What's damning about this is that such an error was both not caught by the researchers and then not corrected after it was raised as an error. Is this the kind of conduct that should be acceptable amongst AI researchers who want to stake a claim on their work being authoritative?
Putting aside the astounding material and resource cost of this fantasy, the claim made here is an example of why people call AI proponents 'out of touch' or 'anti-human.'
Part of the reason why mass media entertainment - Squid Games, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Minecraft Movie, etc - is so popular is because it is a shared experience that is commodified and then widely distributed. People watch things because their friends and families watch them, and the shared experience is a sort of asynchronous social experience. The same is true of games - just look at the popularity of Lets Play content on Youtube and Twitch. The same is true of music - concerts are still the primary way musicians make money.
So long as this is true, the 'dream' of hyper customised, personalised Netflix-style entertainment is an utter fantasy that denies the human need to experience, share and discuss their entertainment. I would go so far as to call it a delusional claim, and also very dystopian - to realise this goal is to atomise the social lives of billions via a complete walling off of the shared lived experience.
(Maybe this is not true with porn, given it is a commonly viewed in a, uh, solitary context; although at the same time Porntube and pre-Verizon Tumblr both show that it turns out that many people share their porn taste with others.)
The only YC figure who espouses any position on U.S. federal politics is Paul Graham, who loudly campaigns against the current administration almost every day on Twitter.
You're burning your credibility here fast as the new moderator. dang derived his respect as an admin from not getting into fights in the threads. It additonaly tarnishes your credibility as you're doing this in defense of your employer. You look like a rage-poster who has the same response copied and ready to go from thread to thread.
Please take a moment to step back and examine if this is the image you want to be projecting as the official representative of YC and HN.
Where we get it wrong, I'm happy for it to be pointed out so we can improve. That's always been the case with HN moderation, and it's what I like about the work. The community demands that we operate to a high standard, and is quick to call us out when we get things wrong. That's the way it should be.
Where it stops being OK is when people make false (or extrapolated-to-the-point-of-absurdity) claims about YC’s actions/intentions, and its influence on HN moderation (and thus HN’s integrity).
Where this happens, the least I can do is (a) provide some balancing context when claims/insinuations are made of, say, YC's leaders being in cahoots with the administration and HN moderators enabling it because it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it, and (b) ask people who accuse us of censorship to provide details of their claims so we can explain it or investigate further.
I know I'm not going to please or win credibility from everybody, especially those who seem motivated to portray HN moderation and YC management in the worst possible light.
But the problem is that if we let these claims/accusations sit there without any balancing context, people who are open-minded will read them and think they are accurate, then form a negative opinion of YC and HN, based on incomplete information or falsehoods.
I realised just how damaging this can be when I spent time around the YC offices in SF in the past month, for the first time in a few years, spending lots time with dang and in staff meetings and having casual chats with YC staff and partners and startup founders. I realised just how different the vibe and attitude is, and how different the orientation towards politics is, compared to how it is so often portrayed in HN comments.
I also saw how frustrated and dispirited dang is by being subjected to these accusations for so long. And it hit me that these kinds of comments have become so pervasive on HN for so long that even I – who has been behind the scenes at HN for years (but not in the office) – had started to believe them, and become disenchanted about YC. And only when I spent time in the office and in the meetings did I realise just how much of an inaccurate portrayal they are.
I don't for a moment think YC is perfect, and I have plenty of my own ideas about how it can be doing better. And it's still very much the case that HN is an independent arm of YC, and it's not the moderators' role to defend or advocate for YC management.
But I think it’s important that we can provide balancing context when assertions are made about HN moderation and YC's influence on our moderation practices.
(Edited 5th par to be less dismissive/accusatory.)
Alternatively, hi tom, you're a human being with opinions and you're allowed to discuss whatever you like on this site just like anyone else.
i think dang is successful at moderation in part because he does have a reputation and track record of being fair and unbiased in his moderation, and i do agree showing bias in conversations can make people question moderation decisions more, but i'm not sure tom is showing bias by including information relevant to people he knows, and i think he can both discuss however he likes while also being transparent and genuine in unbiased moderation
tom has and does stay out of debates and in-depth conversations around HN related stuff. he's simply dropping some information in to dispel disinformation, which i think is reasonable
Administration and participation in arguments or opinion based debates should not coincide. Using a personal account for personal issues instead of using an administrator is more respectable in my opinion.
Other than routine moderation comments, my comments have all been focused on correcting falsehoods or misconceptions about HN moderation, including claims or insinuations about YC management’s explicit or implicit influence on HN moderation.
Can you point to a comment of mine where that's not the case? I'll happily have it pointed out so I can avoid it in future.
Normally I'd rather not reply this kind of comment, but so as not to let it just sit here and be presumed to be the slam dunk it purports to be...
1) Yes, Jared posted (nearly three months ago) that DOGE reminded him of (and indeed is the same entity as) USDS, a program launched by Obama in 2014 – evidently a program that Jared liked and supported.
2) Yes, Garry was photographed with Joe Gebbia, a notable YC alum who is volunteering with DOGE.
The next day, Garry posted a photo of himself with prominent Democratic Senator Cory Booker:
People will make up their own minds as to whether the tweets cited by the parent pass the test of campaigning or advocating for the administration or any particular agenda.
They don't for me, given the full context.
Still, the relevant matter for HN moderation is the political signals that will influence us or cause us to be biased. The strongest signal is from pg and it’s in the opposite direction to what is being claimed in the comments that accuse us of bias. Of course we don’t want to be influenced in that direction either.
The sheer amount of flagged and dead comments here - along with the vitriol I see in some responses to flagged comments that were not themselves flagged - makes me think this was a mistake.
I'm just curious why you think it helps the Republican cause? When I saw this reported in the media my feel was this is something Democrats are going to latch on to demonstrate the government is seeking to intimidate the judicial branch.
I guess it can have different interpretation.
Either way I'd really prefer not to see this stuff on Hacker News. We have enough things that push people buttons in other places.
HN has degraded a little since I joined some years ago. It is still better than most of the online fora out there, but you can feel the change in the posts.
Let me help degrade it further by asking what the purpose of this comment is and then asking if outside changes, like Trump, would be a more likely explanation for the change in tone
The purpose is the help understand current state of play. It used to be more purposeful, useful and meaningful for me to be here. If things will continue with its current trajectory, I will simply stop. I am not saying everyone will. We all have different lines after all. I am not sure what Trump has to do with this particular conversation though.
>I am not sure what Trump has to do with this particular conversation though.
Your original comment was about the change in tone, I'm giving what I think is the main reason. He spews hateful rhetoric and insults people constantly. Tens of millions voted for him to represent them in the highest position in the world.
>. It used to be more purposeful, useful and meaningful for me
I think the articles where you'll find the highest percentage of comments you'd dislike are obvious. Just don't click on them.
>The purpose is the help understand current state of play.
This is improved if the information is accurate right? Calling out those that might be lying helps.
Wealthy people who could be coined liberal-tarians or just your average tech bro political grab bag largely backed Trump out of financial interest and who, imo, deluded themselves that the administration would be unsuccessful at "the bad stuff" much like his 2016 run.
No amount of shouting from the rooftops that this time was actually different convinced anyone. I can't really blame
us collectively, we resoundingly voted for this— it's as much of a mandate you're likely to ever get in the US and we're in the find out stage of fucking around.
Looking back on old social media posts the theme is that everyone, supporters and not, were high on copium that Trump would do <list of things I like | aren't so bad> and the <list of truly terrible things> was just obviously crazy and wouldn't actually happen or were a joke.
* The Ghost of Elon Musk before he fell down the alt right pipeline and now is no longer liberal-tarian.
* Sundar Pichai
* Jeff Bezos
* Sam Altman
* Jensen Huang
* Tim Cook
A who's who of people who felt their businesses were being threatened by the Biden administration with a starry-eyed view of how this next round might benefit them and being in denial of the crazy.
Many of those probably wanted Biden to win but don't want to antagonize Trump after he won. If I had to guess there at least Sundar and Bezos didn't want Trump to win
Elon and his loud hangers-on in the VC community have made SV look a lot more MAGA than it is
Most of them didn't have words one way or another during the campaign, the post I replied was suggesting they got what they want, I guess that was some psychoanalysis too
Well, the good news is that there's a very convenient link at the bottom of the page here on HN for the AI startup school [1] which is host to a bunch of people that you should recognize.
In the U.S. in 2024, 32% of adult Americans reported being the target of workplace bullying[1]. Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) reported being subjected to debilitating sexual, physical or psychological abuse by their partner[2]. This means that 1/3rd of workers do not feel safe in their workplace, and a significant number of people don't feel safe in their own homes. There is no way these people are going to put anything on their faces that obscures their vision - not a pair of glasses, and not a giant headset. Until these numbers come down, VR and AR will never, ever go mainstream.
I did source it, I just didn't provide links this time. Go dig out the old UK or danish reports or discussions of them from the time.
No links this time because I've posted on this topic dozens of times in the past over the years and was away from my bookmarks list at the time anyway. It didn't stop people flagging posts. They just pick fights with the sources or start making arguments long since resolved. There are whole websites devoted to explaining various aspects of what happened, look for Prof Norman Fenton's blog for an example if you want to get started.
Not going to go and try to unearth it right now but everything he is saying about the figures coming out of England & Scotland is absolutely true, I saw it laid out on Twitter with links to the primary sources in real time.
Isn't that what is promised though?
What is the benefit to automated transcription if each and every single transcription must be manually audited? Where is the cost or labor saving?
It is much easier to correct a transcription than to generate it wholesale. As well, the task of audio transcription correction has long since been commoditized because of the deployment of speech recognition on every smartphone.
Usually I would be as optimistic as you are about this, because that would be the dream (although it would be nicer for them to contribute to the project.) However, given Proton's primary use case is gaming, such an effort will almost certainly be kneecapped by Apple's historic half-hearted commitment to anything other than microtransaction-powered mobile games.
