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Was the wrong article linked?

The actual article title is: "China’s AI Power Play: Cheap Electricity From World’s Biggest Grid"


What year was it when you were 18? Facebook was enormous for me when I was 18, in 2008, for similar reasons. However, these days facebook is mostly just ads and generic modern feed garbage content in general.


The headlines around this are misleading potentially. I think instead of "Without Real ID" it means "Without Real ID or other acceptable forms of ID" (such as passport).


Pretty sure Nano Banana only produces images.

Nonetheless, ask it to “create an infographic on how Google works”. Do you not see any excitement in the result? I think it’s pretty impressive and has a lot of utility.


Until people ask it to make convincing misinformation. Pretty, professional looking graphs are already hard to resist.


> "Generative AI is a blender chewing up other people’s hard work, outputting a sad mush that kind of resembles what you’re looking for, but without any of the credibility or soul. Magic."

Humans have soul and magic and AI doesn't? Citation needed. I can't stand language like this; it isn't compelling.


I think the "soul" is coming from the fact that a human has worked, experimented, and tested with their physical senses a specific recipe until it tastes good. There is physical feedback involved. This is something an LLM cannot do. The LLM "recipe" is a statistical amalgamation of every ramen recipe in the training set.


Or they just wrote down what their grandma used to do and changed how much salt they put in the water.

Or they read a few recipes and made their own statistical amalgamation and said "hey this seems to work" on the first try.

Or they're just making stuff up or scraping it and putting it on a website for ad money.

"Soul" not required.

Also does an LLM give the same recipe every time you ask? I'd wager you could change the context and get something a little more specialized.


You don't see a difference between doing and tweaking what your grandmother did and an AI statistically inferring a recipe?

How is building upon your ancestors knowledge and sharing that with the world not 'soul'?


For me? Handling data like private voice memos, pictures, videos, calendar information, emails, some code etc. Stuff I wouldn't want to share on the internet / have a model potential slurp up and regurgitate as part of its memory when the data is invariably used in some future training process.


I've always wondered, what fraction of the decline could be attributed to indoor pet dogs?

Ok, this is half humorous and half serious. But I'd wager that the answer is non-zero.

This is all just anecdotal, obviously, but I think childless humans with pet indoor dogs could have less of a desire to procreate for various reasons, but perhaps mainly because the instinctual thirst to care for a living thing is quinched to some extent when you have a pet indoor dog.

Obviously not every or most or even many. But perhaps _some_.


Dog as child replacement fits too well for many western couples. There is very light care aspect included. Even bad illnesses happen and one must go to vet. With a dog you don’t need to do homework for two hours after hard workday. Nor plan children birthdays or vacations. Nor read primitive children books for hours on weekend. It’s perfect substitute without much effort.

Children are long term gain, first decade is rather hard. Teaching and training every day, hour, minute. If one wants to do it right.

On other hand dog might be better that a child hooked to a smartphone from an age of 2 years.


I had a dog, then kids and now just got a puppy and I think there is perhaps some truth to it, dogs are certainly much much lower effort/stress/cost but provide a good amount of companionship. It wasn't enough for us, obviously, but we also have minimal family connections outside our household, for others the equation may add up that a dog/cat is enough and if it was then all the power to you.


In South Korea pet strollers outsold child ones [0].

DINKWAD (Dual income, no kids, with a dog) is rising [1]. Hospitality is changing to accommodate this [2].

[0] https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/lifestyle/trends/20231226/sales...

[1] https://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/dinkwad-meaning-origin-u...

[2] https://rochsociety.com/rise-of-the-dinkwads/


Not sure why you are being downvoted. It's an interesting thought.

I will add that us having children completely erased the desire to get a dog. We almost got one just before our first born. Now we can't imagine. I think it's a combination of what you're suggesting, and also because a dog requires a lot of time we just don't have now.


Where I work someone wrote a system to allow one to save every command they ever typed and make it available for searching via cli or web app. I opted in. It's probably one of the most useful tools I've ever used.


How many credentials get exposed this way? That would be my main concern.


Centrally? Can you browse others'?


Which companies are you talking about?


In my experience over the past 5 years in EU and Asia: Increasingly many companies wont even talk to you unless you have ‘a’ PhD. You dont need this piece of paper, but it is one hell of a life hack getting one.


Are you trying to apply cold? The way it usually works is that someone you have worked with before vouches for you and that gets you past that screening.


Never cold.


American Express, Capital One, and Canonical to name a few.

Aside from Unicorn and FAANG orgs self-taught is still predominantly forbidden.


I'm self-taught. My first job I got lucky (or the grace of God, depending on your perspective). After that, it never mattered. I had experience, references, a track record.

And the older you get, the longer the track record, and the more it outweighs the piece of paper.

I'm primarily an embedded guy, though. If you're doing web apps, or desktop, or games, or phones, or high performance, or finance programming, your mileage may vary.


I'm happy to hear your success story but that has not been my experience. I am only able to get into FAANGs.


I'm sorry that that has been your experience. (Or maybe I shouldn't be sorry - FAANGs pay pretty well.) But what you say surprises me, for two reasons.

First, FAANGs get far more resumes than they have openings. Demanding a degree seems like an easy, lazy way to eliminate some. I'm kind of surprised that they don't take it. (I mean, they shouldn't take it, but I'm still kind of surprised.)

Second, many engineering organizations that are not FAANGs are trying to model their hiring on FAANG approaches. So I'm surprised that, if FAANGs would hire you, others won't - especially after you have experience at a FAANG.


Nobody cares about degrees much after you've started working.

Sure, there's very very big orgs where it matters for several positions, but it's not predominantly forbidden.


If this is true, we should keep these starred somewhere so self-taught devs don't have to waste time applying to orgs that care otherwise.


They won't pass the CV screening, so no big deal.


Took 1-2 years before I went a single day without thinking about tinnitus after I gave it to myself playing drums. I was so happy to be smashing those punk drums in the first rehearsal of this band. I remember exclaiming afterwards to one of my bandmates, "Wow my ears are ringing! That was awesome!" He said, "Ya, mine have been ringing for 30 years." My heart immediately sank knowing what I had just done.

I spent a lot of days/months totally devastated about it. I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad. I thought that was going to be my story. I thought it was inevitable.

But I met a lot of people who lived completely normal lives and described their tinnitus as so much worse than mine. I eventually got used to it. I wouldn't say the actual ringing is better or worse than it was. I have no idea how to measure it anyways. But life has gotten so much better. And I almost never think about it any more -- maybe once every few weeks I'll have the thought, "Oh ya, I have ringing in my ears" and a few seconds later I forget about it again. I think it gets better for most people, thankfully.

But it'd be cool to hear complete silence again.


I've had multiple times when my tinnitus has gotten noticeably worse. The path is always the same: some panic and desperation first, followed by some examinations and attempts of alleviation that do nothing, and finally familiarization and acceptance about 9-12 months afterwards that makes everything pretty much fine.

I'm sure it will happen again, and I can only hope that the acceptance phase keeps working.


When I'm very focused I can be in complete silence, but these moments are very few, once I notice the silence the ringing comes back again.

Mostly I'm at a point i don't hear it at all unless I get very distracted or see anything that mentions it. Like right now reading this post and the comments LOL.


That's how it is for me too. I don't hear it until someone mentions it. Then it's pretty noticeable. I went to an audiologist thinking I gave myself hearing loss at a point but he said my hearing is beyond exceptional, and that I should be very careful with it to preserve it. So I think I have an infection induced, or neurological cause.


Not useful for you now AFAIK, but there's some evidence that n-acetylcysteine has a protective effect if taken before or shortly after loud noise exposure.


> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad.

I think you are thinking of Gaby Olthuis. Her story is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQ6kSqBOao


> I remember reading this story about some woman in a scandinavian country who chose medical-assisted suicide because hers was so bad.

I'm surprised there is not some method to surgically disconnect the brain from the ear.


Tinnitus is sometimes neurological, seemingly caused by the brain compensating for a loss of sensation. I can imagine a horror story in which this just makes it a thousand times worse, on top of permanently losing all hearing.

Now, being able to use a hot-swappable audio sensor instead of an ear made of tissue would be pretty dope.


Louder than you think, Dad! Louder than you think!

proceeds to rip off ears


I hear that theory but I don't believe it - I have tinnitus. Nothing else in the nervous system behaves that way - lack of light doesn't suddenly make you see blinding light etc. It's much more likely the sound sensor in the ear is jammed in the on position.


There are various explanations about the genesis of the sound for T sufferers, and it obviously depends on the kind of T that one has (this chart [1] helps navigate the variants).

But if you are one of the "common kind", which is typically an insult to your hearing apparatus that damaged your cochlea, then the work from Susan Shore [2] is a reasonable explanation of what could actually be going on (genesis by the fusiform cells of the dorsal cochlear nucleus). You may be interested in checking out her publications listed in the wikipedia article quoted.

[1] https://www.tinnitusresearch.net/index.php/for-clinicians/di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Shore


Amputees have phantom limb sensations including pain. I believe this is more than theory. Certainly medical science has collected at least some case studies over the past century about people who have had their auditory nerve severed for one reason or another. And, as I recall, the auditory system actually does behave unlike other parts of the nervous system like vision which is more mechanical and less dependent on the brain for basic functionality.


Well, perhaps some but I don't think it's the usual cause. Phantom limb isn't just loss of sensation, it's also having part of the body chopped off. Just having part of your body go numb doesn't usually cause that.


It does and it is called neuropathic pain. Phantom limb is just an extreme case of it, but malfunction or damage to nerves can cause all kinds of phantom “pain”. Experiencing phantom sensations due to nerve damage is well known and widely documented, so phantom sound in the ear due to nerve damage is well in line with that.


There is, audio nerve can be surgically cut, but this means complete hearing loss in one ear. The whole inner ear can be removed. You don't want it without a good reason.

From what I've rad tinnitus can be caused by a) shift in small transmission bones, can be age related. 2) inner ears sensors mess up, can be from loud sound. 3) something else, like infection, inflammation, inner ear pressure build up (may be Ménière's disease).

Hope technology develops fast, some sort of implant talking directly to the audio nerve. I think they already exist or are in development. This can give in theory ultra- and infra-sound sensitivity too, as a bonus.


I've read about an experimental surgery sometime in the past doing this, and the patient had no reduction in their tinnitus. Their sound wasn't generated in the ear.


I guess there might be ethical issues doing the surgery. Also it'd be quite hard to do as the nerves are in the skull up against the brain so basically brain surgery. But I was thinking if there was some way to figure which nerves were firing and kill those that could maybe fix it.

Maybe if you could stick something like a neuralink in there?


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