strangattractor

The problem is - What happens when you ask a question that you have no idea what the correct answer might be? Sounds like a really big Wack-a-Mole to me.

I do find it useful - maybe not quite as useful as the people that stand to make gobs of money off it think it is but useful non the less.

Companies that go out and dump large numbers of employees and replace them with AI are likely in for a rude awakening (if those companies actually exist). If they can actually do that the company was not really offering much value to begin with.

2008 was devastating contracting wise. Starting working for non-profits and have found it rewarding but suffers from similar problems as FTE.

On the plus side I spent a lot of time raising my son in his formative years - time for which I'm thankful. If I had stayed working at start-ups I would have missed that which I would have truly regretted.

Also the start-ups in SV became obsessed with Social Media which IMO is a total waste of electrons so I lost interest.

IMHO it's a great summarizing search engine. I now don't have to click on a link to go to that original source - Gemini just hands me a useful summary. Ask AI to do something specific that requires GI (General Intelligence) your milage may vary. So as OpenAI and Google suck in all your content (creators) you are going to find yourself derive less and less revenue generated by visits to your site. Just sayin.

Did my own stint as a contractor and it was one of the best jobs I ever had. My clients would often ask for something - I would give them my opinion on how it should be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better. They would then choose not to do that and pay me all those extra hours that their poor choice resulted in.

Contrast this to working for an organization. Again I offer my opinion on how it might be done and alternatives that may be cheaper and/or better which results in the same poor choices. Except now I'm stuck supporting that turd of a decision with my own personal unpaid exempt status overtime.

No need to feel apologetic about being smart.

Most significant technology takes almost a generation to be fully adopted. I think it is unlikely we are seeing the full effect of LLM's at the moment.

Content producers are blocking scrapers of their sites to prevent AI companies from using their content. I would not assume that AI is either inevitable or on a easy path to adoption. AI certainly isn't very useful if what it "knows" is out of date.

I think Altman needs a sidekick to help make him more likable. He suffers from resting Gloom face.

Places like EquityZen provide a market place for private stocks.

Your right it's all funny money until they are publicly traded but if they are successful it is still a ton of money. Johnny needs to feed a GulfStream - that isn't cheap;)

The headline then is "Sam Altman pays Johnny Ive $6.6Bn to become his Collaborator". Not a bad idea really IMHO.

Did they really make a conscious decision or was it we want a guy that runs the government like a Reality TV show. Ooops Donny doesn't like Mike (Waltz) any more so time to leave the Island. Pete sure is good at owning the libs - he gets to stay.

"Article I, Section 8, Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United"

How do you patented it? What specific "practical, real-world application" does AGI purport to solve? All these algorithms work by using massive amounts of data. They all do it the same way or close to the same way.

"Algorithms can be patented when integrated into specific technical applications or physical implementations. The U.S. Patent Office assesses algorithm-based patent applications based on their practical benefits and technological contributions.

Pure mathematical formulas or abstract algorithms cannot be patented. To be eligible, an algorithm must address a tangible technical challenge or enhance computational performance measurably.

Patenting an AI algorithm means protecting how it transforms data into a practical, real-world application. Although pure mathematical formulas or abstract ideas aren’t eligible for patents, algorithms can be embedded in a specific process or device." [1]

[1] https://patentlawyer.io/can-you-patent-an-algorithm/#:~:text...

Like MS, Google is ubiquitous - search is much like Office and DOS before that. Anything OpenAPI or the other AI competitors create would normally be protected by patents for instance. Not so with an AI models. Google has the clout/know how to responded with similar technology - adding it to their ubiquitous search. People are both lazy and cheap. They will always go with cheaper and good enough.

Google is the new Microsoft in the sense that they can Embrace, extend, and extinguish their competition. No matter what xAI or OpenAI or "anything"AI tries to build Google will eventually copy and destroy them at scale. AI (or A1 as our Secretary of Education calls it) is interesting because it is more difficult to protect the IP other than as trade secrets.

They are simply having to duplicate all the things Visa provides its customers.

BTC is inherently deflationary in the sense that once new coins cease to be mined the total number of BTC will decrease over time due to lose, theft and death. I know that I lost my wallet with the only BTC I owned 10 years ago. I can name several other people that have done the same. I would think this one property makes it undesirable for use as a currency.

"The shocking theft at WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange..."

Oddly I am not in the least bit shocked. Now if we found out that this was an inside job I would again not be the least bit shocked.

Back when handwriting recognition was a new thing I was greatly impressed by how good it was. This was primarily because being an engineer I knew how difficult the problem is to solve. %90 recognition seemed really good to me.

When I tried to use the technology that %90 meant 1 out of every 10 things I wrote were incorrect. If it had been a keyboard I would have thrown it in the trash. That is were my Palm ended up.

People expect their technology to do things better not almost as well as a human. Waymo with LIDAR hasn't killed people. Tesla, with camera only, has done so multiple times. I will ride in a Waymo never in a Tesla self driving car.

Never meant to imply that he could not. He is a far more accomplished programmer than myself. Simply pointing out that he is an expert and his skill set is unique and in someways quite specialized. He may be considered 10X in his domain - maybe not so much outside of it. Programmer/Software Engineer are broad terms.

Or use New Glenn which works now and has a larger faring.

Yes - Dr Norvig is exactly the type of expert I would often engage to figure out difficult problems. Ask him how to configure a Nomad cluster and he would likely say "What is a Nomad cluster do?"

Writing and debugging production code is a different skill set. Finding the optimal algorithm is useful but not the same as releasing it into the wild which may require maintaining backwards compatibility, work arounds for bugs in other code or hardware bugs that can no longer be fixed at the foundry - the list goes on.

The vast majority of work programmers do 10X or otherwise is not greenfield where you get to pick the programming language you have 10K hours of experience using, the best hardware or an unlimited budget of money and time.

Now I would consider Dr Norvig a 10X educator. That program demonstrates how a decent knowledge of algorithms and math can take a relatively complex problem and make it tractable.

My experience is that people tend to fill the time they give themselves to do things. Give yourself 12 you take 12 hours. But humans have a limit to the focused productive work they can do. Lets say it is 4 hours. So of that 12 hr - 4 was really productive and 8 not so much. When I was at my tiredest I often spent hours trying to debug issues that literally took me minutes when I was rested.

One time I worked so many hours I lost vision (temporarily) in my eye - called cotton wool spots. I was a generally healthy younger guy. Working this way has health effects. If in fact there is such a thing as 10x engineer - how long do you think you will stay 10X once your health deteriorates. Just my 2 cents.

I was once considered a 10X. I would work all night. Rewrite code simply because I found it objectionable - lots of things I'd never do now. Mostly after working those long hours I return after a long rest and spend most of my time fixing all the new and ridiculous problems I created while working tired. Things may have gotten done a little faster. Never once did it even matter - there was no material benefit to the company. Projects still got canceled - team deadlines still missed - products still had bugs - company focus changed blah blah blah.

Focus is a supper power. Not getting diverted with trivial shit. Don't get distracted , avoid creating more work for yourself and others. Todays me would find yesterdays me a -10X annoyance.

You mean like Foxconn building LCDs in the US in his first term. The CEOs line up - bend the knee - 2 years later things change in the plans evaporate.

https://www.theverge.com/policy/2019/4/26/18518650/foxconn-w...

Worst case bubble sort is n^2 - this one is n^2 for all cases even an already sorted list.

I see a private sector pay to have Weather service in our future.

That little quip of mine actually got downvoted by someone. HackerNews readers are a fickle bunch.

If God actually exists and cares about programmers why did he let BrainF*k exist?

Yep - I am writing a HN comment instead of doing my work at this very moment.

I'm having difficulty in understanding why this is assumed to be related to g's pulled as opposed 100's of other things. Someone spending many hours doing a task that demands a great deal of focus and physical coordination might show changes in neuroplasticity different to someone that sits in front of a computer screen writing code all day.

Have to admit the immigration comment also triggered my "blaming immigrants" radar. After a careful reading it was an honest attempt for more information or clarification on how the details might be better interpreted. Something people should do more of when statistics are used as evidence. Actually a very good question.