"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." -- Warren Buffet
The original context was very different, about financial markets, but I've been thinking about it a lot the past 12 months. There's a lot of cowards in high places in tech, surprisingly cowardly people. Or they have sold out their principles to be friends with terrible people, which is also a form of cowardice. Hard to say which.
The whole Epstein thing is a really really great marker of this too. Though I'm not sure if the tide has gone out all the way (we mostly know what's going on), or if there's a lot more tide to fall.
LBJ was a real son of a bitch, who, when he finally was thrust into power as president, did something pretty surprising by going all-in on the civil rights movement. Power reveals who people are, and times of trials reveal who people really are.
I think we merely have a system where the best people are selfless and poor and the worse people are rich and in charge. It makes sense; we have a system that rewards immoral behavior so we shouldn't be surprised that immoral people have made it to the top.
Such systems are nothing new, and are in fact the norm. The current system is perhaps even notable for how it has deviated from the past, and in particular Silicon Valley was a means for promoting some of the most selfless and poor into positions of great wealth and influence, especially going back to the Fairchild Semiconductor days. Always been greedy venal and immoral people here, but perhaps less than in other systems of power.
The stoics, people that Zuckerberg and others pretend to understand and follow, would have nothing but disdain for the lack of virtue that's apparent in those like Zuckerberg.
History is full of cowards who are arguably as guilty as the people who committed the atrocities. The people who are remembered positively in history are the people who overcame their fears and did what they thought was right, even if it carried a real risk of it blowing up in their faces.
It's actually a good thing to point out, because it shows that those people are out of control and exceeding their authority, and need to be reined in.
No need to die on the hill, but point out that there's a consistent pattern of lawless power-grabbing.
> it shows that those people are out of control and exceeding their authority
No, the concentration camps and gangs of masked thugs violating civil rights are that sign. Threatening to treat a domestic private corporation like an enemy combatant during peacetime for not immediately caving to military demands is that sign. Trying to take over the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is that sign. The Executive attempting to freeze funds issued by Congress for partisan reasons is that sign.
Department of War is just little boys being trolls.
The action of a failed rebrand belongs to the Department of Defense, and is indeed an example of exceeding their authority. It was not DoD that is trying totake over the Fed, the FTR, or the NRC, so those examples don't work against Hegseth here.
Anthropic is in negotiation with Hegseth/DoD. Pointing out all the specific actions that Hegseth is doing are fair game to show that Hegseth is nuts.
Bringing in other complaints against other parties, however bad those other parties are behaving, shows a pattern in other people, which might be helpful too. But hegseth's direct actions are stronger evidence.
According to the constitution, Congress is the check and balance on this. If congress refuses act as they are supposed to, it's up to the rest of our democracy to exert force on them, shame them, recognize what's going on, talk to our neighbors, etc.
If the current congress doesn't take action, in 2027 it's quite likely they will.
Of course the most likely current course is that nobody reins in Hegseth/DoD right now, but even if there's no official consequences at the moment there should be a memory and political will to change the system to prevent such abuse in the future.
Fascinating to see so much Clauswitz these days, it's been a major Baader-Meinhof phenomenon for me this year.
One of the strongest points of evidence that Putin is the center of gravity, at least according to Putin, is that he focuses so heavily on trying to make unconstitutional elections happen in Ukraine. It must be a form of projection of Putin's perception of his current situation: Putin thinks that if Zelenskyy is gone then Ukrainians will no longer resist destruction of their identity, language, and state. That's why we see Trump trying so hard to force elections on Ukraine, that's why we see internet commenters suggest that Ukraine should do unconstitutional elections, because they falsely believe that Ukraine's center of gravity is also their primary leader.
Putin is wrong about Ukraine, the center of gravity is a civic identity that's gotten incredibly strong ever since Maidan and the initial invasion. But I have a feeling that Putin understands Russia far more than he understands Ukraine, nad that Putin is completely right about Russia's center of gravity.
There's an important distinction here, between "banned" and "has far cheaper alternatives".
Things can appear banned even when they aren't merely because there is a new technology that's better and cheaper and it's a big investment so people go with the cheaper option.
Nobody is building new coal in the US because it's so expensive, not because there's an outright ban. Now, part of the reason it's more expensive than in the past is that using once-through water for cooling raises the cost of disposing of waste heat. And now, modern and much more efficient natural gas combined cycle plant is the obvious choice because not only is the fuel cheaper per kWh, but you also need to spend a lot less on waste heat disposal.
So is coal banned? No. Did some environmental regulations have an impact on just how bad of an idea coal is these days? Sure, but let's talk about the tradeoffs here, it's not a ban and framing it is a ban leads to bad solutions to real regulatory problems.
You can just look at examples in the article. For example "Lithium-Ion Cell Manufacturing"
> Cell manufacturing uses NMP solvent for electrode coating, handles flammable electrolytes, and requires formation cycling that generates heat and gases. Tesla chose Reno for the Gigafactory specifically because of California's permitting environment.
EPA tried to heavily restrict these outright in 2024 [1] and California has air/environmental rules that made it nearly impossible to develop large battery factories in California, which is why Tesla chose Reno in 2014. An alternative didn't exist at the time and now a decade later Tesla recently filed a patent this year for Dry electrode processing [2]
So basically California lost a decade of possible lithium factories
Given the labor challenges in California due to high housing costs, which selectively pushes out those willing to work for lower wages, I am always surprised when manufacturers choose the state at all. Throwing additional challenges doesn't make it any easier.
It's like the death sentence in CA. The minority who wanted to abolish it couldn't get enough votes, so the actual process was systemically altered until it became too cost-prohibitive.
*This is not a post in support of death penalty, just how CA politicians have figured out ways to legally get what they want even if it directly contradicts the will of the people.
if you own a factory and the legislators make your factory illegal, that's a ban. "well you can just upgrade" is no consolation. one day your factory is allowed, the next day it's not.
I was advocating specifically against mincing words so that appropriate remedies can be pursued. "Unbanning" coal isn't going to make coal appear again!
If there's a specific regulation on one aspect of a factory, as you describe, then "unbanning" the factory isn't going to help either, one must specifically unban that which was banned.
Mincing words would be saying "Factories doing X are banned" when in fact an existing Factory doing X with negative externality Y had negative externality Y priced or regulated.
That's exactly what we shouldn't be mincing, if we want to address the problems and make better decisions.
Great, me too! Trying to play semantics rather than clearly stating reality, or trying to make a picture fuzzy so that inaccurate generalizations take priority over reality, is not a a good way to run a democracy.
It's a republic and a democracy, but every person I've heard say "it's a republic" erroneously believes that the US is not a democracy, and that republics can't be a democracy, because somebody told them that once and they liked the sound of it without ever checking it.
Back during the Iraq war days and government overreach into privacy violations, the tech companies were on the side of the American people. They fought to defend the 4th amendment.
That has all changed today, except for Anthropic. You think Apple is going to stand up to an unlawful DoJ demand these days? Hell no. Tim Cook has lit Apple's reputation on fire. I've been a super dedicated Apple user for 25 years, but I'm heading for the exits now. All that trust has been burned.
Stay strong Anthoproc, you are seemingly the only really large SV company with any principles and backbone. I won't forget what happens here, either way it goes.
Platforms went into full "Islamic extremist" panic for decades and would handover whatever the government wanted in the name of national security, would allow users to be spied upon over time, silence users and remove content, and users' private data was collated for, for example, research purposes.
That said, Anthropic finances PACs[1] that push legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)[2] that would make Anthropic the gatekeepers and censors of all user-generated content on the internet, in order to save the children. That same legislation would force you to scan your face and ID to access or create user-generated content online, again, to save the children. Anthropic would get paid to train on, and censor, all user-generated content that's shared online into perpetuity. If passed, it would also mark the death of free anonymous speech on the internet.
These companies use safety and intellectual property as excuses to achieve centralization. But if you think about it for more than a second, they're basically saying "intelligence for me but not for thee."
I don't want to live in a world where a handful of entities control all of the intelligence, and I don't think you do either. The best future we can hope for is one where everyone can run an open-source AGI on their own gaming PC. And by run I mean local matmuls, not API calls to a remote server.
I'd hold off making that call on Anthropic here until at least after Friday. I'm not sure if persisting that "constructive dialogue is taking place in good faith" and saying nothing else in public signifies backbone considering preceding and consecutive public statements by government officials... It certainly doesn't instil confidence in honesty or transparency.
"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened Anthropic, saying officials could invoke powers that would allow the government to force the artificial intelligence firm to share its novel technology in the name of national security if it does not agree by Friday to terms favorable to the military"
Isn't this entirely theather? I'm sure Musk's XAI would have no qualms about working with the Department That Used To Be Called Department Of Defense.
Hell, there's a significant sharing of people between them and SpaceX, meaning the company's full of people with security clearances working on defense contracts.
Anthropic also seems to have dropped their safety pledge in a matter that I'm sure is completely unrelated.
"Isn't this entirely theather? I'm sure Musk's XAI would have no qualms about working with the Department That Used To Be Called Department Of Defense."
Sure, but Claude seems to be considered better and the US military does not want something second class.
Friday is the deadline that the secretary of defense, Hegseth, gave Anthropic for complying with the "allow the military version of claude to do mass surveillance and autonomous killing" order.
I mean they got threatened with the Defense Production Act. Firmly standing their ground without an inch of give may backfire spectacularly too, if the DoD injects itself into model training.
I think they pretty clearly demonstrated good faith and where it ends up is a tactical choice I'm not in a great position to judge.
If DoD seizes the IP, the issue is they will need the cooperation of their scientists at least in the short term, if they want it to remain a fronter model. The labor angle isn't entirely guaranteed though the white collar worker has very little spine in this country.
> We've been saying this about many policies of this administration, only to be sorely disappointed
I'm not saying it's off the table completely, particularly with Hegseth, who is an insecure idiot. But the choices once it's enacted are (a) Trump ordering Hegseth to stop fucking around or (b) a market crash handing Democrats full control of Congress.
Like when seizing 10% of Intel crashed the market? This isn't exactly the same situation, but I really don't think it's safe to assume that this will be the issue on which the business community will grow a spine.
You might be surprised. When Harry Truman tried to nationalize US steel, it created massive pushback (bad for democracy imo, but the business community defends its interests to the teeth—though the circumstance is he wanted to advance the korean war, which was in the business community's interests).
> That’s a red line he will only cross out of stupidity.
Do not underestimate Hegseth's stupidity. He's completely unqualified for the job he has and is way out of his depth. Ditto for many others in this administration.
Hey, so what you are saying is that unless we use the AI that we control, to take control of the mass surveillance and autonomous drone strike systems, you will force us to take control of these systems?
I mean, did H just Open Clawed the entire US military?
Anecdote, but I knew a couple senior folks at Apple during the San Bernardino encryption dispute [1]. My understanding is Cupertino was surprised—going all the way to the top—how much backlash they got for what they felt was the natural reaction. (Not to unlock.)
> Back during the Iraq war days and government overreach into privacy violations, the tech companies were on the side of the American people. They fought to defend the 4th amendment.
“ the tech companies were on the side of the American people”
They are on the side of making money. And the bigger they are, the more pressure. The big tech companies are now so big that they can’t afford to leave any money in the table if they want to keep their growth rates.
It hasn't really changed, the only thing that's truly different is what they publish. But the Snowden leaks confirmed what many people already suspected - the American agencies have silent, backdoor access to all US based internet companies.
I don't know if it can be verified whether end-to-end encryption like Whatsapp and co claim to offer is actually safe. I suspect it isn't, but, I don't know enough.
You should ask people who were there instead of doubting.
News articles are extremely available and things were so early that they did all fight like hell as a new industry.
The internet itself was the new unknown tech to politicians and their lobbyists just like ai is now.
Little is actually new except it’s maybe be to you just like the current crop of politicians the tech of the day that might impact power or connection between people.
The assumption of whether IBM m a major player in the tech or Internet side of things pertaining to the protest might be worth looking into.
Relationships between govt and tech industry for sure have existed, at that time the relevant and participatory parties may not have been present, or present in the way or on the sides being assumed if compared to today.
I don't think a big company can be on the side of anything, except making money, unless there's a majority owner. This is by design. If fighting the government is going to hurt the company more than not doing it they won't do it. The US government also has the possibility to blackmail people decision individually (like they do with European politicians or international court judges).
Tech companies in the early 2000s were nerds who grew up in an environment where tech was for losers and a waste of time. A lot of those people had strong values and did it because they enjoyed it and wanted other nerds like themselves to have cool stuff.
Now companies are dominated by MBAs and nepotism. Most join tech for a quick cash out. Having values is seen as a loss, because if you can get a billion, why not? You're invincible if you're rich and none of these downsides apply to you. Screw everyone else. They could just be a billionaire themselves if they don't like it.
As a result, zoomers today meme about people like the unabomber making a good point.
> As a result, zoomers today meme about people like the unabomber making a good point.
I don't blame them.
As a nerd I think my spirit was broken by the absolute apathy of the normies. It was easy to ignore up until the early 2000s. It's become unbearable after social media and the iPhone reached the masses. It's not nerd stuff anymore. They influence every design now. They shape every decision. They are actively exploited at every turn. They are profiled, surveilled, controlled. It's gotten to the point even we nerds can't escape this fate no matter how much we want to. We try to tell them about it and we're made out to be tinfoil hat nutjobs. It's happening and they don't care.
It feels so hopeless and it's honestly very radicalizing. It breeds sociopathy. In the end I can't find the will to blame the billionaires either. I think I'd do the same if I could. Make billions and then just create a small paradise for me and all the people I care about. A subset of society where the principles I hold dear actually apply. Society is too fucked up and nobody cares, so I'll just create my own fiefdom.
Democracies make this impossible. Those people vote and they will bring into power politicians who will tax productive people to pay for their own survival.
My country is heading down this path as we speak. President literally gave a speech where he asked something like "who will ensure the survival of the millions of useless people created by technology?" They're obviously going to make us pay for it. The actual billionaires will simply leave before they get taxed, of course. Whoever stays gets to foot the bill.
It doesn't take billions to move one's household though. Sure, the billionaires will have advance warning and sweeter welcome packages wherever they end up going, but leaving a country where the tax rate is a poor value proposition doesn't exactly get harder if one is a net producer in the ideenrevolutionsfieber economy.
The problem is not that the normies don't care, the problem is a society that seems to need that to function well for everybody. The problem is the existence of government. Instead of a state we need a society based on private property, that would solve these problems. It is about who has the possibility to apply force and a state government enables that in a wrong way.
Abolish the state and just let greedy ultra billionaires go wild with private property and make the existing problems even worse. Yeah, I'll pass. The only reason things are still somewhat functional is because a few people within the state are pushing back against the ultra wealthy who are trying to dismantle the state so they can get exactly that fiefdom.
That can be so far from the truth it hurts thinking about it. Governments passed laws that mandated that businesses must legally comply with DOJ or Government Investigates on people of interest. Otherwise they will be blocked in those countries. No users = No money.
Most government consider they're extending you the privilege to conduct business with their citizens, and by virtue of granting you those rights you're burden with complying with the countries laws/security and/or audits.
Your critique of Apple and Tim Cook is unsubstantiated and misleading. That same Tim Cook stood up to the FBI and refused to participate in breaking into phones for them when they were pressed in 2015-2016. The same Apple that later fought against the government forcing document scanning in iCloud and was able to keep them off device. They have been fighting the whole time. Apple is was first to normalize whole disk encryption on commercial machines, they have made Safari a weapon against tracking which is abused by governments. Also every single company in the US is subject to National Security Letters and Apple uses warrant canaries to inform the public within the limits of the law.
And then to appeal to Anthropic is just offensively, willfully ignorant.
> That same Tim Cook stood up to the FBI and refused to participate in breaking into phones for them
I hope you have more evidence for this than just that press release. As far as I'm concerned that was nothing more than a stunt because while Tim Cook "fought" against the FBI, intelligence agencies and private cybersecurity companies already had the capability to break into ~all smartphones.
That single instance created an unreasonable amount of belief that iPhones are unbreakable, which is good news if you're the FBI and you want criminals to put way more trust into their iPhones than they should.
The same Apple actively aids Chinese government's suppression of civil liberties [1]. To think that there's any ideological conviction (and moral high ground) behind their [apparent] pro-privacy stance is painfully naive.
Some tools go out of their way to whine piteously if they can't find Ubuntu in /etc/issue et al. We were using Mint, just got tired of messing with installation scripts every time an upgrade came. And as the transition to Linux accelerates, it's just more convenient to stick with whatever the vendor wants.
Can you substantiate these claims with with anything? What unlawful DoJ demands has Apple given in to? Anthropic is still very early in their trajectory compared to Apple with its ~50 year run, so it's not exactly an Apple to apples comparison.
There are such things and secret courts with secret rulings. You and I have no idea what is actually occurring because of this secrecy; we can only talk about that which is stated publicly.
I've seen this a bit in resumes before LLMs. It seems much more likely to be an indicator of current "best practices" somewhere than LLMs. The number of significant digits on 55.3% is a bit concerning though, and having 14 percentages is also a bit weird, especially going back 10 years. I think you're probably the best guide here, and hopefully a phone screen or similar would smoke out the reality!
Very interesting but very early stage paper, surprised to see it on HN.
MASLD is apparently the new name for NAFLD, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, something that affects a quarter to a third of world population. I didn't realize prevalence was that high these days.
Office Space jokes aside, you shouldn't. I think it's very important to be yourself and refuse to let people pressure you into changing for no good reason. I am not an em dash user myself, as it's a pain to generate when there's no key on the keyboard for it. But if I were, you best believe I wouldn't change my style one bit. People can accuse me of being an LLM if they wish, but that's no skin off my back.
The original context was very different, about financial markets, but I've been thinking about it a lot the past 12 months. There's a lot of cowards in high places in tech, surprisingly cowardly people. Or they have sold out their principles to be friends with terrible people, which is also a form of cowardice. Hard to say which.
The whole Epstein thing is a really really great marker of this too. Though I'm not sure if the tide has gone out all the way (we mostly know what's going on), or if there's a lot more tide to fall.
LBJ was a real son of a bitch, who, when he finally was thrust into power as president, did something pretty surprising by going all-in on the civil rights movement. Power reveals who people are, and times of trials reveal who people really are.
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