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UtopiaPunk

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UtopiaPunk
·9 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
If you want to hear the difference between an audio file recorded at 44.1 and 88.2kHZ, then you need slow the audio playback down. Otherwise, a trained ear cannot physically hear the difference.
UtopiaPunk
·15 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
I agree, legal immigration is much too difficult and I think that's awful!
UtopiaPunk
·15 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
Are you proposing a different solution? Or are you content to be a cynic that does nothing?
UtopiaPunk
·15 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
The USA has never had a leftist president. No president of the USA has ever sought to end capitalism.

I think you know that, and that you are alluding to that with quotation marks. But I'm not sure how the person you are replying to is using the term "left." I feel it is important to clarify when discussing how the Left views immigration.

Clarification aside, I agree with what you said.
UtopiaPunk
·15 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
I don't want to speak for European countries. Never lived there, and I think people living there should be responsible for deciding how they navigate such issues.

In the USA, where I live, there is not much of an ethical or cultural defense to prevent immigration. The dominant culture, white people, are themselves immigrants. To deny others the right to live and work here is selfish at best. If some people are allowed here and some people are not, the only logically coherent next step is to return all land and resources back to Native American hands. If we do not have the stomach for such a bold transition, then the next best thing is to welcome everyone. To do otherwise means allowing and denying people a life here on extremely arbitrary, hypocritical reasons (and usually racist reasons, frankly). So, at least in the USA (and I believe more broadly, North and South America), the political Left must necessarily be pro-immigration if they wish to be anti-racist.

Speaking even more broadly, Leftists have generally be in favor of internationalist cooperation (a la the famous song The Internationale). But how exactly that relates to immigration policies is debatable.
UtopiaPunk
·18 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
Sorry if I'm being dense, but what parts of the USA? Or, I guess more specifically, what is it that you are needing to clear?
UtopiaPunk
·18 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
Is your point that taller trucks and SUVs provide considerable benefits over shorter ones? What are those benefits?

Or do you mean simply that trucks and SUVs, regardless of their height, provide benefits? I don't doubt that and do not mean to imply otherwise.
UtopiaPunk
·18 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
Ugh, ok. Most people do not need one.

I'm not sure what the need is for a very tall pickup truck that can also hold a family five? But maybe there is one. Perhaps there is also a need for an excavator that holds a family of five, idk. If a real need is demonstrated, then sure, please do not ban the manufacturing of an excavator that has the necessary hook-ups for modern child carseats simply because I, a commenter on HackerNews, made a statement that was a little too sweeping for the needs of past, present, and future human beings on Earth and across potential settlement across the universe and dimensions beyond.

But most people do not need a very large truck or SUV. Vehicles with hoods closer to the ground and better lines-of-sight are safer for those around them, while having practically no impact on the utility of said vehicles as they drive on roads and highways in the USA.
UtopiaPunk
·18 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
Nothing in the article is suggesting that we do not need cars and trucks.

It does make a compelling case that specifically large trucks and SUVs are causing preventable deaths. And I certainly find no reason that we need very large trucks or SUVs.
UtopiaPunk
·21 วันที่ผ่านมา·discuss
I think society only works in a high trust society. Well, maybe something exists functionally in low trust society, but it sounds miserable.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
Is the concern that we'd marginalize parents and kids? As a parent of little kids, that's a concern that wasn't even on my radar. I had no idea that that was a major concern of people. Wild. I'm not saying it is a fabricated or unfounded fear, I just don't have that concern at all for myself.

As a parent of little kids, I worry much more about them living fulfilling lives as they grow up in the future. I'm concerned about climate change, wars, and an economic system that will allow them to live self-actualized lives. I have no doubt that the population number plays some factor in that, creating problems that must be solved. But ultimately, humans have created amazing technologies and the Earth is bountiful. We can support whatever number of people is on the horizon (whether that number is larger or smaller), but society must choose to do so and adapt.

My greatest fears are that governments and corporations consolidate their wealth and power to only an elite few, bending society to serve that elite. That is a fear exists regardless of the fertility rate.

I think Charlie Chaplin's speech at the end of The Great Dictator is relevant and inspirational: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20&t=2s

Thank you for sharing your article. It's from a view so unlike my own, and it's been eye opening.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
"Might makes right," you know?

I personally control my life by spending almost all of my income, after bills, towards expanding the elaborate tower-defense-like automated weaponry on my plot of land. If I must leave my fort, I always drive my T-34 into town (I'm saving up for a Sherman).

If anyone is interested in their own tank, this is a fun little listicle of what is possible: https://militarymachine.com/military-tanks-for-sale
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
Two points on that: 1. This would require hardware to be affordable by mere mortals. That hardware is not financially beyond our reach yet, but AI is making the cost of buying good computer parts very expensive. The big corporations are working against the goal of local LLMs in a major way just by soaking up most of the hardware on the market. And I don't even think that's intentional - they're just too hungry to consider otherwise. They can pay high prices where normal people cannot.

2.Local LLMs would have to be designed to be very convenient to use. As it stands, the big players are making their online models very convenient instead, and that let's them charge a subscription. It's a proven business model that our society has gotten used to (even if we grumble a bit). Even if the hardware were cheap, local LLMs are mostly for businesses, with a few hobbyists running it in their basement because they can.

It's extremely hard for me to imagine local LLMs being a threat to the powerful in any way.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
"With luck, it might even help us find methods of reducing their influence and power."

If it started to look like that might happen, the ones with influence and power would adjust the AI behavior. They own and control them.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
I understand that the war between Russia and Ukraine, and now Iran and Israel/USA has set back the slow progress that was being made on nuclear disarmament. I don't understand your claim that nuclear disarmament caused a war, though.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
Maybe I'm a big idiot, but I think nuclear disarmament is a good geopolitical strategy. The USA has treaties in place pursuing that end on a global scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_disarmament
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
Yeah, I agree with you! Regulation of that kind of environmental problem works better the more land is covered. National is best, statewide is meaningful (if you are in a geographically large state). Local is better than doing literally nothing, but it does have the nasty side effect of pushing the problem out of people's sight :(
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
A lot less people would be mad, yeah. In my own area, the mere rumor of a data center was enough to galvanize activity and get write-ups in the local news. The focus, generally, was on how it would raise electricity costs for the county and use up variable water resources right as we are facing water shortages here.

A lot of people here are in precarious financial situations, they do not want to see any costs go up. Inflation at the grocery store, high gas prices, high mortgages/rent, and a lousy job market have people on edge. I don't know if the average Joe is worried about AI leading to a dystopian hellscape, but he at least doesn't see AI providing any benefit to making ends meet.

Turned out not be a data center, but just the possibility caused a stir.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
Yeah, and it should be. But the USA, at least in this current moment, builds regulations catering to corporations and the rich over people's general needs. So the regulations that are on the table at the national level are ineffective.

It's easier for normal people to influence local regulations, but local regulations just push the problem somewhere else. However disdain for AI is so widespread that this is actually kind of effective.
UtopiaPunk
·เดือนที่แล้ว·discuss
You're starting with an assumption that AI is, on the whole, a net positive for society. A lot of people would disagree.