user_7832

I ctr-F'd to search for this quote and am happy to see it mentioned.

Brevity is an art, and it is hard.

Which service(s) were you using, if you don't mind sharing?

I'm curious if most of the big players including eg Google do this thing of nerfing models or it's limited to more "smart" (read: black box models like ChatGPT.

> It also did diddly squat in the market place

Not sure what the context or background of that is, but here in India, the G3 sold out shortly after launch.

Per this [1] stat by a Motorola exec too, it did very well.

> Motorola’s General Manager for India, Amit Boni stated at the Moto X Play launch event that the Moto G (3rd Gen) that was launched in July is among the fastest selling smartphones on Flipkart. Its sales mark grossed 140% higher than the Moto G (1st Gen and 2nd Gen).

(And I know that's legitimate because a lot of peers, friends and family, folks on the streets etc had Motorolas.)

> and the company producing it ran out of business.

Unfortunate, yes, but I don't think it was because they made and sold phones that didn't sell. I don't know if it was business mismanagement or what, but it's an unfortunate legacy of one of the most promising brands. Fortunately Lenovo isn't killing the brand, so there's that.

1 - https://telecomtalk.info/motorola-sold-over-5-6-million-indi...

I definitely trust Google's team (and large trillion dollar companies with sufficient resources to do this) to make reasonable choices for their users... said, perhaps, someone ever? Certainly not me.

(I wanted to write something far snarkier and sarcastic but getting annoyed at google is like getting annoyed at a lawnmower/Oracle. That plus HN guidelines.)

> Give it a shot, 3.1 live one in AI studio/API and max out reasoning - not the one in Gemini app it’s an older model.

Do you know why this is a thing? Despite the app technically being Gemini, I find it quite crap, while the AI Studio thing with thinking is my favorite LLM. Very jarring tbh.

My point or argument isn't that customers have absolutely zero choice, but that there are very few options out there.

If (phone) OSes were truly healthy free markets, there would be a lot of healthy competition. Even cars and automobiles (which still are almost oligopolies, as it's extremely hard to compete) have more options.

I said that sentence primarily as counter to anyone who thinks the mythical "free market" is a panacea to all ills, as many anti-EU folks often have such a view. I was trying to demonstrate that an unregulated market is (very) often unhealthy, and can paradoxically can result in viewer choices.

> At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.

My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.)

The engineering of making things waterproof is in the realm of "A bit more annoying but easily doable if anyone's interested in doing it", not "Doable at the cost of everything else".

> The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries.

There are many food additives with very useful properties, but health effects. There are many perfumes too where the original formulation had a particular compound layer found to be carcinogenic.

Regardless of whether an individual prefers to use such compounds at their own risk or not, large companies will use whatever is the cheapest ingredient for their product.

In some cases, that's better for the consumer - who, often, has almost zero choice.

(And if you think you truly have choice as a consumer, I challenge you to use a phone that isn't running either Apple or Google's code.)

Very limited knowledge, but Air India (a full-fat govt owned airline till recently) didn't really have any of this. Yeah it was losing money, but the customer facing aspects were mostly standard - if anything, more standardized than other private players.

One could make an argument that "Well look, it was costing the government taxpayer money!", and that's a valid point. But given how little the variation in prices are across airlines in India, it's similar to saying "The govt shouldn't do public transport if it loses money, even if society gains".

Tangentially related, The Man from Earth is really good as well.

Very few films choose to shoot on a camcorder, and fewer still pull it off well.

Thanks!

Thank you!

It's really interesting to see see a Hank Green link on HN posted by Geerling, feels like the old internet again.

Oh, and if that wasn't cool enough, apparently the creative director of NASA even posted about it, saying they're using it internally!

...Though, the link appears down, and archive.org doesn't have a copy.

And... archive.ph serves this instead?

Уважаемый Абонент! Доступ к Интернет-ресурсу заблокирован по решению органов государственной власти Посмотреть причину блокировки можно в едином реестре

Подключай Интерактивное ТВ и сам контролируй, что блокировать! Подключить © Компания TTK, 2024 г.

Translated:

Dear Subscriber! Access to the Internet resource is blocked by decision of state authorities. You can view the reason for the blocking in the unified register (Note: referring to Roskomnadzor, Russia's censorship agency). Connect Interactive TV and control what to block yourself! (A darkly ironic advertisement) Connect © Company TTK, 2024

... which is weird when Russia is technically nowhere in the chain.

Can someone explain to me (a non American) which niche or segment was Spirit in (and perhaps why they, and not any other airline, are shutting shop)?

Fun fact, geosmin (one of the main compounds in the smell) can be smelt by humans at staggeringly low concentrations (part per trillion!)

For comparison, sharks detect blood in water in the parts per million range (which itself is already super impressive.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosmin

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/28/geosmin-why-we-smell-ai...

I'm not exactly sure of the details, but isn't this similar to DigiD in NL? There too you can "prove your Identity and log in" via the govt app. The server side of the 3rd party has to handle the rest (eg user account information etc.), nothing is shared beyond "this is the guy who's signing in, verified by the govt".

Slightly tangential, how good/bad is 4o compared to the modern (5.3 I think?) one?

TBH I personally find non-thinking replies quite poor for the type of questions I ask so I haven't touched chatgpt for months (ever since Gemini 2.5 Pro I think.) (And even Gemini 3.1 Pro tends to still be too literal at times instead of understand the implied meaning lol. We've got more place to improve.)

While that's quite possibly true, I forgot to mention that I'm not in the US but India. I was conscious the whole time, with only local anesthesia. Also the dentist in question is actually our "family" dentist, and he's a pretty knowledgeable/skillful guy (easily more knowledgeable than many GPs on health matters of the body).

Fun fact, you can totally get them to pause the procedure without saying a word. All you have to do is end up in a lot of pain, have your heart rate skyrocket like anything, and get everyone in the OT very concerned ;)

Totally get it, I too only understood it "theoretically" till I had a (fairly minor!) dental operation.

... Suddenly I'm maintaining a continuous note of when I'm taking which medicine to avoid crossing safe limits (which I anyway was crossing most days).

I was only told to take 2 paracetamols a day (bullshit dose, I'd be waking up from the pain even with more pain meds).

"Diclofenac for rare use" - well, if nothing else is touching the pain, is it an emergency?

Eventually after forever I was able to transition to Ibuprofen + paracetamol. And I already have a health condition which is heavy on my kidneys... pain management can be absolutely crazy.

> Apparently for some people it also helps with lessening tolerance for their ADHD meds, but I'm not so sure about that.

I'd believe it. I first heard of NAC on the nootropic subreddit in a past lifetime. The benefits vary, but generally it's a safe thing with a low chance of making anything worse, but a possibility to improve things. Many neurodivergent folk have written about how they benefit.

I'd give more info on the exact benefits they found (iirc OCD and rumination loops could be broken more easily), but unfortunately my memory is failing me.

> I'm more concerned that Signal incorporated in US is having easy life.

To add - ironically, it was Durov (Telegram founder) who got arrested in Paris.

Could you share a link or something about this?

> ...responding to that with sustained, coordinated attack campaigns online. That's what Micay's history is.

For the rest, in general, I'm tempted to give grapheneOS the benefit of the doubt. Running any FOSS project is hard, running it against the (implicit) wishes of OEMs/Google (who throw in things like Play Integrity) is even harder, and doing it when 3 letter agencies at the US govt actively hate you is harder still.

Being paranoid in responses to FUD campaigns isn't ideal, but save coordinated attacks, I'd say fairly understandable.

Yeah thanks, I think that's the right quote.

I think I found the original comment I had read (featuring a reply by saurik himself): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43853055

I don't intend to be a contrairian purely to be one, but Apple is the same company that (to paraphrase) wanted to "see Saurik cry".

This being hackernews, I hope to be excused for siding with a white hat code-hacker over a trillion dollar corporate.

(And that's not getting into all the other morally questionable stuff they've done.)

Not +1, but +100 to your comment (fellow ADHD'er here). Even a virtual friend who'd help me stay on track would be excellent, and if I had a physical human assistant... that would legitimately make many aspects of my life much better. (Simple example: I could ask them to nag me to exercise.)

> Also, you certainly got some brass, linking an entirely AI generated article in a forum where extreme distaste is registered for entirely AI generated posts.

> How is your comment not downvoted to oblivion?

I'm sure there's a polite way to say things.

I heavily dislike LLM content, but if you read the content, it's actually got information of value.

I think you're broadly correct and that's definitely a reason, and I have another example to support it.

Mumbai too has a very similar structure (the core city is basically a peninsula that goes north-south). Our railway lines run N-S as well, with (till the recent Metros) feeder roads connecting them.

Mumbai is also one of the most densely populated cities in the world (#2 by some metrics).

Our local railways have an annual ridership of 2.26 billion [1]. Pretty much everyone agrees they're vital to the city.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_Suburban_Railway

> We can and should address more than one problem at a time.

Very much agree. Here in India, one of the big telecos has now rolled out a system where if you're on a call with an unknown number, OTPs are not sent to the phone till the call ends. IMO systems like this (or ironically - using OEM installed on device AI as a MITM to stop a call when an OTP is heard) are very good ideas.

> Malicious APKs are a real problem that exists. I work tangentially in this space.

Not doubting it for a moment. I've myself installed an app (that in my defense I pretty much suspected to be malware) that was malware. Even a few weeks ago I helped someone remove a hidden app that was draining their battery like anything (idk doing what, crypto mining or something I guess?). Ofc this app had accessibility permissions and would close settings if you tried to uninstall it.

On the flip side, I've also been stopped by my own phone to give accessibility permissions... to TapTap (a FOSS app by legendary developer quinny98) [1].

I should probably add - here in India, UPI scams use(d?) to be very common, let alone "giving someone your OTP" scams. I personally know someone very close who's lost a good bit of money, purely via someone social engineering them to hand over OTPs.

Even today, scamsters call and threaten a "digital arrest" (whatever the fuck that is) to unsuspecting victims. Presumably many hand over their money.

I have absolutely nothing against technical solutions. But IMO social education to never install apps from outside the play store, combined with "Digital Arrest does not exist" ads that the Indian govt is already running, are significantly stronger and resistant to much more things (like I mentioned - pig butchering or gift card scams).

I would be very curious if you had stats for how much is lost to scams via social engineering, vs malware. I asked Gemini (I can share the chat link via some private method of communication if you're interested), and apparently per IC3, it's 13.7B USD for social engineering, vs 1.57B USD for malware. If you have better data, I'd be happy to know more.

> I’d agree, if that was what was going to happen. But it isn’t. Google is not going to block 3rd party apps.

Perhaps I'm a cynical guy (which is true!), but I see zero reason to give google the benefit of doubt when it comes to control. I understand you're perhaps a googler (or you work on the same side) - nothing against it at all. Hardening is 100% helpful.

But companies famously like to increase revenue, and do not care about users. Every app on the play store (and btw there are a ton of scammy ones - I know because I get their ads on Youtube :) nets google some money. There's nothing stopping google from going "Actually we decided to stop all apk installs as people get scammed by them" tomorrow?

There is no fundamental reason to believe them beyond trusting them at their word. And there are many reasons to not believe them, unfortunately.

IMO, the old adage holds true - beating tech is hard, beating humans (with a wrench ;) is easy. Aka, XKCD 538.

1. https://github.com/KieronQuinn/TapTap 2. https://xkcd.com/538/

> Good, it shouldn't be two clicks for elderly people to install trojans on their phone that then drain their bank account.

And what makes you think that most scams involve fancy zero days/CVEs/hijacking the OS, and not simple social engineering?

You do not require a malicious apk to receive 2FA codes, or for the gullible user to read them aloud to the scammer. All phones come with an SMS and phone app.

You do not require a malicious apk to send transactions in banking apps (eg tricking people selling their product to send the money.)

You do not require a malicious apk to engage in a pig butchering scam, or to buy gift cards.

> There should be some explicit confirmation that the user knows what they are doing and they are not being scammed. It is long overdue.

I agree. Social engineering counters should have awareness raised by the governments. But blocking 3rd party apps for this is like using a cannon to shoot a mosquito. I'm not sure it makes the slightest of sense.

> The information value of providing (or receiving) a demo has dropped to roughly zero with vibe coding.

Only if you're a software-only startup. If you have hardware, the entire article is still valid.