mysterypie

3 ay öncediscuss

> it's socially acceptable to do 'yet another translation', but not a newer version in the same language

I wish they'd teach with modern English translations of Shakespeare in high schools. Maybe then kids would like it a lot more. But it seems like it's taboo to read Shakespeare in anything but the original.

mysterypie

4 ay öncediscuss

> allocating a large part of my portfolio into AI companies

Even if you were certain that AI would take over virtually everything, the problem is deciding which AI companies to invest in. Thinking back to 1996, just when this new thing called "the web" was gaining tracking and assuming you were certain it was going to be huge, what companies would be the best investment? A lot of the companies doing web stuff went nowhere. Many of the biggest successes didn't even exist in 1996. It's not obvious which (if any) AI companies are worth investing in even if you're positive that AI is the future; the current companies might be massively overvalued; the best AI companies might not even exist yet.

mysterypie

5 ay öncediscuss

I was looking at rank by karma (not rank by word count):

https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

mysterypie

5 ay öncediscuss

There's something about the numbers I can't figure out. Look at the top three HN contributors by karma[1]:

      username    words       karma
  1.  tptacek     4,310,896   416351
  2.  jacquesm    3,841,209   237961
  3.  ingve       2,273       215283

How did ingve get to #3 with just 2 thousand words, whereas tptacek and jacquesm authored 3-4 million words? Looking at his 14-year history, it's true that he hasn't written that much. I suppose one possibility is that his writing is 1000x better at earning karma. But I'm going to hazard a guess that it's the quality of his 3-4 submissions per day that brings up his karma when one of his submissions is a hit (I think that submissions do count toward karma).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

mysterypie

6 ay öncediscuss

As someone who hasn't used Windows in a long time, could you explain the benefit of doing a double install like that? I.e., if you stopped at step #1, it's activated, so what purpose does step 2 serve?

mysterypie

8 ay öncediscuss

> $600 in the 1920s (1930s?), not inflation adjusted

I consulted the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator:

$600 in 1925 would be $11,264 today

$600 in 1935 would be $14,329 today

A lot of money, but I've heard that it can easily cost $10-20K today to erect a couple of poles to bring power a hundred feet to your property in a rural area these days. Do you know what distance was being covered to bring power to your grandfather?

mysterypie

8 ay öncediscuss

> With widespread AI adoption we plausibly could consume 10x or more of the service: Legal services, for example, plausibly fit this bill.

A ten-fold productivity gain in legal services sounds simply awful for society. Imagine the time and money sink if everyone can sue you for every frivolous thing because AI can prepare and file the paperwork instantly without needing a lawyer. You'll need your own AI to defend against the onslaught of legal disputes.

Every contract for jobs and every terms & conditions for services will be 10x longer because AI has a much higher complexity threshold compared to a human. My belief is that one reason tax returns became much more complicated in the last ~30 years is because of tax preparation software. In the era of paper tax returns, there was a limit to the complexity that an individual or even an accountant could handle, so there was a limit on how complicated the government could make it.

Most normal people rarely need a lawyer in their lives. With AI's productivity explosion in the legal services, you're going to need legal services every day. Your neighbor wants to borrow your chainsaw? Your AI legal agent will negotiate a liability waiver with his AI agent.

mysterypie

9 ay öncediscuss

> ChatGPT has more than 800 million weekly active users

0 to 800,000,000 in 3 years?

The fastest adoption of a product or service in human history?

mysterypie

11 ay öncediscuss

Do you still get fingerprinted under the visa-free transit policy for foreigners?

I can accept a facial scan, but I draw the line at fingerprints and more invasive biometrics.

mysterypie

10 yıl öncediscuss

The actual inventor of Hacker News, Paul Graham, hasn't commented for over a year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg

Considering that he was very very active on HN in the past (karma 155077), I wonder what his reasoning is to cut back?

mysterypie

Submissions

Carjackers swipe biometric Merc, plus owner's finger

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