To me one of the big downsides of LLM's seems to be that you are lashing yourself to a rocket that is under someone else's control. If it goes places you don't want, you can't do much about it.

That's true for traffic on Facebook, Apple App store guidelines or Google terminating your account as well. What's new is the speed of change and that it literally affects all users at once.

They could have released Opus 4.6.2 (or whatever) and called it a day. But instead they removed the old way.

Becoming dependent on those platforms was bad too, but this feels like another level. Making your entire engineering team dependent on a shady company with an apocalyptic fantasy as their business plan just seems insane.

3rd party dependency for a business always freaked me out, and now we have to use LLM to keep up with the intensified demand for production speed. And premium LLM APIs are too inconsistent to rely on.

That sounds specifically like the housing shortage that is afflicting some of the most dynamic, productive parts of the country, like NYC and the California Bay Area.

Driven by NIMBYism and some other things, those areas stopped building anything like enough housing, with the obvious result that demand outstripped supply and prices rose, putting them out of reach of many.

That's kind of the origin story of the YIMBY movement, which started forming to fight that trend.

I don't disagree but i also think in terms of actual numbers, the majority of the people that earn these upper middle income salaries are living in more expensive urban areas (at least before work from home)

Yeah, if we cut back a bit on the war crimes we could easily fund both more moon missions and cool science, as well as a shit ton of great programs to help people with the basics like food and rent and health care.

The US spends more per capita, and even as a share of GDP, on healthcare out of public funds than some advanced industrialized states that have universal systems, as well as spending even more on healthcare out of private funds than out of public funds. If we didn’t have a system which expended vast quantities of additional resources in order to assure that a substantial subset of the population is denied needed healthcare and instead just provided the needed healthcare, we could fund all those other things without cutting back on the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, either direct or those that we subsidize that are executed by other regimes.

We still should cut down (ideally to zero) on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, but the reason is because those things are unqualified evil on their own, not because doing so is necessary to fund healthcare and other priorities, which it very much is not.

Or as my parents would say, "socialism", as if that were a bad word.

Now war. They think that's worth it, even if it's also bad.

I wonder why they decided on that timing? If it were better illuminated by the sun, couldn't they get some better photography?

They want to fly by at lunar sunrise as the shadows help see depth better. Also, they have very sensitive cameras (up to 3,280,000 ISO!); the Earth photo the other day was taken at night, so you can see how they'll be able to get detail even in the dark parts

640 ISO ought to be enough for anyone.

My guess is that this mission is not about imaging the far side of the Moon at all as that has been done already.

Fair, but these images are going to get a lot of public attention, so making them good ones would be worthwhile.

This is a vehicle test, not a sightseeing trip. Photography is not the priority.

current 2nd stage is underpowered, so it has to be compensated by 1st stage right from the start

and since launchpad is in the north hemisphere, Moon has to be at the south part of its orbit

The social media team.

It makes me tear up seeing the absolute 'best of us' as humanity striving and exploring in the midst of so much wretched evil and awfulness.

Same. There's a lot out there to get us down, but most people are fundamentally good at the end of the day, regardless of culture or borders.

"Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?!"

> It was incredible to see all of these people with very different backgrounds and interests coming together for one common goal: making the world better with technology.

I feel that's been kind of absent for a while. Sure, tech is huge and there are niches, but the general zeitgeist.

Like... the tech world went from this kind of niche thing, to "hey, hackers, you could set yourself up by creating a company and then get to do what you want", which then shifted more and more towards companies, and is right now lurching towards a world where you must pay a mega AI corporation if you want your output to be competitive.

> I disagree with the premise here. I think the core mechanics of social media, ie instant communication between random strangers about random topics, creates toxic interactions regardless of whether it's manipulated by engagement algorithms.

Larry Wall said, way back in the 1990ies,

"The social dynamics of the net are a direct consequence of the fact that nobody has yet developed a Remote Strangulation Protocol."

Which is kind of correlated to the fact that being behind a keyboard feels different to people than being face to face.

I always disliked this take, but I struggled to explain why, until I found this: <https://www.butajape.com/comic/say-it-to-my-face/>

I think that Larry's mostly kidding and it's not really some implied threat of violence in person. Just that we're better at politeness and restraint in person because we see a real human in front of us instead of something abstract on a screen.

Agreed.

We can either use our real names (bad plan IMHO) or deal with the fact that without the consequences of our actions, there are a lot of arseholes around.

Moderation is the answer, I think there's no way around that. HN show's that it can be done well, reddit show's that it can be done badly. Twitter show's what happens when it's not done (yes I'm being a little extreme there).

Real names didn't stop people from being arseholes on Facebook. They did lose a lot of friends, but they also found like minded friends, so kind of a wash.

Bingo. The Internet turns the other person into an abstraction.

If you turn on the thing that shows 'dead' comments, there is a larger than normal number here.

Indeed, and the dead comments (from new users!) overwhelmingly favor the government position.

But, this is a non-story, because those comments were correctly killed precisely so they wouldn't clog up this thread.

I wouldn't call something a non-story just because the ultimate end-goal was mitigated. The fact that it was attempted is a story, especially when it's a meta commentary on story about trying the same thing _officially_.

Eh. The actors that use these features use a shotgun approach. The result is you see a bunch of dead comments and assume the system is working as intended, while a couple of the less inconspicuous comments persist. This happens frequently on specific topics.

Could be organic dipshits with little to offer the discussion. That's the most common case in my view.

Said dipshits tend have an unnecessarily high degree of self regard.

I am kind of considering the idea of changing my LinkedIn profile to one of me with a 'wild rag', checkered shirt, and broad brimmed straw hat and calling myself a robot wrangler and see if I get any takers.