"A couple of bookcases, a plywood work surface, corkboard with outlines tacked up, an old brass lamp, an underworked laptop for emails, a Smith-Corona typewriter. "
I wonder if software engineers would pay for some software (or dedicated hardware) to turn their laptops into a coding typewriter with maybe just a GPT connection to probe documentation and whatever tunnels they need to work on internet deployments.
I understand exactly what you mean. A disconnected, distraction-free place to focus and think... the equivalent of a "wooden shed with nothing but books and a typewriter", except the isn't typewriter work; it's more difficult to fully "detach".
What *is* the software-world equivalent of a typewriter?
That's a very complicated question! You get root access, and they released the toolchain and kernel source less than a week ago, so I'm not sure what will be possible going forward. I don't recommend getting the keyboard folio based on future guesses as to what the software will support, but it's great for... Just. Typing.
Occam's razor: I think Sam's personal narrative is the correct one. He built a non-profit that took off in a way that he didn't expect it and now a for-profit is the best way to run the lightning they've caught.
In terms of profit, AFAICT, Sam doesn't have designs on building extra large yachts and his own space agency but what he wants is to be the one at the stead of building what he considers is world-changing tech. One could rationally call this power-hungry but one could also rationally call this just helicopter parenting of a tech you've helped built. And for that a for-profit that is allowed to maximize profits to re-invest in the tech is the optimal setup (esp if all the competitors are doing the same)
Is this a different org than when it started? Yes. Was this a dupe from the beginning? I don't think so.
"But why can't he have a more worldly-aligned board looking over his shoulder?"
Because we live in California and have a bad taste for governance by committee or worse: governance by constant non-representative democracy (see: Housing).
If this now completely comes off the wheels, I still think Congressional action can be a stopgap, but atleast for now, this restructure makes sense to me.
What do you do with a a lot of money past a point? A corporate controlled AGI being just a stop on the way to build another private space agency seems like a...letdown.
> if you went to a group of investors and pitched a board game where the winners get space ships and the losers die, they'd call you crazy. But if you suggested to those same investors that perhaps we shouldn't organize our entire society that way, they'd call you crazy.
"where the winners get space ships and the losers die,"
The Social Security budget is $1.4 Trillion, just the federal welfare budget is >$1Trillion (not including state budgets), and then there's medicare. Meanwhile, the NASA budget is <$25B (with SpaceX's operating budget and profits being a fraction of that)
I wish we lived in that simple of a world. But we don't.
“the winners get space ships and the losers die, they'd call you crazy”
Was the original quote. I just showed that you could get rid of all rockets ever made and it would be a rounding error for any funds used to save the “losers” from dying.
To be honest, I would take a private space agency 7 days out of the week with that kind of capital. We have no fundamental proof that LLMs will scale to the intelligence levels that we imagine in our heads. The industry application for LLMs is even weaker than computer vision, and the public sentiment is almost completely against it. Sam's product is hype; eventually people are going to realize that Q* and Strawberry were marketing moves intended to extend OpenAI's news cycle relevancy and not serious steps towards superintelligence. We were promised tools, and they're shipping toys.
I could tell you in very plain terms how a competitor to Boeing and SpaceX would benefit the American economy. I have not even the faintest fucking clue what "AGI" even is, or how it's profitable if it resembles the LLMs that OpenAI is selling today.
I would agree with you that a space agency is also useful (maybe more useful some days of the week). Sam disagrees and thinks he can do better without a non-profit board now.
I'm glad we live in a world where he gets to try and we get to tax him and his employees to do other things we consider useful.
Its interesting how first impressions can be so deceiving. The world's largest private space agency (SpaceX) has completely changed the game in rural internet connectivity. Once upon a time, large chunks of the US had no reliable high speed internet. SpaceX has brought high-speed low-latency internet to every corner of the globe, even the middle of the ocean and Antarctica. This isn't going nowhere even if it seems that way.
SpaceX is not a private space agency though, it is a private space launch and satellite communications company, which has revolutionized access to space and access to communication, providing enormous social benefit.
People use SpaceX every day even if they never connected to a starlink -- the lower costs that governments pay for space launches means more money for other things, not to mention no longer paying Russia for launches or engines.
I think they're both overhyped by sci-fi optimism but I would agree (even being mostly an AI minimalist) the impact of LLMs (and their improvement velocity) is a lot meaningful to me right now. I mean satellites are cool and all.
This comment reeks of Steve Ballmer opinion of Apple and the Internet early days. If you work at any decent technology company, you realize AI applications every where and the pending mass layoffs. Or nimbler startups replicating their work more efficiently.
> What do you do with a a lot of money past a point?
Feed the hungry. House the homeless. Give away money unconditionally to those in need. Build hospitals in poor countries. Fight disinformation on crucial topics (such as climate change). Provide disaster relief. Not build more power hungry technology that exacerbates our current problems.
Do literally anything positive for another person, that does not harm others.
The list is pretty big when one isn’t selfish; there’s no law forcing anyone to build space agencies.
Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing.
Funnel $10B of food to xyz famine region and you've undercut local farmers for generations. Happens all the time [1]. And that's assuming you can get the aid past local corruption.
These problems aren't as simple as people assume, and I'm low-key happy young naive Billionaire's are avoiding these issues instead of trying to throw their weight around.
FWIW: Sam's already funneled a bunch of money into green energy production[2].
> Funnel $10B in housing to Los Angeles and you'll build less than 100 units of housing, because the inflationary push of that money would balloon the cost of per unit housing. I don't want to imagine the effect of that on middle class housing.
Doesn't make sense to me. An uptick in construction work will not be an inflation balloon. More disposable income doesn't mean 1:1 more spending.
If you build a lot of (social) housing, you put at worst a lot of people a roof above their head.
Families having less financial stress might lower crime rate and improve children school scores. They might save to start businesses or find their other talents.
For some, this might be a downside tough. It makes workers more educated, healthier, more stable, less desperate and less dependent on bosses, plus they might be less angry so politically less exploitable too.
"An uptick in construction work will not be an inflation balloon. "
There's a massive shortage in construction workers [1], so yes there will be? The few construction workers we do have can demand higher wages (yay!) but then will they be outbidding other mid-income folks for housing with those increased wages? Sounds like an inflation spiral to me.
My statement wasn't against social housing, I love social housing. We just haven't cracked the code in scaling housing (and subsequent maintenance) yet. And the problem is about 80% political will, billionaire cash is useless here.
On a macro scale, that has hardly any impact, and I think it would be even immeasurable.
It is rather the other way around. Higher rents / house prices will make sure only people with higher wages can afford to live there. That means your bagel or coffee will be more expensive there too.
Nope, LA is too much part of the macro economy to make such an impact. Wood and labor doesn't have to come from LA and even if that would double (it won't) there would be a round zero impact on inflation in LA.
The land to be build was going to be sold anyways, you just get one bidder more, or several bidders less if the council makes requirements like x% social housing.
Please, forget anything you are worrying about here, it does not apply.
Literally every problem I mentioned is at its worst state possible. People with millions and billions simply waiting to buy materials or get land approvals. It’s a well know intractable problem [1] and really the crux of the problem.
If just these problems could be solved the state has more than enough funds to house everyone. What billionaires do would be wholly irrelevant (like it is now)
I didn’t say “do these things inefficiently”. If we know better, we can do better. It’s like if I said “use the money to fix the potholes in this road” and you replied “but if you shove all that asphalt in the same hole, it will create a mound that stops cars from going through”. Yeah, don’t dump everything in the same place without thinking.
Start by collaborating with organisations which are entrenched in studying these issues and the impact of the solutions. If you have the money you can pay them to help and guide the effort, don’t act like if you know everything.
Yes this has basically been the modus operandi of the gates foundation and it took them 10 years to make a dent on Malaria. They still have no clue how to “efficiently” reduce famines.
They won’t touch American housing problems with a 10ft pole. That should tell you something.
Go to Berkeley, tell them a Billionaire wants to build housing for the homeless in their neighborhood. See what happens.
It’s a hard pill to swallow but the best thing billionaires can do is let us tax them and then butt out go fly rockets. The political problems is upto the rest of us.
> They won’t touch American housing problems with a 10ft pole.
Why do you keep insisting on the USA? It’s not the only country in the world.
> Go to Berkeley
I will not. I’m not American.
> It’s a hard pill to swallow but the best thing billionaires can do is let us tax them
Maybe it’s a hard pill to swallow for the billionaire, but I personally agree and think you’re right. However, this conversation started with someone asking “what do you do with a a lot of money past a point” and offering only a private space agency as an alternative to working on AGI. My point was there are many other problems worth pursuing.
My point was every other problem would be made worse by a billionaire pushing his/her money in there. Everyone is a couple of billions of money funneled away from becoming the next George Soros.
If you don’t think NIMBYism and degrowth is a problem in your country yet, just give it a couple of years. It just hit England, you’re next. No billionaire can save you.
I don't think the narrative makes sense. It was clear from way back in 2016 that training would take a ton of resources. Researchers were already been sucked into FAANG labs because they had the data, the compute, and the money. There was never a viable way for a true non-profit to make world-changing, deep learning-based AI models.
When seen through the rearview mirror, the whole narrative screams of self-importance and duplicity. GPT-2 was too dangerous, and only they were trust-worthy enough to possess. They were trust-worthy because this was a non-profit, so "interest aligned with humanity". This charade has continued even to barely some months ago.
I think the main question will be if Meta can run the glasses under a different business model than ads/personalization. I know Meta feels like they missed out on owning the hardware ecosystem with mobile, but a big part of why Apple's product work is because their business model is not ads.
If they can fix their incentives there it will address 80% of the concerns in this thread.
Counterintuitively I think a passive screen affixed to your face will reduce your reliance on all other screens. Glasses aren't a great form factor for scrolling feeds, but they are much better at connecting you to your physical world (which phones are the worst at). That plus just the posture improvements [1] that glasses can provide over the phone may make this a winner.
It doesn't matter if they can or can't, Apple will do a better version of this and people will buy it because they're a much less shitty / shady company than Facebook.
So amazing! Strongly considering using this for my next purchase. Two quick questions:
a) How do offer + contingencies work (contingent on financing, home inspection etc.), will a human immediately have to get involved when any contingencies are involved?
b) Your service will text the sellers agent, and get me the lockbox number so I can tour a property myself without having to schedule with a buyers agent? Just that service alone would be amazing
a) When you draft an offer, the contingencies are fairly standard w/r/t mortgage, inspection, title, insurance, etc. Realtors use standard language here to cover these on the offer form, we use the California Association of Realtors Residential Purchase Agreement form, which is the standard offer form.
b) Yes. Technically, a licensed agent has to open the door, but ours will stand outside.
I'm curious about b). If you are sending a licensed agent to the property, wouldn't the typical buyer want the benefit of their knowledge?
Personally, not a huge fan of the cartel. On the other hand, I have worked with agents who have saved me tons of time & money by spotting problems before inspection. If the agent is going to be present, it seems logical to have them contribute their knowledge.
An agent will still look at the property and provide a check/advice, so you wouldn't miss out on that benefit if you use our service. Regarding point b), while we send a licensed agent to the property, we understand that different buyers have different preferences. Some may want to fully leverage the agent's expertise, while others might prefer a more hands-off approach. We believe in giving clients the flexibility to choose their level of engagement.
“vocal minority is very loud, everyone else disagrees but are too busy to come yell at electeds, so we can’t fix this obvious problem. Done. Problem festers”
I'm in Minnesota, I'm just assuming California has the same problems. The issue is pretty nationalized.
Some of it is students having a genuinely disturbing attachment to phones specifically, like a sense of anxiety when the phone is gone. There's also parents who get really freaked out about school shootings and are anxious that they won't be able to be in contact with their children. I guess it's kind of similar. Anxiety does not bring out the best in people. (And I note the page specifically refers to this concern)
As a parent it's also handy to be able to communicate with my child about logistics during the day. Parents can be kind of whiney about that sort of thing. Whiney parents should be the basis of policy, but obviously it happens...
There is a saying I healthcare: you can optimize for access, cost, and quality but you only get to choose two. So for “true abundance” (access) you will generally have to put up with higher cost or lower quality. How you find the appropriate balance is the hard part.
Mind boggling to me that a non-ping pongy lane keeping is not standard in cars. Is it standard in luxury cars? Seems like an obvious thing to add/upsell.
Non ping-ponging lane following assist is already available in many cars including KIA and Hyundai models. They're very conservative and disengage very easily. I think it's by design to minimise their legal accountability
Not just legal accountability, but actual safety. They are designed so that they do not give the user a false impression of the extent of their capabilities.
I've been incredibly surprised to see that lane assist in my Kia is significantly better than that of most other (legacy non-hi-tech, think nicer hondas and lexus ICE/hybrid) cars I get a chance to drive.
I unfortunately don't have radar cruise control on my Kia, though, which would make highway driving even in traffic completely effortless, and this seems to be standard on themore expensive cars. Maybe it's for the better, though, because it does force me to be much more attentive on the road.
Hyundai actually has two systems, LKA and LFA. LKA just tries to bounce the car back when it detects lane edges, LFA actively keeps the car in the middle of a lane.
All Hyundai models in Europe have LKA, some (more expensive) also have LFS.
My 2019 Audi S5 was excellent at this. It would ping pong at most once then auto-correct itself to be perfectly centered in the lane.
It did some weird things like if the car in front of you was driving a bit too far to the left/right of a lane, it would copy them. Other than that it was nearly perfect, though. Never had it take an exit by accident, etc.
Their tuning on when to accelerate/brake and make it smooth needed a fair bit of work, but I found that switching the drive mode from Dynamic (Sport) to Comfort changed the eagerness of the system and smoothed things out.
> It did some weird things like if the car in front of you was driving a bit too far to the left/right of a lane, it would copy them
Wouldn't that conceptually be the right thing for the software to do, copy the human in front of it (unless it has demonstrably better information)? OT1H, "lemmings," but OTOH unless the whole line of cars were all on openpilot my life experience has been that the person in front of me by definition has more visibility than I do since their car is not blocking their view as it is mine
I am totally talking out of school, because I'm not in that space and my poor BMW chose to do its own thing[1] so it doesn't work with openpilot[2] -- although they have a dedicated #flexray channel[3] so hope springs eternal
> Wouldn't that conceptually be the right thing for the software to do, copy the human in front of it (
I see people failing to follow the rules for bad reasons far more often than for any good reason. I don't want my car driving off to the side of the lane just because the car in front isn't centred. It should assume the right thing to do is to follow the rules, and hand off to me in cases that are more complicated.
Ugh. So I’m working on a fork of openpilot and the way the OP model is designed, it has its own rules that is not rooted in any legal driving framework for any state. The simple one is staying right. My state says your vehicle must stay on the right side of the road including roads without markings. OP will try to drive in the middle of the road. Another one is how OP does not distinguish people from parked cars or how oncoming cars are not tracked but simply an object the car should try to avoid (though it does not do this very well and experiences frequent disengagements due to it)
Obviously a model which manage these conditions would fair better but the comma hardware is fairly underpowered for any stronger use case.
I have added dedicated compute to my car to handle a lot of driving rules but now my solution is independent of comma. I tie into the LVDS display on the console so the integration is immersive, but it also means I don’t need comma for the hardware. My fork is also starting to diverge from OP so I may have a competing (but tangential) product!
I also notice this phenomenon in Audi. It’s as if the steering motor is applying inputs after the steering setting has been applied. So if your steering wheel is in sport mode then the motor requires additional force to turn.
I run my own forked copy of openpilot and the car cannot keep up with turns in dynamic mode. When set to comfort it can handle all turns with ease.
For the actual context outside the extremely online immigrant hatred:
Canada lowered its student immigration target and then MISSED it [1]. Students in India are acutely aware Canadians don't want them (or more accurately, don't have the infrastructure to handle them). So now a whole generation of potential immigrants have spread the word that Canada is not worth it (and that fire will spread fast).
This plus the standard developed country birth rate (i.e. low) but a lack of adequate infrastructure is now going to push Canada into anemic to negative economic and population growth. Think Japan without the infrastructure.
Unless something is done to turn around this degrowth, and without immigrants to blame this time, Canada has nowhere to go but simply become America's little shrunken brother.
What is actually unpopular to say is that a certain sector of Canadians got annoyed at too many different looking people in their towns and instead of demanding the government build infrastructure and housing, they demanded the government choke growth. And well, they're gonna get what they demanded..
Doesn't seem to be a problem in California. Earthquakes aren't a big deal in Japan; they're part of everyday life. Unlike some other countries, the construction industry here knows how to build structures that don't fall down every time the earth shakes.
I wonder if software engineers would pay for some software (or dedicated hardware) to turn their laptops into a coding typewriter with maybe just a GPT connection to probe documentation and whatever tunnels they need to work on internet deployments.
I'd love to experiment with something like this.
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