Hacker News Reader

polygamous_baton The case for never reading the book jacket

For those who don’t remember it, the final four words are “He loved Big Brother.” Had to look that up as well.

polygamous_baton Cicero: The first AI to play at a human level in Diplomacy (2022)

I assume the paper went through peer review and finally got published in Science.

polygamous_baton Is it legal to mix cash in a jar? How is Bitcoin mixing any different?

If it didn’t apply then you could buy Monopoly money from a third party called let’s say Mether, mix it in a jar, and sell Monopoly money back to Mether.

If a law is defeated by something as simple as that, what’s the point of having the law? It’s like saying if you commit crimes wearing gloves you get to walk because there are no fingerprints.

polygamous_baton Satya Nadella: "We have all the rights and all the capability."

> assets whose value cannot be realized except by an actor with greater resources and time window

Somewhat disagree on this, since open sourcing their model and code would help a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

polygamous_baton Satya Nadella: "We have all the rights and all the capability."

I assume Microsoft will countersue with their own interpretation of the contract. However baloney that is, they only have to drag the case along until the former shell of OpenAI runs out of money and gives up the ghost. They could spend $10Bn on this and still come out ahead compared to buying OpenAI at market rate.

polygamous_baton Satya Nadella: "We have all the rights and all the capability."

And the crazy part is, even if MS “steals” the whole IP and then spends 10Bn (that’s a number longer than my phone number, btw) in defending the theft in court with legal shenanigans, they STILL come out ahead compared to buying OpenAI right away.

Seems like the only winners standing in this scorched earth is Satya and his shareholders.

polygamous_baton Satya Nadella: "We have all the rights and all the capability."

Even if Satya is lying through his teeth, how much money and power would a gutted OpenAI have to devote to a protracted legal battle against Microsoft’s army of lawyers? It feels like robbing a person with cancer and hoping that they die before the case gets to the court, which feels very on brand with how Microsoft used to play things in early windows days.

polygamous_baton Satya Nadella: "We have all the rights and all the capability."

How much money and power would a gutted OpenAI have to devote to a protracted legal battle against Microsoft’s army of lawyers? It feels like robbing a man with cancer and hoping that they die before the case gets to the court, which feels very on brand with how Microsoft used to play things in early windows days.

polygamous_baton OpenAI's employees were given two explanations for why Sam Altman was fired

  :s/Xenu/AGI/g

polygamous_baton Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

Because he who controls the spice controls the universe.

(By spice I mean money here for those unfamiliar with the reference)

polygamous_baton SEC charges Kraken for operating as an unregistered securities exchange

They will happily explain it to the judge with you in the room, I believe.

polygamous_baton Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

I assume ADL considers “white” an euphemism for “Aryans”, in this case.

polygamous_baton Sam Altman is still trying to return as OpenAI CEO

“We didn’t steal your likeness! We just scraped images that were already freely available on the internet!”

polygamous_baton OpenAI's chaos does not add up

Clippy was truly ahead of its time… MSFT has been playing the long game all along.

polygamous_baton Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft

> Engineers aren’t a lower level than scientists, it’s just a different career path.

I assume GP is talking in context of OpenAI/general AI research, where you need a PhD to apply for the research scientist positions and MS/Bachelors to apply for research engineer positions afaik.

polygamous_baton Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

> Bad news for you, their last CEO was too.

Did anyone believe that he seriously believed in that? I thought the consensus was he was angling for a government backed monopoly with OpenAI as the “steward” of large AI models.

polygamous_baton Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

Would be pretty weird to step in Sam’s replacement if he was philosophically aligned with him?

polygamous_baton Crypto Crashed and Everyone's in Jail. Investors Think It's Coming Back Anyway

Crypto investors? The same ones who predicted 29 out of the 0 de-dollarization and absolute meltdown of fiat economy, those investors?

Better trust them this time, then! It’s not like they have anything to gain from spreading this news (read rumor), right?

polygamous_baton Altman sought billions for AI chip venture before OpenAI ouster

Yes exactly, maybe I am cynical but I do not expect Microsoft to say “Ah I guess it is my fault and legally I can’t do much here” and give up. They did not get to where they are without dirty tactics.

polygamous_baton Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads

You have an extremely weird idea about the relationship between “how much something sells for in the market” and “how much something is worth”. Could you answer how you view this relationship for the following things?

1. Your kidneys, or heart, or any vital organ.

2. Weapons grade Plutonium.

3. Falcon heavy.

4. A single grain of rice, 100 million times.

What you are saying implies “we don’t have a good marketplace for user data”, which is pretty obvious. But I have no idea how “thus it is worth nothing” follows from there.

polygamous_baton Altman sought billions for AI chip venture before OpenAI ouster

> You are a resource. He is a point of connection to resources.

All I am getting is “you’re getting conned, he is the conman.”

polygamous_baton Altman sought billions for AI chip venture before OpenAI ouster

Unfortunately, MS is not known for being the world champion in fair play, and this isn’t going to be the first time they try to sink others’ ships to hide their own incompetence (in this case, putting $10BN in a weird “capped profit” entity without understanding what may come of it.)

polygamous_baton Altman sought billions for AI chip venture before OpenAI ouster

That’s the reading I am getting: MS lawyers really screwed up this one. What kind of lawyer worth their salt would let the company put $10BN on an investment on “capped profit” where you’re supposed to treat “investments as donations”? The more I read about it the more I keep thinking what the lawyers must have been on to not make more noise about this earlier.

polygamous_baton Altman sought billions for AI chip venture before OpenAI ouster

Not start a scammy crypto coin, that’s for sure. Stronger push of societal acceptance of public key cryptography everywhere would be a first good step.

polygamous_baton Altman sought billions for AI chip venture before OpenAI ouster

I think the point GP is trying to make is: just because he was working out of an OpenAI office doesn’t mean he was necessarily working on OpenAI business; he could have been remotely working on some of his other ventures.

polygamous_baton Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads

Yes, because YouTube is changing their stance between when a large part of the data was uploaded and now. If they chose to compete fairly from the beginning instead of using their search ad revenue to kill off all the competitors we might have had something resembling a remotely free market instead of the unthinking, unfeeling monolith we have right now.

polygamous_baton Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads

I’m sure the market was drunk on the day when Apple changed iPhone privacy settings and Facebook’s valuation dropped by 10 digits US dollars. /s

polygamous_baton Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads

Surprise: you can like the content on YouTube (which is not their property in the first place) without liking YouTube. YouTube is practically holding an incredible amount of knowledge and information hostage to feed Google’s insatiable desire for profits.

You can like the content while hating the delivery mechanism and trying to fix it up to the best of your ability.

polygamous_baton Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads

The whole point is that there is no moral/ethical way to enter a “contract” with a party who has been knowingly siphoning (read “stealing”) your and everyone else’s data without being upfront about it since time immemorial. Oh you want to enter a contract with me? Send me an invoice at the end of every month about what data you collected from me and how you used it to pay for the services. Otherwise, there’s no way they won’t be double dipping.

Or they can drop the adtech business or spin it out as a separate company. But either way currently there is no way to fairly deal with ad tech companies with thinly veneered “free” services on top.

polygamous_baton Greg (2017)

> WorldCoin

Is that supposed to make him look good? Because it doesn't, in fact it makes him look very out of touch at best and a complete fool at worst.