yesfitz

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28411712

I was originally critical of this piece because I work in a highly regulated industry (and silos can lead to compliance issues), but after a little more consideration, I realized I see re-siloing happening organically due to lines of business competing for scarce resources.

For example:

Because everyone needs Team X to complete their projects, Team X's leadership has to decide how to allocate their time. This rarely makes the lines of business feel like their needs are fulfilled. So different lines of business start building back channels to members of Team X, in a bid to get an advocate for their projects.

Eventually, a line of business might hire a Business Analyst just to deal with Team X.

I guess an alternative would be to embed a member of Team X with the line of business. They're dedicated, but could also be reassigned as needed.

It would be helpful to have a step-by-step walkthrough on the site (video or screenshots). The "How It Works" section is a little vague to suit that bill.

I'm looking for both an example of what to expect and inspiration for how I could be eating with your service.

I'd also recommend focusing on the API integrations, and/or whatever other features separate elevate this beyond asking $LLM for a weekly meal plan and shopping list taking into account dietary preferences.

I actually stopped using a phone case because I liked the dings and scratches on my phone. The wear made it feel like my device.

As for cloth, I feel similarly about my worn flannel shirts and some chunky-knit sweaters, but not car seats or white shirts with some tomato-sauce stain on them.

Assuming this style of robot catches on, the designers or enthusiasts may find ways to make the cloth wear feel cozy instead of ratty.

Their teleoperator position from 3-11 PM, M-F, pays between $22 and $31 an hour with benefits and is onsite in Palo Alto.[1]

I'll be curious if they move those positions to a lower cost-of-living area as they scale up.

1: https://1x.recruitee.com/o/robot-operator

Per the keynote video, the bodysuit is machine washable.

As long as 1X stays in business or enthusiasts exist, I have to imagine there will be some option to clean/replace the head covering on the $20,000 robot.

"Deviance" is probably the word to focus on here, as in "deviation" from the mean.

Drinking underage is a deviation from the norm of following the law.

Moving is a deviation from the norm of staying (as evidenced by the census data showing that in the 1950s ~20% of people lived somewhere different than they had the previous year, in 2023 it was 7.4%. In 1950 3.5% of the population lived in a different state than they had the previous year, in 2023 it was 1.4%)

I think Mr. Sanger is writing from a place of familiarity with Wikipedia at the highest levels. Many of the things he criticizes may negatively impact the functions at the top, but make the on-ramps and experience at the bottom fantastic.

I am not a frequent Wikipedia contributor in the least, but have been friends with some in highschool, college, and through to today, so I have some familiarity with the rules and culture.

Nine theses deserve at least nine responses:

1. At the top level, consensus breaks, but if you look at Wikipedia from the bottom up, it is a collection of research and publishing decisions reached by consensus.

2. Competing articles is a ridiculous idea for a publication whose goal is to be neutral and factual. If the wikipedians are the problem, it's never been easier to publish your own research either in another wiki or just a blog post.

3. The list itself says it is specifically not a list of banned sources, although I'm sure it's referenced as more of an authority than it should be.

4. The current neutrality policy and guide on writing from a neutral point-of-view is battle-tested, growing from the original neutrality policy. Almost like case law in modern legal systems.

5. No argument here. Maybe Ms. Frizzle's motto from The Magic Schoolbus would be a better fit. "Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!"

6. Deanonymization is another point that's fine at the top level, but breaks down where the real work happens. When the expectation is that "real" editors use their real identity, that will trickle down to the rest, which will have a chilling effect.

7. Public rating of articles exists and it's called the "Edit" button. If you think an article is bad, the only way to fix it is to fix it. And you're empowered to do so, even without an account.

8. Having been a moderator on a handful of platforms over the years (never Wikipedia), if you need to ban someone, they should probably be banned indefinitely. Review is not necessary. If you've stopped the bannable behavior, you can 100% come back with a different account, and no one will hunt you down for ban evasion.

9. An elected legislature sounds fine for another project. The current state of popular elections and representative democracy in the real world doesn't make me too hopeful that it's a great solution to alleged mismanagement (unless of course you want your side to be the ones mismanaging things.)

I agree, the author should have made it clearer, but I think the implication is that the marketplace makes it easier to redeploy labor in the face of uncertainty around which tasks will be taken over by AI and what tasks humans will need to perform because of AI.

I think the word "potentially" is carrying a lot of weight there.

Do you have any sources that these things happen and/or that they negatively impact students outside of those programs?

The argument I've heard previously is that G&T programs remove peer role models from classrooms, which lowers the class's average behavior and achievement.

I was a G&T student for 5 years (2nd through 6th) and have close relationships with people who were educators then administrators in a G&T program.

Ah, thank you.

My sentence about "gropules" was a dig at "empaths". You may not have run into them, but they're tarot and crystal adjacent. It's a teeny tiny minority of people who talk about "empathy", but they do use it vapidly, and could lead to people with an underdeveloped sense of empathy to dismiss the whole concept as something akin to new-age nonsense. I've met enough to last me a while though.

However, you're right about my argument, and our disagreement lies in the affected population.

"17% of children aged 3–17 years were diagnosed with a developmental disability, as reported by parents, during a study period of 2009–2017. These included ASD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), blindness, and cerebral palsy, among others."[1]

Now, that's children, and with the correct support, people with those disabilities can be taught empathy along with other social skills.

But what about those without support, those who should have been diagnosed and supported but weren't, and those who didn't meet the criteria to be diagnosed with an official disability/disorder but still struggle?

I may be an outlier, but I would estimate that about 1 in 5 people that I meet have some trouble with empathy (i.e. semi-frequently misunderstanding the feelings and/or motivations of others).

Ultimately, I agree, ignorance is no excuse for bad behavior, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't act empathetically to those who have trouble doing so. If anything, the author's piece is a fantastic path to developing a sense of empathy for the <1-20% of adults affected by a lack of it.

1: https://www.cdc.gov/autism/data-research/index.html

I think the author understands that "have a little empathy" is a request to modify their behavior, but expresses their frustration that the request is unclear and (in the author's experience) the requestors won't clarify the request.

Contrast this with the conversation we're having now where I requested clarification on your initial comment, and you thoughtfully provided it.

But to your point, there's an innate "getting it" where your level/expression of empathy is roughly in-line with people you interact with, and if you don't have that, you need to do work to "get it", which is what the author did.

We can compare empathy to other practices that can benefit from innate understanding. Some people "get" poetry, math, music, long-distance running, etc. and we can all work to "get" them, but in my experience, it's never quite the same.

Can you tell me which specific use of the word "empathy" I am arguing against? Because I don't think I'm arguing against any definition at all.

I think I'm arguing that telling someone to behave a way that they don't understand is unhelpful. That could be "empathetic", "thankful", or "gropulent". ** Taking the author at their word, they don't understand the request.

When they ask for clarification, they don't receive it.

In that way, it is veiled, similarly to my "gropulent" analogy.

In other words, the author is being asked to behave differently, but not given guidance on how to behave differently. Which is why they wrote this piece about what empathy is.

I think the author would have gotten a lot further by asking how rather than why, but the author admits that they thought that requests to be empathetic were requests "to be fake and lie". (i.e. They misunderstood what "empathy" meant.)

This is addressed in the post:

> "Usually, 'be more empathetic' was a veiled request for me to modify my behavior or thinking towards someone (e.g. they thought I was rude to someone and wanted me to apologize and change my behavior)."

And you actually illustrate the entire point of the post.

Imagine that someone's upset with you and tells you to be more "gropulent". Many people have said this to you, but gropulence doesn't come naturally to you, and the term is bandied about in a wide variety of situations, making it hard to pick up context clues. There are people who call themselves "gropules" who can't explain how they use gropulence to support the claims that they make about others, and they sound an awful lot like psychics, who we all know are frauds.

How would you start learning to be gropulent?

I hope you'd be as curious and thorough as the author of TFA.

What is behind the request?

Can you expand on how gifted program students receive a disproportionate amount of education?

From the Roman Catholic point of view, there's a variety of answers.

For super up-to-date happenings, you can go to Vatican News[1]. (A great example in the first article, "Holy See urges moratorium on autonomous weapons at UN debate on AI".)

For weightier, more timeless writings that address the issues of the current day, but are meant to be read indefinitely, the Papal Encyclicals[2] are the look. Rerum Novarum is a good one to start with.

I'd be skeptical of any persuasive writings by lay-persons (i.e. not priests or nuns). It's like the difference between a lawyer's opinion and a judge's ruling. They can be fantastic scholars, but they don't speak for the church.

1: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city.html 2: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/

Yeah, a 5 second clip of the word "Object" being inflected like it's actually speaking.

But also it ends with "...object ject".

When you inspect the network traffic, it's pulling down 6 .mp3 files which contain fragments of the clip.

And it seems like the feature's broken for the whole site. The Lowes[1] press release is particularly good.

Pretty interesting peek behind the curtain.

1: https://openai.com/index/lowes/

I think it would 100% work for someone who truly finds the "most-fun part of baseball" "having a correctly called game by the rules".

Initially I was going to argue that that's a silly thing to prioritize in a game, but it's a matter of taste and I'm not going to tell you what to like or not. It's not like you said that you liked arguing with your friends or something.

In all seriousness though, sure, everyone wants a fair game, but there's limitations. For instance, I only watch minor league baseball, and it's not because they got the pitch clock and ABS first, it's because the teams aren't completely optimized like the majors, and the game isn't as refined - it's closer in spirit to the first game of baseball ever played.

Frankly, I'd rather watch a pick-up game without an umpire if it weren't weird (and I could get a beer and some hotdogs).

Long story short (too late), baseball's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The stats, the camaraderie, the competition, or the culture around the game itself. If you prized a game going off like clockwork, I couldn't fault you, even if that doesn't factor into my love of the game at all.

As I recall, some baseball video games will let you set both teams to be controlled by the computer.

Guaranteed perfectly-called games every time.

Doesn't sound particularly fun to me, but to each their own.

I've been thinking about this due to a renewed local interest in Bowling Alone[1].

Besides the main identified contributors of personalized media, suburbanization, real estate prices, and the increase of dual-income households, I've started to suspect that government-funding of organizations has also had a significant impact.

In the past, organizations had to raise funds from their communities. As government grants for organizations increased, the cost floor was raised on all organizations (i.e. fundraising, rents, salaries, etc.), and led to the professionalization of what was previously handled by volunteers.

In the same way that the 30-year mortgage and zero-interest-rate policy made it harder for individuals to raise the initial funds to buy a home (by enabling an increase in home prices, making it easier to buy a home if you already own one), I suspect access to government capital has made it harder for small organizations to remain small while they compete with more professional (read "larger") organizations for their members' time and money.

And this is a problem because as Terence Tao points out, "...[Small Groups] also fill social and emotional needs, and the average participant in such groups can feel connected to such groups and able to have real influence on their direction."

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

You're wrong both generally and in this case specifically.

Since 1998, H1-B applications include a $500 fee[1] that's used to "...provide training and related activities to workers to assist them in gaining...employment in high-growth industries or economic sectors."[2]

Government programs frequently include provisions for how they will be funded.[3] And revenues generated by government programs are frequently earmarked for specific purposes prior to collection.[4]

That money is not fungible. It is "mandatory" spending.[5]

If you're going to be wrong, you should try not to be rude at the same time.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Competitiveness_and_W...

2: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/skills-grants/h1-b-skills-t...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_...

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Lottery#Lottery_p...

5: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/introduction-to...

Enforcing speed limits requires constant labor and doesn't scale.

Making adjustments to roads requires some upfront capital and scales to every car on those roads.

Check out this great resource of traffic calming measures from the Institute of Transportation Engineers[1].

Chicanes, Chokers, and Corner Extensions are just three examples of measures that can be taken temporarily and cheaply.

1: https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/traffic-calming/traf...

Counter example: 12 Mini runs fine. Health-wise, it's got 22 GB free, and the battery was replaced in February, 2025.

I really dig the redesign. I've been suffering through flat UIs since at least 2013, so having some volume back is very welcome. I know we probably won't go back to skeuomorphism, but that'd be great. Metaphor in design is important. It's a shortcut to understanding. As it stands, I'll gladly take Liquid Glass's volume and distortion as a indicator of interactability.

But, I am a "harbinger of failure"[1], (12 Mini, right?), so maybe this won't be long-lived either.

1: https://news.mit.edu/2015/harbinger-failure-consumers-unpopu...

That's true, and as far as my quick research has gone, the plastic is burned off during the smelting process of aluminum recycling.

Because of the small amount of plastic in each can, and the high heat of the smelting process, odds are good the thin plastic liner will be almost fully combusted, which should greatly reduce the amount of microplastics.[1]

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

In addition to this, I think the headline is confused because the article later says: "UBS averaged the hard data together with inverted yield curve and credit markets to produce an aggregate recession probability of 52% for July..."

So 52%, not 93%, and I can't find a link to where UBS published this information.

But here are some other recent figures from UBS (or at least attributed to them):

2022-05-05: 0% https://www.ubs.com/global/en/investment-bank/insights-and-d...

2022-06-21: 40% https://finance.yahoo.com/news/odds-hard-landing-u-economy-2...

2022-08-30: 60% https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/ubs-raises-...

2023-07-19: Goldman Sachs says 20% https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/the-probabili...

2024-08-27: 25% https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/ubs-wealth-management-rai...

I think the number is largely useless, and this article is even moreso.

To be a little more constructive for the author, as they themselves are an editor:

* Headings would be helpful. They let the reader see what the structure of the writing is. And I see that you definitely have a structure, we'd just benefit from knowing it before we dive into reading the whole piece.

* Once you're using headings, adding a table of contents or an outline at the top of the page is trivial.

* Consider adding a hook to the first sentence. It says that you went to a Nokia 2780 and won't be going back to a smartphone, but why should a reader scroll past the picture of Paris Hilton to keep reading? Are you going to tell them how/why to do likewise, or is this a meditation on your journey, or something else?

You can buy reusable metal straws online or from a variety of retailers today, and you can remove (or refuse) the lid to a cup, at which point it can be used without a straw.

Another option would be to buy canned beverages rather than fountain drinks.

I'd like to address your last point because there's another thread about the larger amounts of plastic being easier to police:

Not all pollution is fungible.

Greenhouse gas emissions and the microplastic epidemic are two related, but separate issues.

There is no amount of fuel efficiency that would stop a plastic bag from blowing into a stream or tree and shedding microplastics as it breaks down.

Why would wide applicability be a mark against an idea? Do you feel the same way about gravity and normal distributions?

Your example is an excellent one though because it shows a corollary to the way that quote was intended in this conversation.

How it was meant: "It's OK to not remember everything you've read verbatim, because the important parts mixed into who you are/were."

Your corollary: "We must be careful about what we consume because it will be mixed into who you are."

Just like bees in the wild, otherwise they'd never make new colonies.