HackerTrans
TopNewTrendsCommentsPastAskShowJobs

dpiers

no profile record

Submissions

He Was an Online Drug Lord. Now He's a Crypto Entrepreneur

nytimes.com
8 points·by dpiers·2 lata temu·1 comments

comments

dpiers
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
We already live in a world where parents decide whether or not a child with Down Syndrome will be born.

60-90% of prenatal diagnoses in the US result in an elective termination. The number is nearly 100% in Iceland and some other Nordic countries. Unlike autism or ADHD, we have a very clear understanding of exactly what causes Down Syndrome and now potentially how to correct it. A treatment like this is no different from correcting a congenital heart defect - it gives a baby a chance at normal, healthy development.
dpiers
·3 miesiące temu·discuss
You’re neglecting the fact that each one of those businesses had a plan, they just pivoted to more successful plans.
dpiers
·5 miesięcy temu·discuss
The title is a lie - the original statement was that it was closer to “a small game engine” than a basic text UI.

CC has a complex scene rendering pipeline with a 16ms/frame budget. That is much closer to a game engine than a print statement.
dpiers
·w zeszłym roku·discuss
Languages are thought encodings.

Most people can only encode/decode a single language but an LLM can move between them fluidly.
dpiers
·w zeszłym roku·discuss
Amazon has surpassed Newegg as my online parts provider of choice.

It's not that things can't go wrong, it's just that they are much better at handling it than Newegg these days.
dpiers
·w zeszłym roku·discuss
We are in the process of abandoning ChatGPT Enterprise because Google is now bundling Gemini access for free with Google Workspace.

If OpenAI is not safe from anticompetitive practices then no YC startup is.
dpiers
·w zeszłym roku·discuss
This explains a lot about Ork Mekboyz.
dpiers
·2 lata temu·discuss
Well there was that one time Germany owed everyone a lot of money after the Treaty of Versailles and it kind of directly led to Hitler’s rise to power and another World War… makes sense for them to be a bit more conservative than other countries.
dpiers
·2 lata temu·discuss
It seems you are under the impression that the venture capital firm cofounder by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz was created by a single individual.

If you can’t get basic facts correct no one is going to take your other claims seriously. A16Z has a diverse portfolio of investments and are as famous as they are because of how successful their companies have been.
dpiers
·2 lata temu·discuss
I don’t disagree. Crypto is neat but has no useful (legal) real world applications.
dpiers
·2 lata temu·discuss
Oh, please. Bitcoin is a protocol with no more inherent value than SMTP.

Aside from being the Catholic cryptocurrency, it has been surpassed technologically in every way by newer and better designed protocols. Why would anyone who doesn't already own Bitcoin choose to use it for anything over, ex. Ethereum?

Bitcoin maxis aren't technologists; they're grifters trying to convince you their magic beans are the most special magic beans.
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
I’m creative but have never been adept at sharing visual ideas in my head with the rest of the world. I’ve found genAI image tools empowering because for the first time I can turn an idea into my head into something other people can see and enjoy. I’ve used it for everything from portaits and memes to recreating scenes from my memories that I don’t have photos of to help me remember.
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
I use credit cards for all of my spending. One gives me 4% back on fuel, another 3x points on travel and dining, etc. Paying with cash/debit is less economical because you forgo these rebates and incentives.

I also pay my cards in full each month so there are no interest charges, just a few with annual fees that are more than covered by the card benefits.
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
Is this news? I'm genuinely asking - TLO and other skip tracing tools have been around for a while, and have been offering license plate location data for years.

The ACLU issued a report on how ALPR devices are used to track people in July 2013 (1).

Flock Safety (2) was founded in 2017 and has raised $381M from name-brand VCs like Tiger Global and A16Z. The ACLU raised concerns about them a year ago in a report. (3)

No one has been keeping it secret.

1: https://www.aclu.org/documents/you-are-being-tracked-how-lic...

2: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/flock-safety

3: https://www.aclu.org/report/fast-growing-company-flock-build...
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
This story by itself might sound like sour grapes, but in combination with other reports about the CEO(1), I suspect bad news ahead for Stability's investors.

It seems like a narcissist with a very 'dynamic' relationship with the truth chased the AI hype train and ended up with a bunch of money and attention due to a stupid VC. He pissed off the teams that invented Latent Diffusion and his partners at RunwayML in the process, and now it seems like his cofounder as well. What value is there in a company that's only famous because they spent $600k in VC money training an open source model on AWS?

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2023/06/04/stable-di...
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
I had a former employer call once and ask me to sign a form confirming that I had opted not to exercise the stock options worth 0.125% of the company when I left.

They were raising a new round and my old grant was a sticking point because the new investors weren't content with the company not having a record of my exercise.

I signed because it helped them out, cost me nothing and seemed like the right thing to do. Just think it was funny that a VC was so averse to dead equity that they made the company make sure someone who wasn't on the cap table agreed that they weren't on the cap table.
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
Comcast "forced" me off of mine by upping my rate to $180/mo for the cheapest cable-only package when there were contract deals available with internet and more channels for $110/mo.

No contract rates available without turning in the cablecard. Switched symmetric GB fiber provider for $65/mo and pay for streaming TV during the NHL season.
dpiers
·3 lata temu·discuss
That’s because SMS has a 1120 bit message capacity and uses one of two encoding mechanisms.

GSM-7 uses 7 bits per character and a correspondingly limited character set that allows for 1120/7 = 160 characters.

UCS-2/UTF-16 uses 16 bits per character for a total of 1120/16 = 70 characters per message.