Systemic discrimination, happens all the time. I am blind. I regularily fail the "tell computers and humans apart" test. You imagine, that feels very much like the dehumanisation it is. Big tech couldn't care less. After all, they need to protect themselves against spammers. Much like the guy who was on the HN frontpage just a few days ago, arguing that he is now trashing accessibility because he doesn't want to be web scraped. If you raise these issues with devs, all you get it pushback, no understanding at all. Thats the way it is. If you are amongst a minority small enough and without a rainbow coloured flag, you end up being ignored, stepped over, and pushed aside. If you are lucky. If you are unlucky, and you raise your voice, you will be critizied for pointing out the obvious.
I agree anti-bot vigilantes as well as corporate anti-ddos middle-wares have had a detrimental impact on accessibility. I'm afraid they consider your use case as acceptable collateral damage if they consider it at all.
> arguing that he is now trashing accessibility because he doesn't want to be web scraped
Interesting, because he failed me too just because I use Firefox. Have you been told about the article or it actually worked with your screen reader software?
In fact progressives are much more oriented toward freedom than others. They just don't think the powerful need much assistance and instead focus on the freedom of LGBTQ people to make their own decisions about gender and sexuality, the freedom of racial minorities to do what everyone else does, the freedom and opportunity of undocumented, unhoused, and addicted people. Freedom is the heart of progressivism. (I don't subscribe to any group, but HN usually does not understand and mischaracterizes progressivism.)
@simonw: Any particular reason you stopped releasing "llm" regularily? I believe the last release was done in summer. Neither gpt-5.1 nor gpt-5.2 have been added. Are you about to give up on that project? Is it time to search for another one?
I also have an open issue since months, which someone wrote a PR for (thanks") a few weeks ago.
I shipped a new release yesterday - https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/changelog.html#v0-28 but yeah, the last core release before that was in August. I've been pushing out plugin releases for it though, for new models from Gemini and Anthropic and others.
Honestly the main problem has been that LLM's unique selling point back in 2024 was that it was the only tool taking CLI access to LLMs seriously. In 2025 Claude Code and Codex CLI etc all came along and suddenly there's not much unique about having a CLI tool for LLMs any more!
There's also a major redesign needed to the database storage and model abstraction layer in order to handle reasoning traces and more complex tool call patterns. I opened an issue about that here - it's something I'm stewing on but will take quite some work to get right: https://github.com/simonw/llm/issues/1314
Clearly no, because both activities couldn't be more different. I dont sit down in the evening and spend 2 hour scrolling through social media. Why should I? I might scroll through my feed while waiting for my dentist appointment, because it is a nice way to pass the time. But reading a book takes time and attention. I do that after work, at home, with enough time at hand.
How you consume social media is not what everyone does.
For example my SO spends hours on end on Facebook. Depending on whether you consider it social media I sometimes sink a lot of time (think hours) on YouTube. And that's time we're not spending on reading.
In light of this the question doesn't seem as twisted.
Not just in SF. "Journalists" love to pick up these enflated futuristic projections and run with 'em, since they sound so cozy and generate clicks. I still remember the "Google Car" craze from the early 2010er years. And if you tell people who read and believe this futuristic nonesense that it is enflated, you get pushback, because, yeah, why should a single person know better then a incentivized journalist...
Compared to the average human? Yes. Most people are distressingly bad at empathy to the point where just repeating what they just heard back to an interlocutor in a stressful situation could be considered an advanced technique. The average standard of empathy isn't that far away from someone who sees beatings as a legitimate form of communication. Humans suck at empathy, especially outside a tight in-group. But even in-group they lack ability.
I am sorry for you. You must surround yourself with a lot of awful people. That is pretty sad to read. Get out of whatever you are stuck in, it can't be good for you.
The stats are something like 1 in 10 people experience domestic violence. Unless someone takes a vow of silence and goes to live in the wilderness there is no way to avoid awful people. They're just people.
The average standard is not high. Although I suppose an argument could be made that wife-beaters are actually just evil rather than being low-empathy but I think the point is still clear enough.
No, what I'm saying is that around 6-8 out of 10 people are worse at empathy than a chatbot, in my estimation. And even if that gets knocked down a little I still don't see how people would argue that humans have some unassailable edge. Chatbots are an AGI system. Especially the omni-models.
I don't know why you picked that particular example to make your point. I do notice though that you framed it in a pretty sexist way. You realize the dark figure of men getting abused by their wives is higher then the media reports? In any case, my point is, violence in relationships happens both ways.
Why that confirms that humans are in general not capable of being empathy is beyond me. My point still stands. You cant fix the whole world. BUT, you definitely can make sure you surround yourself with decent people, at least to a certain extend. I know the drill. I have a disability, and I had (and have) to deal with people treating me in a very inappropriate way. Patronisation, not being taken serious, you name it, I know it. But that still didn't make me the frustrated kind of person you seem to be. You have a choice. Just drop toxic people and you will see, most humans can be pretty decent.
> You realize the dark figure of men getting abused by their wives is higher then the media reports? In any case, my point is, violence in relationships happens both ways.
Yes. That is in fact pretty much exactly what I'm arguing. People are often horrible.
> BUT, you definitely can make sure you surround yourself with decent people...
People generally can't. Otherwise there'd be a bunch more noticeable social stratification to isolate abusive spouses instead of it being politely ignored. And if people could, you would - you note in the next sentence that you can't being dealt with in an inappropriate way.
And you aren't even trying to identify people who are generally low empathy, you're just trying to find people who don't treat you badly.
> me the frustrated kind of person you seem to be.
The irony in a thread on empathy. What frustration? Being an enthusiastic human-observer isn't usually frustrating. Some days I suppose. But that sort of guess is the type of thing that AIs don't tend to do - they typically do focus rather carefully on the actual words used and ideas being expressed.
An AI (LLM) neither focuses on words nor on ideas. What you are promoting is plain escapism, which sounds rather unhealthy to me. To each their own. But really, get some help. There are ways, many ways, to deal with a depression, other then waiting for a digital god.
If you object to HN you didn't have to create an account. And I still reckon even a sycophantic AI would still have managed more empathy in its response. They tend to be a bit wordy and attempt to actually engage with the substance of what people say too.
They didn't even mention HN. Are you saying the people you associate with are just on HN?
Don't spend all your time on HN or weigh your opinions of humanity on it. People on here are probably the least representative of social society. That's not rejecting it, that's just common sense.
I cancelled my NetFlix subscription already, what, 7 years ago, for that reason... However, it is not just NetFlix. Most newish movies don't do anything for me. I prefer a movie from the 90s (or even earlier) over almost anything produced in the last 5 to 10 years. It is likely a generational thing, and a case of old man yelling at clouds. If studios think effects are more important then the actual story, well then, so be it.
It’s fun to pick a year and do a deep dive on everything that was released to theaters (old newspapers with movie times are great for this) - so much crap you never heard about, unless it was phenomenally bad.
As a 100% blind person, I am schocked to read this. In a sense, my hunch that DEI is a big fucking scam has just been confirmed yet again. Besides, I wish a real, life-changing disability onto all of these faking people. The children, and their parents.
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