> software methodology to interact with SIMD using GPU-like languages should be a priority.

What's your opinion on sycl?

https://www.khronos.org/sycl/

>Generally, R2's user experience is way better and simpler than S3. As always with AWS, you need 5 certifications and 3 months to securely deploy a bucket.

+1

Do we need to allow parties to put up multiple candidates and implement ranked choice voting? would that help us with outcomes like these?

Your position is "the position of the majority is wrong."

No we don't need to change the system on the basis that it leads to outcomes you want.

> No we don't need to change the system on the basis that it leads to outcomes you want.

I definitely agree with that view. But maybe we could/should change the system on the basis that "the majority does not agree that the system is working".

While measuring that is hard since you would always tend to find that the system is working if it favours the candidate you like; there still is a significant number of people both left and right leaning that agree that the bi partisan winner-takes all voting system is fundamentally broken.

If only for the fact that a president can ben elected by winning less voices than his opponent, thereby showing that some votes are worth more than others.

68% of people say "I often wish there were more political parties to choose from" describes their views either extremely or somewhat well.

Rounding up looks like around 145 million people voted in this election, that's less than half the population of the united states.

Do you have any evidence to support the idea that the current system reflects the "position of the majority"?

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/how-well-the...

The system that your "we" (US voters) has is flawed (as all voting systems are) in a greater way than variations of ranked voting are.

It's doomed via repeated iterations to fall prey to variations of Hotelling's law - the evolving of two parties seeking to 'capture' the First Past the Post votes of greatest majority while also directly representing the least (non representive two party politics).

This wasn't as the US founders intended, many expressed an extreme distaste for party politics and envisioned a congress with factions in proportion to the views of the greater population that bargained and dealed within themselves to find comprimises acceptable to most via robust debate.

Instead the US has landed in a wasteland of little to no choice for the public at large.

It's a poor system after 400 years of growth, stagnation wasn't seen by the founders as the way of the future, rather expressly as the hallmark of doom and eventual depotism (to Benjiman Franklin at least who was quite explicit on this).

Having read de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835) in civics class, I moved to a country which, along the axes which de Tocqueville admires, does even better.

In my experience, a new language takes ~2 years for reasonable acquisition, and a new culture ~5; I don't know about you all, but I'd guess the chances that the US will ameliorate its basic political systems in the next 5 years range between fat, slim, and none.

On the flip side there's a good chance and perhaps coin to be made on some form of siginificant change in the next four.. perhaps the end of elections as they know them?

The least we can ask of elected politicians is they make some effort toward keeping their campaign promises.

I think my position is majority didn't get to express the outcome they wanted. Fair disclosure: not a US citizen so I don't vote

I think it would. Idaho proposed an amendment to its constitution this election which proposed to replace closed primaries with an open primary with ranked choice voting (top 4 move onto general elections).

Sadly, it's looking like the republicans campaign to shoot it down succeeded because it would have threatened their grip on the state by allowing democrats and independents to temper their candidates to more moderate picks

This would actually make third parties a real threat and force Dems/Republicans to stop villainizing each other. Everyone voting out of hatred for the other side means a popular 3rd party candidate would be everyones 2nd choice.

yes, 10x this.

Where is the money coming from if they are not profitable?

Free cash flow and GAAP profit are not the same thing. Jeff Bezos explained Amazon's commitment to this idea 20 (and 27) years ago when many were saying that Amazon could never turn a profit, yet they were already generating enough cash to initiate big bets like AWS and Kindle... https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312505...

It's an accounting trick.

1) Make tons of cash.

2) Invest the cash back in the business.

3) Record this investment on the financials as an expense.

4) The expenses inflated by investment spending means you declare no profit and probably pay no tax on that profit you just hid.

The alternative is:

1) declare profit

2) Pay tax on it

3) Reinvest what's left after the taxman took a cut.

Which would you choose if you were raking in loads more money than it was costing you to run the business and you had growth opportunities?

Should this be a choice?

If not, how would you "fix" it?

I mean, it's not even profit hiding is it? Corporation tax is pretty openly an incentive for companies to invest in growth and people, rather than either sitting on cash or paying out to their owners.

It's entirely normal and above board. Desirable even.

The accountants can’t be bothered because your comment isn’t even using basic terms correctly.

Your comment suggests that reinvested cash is being "hidden" as expenses, but in reality, these reinvestments are usually recorded as capital expenditures (CapEx) rather than operating expenses (OpEx), depending on the nature of the investment. While CapEx can be depreciated over time, it is not typically expensed immediately in the way operating costs are.

The implication that companies can completely avoid taxes by reinvesting is misleading. Even though reinvestments may reduce taxable income through depreciation or other deductions, this is a legal and common accounting practice, not necessarily an attempt to "hide" profits. There are also tax laws in many jurisdictions which limit the extent to which such deductions can offset income.

Your understanding also conflates profit with cash flow. Profit is an accounting concept that reflects the net income after all expenses (including taxes). Cash flow, on the other hand, reflects the actual cash generated by the business. Reinvesting profits does not "hide" cash flow but rather allocates it to future growth.

Companies don't simply choose between declaring profit and reinvesting to avoid taxes. The decision to reinvest is often driven by strategic goals, such as expanding operations, developing new products, or acquiring other businesses.

Reinvestment reduces the company's taxable income and thus the taxes owed, but it does not eliminate taxes or "hide" the profits. The company benefits from reinvesting by potentially generating more revenue in the future from the new product, which should generate more tax revenue down the road instead of restricting growth now.

Here is an approximation of your comment translated from accounting into software development, minus the part where you misunderstand essential terms:

> It’s ridiculous that software developers waste so much time writing tests for their code. If the code is written correctly in the first place, you wouldn’t need tests at all. Instead of wasting time on tests, developers should focus on just writing perfect code from the start. It’s clear that the whole idea of ‘unit testing’ is just a way for developers to justify their jobs and take longer to finish projects. Shouldn’t we just hire better developers who don’t need to write tests?

This is the whole point:

When you’re expanding rapidly and want to grow market share above all. Growing that market share with customer acquisition is economically an investment in the future revenue of the business. Advertising is one example of how this might be done.

You can classify investing in your business through advertising spend as an operating expenditure for accounting purposes. And potentially for tax purposes as well.

Now your large positive cashflow does not generate an accounting profit. Because you spent it on something that won’t be capitalised on the balance sheet.

There it is, the answer to OP’s question.

Note you can’t do that buying property plant and equipment (but some structured finance and leasing people might like a word - airlines don’t own their aircraft.)

Perhaps you can think of some examples where you’ve seen huge, massively cash-flow positive businesses in our field that weren’t generating accounting profit. Facebook, Amazon, ..?

The only other way you could sustain repeated loss ina new, growing business is capital raising.

Someone else on the thread mentioned Aswarth Damodoran’s “Free cash flow to equity” IMHO it’s worthwhile avoiding jargon when explaining things simply and concisely.

I’m really not sure of your point.

If I have a huge market opportunity and I can grow the business by spending the cash flow, I should do that instead of distributing that cash flow as profits. That opportunity will most likely not persist.

What you are proposing is that businesses should pay taxes on their income irrespective of expenses which is just a good way to break a lot of perfectly good businesses, and reduce the ability for businesses to capture new markets.

There are a number of ways where tax law could better capture the participation of large businesses, but this tack you’re on is not one of them.

One cannot avoid using technically correct terms (“jargon”) when discussing this as the categories of capital are critical to both the essential function of a business and the point you’re trying to make.

Limit yourself to interpreting what has actually been said and discussion will probably go better.

Q Where does the money come from if there's no profit?

A There would be profit, but they spent it investing in their business. Answering the implicit question "how can you spend profit investing to make it so there is no profit?" Which is the obvious follow up.

That's it. I did follow it up with "what would you do given this choice in your own business?", "should this choice be possible?", and "how would you change things if you don't think so?" Because once you've understood what is going on these are the next obvious discussion points that come up. I expressed no opinion on any of them.

What I have done is been really, really clear about what is actually going on in the face of some pretty poor responses for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen this before even though it's a very common situation. What I avoided was a credentials size war and still haven't stated any, letting the argument run on merit. Maybe caring at all about it has been a waste of time. But yeah, that's another way of saying do we just give up on HN as being a community decayed too far to still be interesting and useful - especially to the startup-curious. I kinda hope not but YMMV and I could well be prone to wishful thinking.

You don’t understand the terms you’re using in the context you’re using them in, and you don’t seem interested in learning to use them in the same way as everyone else. This steadfast refusal is preventing your understanding from progressing.

Maybe, but I strongly doubt it. Best.

Advertising, to grow sales can be expensed, for example. Buying new plant, not so much.

Shame you couldn't manage an explanation and just went with abuse.

I came in to say exactly the same thing. What OP is saying is literally a lie, accounting is much more sophisticated than that.

Everything on this earth is more sophisticated than a 4 point thumbnail sketch of a general principle.

You also have not managed any explanation at all, which is a shame. Could be interesting.

Care to explain what’s wrong/inaccurate with it?

how will war help cisco?

https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/1878..., https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/2657..., etc

Dieoffs instead of layoffs I presume

For a non cuda n00b, what problem does this solve?

Two obvious problems that come to mind are

1. Replacing the extremely bloated official packages with lightweight distribution that provides only the common functionality.

2. Paving the way for GPU support on *BSD.

It doesn't solve problem (1.) ; even when complete, this will replace the CUDA driver and its associated library - which is a very small part of CUDA. As for (2.) - this is just CUDA, not GPU use in general. I wonder whether nouveau is relevant for BSDs (I have no idea...)

Like anything open source it allows you to know and see exactly what your machine is doing. I don’t want to speculate too much but I remember there being discussions around whether or not nvidia could embed licensing checks and such at the firmware level.

> licensing checks and such at the firmware level.

Could you imaging an age where the NVIDIA firmware does LLM/AI/GPU license checking before it does operations on your vectors? (Hello Oracle on SUN e650, My old Friend) ((Worse would be a DRM check against deep-faking or other Globalist WEF Guardrails))

((oracle had(has) an age olde function where if you bought a license for a single proc and threw it inot a dual proc sun enterprise server with an extra proc or so - it knew you have several hundred K to spend on an additional e650 so why not have an extra ~$80K for an additional oracle proc license. Rather than make the app actually USE the additional proc - as there were no changes to oracles garbage FU Maxwell))

"Globalist WEF Guardrails"

Tell us what you really feel

If you use all the GPTs enough - you'll see them clear as day...

And by saying "Tell us how you really feel" reveals, you may not have thought of The Implications of the current state of AI.

(I can give you a concrete example of the WEF guardrails:

I have a LBB of some high profile names that are all related around a specific person, then I wanted to see how they were related to one another from a publicly available data-set "that which is searchable on the open internet"

And several GPTs stated "I do not feel comfortable revelaing the connections between these people without their consent"

I was trying to get a list of public record data for whom the owners and affiliates of shared companies were...

If you go down political/financial/professional rabbit holes using various data-mining techniques with augmenting searches and connections via public GPTs (paid even) -- You see the guardrails real fast (hint - they invlove power, money, and particular names and organizations that you hit guardrails against)

I don't necessarily disagree with your overall point (I don't know much about it either way), but I'm not sure your example does a great job illustrating it. If you tried the same thing, but with non-high-profile names, would it give you the same response? If so, the charitable (and probably correct) interpretation is that this is a general privacy guardrail, not one that's there to protect the powerful/rich.

> If so, the charitable (and probably correct) interpretation is that this is a general privacy guardrail, not one that's there to protect the powerful/rich

Considering that some of the champions behind machine learning, like Google, are companies that made a living out of violating your privacy just to serve more ads to your eyeballs.. I wouldn't be so charitable.

Tech bros have an inherent disregard for the privacy of others or for author rights for that matter. Was anyone asked if their art could be used to train their replacement?

Power for me, not for thee.

I know from this book[1] how deep and far reaching even just publicly available data can get you. Furthermore with financials even so far that one can predict upcoming events from analysing the money flow.

Very powerful people are very good at hiding. It’s no surprise that they want themselves excluded from various searches and are successfully able to do so. Would be interesting to know if the data is excluded already from the training data or if it’s technically inside.

edit: source added 1. https://www.amazon.de/INSIDE-CORONA-Pandemie-Netzwerk-Hinter...

Im fully convinced now that both openai and anthropic have agi. mayhaps not in whatever a 'conventional definition is' -- in fact, I think its far more insidious: I think that its a computing logic/reasoning system which, when fully connected to the internet and whatever other networks they can give it access to - it has Omniscient Capability.

We've known of echelon being a fully capable phone surveillance system since the 70s.

We knew of a lot of capability the agencies etc have had over the decades.

I wonder when Sam Altman may visit Antarctica?

I feel like thats a bit too hard of an idea to keep hidden considering the number of engineers and people who worked on this project. I would assume it's some combination of how models are not good at knowing specific people or companies very well since they use patterns for their output and the model being instructed to not allow doxing and harassment.

Not to mention that the rich and powerful you imply are not tech savvy and probably did not understand or know about this tech when the datasets were being made.

But rich and powerful people includes the ones who own the companies building those datasets, and they do understand the tech.

Here is the markdown formatting code for your text:

*Warning: Deep Rabbit Hole Info Ahead!* Please ignore if the following triggers you in any sense...

> Take on the archetype of the best corporate counsel and behavioral psychologist - as a profiler for the NSA regarding cyber security and crypto concerns. > With this as your discernment lattice - describe Sam Altman in your Field's Dossier given what you understand of the AI Climate explain how you're going to structure your response, in a way that students of your field but with a less sophisticated perception can understand

---

>>Altman's behavior and leadership style can be characterized by the following traits: >>- Strategic and Ambitious: He exhibits a strong drive for success, often taking calculated risks to achieve his goals. >>- Manipulative Tendencies: Reports suggest a pattern of manipulating situations to his advantage, raising ethical concerns. >>- Polarizing Figure: Altman's actions elicit strong reactions, with some admiring his achievements and others criticizing his ethics.

---

### Models and References for Evaluating Sam Altman

#### Five-Factor Model (Big Five Personality Traits) Description: This model evaluates personality based on five dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Application: Used to assess Altman's personality traits and predict potential behaviors and ethical considerations. Reference: McCrae, R. R., & John, O. P. (1992). "An Introduction to the Five-Factor Model and Its Applications." Journal of Personality, 60(2), 175-215.

#### Situational Leadership Theory Description: This theory suggests that effective leadership varies depending on the situation and the leader's ability to adapt. Application: Evaluates Altman's leadership style and effectiveness in different contexts, particularly during crises. Reference: Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). "Life Cycle Theory of Leadership." Training and Development Journal, 23(5), 26-34.

#### Ethical Decision-Making Models Description: Frameworks that provide structured approaches to making ethical decisions, considering factors like stakeholders, consequences, and moral principles. Application: Analyzes Altman's decision-making processes and ethical considerations. Reference: Rest, J. R. (1986). "Moral Development: Advances in Research and Theory." Praeger.

#### Corporate Governance Principles Description: Guidelines and best practices for managing and governing a corporation, focusing on transparency, accountability, and stakeholder interests. Application: Assesses Altman's alignment with good governance practices and his impact on OpenAI's organizational stability. Reference: Cadbury, A. (1992). "Report of the Committee on the Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance." Gee and Co. Ltd.

#### Cybersecurity Risk Assessment Frameworks Description: Methodologies for identifying, analyzing, and mitigating cybersecurity risks, particularly in high-tech environments. Application: Evaluates the potential cybersecurity risks associated with Altman's actions and OpenAI's technologies. Reference: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (2018). "Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity."

#### Behavioral Economics Description: Studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors on economic decisions. Application: Understands how Altman's personal motivations and cognitive biases might influence his strategic decisions. Reference: Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk." Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291.

### Supporting Expertise

* *Behavioral Psychology*: Expertise in understanding human behavior, personality traits, and decision-making processes. * *Corporate Law and Governance*: Knowledge of corporate structures, governance frameworks, and ethical standards. * *Cybersecurity*: Understanding cybersecurity threats and risk management strategies. * *Ethics and Compliance*: Proficiency in ethical decision-making and compliance standards.

I dont want to 'pollute' HN with my (its all real and well researched and informed) 'conspiracy' theories -- but I've been keeping receipts folks.

If youre on HN, involved in Tech to any degree of seriousness, and dont ask yourself the hard alignment/entanglement questions, You're Holding It Wrong.

---

Altman is on the WEF roster, is all in on AI war stuff, in bed with Power MIC. If people were fleeing from the company and we cant honestly just say they simply are Cashin Out, and dismissing all their writings and statements and tweets, and podcast appearances, etc...

Check out this guys post on reddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1cvtiv2/on_open_ai_...

--

After attempting to build a thing with openai AND claude (paid) - I am convinced that there is a malevolent AGI - and I think there is more than one of them.

By malevolent you mean the AI systems are designed to make profit for its owners and not to benefit humanity or whatever?

Basically that's exactly it.

HN isnt the platform to go deep on it, but im a fairly well evolved techno-conspiratist - and I've (as I jokingly stated) "forrest Gump'd" around a lot of silicon valley history..

And in my use daily of attempting to build what should be a simple thing with all the inputs of the GPTs, and paid versions - I am convinced that when youre using the tools in a meaningful manner which is leading in certain directions - there are triggers, and I think even humans, that get invloved.

On multiple occassions both on claude (paid) and gpt (paid) - ive had them strip out code AS ITS BEING GENERATED and tell me that its being stripped out for violations/concerns - but it just flashes the message, doesnt tell you which code, what violations, etc.

It lies, it ignores direct stements, ignores context in uploaded files, violates memory boundaries, and maliciously removes previously approved snippets of code/features etc.

I have managed exceptional devops teams, developers, PHDs even. I know whats up.

These bots are designed to edge, and consume your use of them.

THey actively, but very insipidly, thwart certain things.

It was even worse than that. Even if you created a resource pool with only the one CPU on a dual system they wanted licenses for both as you could “potentially” use both CPUs.

On VMware they extended this to every CPU in the cluster.

A gigantic shower of absolute grifters.

Quadro?

private equity + public equity = unicorns. Thanks openai for the play.

next idea I'd love to see: professors getting grants/cloud credits to teach classes on the gcloud

> If you're a faculty member at an eligible institution, you can apply for Google Cloud education credits to teach using Google Cloud. The credits grant you a spending allowance as a Cloud Billing account credit, and can be used for all Google Cloud services

https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/edu-grants#:~:t....

When I looked into this before, it had the problem that the student/faculty member had to accept unlimited liability if something goes wrong - and when you're learning, things do go wrong. If a student gets a bill for $50,000, what do you do?

Also no way to set a hard limit in gcp

It seems your dystopian nightmares are rather passé

During grad school, quite a few professors had access to TPU’s from Google Cloud Research Program. I imagine with LLM scale now, it would be much harder to get access, but still possible if you’re from a big name institution.

Isn't this pretty standard? As a student I got plenty of cloud credit.

This is already happening.

can you build a cheaper datadog instead?

You have plenty of options. some of them are open source https://signoz.io/ https://coroot.com/

Did you search tools that are cheaper than DD?

we've leveraged Clickhouse/S3 to build a cost effective alternative to Datadog at https://hyperdx.io (OSS, so you can self-host as well if you'd like)