tavavex

-exclusively- allow passkeys

Isn't that just a euphemism for "we mandate passkeys"? Saying 'exclusively allow' draws the reader's attention to the positive (allowing!) while de-emphasizing what's not permitted.

Regardless, I think it's a lot less of an issue for services exclusively oriented at people in tech instead of just everyone. Even then, there is a barrier to adoption besides just understanding it, which is relying on new software or owning a piece of hardware. It's a lot messier, while text remains universal and has no dependencies.

The US bombed a school? Where's the worldwide outrage in reaction to Russia destroying HUNDREDS of them in Ukraine? While everyone is hyperfixated on the US, Russia has deliberately targeted schools, hospitals, kindergartens, supermarkets, apartment buildings and far more in targeted terror campaigns. And yet all is silent in the West, in fact every attempt to bring up the evil of Russia is immediately drowned out by BUT WHAT ABOUT. Every single time. It's because this isn't really about schools. This just lets people quietly signal their support for Russia for them standing up to 'the West' by murdering hundreds of thousands of people. Whatever evil the US has committed in the past and is supporting now, Russia has done tenfold in just this war. The list of kidnappings, plundering, torture and rape that they've committed is practically endless. They have no mercy, but many Westerners have had their brains melted by east-vs-west 'discourse' and they won't ever understand.

What they're saying is that mobile phone tech didn't scale at the same rate as LLMs. How fast it takes a technology to unfold into full adoption varies depending on the industry and on what's blocking development at its inception.

Mobile phones were severely constrained by hardware that made them impractically expensive and unwieldy, and also by the time it took to set up wireless networks at a large enough scale. That's why it took mobile phones a few decades to really get going, and this is going to be different for every other technology.

LLMs, for instance, were not as hardware-constrained - we have a lot more compute now, but there wasn't a hardware paradigm shift or anything, things were already pretty good a few years ago - now it's just about scale. LLMs were also always relatively affordable - there wasn't a period where they cost $10/token, so we don't get the same kind of affordability scaling as with phones. They also utilize existing internet infrastructure and don't need to be rolled out in some new worldwide grid.

She could only have that info if she has the money to pay for it. In every possible interpretation, this is just discriminating based on wealth. There was no paywall before. Now the rich get direct access to better information and more wealth, everyone else is left in the dust. As if they didn't already have that advantage before.

To me this would be similar to an argument that "one dollar = one vote" is democractic because anyone could hypothetically pay more or just earn more money.

The point people bring up about concrete CO2 use is absurd. To me it screams of refusing to talk about the debate the protestors are having and instead trying to find any minor nit to pick, which then lets you declare that they're imperfect and therefore not even worth discussing.

In the grand scheme of things, the concrete use here is completely unnoticeable. They're not causing extreme ecological damage here. This is a protest that does something about the problem they're complaining about, slows down their enemies and brings a lot of publicity to their act of protest. Without making a value judgement, this is much better than what a lot of other protests achieve in terms of direct effectiveness.

Frankly, the CO2 retort can be reused for almost any protest that destroys or defaces something, because the work to undo or replace that probably creates emissions.

Everyone uses it, but how much of the AI opposition do you think pays to use it?

No matter how much HN users want to deny it, the cultural zeitgeist is that using AI is immensely uncool. If you only read HN, you'd think that everyone is already on board and the opposition consists of their favorite ivory tower stereotype of the day.

LLMs are still a very convenient shortcut, so most people can and will use them for small things. But don't make the mistake of extrapolating that and concluding that they then must also be OK with consuming AI-generated media, generating correspondence with their friends and family, accepting the new garbage-filled internet or permitting giant AI infrastructure projects. Young people especially don't tolerate it.

child labour and dangerous working conditions

I don't think these ideas are as toxic to the current political climate as you think they are. We're probably just a few short years away from the current generation of right-wing populists integrating ideas like "children are useless eaters that are your property to command, make them give back from all that you gave to them" and "work safety and environmental regulations are an emasculating evil, real men want to breathe poison and take risks" right into the core of their platforms.

What a balanced viewpoint!

On one end, we have a megacorporation that has been proven to engage in: willingly sharing private user data with random third parties; accepting and running ads for foreign state actors targeting another country; creating one of the most sophisticated tracking regimes in the world; collecting oceans of data to build profiles on everyone, user and not; enabling a genocide to be coordinated on their platform; using their money and power to influence legislation in their favor; knowingly designing their platforms to be incredibly addictive, including deliberately discussing how to get children hooked; and a practically endless list of other things.

On the other end, we have HN commenters. They are really angry and that they want to undo some of the damage described above. They are pretty jaded about how elegantly Meta has been able to exploit addiction, network effects and the human mind to keep people complicit.

To me it's obvious that #2 is the true evil. They obviously won't succeed because wealth controls our reality, but just for daring to question the status quo, they are authoritatian elitist sheep with superiority complexes. True freedom is when the world's biggest companies get to do whatever they want, slavery is when people to use their democratically elected governments to oppose that. Can you smell all that freedom in the air?

My comment never says the rules are set in stone permanently - only that every stock needs to abide by the current set, unless there's enough money in play in which case the rules are edited then and there to specifically accommodate that company.

What do you mean? I was under the impression that including SPCX has been massively beneficial for Nasdaq. It creates lots of trading volume and sends a quiet signal to other massive tech companies looking to IPO to come to them, rules be damned. So they're definitely extremely lucrative for Nasdaq.

They're not saying it 'mandates' it as law, but that the systematic incentives inevitably lead to corruption. The ability to buy government is irrelevant - this is just the easiest method right now of converting money into power. If there was no government to buy, private business would execute that conversion themselves by ruling over people and enforcing their wishes directly.

We're living under true capitalism right now. Look at the incentives. I don't see how we could have progressed to anything besides this, this is the natural outcome of the system in place.

American libertarians often imagine some kind of wonderland capitalism where everyone agrees to play by the rules that aren't enforced by anyone. To my knowledge this has never existed as a long-term equilibrium and it can't exist. I've yet to meet anyone who can tell me how their imaginary ideas go up against claims like

1. Encouraging infinite growth with no controls or limits will always lead to monopolism and is a one-way ratchet

2. Power vacuums are always filled (no public government leads to private companies stepping in and taking the dictatorial role, this time without any of the democracy)

3. Power always corrupts

So, the inclusion rules are basically "these are the hard limits that specify which stocks are eligible, unless someone really big and lucrative comes along, in which case it's whatever and we'll just adjust the rules to make them eligible"?

Your argument assumes that AGI, whatever it might be, will definitely be very humanlike, but why? Slavery is about living beings because it's an outcome of human relationships that are driven by our biology. Our aging, the capacity to feel pain, the thirst for power over others. All driven by what we are. Do you think that any equal intelligence must necessarily adhere to the same rules? What if AGI isn't an 'entity' in a computer that you can relate to and liken to humans, but a text box that is just really intelligent? Can you enslave something that has no innate desire to act on its own outside of its directions? Something that can't feel pain or pleasure or be externally coerced by fear and only does its job because it's innately embedded in its structure as the thing it's made to do, without the need for these reward and punishment mechanisms?

It feels like each new SOTA model brings the average quality a bit closer to the asymptote of well-made non-vibecoded software but it can't quite cross it.

Why am I responsible for this person's death? He had fallen on the subway tracks all on his own, it was his fault. All I did was extend a hand to him, let him climb halfway up, and then kick him in the face back down. So why is everyone looking at me now? The outcome is the same it would've been if no one jumped in to help. Why aren't you calling the bystanders murderers too?

I strongly disagree. For one, people don't just have an issue with individual cops abusing that power, it's just one of the easiest things to point to and one of the most common types of misuse that occurs in real life. The bigger issue is that drones are extremely cheap, and there is nothing limiting their use to actual crimes. It starts as cautiously testing the waters by using the drones to assist people in hunting down actual crime, but there is nothing to prevent it from being scaled into a precrime mass surveillance machine. Much the opposite, this would make the job of the police a lot easier, so if drone surveillance is fully entrenched in our societies, they will start incrementally pushing for it. Do you not see the issue?

But let's also come back to the individuals misusing drones argument - something that's a lot more immediate and perceptible. Whenever there's arguments about expanding police powers, proponents always hand-wave these concerns by suggesting that some systematic or technological changes be made. But neither the police nor the government above them have an incentive to do these things beyond the shallowed need for good PR. Police would like the least restrictions and oversight on their actions to 'increase efficiency', governments would like the same to squash 100% of crime. There's no mechanism that moves the ratchet back. You know these measures will not be implemented. The only method to prevent this that seems powerful enough seems to be denying them the power altogether.

Most importantly, it frustrates me that in these arguments, it's always presented as a two-choice space. Either you get the status quo, or the incredibly dangerous new mass surveillance tech. Crime waves have existed in the past. How did cops manage to deal with them without a thousand eyes quietly recording everyone doing everything? In many places, crime has been going down well before any mass surveillance doodads could even have existed. Don't you think there's other actions that can be taken to improve things outside of just allowing them whatever they want?

It's a bleak world in terms of bots flooding the web, but out of all possible solutions, this seems to be preferable over invasive and identifying fingerprinting that everyone wants to roll out. Here's hoping that mouse movements aren't sufficiently unique as to be fingerprintable too.

June 9, 2032: ReMind, a new biotech startup, has opened to a recordbreaking IPO after a demo and a series of small-scale trials that stunned the world. The company is pioneering a new way to ingrain memories into the human brain - each ReMind screen is equipped with a special camera that can quickly recognize anyone who walks up to it, and ReMind's secret sauce algorithm is able to use past data of each user to generate imagery that will have the most profound impact on their brains. They claim that the algorithm is highly effective, being able to burn in imagery into the viewer's brains with an average accuracy of 83% per viewing. The CEO has promised to launch two services to start: ReMind Long-term, which focuses on creating imagery that simulates a 'traumatic' impression for creating long-term memories, which will be immensely useful for advertisers; as well as ReMind Short-term, for milder experiences that resemble a catchy song in a visual format for a quick boost in sales for a limited-time promotion. Advertising companies around the world have already placed tens of thousands of sales and deployment of ReMind-equipped screens is planned to begin immediately. Look forward to spotting one in your grocery store, in an elevator, on gas stations, on in-flight entertainment systems and in place of billboards on public spaces. The future is looking bright for ReMind!

If you're dying or in critical condition, you'll get treatment now. There is a problem with non-emergency cases taking a long time to go through the system (especially major and complex procedures, because I've never waited anywhere near 7 months). But the solution to this is to stop the provinces from trying to sabotage public healthcare, then train more doctors and make systematic improvements. Not insert layers of private industry middlemen whose life's calling is converting human suffering into cash at maximum exchange rates. Everyone I know here would gladly take our system over yours.

"Building a network" is getting harder and may soon become completely impossible. Apparently when the total number of people who are interested in you or whatever you're selling doesn't increase and are instead diluted by piles of automatically-generated, void-filling slosh, it gets harder to spot what's really valuable. Everyone had to wade through the swamps now, so instead of surrendering more of their time to try and find anything worthwhile, people retreat from these places into their own communities.

I'm sure none of that matters though. You've already shown what really matters, the only thing that's valuable in the world - money. Maybe if those naysayers just shut up and got into the slurry pit like the rest of us normal people, they'd be convinced not to care about silly things that aren't money. After all, using a computer is 'artificial' or something. Even if you used those screens to connect with real people or do things for someone, the computeriness means that you might as well forego everything and everyone now. It was on a screen after all. So stop caring and play along with my numbers going up party. I may not be striving to do anything but value extraction, but at least it's going to make the most important number really big.

Subscriptions are difficult to avoid for certain situations where the developer does a lot of ongoing work and where the work is expected to continue in perpetuity without there being a set-in-stone finished product somewhere in the future.

But in all other cases, or even many of the ones where it is 'necessary', the presence of a subscription is a red flag for predatory pricing. Minor ongoing work or maintenance really doesn't cost as much as the author thinks it does. Keeping the lights on and updating API calls can be covered by new sales of permanent licenses as long as the app continues to sell. But if they had to go with a subscription, the real per-user cost would probably be measured in cents per month. Maybe add a bit more for their profit margin and charge a nice $1/mo. Do you see that anywhere except the rare app by a small developer that doesn't want to price gouge? No, all software businesses want at LEAST $5/10 a month because they've run the numbers and figured out all the tricks to human psychology, and they know they can trick someone into spending 'just $5' without them internalizing that the company is charging them a ridiculous $50-100 per user per year for even the most trivial service, leaving with almost pure profit. This is why investors love anything with a subscription service.

The author just inflates the prices and adds zeros to numbers to make permanent purchasing seem dead in the water, ignoring that we had multiple decades of software development before the advent of subscription services, where those prices were reserved for big professional suites and not your everyday app or a minor service. It's not that expensive, companies charging insane prices has just shifted your perception of what's going on behind the curtain. We even had one-time purchase mobile apps briefly, and they weren't doing it for charity either. Video games that don't require external services are still overwhelmingly priced for a single purchase, and somehow they're making bank despite also having to release updates and bugfixes.

But I wasn't talking about things that are just hard to replicate. I was talking about companies that keep getting further away from anyone matching them, forever. No one can match ASML's prowess, but do you think that China today is further from catching up to them than they were 10 years ago? Going from nothing to modern silicon fabrication is a lot harder than going from existing knowledge but no expertise/technology to implement it, to actually making it happen. That's my point.

You have a valid point about ecosystems though - that is a rare exception where first movers can keep holding onto their advantage that I hadn't thought of. However, it's not really applicable when talking about a commodity like space launches.

They have the same dreams as their competitors - finding a breakthrough that gives them an edge over the others and makes them dominant. And also, having the word 'AI' anywhere near your company makes all the right numbers go up, so having an in-house AI division that Musk can bundle with the other companies to pump their valuations with is very helpful to him, even if the product itself loses some money.

I'm guessing that they already have the model ready and the announcement blogposts locked and loaded, and then release them as soon as they see a competitor make the first move, trying to overshadow the first announcement or at least be swept up in the hype just as people start talking about new models again.

A single amoral poor person doesn't matter because they can't do anything to you short of physical violence. A single amoral ultra-wealthy person can and will make sure everyone plays by their rules, they are unstoppable forces in society. Not every evil person ends up being rich, but the incentives in our society basically ensure that past a certain point of extreme wealth we're selecting for the most ruthless and self-centered people who know how to play the game. Even an initially good person that managed to climb the ranks on merit or real innovation eventually has to make the choice between ethics and getting more money, and we know which way they tend to go.

HN is/was a bastion of venture capital and big tech. This is literally Y Combinator. Maybe reflect on why the tides may be slightly shifting away from idealist absolutism even in a place like this. You'll probably find genuine grievances and criticism instead of Red Scare cardboard cutouts that you'd look so good taking down.

The gap is getting larger year by year, not smaller.

Why? Logically it would seem that learning how to do something that's already been done would be easier than discovering it. SpaceX has already done a lot of the work and has shown the others that it's possible and how they do it. Why won't the others catch up? I can't think of any industry that has a market leader that only gets further away from their competition forever.

I'd hope lawmakers and public advocates can devise solutions that allow both safe cars and secure data practices. This is not a case where safety in one domain needs to be traded for safety in another.

The reason for the cynicism is that this has never happened. Can you think of a time in tech when a new method that could be used for tracking and spying was devised and then everyone was sensible about it, developed reasonable regulations and it has never come back to bite us since?

It's always extremely easy to argue for anything that increases safety, because then the proponents can propose anything with the justification that their metric isn't zero yet, and then argue that anyone opposing them supports death or crime. But frankly, everything is safe enough. If the status quo was frozen in terms of tracking technology, no one would notice it and decry the lack of safety. Deaths in traffic accidents in the EU are down dramatically since the year 2000. So yes, I don't mind stopping for a bit if that prevents us from descending down a winding path to a place where every single object is always connected, permanently tracked and is mandated to collect, analyze and send out a thousand different data points to keep a tight grip on everything.

I'm not seeing any evidence of this. Precision tools raise the ceiling. AI mostly just raises the floor. Ease of use is a focus point for all AI labs and it's what they're constantly trying to improve. Yes, an expert can juice these models for all they've got, but an average Joe today is probably getting better results than the best power users had a year ago. Extrapolate this a bit and ask yourself if businesses will ever want to pay your geniuses and craftspeople a professional's wage if they could get 'good enough' results from any desperate minimum wage worker, or even by doing the work themselves.

Automation in the past was just about changing what was in the human's hands. Technology improved, people got faster, but there was still a balance. The people who owned the machines and the factories couldn't and didn't want to operate them, and had to employ others.

Now they're threatening us with total automation. In their dreams, we're not the people riding horses who now get to drive shiny new cars. We are the horse. If that dream is possible with the current technology, they will stop at nothing to achieve it.