shawn-butler

Software has long relied on a lack of culpability for defects to keep its margins. Why should “AI” companies face a higher standard?

The law also goes after payment providers and network providers (vpn) etc if they "knowingly" provide service to anyone who engages in prediction market betting.

The law[0] as written is a mess. You could in theory shut down the "legal" Minnesota state lottery that is otherwise carved out from the law by claiming they are providing data on outcomes via the internet if someone outside the state is betting on the outcome of the lottery in a prediction market.

[0]: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/94/2026/0/SF/4760/versions/... (search for "ARTICLE 8")

Then it isn't a thing you can do.

Your definition of heavy gamer I think differs from the norm if your main plays were Mario kart, et al.

I doubt they are querying 1 TB of data in the browser. DuckDB-WASM issues http range requests on behalf of client to request only the bytes required, especially handy with parquet files (columnar format) that will exclude columns you don't even need.

But the article is a little light on technical details. In some cases it might make sense to bring the entire file client-side.

Due to a lapse in appropriations, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel is closed. Complaints may still be filed, but most will not be addressed until OSC reopens. [0]

They are the "independent" body that enforces Hatch act regulations.

[0]: https://osc.gov

here you go.

https://mycity.houstontx.gov/MYCITYDOCS/documents/map-LandUs...

VS Code package in my applications folder is 600+ MB.

The Electron Framework.framework it contains is 400+ MB alone. I don't understand where you come up with your 90 MB figure?

He made his money, he doesn't care who starves now

I dunno, with row-level security and proper internal role definition.. why do I need a REST layer?

This is absurd. The data shows maybe a 1-4% gain.

I know that legitimizes a bunch of activist talking points but come on.

This is HN

It's also as I recall when tuition and student costs started to spike in the US which is probably more directly related than some "philosophical" change in the zeitgeist[0]. When students and parents start racking up debt like this, you become very interested in the fastest way to pay it back.

For me the impact of the university administrators as they chased higher endowments for more buildings with naming rights and expanded their own bureaucracies with direct hires that did not directly contribute to the faculty mission did more to alter the university experience than anything else.

[0]: https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year

This really isn’t true in principle. The current LLM ecosystems can’t do “meaning tasks” but there are all kinds of “legacy” AI expert systems that do exactly what is required.

My experience is that middle manager gatekeepers are the most reluctant to participate in building knowledge systems that obsolete them though.

No, the humanities won't survive.

The problem with humanities is that the "state of the art" is about only saying something "new". For example, the author thinks that discussing Kantian theories of the sublime and “The Epic Split” ad (a highly meme-able 2013 Volvo ad starring Jean-Claude Van Damme) is "straight A" work.

It is irrelevant nonsense masquerading as intelligent discourse much like most of this author's actual published work and it is also something at which LLMs excel.

To be a "rockstar" humanities professor at Princeton, you have to make up something "cool" to fill the seats to keep the attention of 17-25 year-olds.

With LLMs that have encoded snapshots of the entire literary corpus that humanity has produced, those students can make up whatever connections they want and justify their worldview. No humanities courses required beyond maybe some introduction to vocabulary / prompting.

Most universities have sliding scale (down to zero fee)law services available for students.

Things like tenant rights, criminal cases, immigration, consumer, employment, wills, health care directives, power of attorney, name change, etc.

You should make use of them. Especially if your educational career is being impacted “a hold” (whatever that means). If it was coursework project then your professor also should have some sway if he or she has tenure and any integrity

Good luck

the full report[0] is a good read don't just read the summary..

>>> But these findings should not be viewed in isolation. They stem from a business model that varies little across these nine firms – harvesting data for targeted advertising, algorithm design, and sales to third parties. With few meaningful guardrails, companies are incentivized to develop ever-more invasive methods of collection. >>>

[0]: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Social-Media-6b...

I have seen many notices like this in the past few months. My guess is anbody of signficant size whose reason for existing includes curating user-generated content is trying to ensure that gen-AI ingestors don’t swallow up their data through unpaid API access or scraping. (Maybe a podcast or article popular with CxO and IT directors on the topic??)

Which they seemingly already have done anyway. Another unintended side-effect of the borderline illegal and generally immoral “AI” companies efforts to get as many data sets as possible.

Might have been true 20 years ago. There are very few toxicities in newsprint that rise above natural levels in soil within a very short half life.

https://www.alliumfields.org/2015/05/is-newspaper-in-compost... has data for you and I believe there is a soil health group at Cornell that published alot of studies.

Investigate the biochar process as an alternative. You can also buy biochar for your houseplant needs [0]. Creating that much artifical peat in a small area would be a massive fire hazard but probably could be managed.

"Vertical" or indoor farming is one of those silicon valley tropes. VC lost billions during the last decade and I don't know of a single success story that is still going / profitable. I'm sure after enough time passes people forget and will try again.

[0]: https://rosysoil.com/

When you look at the actual history of science, this path of “tangible progress” you rely on is shown mostly to be a constructed narrative.

There are actual mass timber projects to look at. The article mentions one in Milwaukee. I am familiar with the T3 project [0].

It was delivered ahead of schedule and below cost relative to a traditional steel/concrete plan. No huge issues of which I am aware in the 5 or so years since occupancy, but someone else may know better.

[0]: https://structurecraft.com/projects/t3-minneapolis

What if it's all the same electron[0]?

[0]: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1965/feynman/lectu...

Most crypto companies and investors are now AI investors / pivots. Don't think many are left to answer your question.

Serious problem if true

Seeing as Slack was born as a tool inside Glitch which existed only because of a side project called Flickr…

I don’t really think it’s the size or layers of a company that prevent; it’s the culture. This culture of creation permeates everything I’ve seen Stewart Butterfield do. At least from the outside. Admirable and extremely profitable.

You knew it was defective and sold it to someone else? Not sure about the ethics on that one

Provide a specific example of what you have in mind to further the conversation not just more opining on “dangerous” is my suggestion.

Virtue signaling is hardly a “mean-nothing” phrase.

But most people confuse virtue signaling (attempting to fit in by saying the right things) with moral grandstanding (garnering attention)[0]. Which behavior Cameron is engaging here is for the reader to judge.

[0]: https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12075

It’s Altman. Does no one remember his world coin scam?

Ethics, doing things thoughtfully / the “right” way etc is not on his list of priorities.

I do think a reorientation of thinking around legal liability for software is coming. Hopefully before it’s too late for bad actors to become entrenched.