Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | testplzignore's commentslogin

Our industry has never been serious about security. We all download and run unvetted code via package managers every day. At least now the insanity is out in the open. We won't change until Skynet fires off the nukes.

I keep getting so depressed thinking about the inevitable. Quite simply, humans can't scale or iteratively improve. We still need to eat, we still need to sleep, we can only think on one thread at a time basically, we take 20 years to get to our prime, which is a fleeting moment, while most of our lifespan is spent in a state of decline of capability. AI humanoid robot from the near future doesn't need to eat or sleep, can work 24/7, can compute thousands of processes in parallel, is the same fungible unit as any other humanoid robot, forever with some maintenance. Why justify a sustaining an inefficient human in that modern world? It is more profitable for the company to have humans go extinct and maximize planetary resource use to its fullest extent possible.

Seems we are digging our graves as a species and don't even realize it. I mean Sam Altman is already saying it taking 20 years to train a human is a Big Problem.


I don't think it will be cost effective to build humanoid robots to do most tangible work. Why assemble an expensive masterpiece of servomotors, chips, plastic and steel, when billions of desperate humans are right there and only cost 2.5 meals a day and a small shelter?

Of course, intelligence will be a solved problem so "20 years of training" won't be needed. You'll just be the hardware. AI will tell you to pick up that box, place it on that conveyor belt, place the autowelder at that seam and wait for the green light, turn the wrench to install bolt B in part C. If you don't wish to, or no longer can, so be it. Another, hungrier human will replace you. After all more are made every day, and they are capable of doing this type of labor by age 10 or so. And what else would they do with their time, go to school and get a completely useless education?

All of this will of course be in service of our technofeudal lords, the owner class. Some robots will be needed for heavy lifting and for the jobs that are too sensitive to trust a human in, like personal security and strikebreaking. Can't risk trusting a serf for those tasks. But for most physical grunt work humans will be cheaper. Shockingly cheap, when they have no other options.

Did that make you less depressed?


Humanoid robots are only the intermediary. Eventually processes that use robots will be redeveloped to used something that doesn't look anything like a human robot.

In that sense I see their higher cost as temporary. Another factor: robots will not rise up and blow up your factory. They will always work at the same efficiency for each and every robot produced. They will not go on hunger strikes. They will not kill themselves.


> I don't think it will be cost effective to build humanoid robots to do most tangible work. Why assemble an expensive masterpiece of servomotors, chips, plastic and steel, when billions of desperate humans are right there and only cost 2.5 meals a day and a small shelter

If all you have to offer people is this kind of sad fucking "2.5 meals a day and a small shelter" while you live on yachts and eat like a king, eventually they will gang up and kill you


> eventually they will gang up and kill you

I’m looking around the world and thinking this “eventually” isn’t happening very fast.

Not an optimistic thought.


From history, it usually doesn't happen very fast, then it happens very fast

I keep wondering when the west will get tired of having kings and they keep surprising me. I assume humanity get to The Culture eventually, but I'm starting to doubt that Americans will be leading the way on that front.

But maybe Altmans AI will break out and do it for us.


I sure hope you are right.

>and don't even realize it.

Oh, many of us realize it, but doing anything about Moloch is much, much harder.


Isn't the problem that Altman and his peers are calling the shots here? We could use robots to work less and spend more time enjoying life, but we can only imagine being crushed under a boot and starving.

Surely we can accelerate human training. Just install a brain implant which administers an electric shock whenever the subject deviates from the official training plan.

Maybe in the future the AI in charge of the in vitro fertilized human factory will uncover the genes to induce siamese attached at the brain twins. Then you cut off the weaker appendages and keep the malformed head with twice the brain capacity. I guess that is one way to scale.

To what end though? Are the robots going to take over and trade busy work amongst themselves forever? What would that accomplish?

Your comment made me wonder what if animals wonder the same about us humans :-)

> Why justify a sustaining an inefficient human in that modern world?

I should not need to justify my existence, that is the problem with being led by psychopaths.

Twenty years to train humans for what? A tech job? That is not why we get an education. It is not my purpose to be a cog in the wheel for some psychotic billionaire.


Yes and also the software industry has never been truly serious about security either: it's more of implied table stakes than an advertised product feature.

Also, customers outsource the risk to their vendors, so as long as there's someone to sue, nobody worries about doing it right. Ship it now and pay the lawyers later.


This is never getting to skynet launching the nukes stage. It's not that clever and never will be.

Humans will kill us by it damage amplifying their worst characteristics.

Thus we'll die of a pandemic because some idiot LLM'ed up positive looking virology data when they were being too lazy to verify something. Everyone will trust it because they don't really care as long as it looks about right.


> We won't change until Skynet fires off the nukes.

And then we won't need to, because at that point it will be too late.


It has never been serious about security, quality and performance. Only new sloppy features. And now everyone is bragging on LinkedIn how fast they create more slop: "Look, CC generated thousands lines of code for me! Approve and merge!"

You should always use Object Lock with compliance mode on your S3 backups. Always.


I don't see anyone else asking this question. Seems like a major detail Google is burying.

I'm guessing the alternate billing flow will contractually require the app to "phone home" to Google with how much the user spent. Presumably will be part of the app review process.


Bruce Wayne implemented this almost 2 decades ago in The Dark Knight. EU innovation moving at a snail's pace as usual /s


We need to standardize on using Earth circumferences as the unit of length. Or better, football fields! (the type of football of course being implied by the website's ccTLD)


We _have_ standardized on Earth circumferences for length, only we divide by 40 million to make the numbers more sane, and got the measurement slightly wrong!


We should just redefine it to make the speed of light a nice even 300.000 km/s - we are so close already!


But it's already a nice round 10m/s in base 299,792,458.


Why stop there when we could just as easily redefine it to be 1 (new base unit of length)/second or 1 meter/(new base unit of time)?


How hard would it be to fix this? Could we theoretically add or subtract enough material or make whole thing slightly more dense or less dense to compensate?


Per Wikipedia, the discrepancy is approximately 74 km, so digging a ditch with an average depth of approximately 74/2π ≅ 12 km around the circumference of the Earth would theoretically fix the problem.

Feasibility and geological implications are left as exercises for the reader.

Regardless, I suspect a more cost-effective fix would be to redefine the meter to be a couple "legacy" millimeters longer.


There have been changes in the manufacturing process to "pre-shrink" fabrics.

Similar improvements have been made to improve colorfastness. Mixing new reds and whites used to consistently produce pink. Not anymore.


This makes sense in the modern age where retailers accept returns for any/no reason and manufacturers tend to bend over backwards to get you to avoid returning anything.

Same reason why any furniture you order online seems to always have all the tools necessary to assemble it. They never require power tools and always include screwdriver(s) and/or Allen wrenches. They need to design away every possible reason someone might just return it.


I was actually spoiled by the fact that self-assembled furniture typically does not require any power tools. Then I bought a bike rack and was disappointed that the first step required a drill.


Still happens sometimes, especially if you do warmer water.

I have some semi-recent pinkified cloths.

That said, washing everything on cold water and low temps in the dryer works pretty well at extending the life of cloths.


Not buying fast fashion helps with the color fastness. There was the article sometime back about one of the popular depeche mode sites with "swimming attire" vs swimsuits as they were not meant to get wet and the colors would run down your skin if you got them wet.


That's a weird topic for an 80s band fan site, but ok.


did you ever ask yourself what the name of the band meant?


Better not to ask. :P

Pretty soon you find out Frankie wasn't even in the band; The Pet Shop Boys didn't sell dog food at all; Dexy has terrible lap times; the Elfmans weren't actually knighted; etc.


I should have been clear, I also expected that there were changes to the clothes. I was just more surprised after we ran some sweaters through the cycle on accident, only to find that they did just fine.


Yeah, same company. "Off" likely meaning discounted.


Or like a bake-off?


old.reddit.com is still up :)


> Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company.

Most unrealistic prediction :)


It did a good job with the points-to-comments ratios. The purely technical stories are higher than industry news and clickbait.

Interesting how controversial Zig will be in the future :)


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: