HN user
Your edit really illustrates what's wrong with all of this. We can't even get computers to reasonably assume what we're trying to say. But somehow the ultra rich have decided to devote all global resources to doing bad autocorrect for everything everywhere and calling it AI.
I think people are for surveillance under the presumption of it catching major criminals. But once it's introduced, they realize its main purpose isn't to nab murderers, but to punish them (the people who voted for it).
Surveillance everywhere means you can't park in a no parking zone for 3 minutes just to drop something off real quick. You'll get a ticket mailed to your door. You can't go 5 mph over the limit when nobody is around. You can't slow down at a stop sign without stopping for a full 10 seconds without risking being busted. You can't sneakily sample a grape before deciding whether they taste good enough to buy. You can't not tip a bad restaurant without them plastering your picture on the walls to embarrass you. You can't say a mean thing to an annoying person online in the heat of the moment. Half the people on earth cheat on their spouses while pretending they never would and anyone who does should be imprisoned, and soon they'll have their secret revealed and regret their words. You can't trip and fall in a goofy way without your video being a global meme for a whole month.
All these pop into people's heads and make them think "screw that" after at first thinking it's great.
Other countries have visas and don't require embassy visits. There's no difference between as ESTA and how other countries do visas.
They're identical but countries pretend they're different. I got an evisa when I went to Indonesia and India. For each country, the process involved uploading a picture, filling in some basic details, and paying a fee. I was approved in 30 seconds for each. I'm pretty sure it was automatic.
ESTA is supposed to be a lower hurdle than a visa. But from what I've heard, approvals take longer and quite a few people get rejected.
Countries like to pretend they're still visa free, but honestly, it's just a pain in the ass and I'd rather they call it a visa. It's very, very easy to book a plane to a country, see all info indicating its visa free and you can just go, then right as you're about to head out, you decide to check for the 50th time just to be sure... and it turns out there's some "visa free process" for your country called EDtdjvubHHVJVF or some other random assortment of letters that involves a 2 hour application process and 24-72 hours (business days only) for approval results to come in. A visa would be preferable because it's more transparent.
Didn't expect to see this on HN, but it's definitely one of my favorite YouTube channels. Most food history content online feels like straight up readings from Wikipedia, but OTR does actual research and interviews. The Golden Triangle episode where they interviewed the anti-CCP rebel veteran who was like 90 years old was pretty neat. Doesn't sound like it'd tie into food, but it does.
The most impressive thing about Blender is how it feels like early 2000s-era creative software. And I mean that in a good way (blender was actually awful back then, but it's great now)
It opens instantly on my computer. It's fast. It's lightweight to the point my fans don't even spin up no matter what I do. It's customizable. It does everything I want to do and it never gets in the way of me trying to do my job. Meanwhile Photoshop these days randomly shows fucking popups about features and begs me to use its cloud scam, it's slower than it was 20 years ago without offering significantly better features, and the UI has somehow gotten worse when it was fine before. Blender does everything right. All I want is someone to take Blender's design philosophy and make a 2D image editor for desktop. Or hell, everything. I'm sick of bloat and BS in every damn app these days.
It seems the main use case is having Claude automatically write blogposts about how great using Claude is, then submit them wherever necessary.
There's lots of news about the billions AI companies spend on data center construction, but it feels like it's not even a fraction of the money they're spending on endless nonstop blogs about how great their app is at doing... things. Things that will never be defined.
AI enthusiasts actively want a world dominated by a few massive tech corps that'll steer our thoughts and kill creativity. The envy towards people who have skills that they polished is always very, very palpable when reading comments they make or hearing them talk in real life. But beyond just AI, the world is increasingly full of people who are proudly self-declared "accelerationists": accelerationism being the idea that we should make everything as shitty as possible because it'll make the world worse and bring everything down to their level. It's crabs in a bucket as a political, economic, and work philosophy.
My definition of colonialism generally involves people being subjugated and being treated as less and involuntarily part of an empire. People in Gibraltar are British citizens with full rights by definition.
Land borders that one doesn't like doesn't equate to colonialism. It's just a land border that you don't like. The people of Gibraltar voted almost 100% to be British on more than one occasion. Trying to make them not British is the definition of colonialism
I was born in a country that has islands and I live in a different country that consists exclusively of islands. The islands spread out thousands of miles in various directions. Land being far apart is just a reality of how countries work.
The distance from London to Gibraltar is closer than the distance from London to Bermuda, but nobody finds that weird. France has French Polynesia on the opposite side of the world. Russia has Kaliningrad. Norway has Svalbard. South Africa has another country, Lesotho, right in the middle of it. India wraps around Bangladesh like a tentacle. Azerbaijan has a random piece of land and makes a sandwich out of Armenia. Spain has islands directly west of Morocco. France has land on South America.
The whole world has freaky borders. The only clean borders are places like Wyoming and Colorado.
Gibraltar has been part of the UK for over 300 years and the people are all UK citizens. Forcing those people out or seizing the land from them would be the definition of colonialism, yes. And exclaves exist all around the world. Geography has never really meant anything in national terms. Spain has a piece of land on Africa and I don't think they plan on giving that up.
This is the same mindset of criminal in a low trust society btw
"If you didn't want me to do this, you should had a fence/cameras/security guards. You shouldn't have dressed like that. You shouldn't have put your phone in that pocket."
Excusing trillion dollar corporations like low level criminals is embarrassing. Society shouldn't have to lock itself up because bad actors are spreading everywhere. The bad actors should just be removed.
As an American, to me it's always felt like non-white Americans are never really accepted as "full" Americans by people as a whole. If a German guy moves to America and gets citizenship, he might be known as that German American guy, sure. But if he has kids, they'll just be called American. Over 100 years ago, some Chinese people moved to America. Those people had kids. Those kids had kids. Those kids had kids. Some of those kids also had kids. But what are those 5th or 6th generation Americans called? Asian Americans or even Chinese Americans, even if they've never been outside of the US and nobody in their family several generations up the line has either. And people who were forcefully brought to America 300 years ago still have their descendants being called "African American" instead of simply "American."
I say this as someone who myself emigrated from America. Nobody calls me "that American guy." I'm just "that guy".
It's really quite interesting how there are always posts on HN with people talking about how AI made their life great, did it cheaply, made a great product, and saved the day. But whenever someone asks for specifics, the questions are always dodged or answered very vaguely. It's rare that anyone ever even says what their product does.
Vietnam is even cheaper.
The problem is you get paid in a roided up currency and it's a fun vacation for you. The locals get paid awful wages and a single night at an hotel for a typical person here is a whole month's rent for them.
We're a little over 1 year in and the sudden ramp up feels absolutely nuts. In 2028 people will start to feel like it's normal. Just look at places like Russia. Everyone is used to the corruption and thinks it works well enough for them, so they fear any change will be worse. A lot of Americans have already stopped denying the corruption like they did last term, and have retreated into saying, "yeah, it's bad, but (other candidate) would be worse." Same terrifying mindset.
Constitutional amendments are generally made with the purpose of granting rights to the people, not taking them away. The US once made the mistake of making an amendment to take away rights (banning alcohol), but then another amendment restored the right to get drunk.
Countries who've made the mistake of allying with the US might face sanctions or some sort of threats. People will just use Chinese AI then. This is the US biting itself in the ass.
Asking "why would a company lie?" is probably the funniest thing I've seen all month. Every big company puts out BS nonstop.
Some cities are desirable. Some are not. New York is a city that people all around the world want to live in. Detroit is the opposite.
Laws don't apply to corporations. It'll only be used to punish individuals.
SoftBank has a history of making investment decisions that are the absolute opposite of good. I'm always bewildered as to how they still exist since they make nothing but absolute blunders.
It is nonsense. But thinking it's okay for kids to be able to go outside and do what they want, but oh no the internet is dangerous and we need IDs is even more ridiculous, quite frankly.
If you don't want kids using social media, set up a network filter. But if you want to have mandatory ID for social media to "protect kids", but you have no trouble letting your kid go outside and get up to who knows what (they're absolutely going to be browsing the internet on their "cool friend's" computer and doing devilish things like saying naughty words on reddit), then I think anyone who really believes that needs to post their ID as proof. Because it's a very contradictory and inorganic thought process.
If you're letting your kids be lured and attacked, that's a parenting issue. Responsible parents aren't letting their kids slip out alone. The better solution to this would be some sort of penalty for irresponsible parenting.
Give your ID and full name and address to every site you access so that people care about freedom and privacy. Yeah. Genius idea. Strip away everyone's rights so they think "gee, I wish I had freedom", then never let them have freedom again.
I don't wear AirPods/headphones of any sort in public but I don't like talking to strangers while out and about and get very uncomfortable since it's almost always someone trying to get something from me.
But every time someone does randomly talk to me, I smile and laugh and I'm very cordial. Because people who approach strangers generally get quite angry when they're outright shot down. That doesn't at all mean I'm happy to talk. A smile is often just a defensive response.
We all went down to Harajuku to see if we could see some artistically dressed youngsters
Over 95% of the people in Harajuku are tourists going there to do exactly that. Locals completely avoid the area.
That's what infrastructure is, yes.
With me, it's useless if I try to actually read something. But there are times where I just want to check my phone for 5 seconds, and that was enough to make me feel sick for the next hour. The dots help me with those quick checks.
They're also good when I'm on a bus/boat/train. I used to get sick quickly when riding any of those, but now I'm fine even with long periods. Cars are just more intense to me for some reason.
Every time someone has said some goofy thing will go away because people are getting smarter or realizing something, it's absolutely not the case. A large number of people will always want someone to tell them that they have everything figured out and others just don't see how great they are, that they'll wake up rich and famous one day, that they're powerful, that they're beautiful, etc. Many will pay to be told this. Many will pay for subscriptions to become even bigger and better.
As an extreme example, pickup artists had a wave of success a few years back and people paid big money for those ridiculous courses. They got replaced with Andrew Tate style "a real man just smokes and fights and hates women" type content and people paid money with the hopes of becoming like them. Trends and life goals change, but people still gobble up self help.