Hacker News Reader

speedylighton Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science (2011)

Ok I see what you mean and maybe I should’ve paid a bit more attention to the specifics, but I still stand by my original comment.

speedylighton Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science (2011)

speedylighton AI will shrink workforces within five years, say company execs

You know I am someone who likes to push the envelope near the point of breaking just to observe what would happen, and I more or less feel the same about AI; that said I can’t help but wonder how ill prepared we all are when such this shift to near total automation eventually happens.

Companies gravitate towards cheap, and maximally efficient labor… currently the best way to achieve that if you’re a US business is to outsource it oversees, ergo India and customer support.

What will happen when people not only compete against each other for work, but also against machines? (That probably already happens to an extent, I am talking systemic) It’s not even remotely fair for an individual to have to compete in this kind of environment.

There several solutions that I can think of (By “we” I mean the US in this case).

1. We can turn into a welfare state and start paying everyone a fixed income. 2. We could augment ourselves with technology that enhances cognitive and physical abilities, leveling the playing field with AI. 3. We could put performance limits on enterprise computer hardware and put a ceiling on the emergent capabilities of AI and therefore reduce the barrier to fairly compete.

I personally I’m gonna open up a bakery in France and just hope you all manage ok.

speedylighton Top Israeli spy chief exposes his true identity in online security lapse

If nothing else you can use money to help people. Money is never useless my friend. Money can be a burden though, like if you have it but can’t spend like someone else who has the same amount but legally I can agree to that.

speedylighton A podcast about the xz backdoor with the guy who found it

We should lure him/her with a bait, like the winrar source code or something… give him hope for redemption.

speedylighton Ask HN: How redditors have the time to write long anwsers?

Because they love karma points and correcting people more than life itself.

speedylighton Ask HN: Why can't the US government run their own social media?

No one would use a government run social media, especially in the US.

speedylighton Ask HN: Nice alternatives to Postman?

I would say use insomnia but it’s going down the same path as postman. There are some nice VSCode extensions that integrate a REST client directly into the editor.

speedylighton John Barth has died

I think I was yeah, the article I saw was just 3 short paragraphs.

speedylighton White House directs NASA to create time standard for the moon

Watch them try to integrate it into earths time and calendar system somehow

speedylighton US appeals court kills ban on plastic containers contaminated with PFAS

The economic impact requirements has lobbyist fingerprints all over it. Imagine if the FDA had to consider the economic impact of rejecting or accepting new therapeutics, or if the FBI can just decide not to prosecute some individuals because the economy would lose money!

All meaningful regulations will have negative economic impacts on those being regulated, that’s why the Republican conference loves de-regulation, it makes their donors and themselves more money!

speedylighton OpenVoice: Versatile instant voice cloning

I barely managed to get one good output(by following the installation for Linux instructions) before the 1st Jupyter Demo crapped out on me. I didn’t have the patience to investigate the error, but I am very impressed with the quality considering I’m also running it on an M2 laptop.

speedylighton DBRX: A new open LLM

Quantized models will run well, otherwise inference might be really really slow or the client crashes all together with some CUDA out of memory error.

speedylighton Acetate Revisited: A Key Biomolecule at the Nexus of Metabolism, Epigenetics

Acetate is the final step of the alcohol metabolism process before its turned into water and carbon dioxide so I would venture it is not the most toxic part of drinking because the goal of the liver is to turn unstable, harmful compounds in the body into more stable, water soluble by products.

speedylighton MTA board votes to approve new $15 toll to drive into Manhattan

Hmm spend $15 or ride a subway that needs the national guard to be safe?

speedylighton Fewer people using Elon Musk's X as it struggles to keep users

I deleted my account. Using the app is insufferable because the majority of the posts are NSFW which are usually meant to promote OnlyFans accounts, or show liveleak-esque videos, etc The replies under individual posts are like timeline of their own filled with posts completely unrelated posts.

Elon Musk took Twitter, chewed it up, and out came this unrecognizable, good for nothing piece of shit app that I’ll never use again. I hope SpaceX and Tesla don’t get the same treatment.

speedylighton Martin Scorsese's secret life as an obsessive VHS archivist

Seems like a great idea for a date!

speedylighton Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

The holy grail of gene editing will be when we can make “permanent” changes to the DNA of people alive today.

speedylighton Man changes name to Literally Anybody Else and announces US presidential run

Whenever someone says “sad state of affairs” I always think of US elections post 2016, I wonder why!

speedylighton Madison County, MS spends $2.7M to train comptroller about phishing, IT security

There a should be an allowlist of bank accounts a public official is can to send money to.

speedylighton Scientists have traced human tail loss to a short sequence of genetic code

Would be cool if we had tails, so I could wag it with my future dog!

speedylighton 6.2 GHz Intel Core I9-14900KS Review

Closed loop helium gas cooling system = lots of gigahertz

speedylighton LLM4Decompile: Decompiling Binary Code with LLM

I have thought about doing something similar for heavily obfuscated JavaScript. Very useful for security research I imagine!

speedylighton Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice

There’s this one I just found - [https://player.vimeo.com/video/370150539?background=1](https...

speedylighton Montana Man Pleads to Federal Charges for Efforts to Create Giant Hybrid Sheep

He violated State, Federal, and International laws in pursuit of his enterprise. I gotta hand it to him it’s an impressive scheme to (almost) pull off at 80, I hope when I am that age I’ll be half as motivated to do stuff as he is.

speedylighton Paul Alexander, ‘the man in the iron lung’, has died

This man demonstrated such an outstanding will to live and over come his disability. A part of me hopes he has moved on to a better life. Rest in peace, Paul.

speedylighton Lead in gasoline blunted IQ of half the U.S. population, study says

I think there’s too many to count.

speedylighton Cystic fibrosis breakthrough has given patients a chance to live longer

Have you tried looking him up? He could still be alive.

speedylighton Gemini won't return C++ coding help if you're under 18 "to preserve your safety"

Tell them to use typescript instead. It is a safe language after all