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I bet it’s as simple as Nolan just wanting the biggest screen and biggest film negative he could practically get his hands on without inventing a whole new format. I do wonder if we’ll see him try to add anamorphic lenses to 15/70 IMAX at some point to try to make it widescreen again, which would be crazy (in a mad scientist way).

Also, I am kinda frustrated that he pushes for large formats so much and yet lights everything so plainly. I’d love to see him go for a more high-contrast lighting scheme like we saw in typical Hollywood movies in the 80s and 90s.

Asimov seems to have missed that the book does not claim that everyone is being watched at all times, but that everyone could be watched at any time, in any place, and that they have no way to know for sure if they are at any given moment. Therefore, they have to behave as if they are under surveillance at all times, just in case. It’s a very effective and practical means of control. See the famous panopticon concept. You don’t even need a guard in the tower, just the threat of one most of the time, and occasional random, unpredictable enforcement just often enough that the surveilled cannot relax. The cost of doing so is not impractical at all.

Asimov is missing an important point that is pretty clearly spelled out in the novel, and this severely weakens his critique. I find this pretty funny because he starts off the essay insinuating that others who claim to love the book haven’t read it. Same to you for hating it without having understood it, Asimov!

*BSD is dying! You don’t have to be Kreshkin…

But seriously, if one counts macOS and iOS as FreeBSD users, there are more than ever. Of course that means counting Android and Steam as Linux OSes, in which case Linux users still greatly outnumber FreeBSD users.

VCs, too:

https://futurism.com/openai-investor-chatgpt-mental-health

(From last year…)

Why would the doomsayers be the ones who need to answer that? That’s kind of their point! It’s the AI boosters who need to answer that, and so far it’s just a big collective shrug + silence.

> Several commenters suggested the original essay was written by an LLM. They were half right. Both that essay and this one were written with Claude as a drafting partner. I directed the argument; the LLM helped with prose.

That’s all well and good, but I think he needs to take a closer look at some of the resulting prose and clarify a little more. Most of it is good, but there are some unclear statements, like this (right after his descriptions of “Camp A” and “Camp B”):

> Sutton says Camp B wins. My essay was filed under Camp A. But decision theory belongs to neither camp.

The second sentence quoted above doesn’t specify, but I’m pretty sure it means that it was filed under Camp A by the commenters, and incorrectly at that. If so, it would probably read better as:

> Sutton says Camp B wins. Commenters seemed to file my essay under Camp A, and then dismissed it. But that’s incorrect; decision theory belongs to neither camp.

Or something along those lines.

I honestly think this isn’t nit-picky feedback, either. This is a crucial set of sentences which appear to lay out the main point of the essay, so it’s vitally important that they be clear … who “filed” it as a particular camp, and was that correct or incorrect? It should be revised to convey that, as well as better connecting that to what incorrect conclusions might have been drawn from that. The information can be gleaned from the surrounding context of course, but I found that crucial sentence to throw off the flow what was otherwise a really great essay.

> But, the pro-legalization folks would argue patently crazy things: it cures cancer, the smoke isn't bad for you at all, there are no downsides! etc.

Who seriously claimed that it “cures cancer”? There have been some claims that it helps alleviate nausea associated with chemotherapy, which is quite reasonable and will likely be proved out by evidence over time.

Really … who genuinely claimed it “cures” cancer?

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that he piggybacked on a large company’s name recognition by originally calling it “clawd”, clearly intending it to be confused with Claude. I have my doubts it would have gone anywhere without that.

Lo and behold, here’s a concrete example I stumbled across just a few seconds after opening Reddit again (really gotta stop doing that):

https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/Y52yB6Fg3A

The worst is Reddit these days.

I pretty much never even went there for technical topics at all, just funny memes and such, but one day recently I started seeing crazy AI hype stories getting posted, and sadly I made a huge mistake and I clicked on one once, and now it’s all I get.

Endless posts from subs like r/agi, r/singularity, as well as the various product specific subs (for Claude, OpenAI, etc). These aren’t even links to external articles, these are supposedly personal accounts of someone being blown away by what the latest release of this or that model or tool can do. Every single one of these posts boils down to some irritating “game over for software engineers” hype fest, sometimes with skeptical comments calling out the clearly AI-generated text and overblown claims, sometimes not. Usually comments pointing out flaws in whatever’s being hyped are just dismissed with a hand wave about how the flaw may have been true at one time, but the latest and greatest version has no such flaws and is truly miraculous, even if it’s just a minor update for that week. It’s always the same pattern.

There’s clearly a lot of astroturfing going on.

Yes, and now we have billionaires arguing in public about such basic facts:

X link: https://x.com/paulg/status/2008989862725341658

Screenshot: https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1q6zgq5/theres_someth...

This feels like a narrative being pushed. Tech oligarchs these days are flexing by showing off how much they are able to bully government, and Altman wants to get in on the game by spinning things this way. I’m not convinced they really bent the rules for OpenAI any more than usual given they only employ a few hundred people.

It was a comment revealing his attitude towards what would soon become his customers in a globally-impactful business over which he has sole control. It’s more relevant than ever today.

Wow. The 2019 novel “The Last Astronaut” hypothesized about a fictional interstellar object coming into the solar system, called “2I” in the novel for short, but back here in real life, we’re already up to 3I.

Agree, as someone who has spent way too much time studying the way motion picture film looks up close, this isn’t very realistic looking. It’s really just a form of dithering.

“Poaching”? It’s called the free market.

Capitalists always hate capitalism when it comes to employees getting paid what they are worth. If the market will bear it, he should embrace it and stop whining.

> I’ve been feeling pretty good about my benchmark! It should stay useful for a long time... provided none of the big AI labs catch on.

> And then I saw this in the Google I/O keynote a few weeks ago, in a blink and you’ll miss it moment! There’s a pelican riding a bicycle! They’re on to me. I’m going to have to switch to something else.

Yeah this touches on an issue that makes it very difficult to have a discussion in public about AI capabilities. Any specific test you talk about, no matter how small … if the big companies get wind of it, it will be RLHF’d away, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Just refer to the old “count the ‘r’s in strawberry” canard for one example.

They’re probably going to come out at some point and say it was all just an act.

This is a fantastic comment and I couldn’t agree more. I don’t what they’re going to come up with as a result of this partnership but I expect that it will be utterly lacking in the qualities you describe. You really put your finger on it.

Oh yes I’ve thought of that, but I’m sure they have too. If AI advances to the point where everyone is out of work, then it will have also likely advanced to the point where it can aid in getting around the current supply chain fragilities.

That angle unfortunately just doesn’t give me much hope.

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. It is absolutely in the cards for the ownership class to send out swarms of drones to kill us all.

The best we can hope for is to all end up in permanent slums picking through garbage to survive.

One peep of protest a little too loud and suddenly we’ll all be living the same scenario that’s visible all over the “combat footage” portions of the web: you are walking along outdoors, you hear a buzz, and then suddenly you look up to realize there’s a drone coming at you. You panic and try to run but by the time you hear it, it’s too late. It catches up to you easily and drops a bomb on you. Or maybe it’s a smaller more targeted (and disposable) one that zips straight at your forehead and explodes on contact, destroying your brain.

People may say I’m a doomsayer but just look back at the history of labor in the US. They sent out privatized security to shoot anyone who didn’t cooperate. And that was when they still needed the workers! Just imagine what they’ll do when they no longer need anyone!

Really curious to know what the test shots from Boss Films looked like!

Richard Edlund’s team’s work on various films of the 80s was impeccable (including Ghostbusters, Die Hard, Big Trouble in Little China, and more). They were the inheritor of the crown of high quality 65mm VFX after Douglas Trumbull quit the business (the pinnacle of his work being films like Blade Runner and Brainstorm).

I have to wonder what was wrong that caused the last minute switch to ILM!

> fraud

Prove it.

They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress.

The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying.

If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks volumes.

Not the person you’re replying to, but there used to be regulations limiting ownership of radio & TV stations in the US. When these regulations were lifted in the 1990s, it resulted in one company (Clear Channel) going on just such a buying spree.

Did you read the links I posted? They can be made from dandelions. More info can be found in this previous thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37727040

Personally I would love to see a world of 100% transit, bicycles, walking, etc., but let’s be realistic. As long as we’ve got cars, we might as well try to do as much as we can to reduce the amount of pollution they generate.

Here is a comment thread on HN from a while back with more info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37727040

It really doesn’t sound all that infeasible, just would require some investment to build momentum.

This is why a move to natural latex rubber tires is necessary. Companies have experimented with them[1][2] but a world-wide switchover should be in the works.

[1] https://www.continental-tires.com/about/sustainability/activ...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/04/eco-friendly-tires-brid...

> This contract was signed in December, during the Biden administration

You’ve posted this comment more than once without proof. Here is a comment from someone else which indicates (with references!) that it is part of a procurement forecast and is not yet an actual contract:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43031161

Do you have any evidence a contract has been signed?

Now there are news articles saying Tesla was “removed” just because it was reworded to say “electric vehicles” instead:

https://time.com/7221880/state-department-2025-procurement-f...

I doubt any reasonable person sincerely believes the contract will ultimately go to a company other than Tesla. Musk is claiming to be cutting “waste” and “fraud” while lining his own pockets.

They keep claiming to find “fraud” but to me it just looks like spending on things they don’t like.