If it was as cheap and easy to install a new engine as it is for an OS, I imagine swapping engines would be even more popular than new OSs. (And I think far fewer would clamor to replace their OS if it cost $x,xxx for each OS swap and took many hours of manual labor - I.e. I think whether someone wants something can be heavily influenced by whether it is ~free vs cost $x,xxx, etc.)
Their promotional material and launcher (to choose which version of the game) seem to heavily reference how they’re using existing (named) community patches (on top of the optional new FMV).
In Thailand pretty much all of the banks are shutting down their websites. App only, typically requiring visiting a branch to register the app on your phone, blocking screenshots, and often blocking vpn or 1.1.1.1 access. :-(
NIMBYism covers far more than just building homes, and covers more than just homeowners. Instead, it covers when residents oppose things like schools, public transit, electricity generation, infrastructure, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY
The person I initially responded to was specifically talking about housing NIMBYism, not NIMBYs in general. I pointed out how homeowners are typically the ones opposing new housing, which is not the case with data centers.
You responded with “NIMBYism covers far more than just building homes” which is true but not what was being responded to.
1. That’s a legal grey area that could result in significant legal exposure for Anthropic.
2. Even if someone wants to do something that’s in a legal grey area, or more (hacking others, another item limited by Anthropic), is the idea that such people won’t have the ability to use AI to do those things? I don’t understand the criticism that just because one company might institute some guard rails that those who want to conduct legally grey or black activities will be unable to use other AIs to do so?
You might say that the legal grey area involved here is significantly smaller than the legal grey area involved in training these models on literally all of the copyrighted material they could find. The difference seems to me that it's more likely that Sony would pick a fight about this becoming a thing, whereas the training data is a horse that has already bolted with an unclear path to remedying it.
> Also he has 2 kidneys and 2 lungs, while he could get by with just 1 of each, and there are people badly needing them.
Is that supposed to be an example of hypocrisy? Or why did you specifically type that up in your comment?
Regardless, are people required to not be hypocrites in any other way for it to be acceptable for them to say something else is badly inefficient? Actually, I am not even sure any of your comment is an example of hypocrisy, unless you're saying that someone can't say a completely different thing is badly inefficient, unless that person is personally efficient in (all?) other unrelated dimensions as well (for example, RAM, while being inefficient in terms of kidneys, lungs, and homes)?
The US has by far the lowest spending (fed + state + local) among the major advanced economies in the world. [1]
The US also has by far the lowest taxes (fed + state + local) among them too; in fact, the US could have raised taxes by more than 15% and still been lowest. [2]
Regardless, if someone does believe spending should be cut:
A) What specifically should be cut, and
B) What % of the 11.5T/y [3] gov spending does it add up to?
The US was literally founded over concerns related to large governments and governments gaining too much power. The idea we have some of the lowest spending as a percentage of GDP shouldn't be surprising, its originally by design.
I also don't really care how much other countries choose to spend, that's their choice and I shouldn't have a say in that.
I wouldn't begin to say I have the answers or prescriptions to what should be cut, there's plenty of data I don't even have access to. From my experience with both local and federal governments, though, there is plenty of waste in the US that could be handled without even impacting the end result our programs are intended to deliver.
1. You make strong definitive statements like "there is plenty of waste" that could be cut "without even impacting" programs' results, but then can't actually quantify it? How can you make strong definitive statements if you simultaneously say "I wouldn't begin to say I have the answers or prescriptions to what should be cut"?
2. Regardless, is there any national politician who has named and quantified the items that they would cut that you support? As this seems to be a large, long-running problem within the right ('news', politicians, etc.) where they will make significant claims about wanting to cut gov spending without ever actually naming the programs they want to end and what % of the ~11T/y spending it adds up to.
3. You pointed to how when the US was set up in the 1700s that the government had different goals, and that there were wildly different expectations of what government provided for its citizens. Do you think the expectations of what the government provided in the 1700s are still relevant for what US citizens expect (or demand) of government services in the 21st century?
4. Every program will have some waste and abuse, and organizations typically then spend money to combat the waste and abuse. Sometimes the cost of fighting the waste and abuse, and/or the increased bureaucracy and overhead to prevent the issues in the first place, even exceed the costs of the waste and abuse that is being combatted. But my point is that even if waste exists, the 'cure' might be worse than the 'disease' in terms of increased costs, increased bureaucracy/oversight, etc. I'm not even necessarily opposed to those increased costs, bureaucracy, etc. in order to combat the possibly-smaller-costing waste and abuse, but it's certainly not as simple as "___ exists, so we can spend less by just not doing that."
Isn't the view that people having extra homes used 5% of the time a very well-known and common criticism, and there has even been legislation enacted in a number of places to discourage or penalize such homes?
(For SF, it appears:
- Tax rates for >1 homes are higher under the Homeowners' Exemption
- There was also an 'Empty Homes Tax' but it was struck down by the court in Eric and Andrew Debbane v. San Francisco)
Sure, but housing is far higher on the hierarchy of human needs than RAM, so it’s apples and oranges (not to mention the other absurdities of Altman’s position which are too numerous to mention).
Altman said that people use all of the computer's 32G of memory at most (pulling a number perhaps out of his ass) 5% of the time.
You referred to using a home at least 5% of the time. If I live in only two rooms totally 150 sq ft of my 3,000 sq ft house for 19 days of the year than I use 5% of the house for at least 5% of the year.
I trust you see those two 5%s are very different things.
Consider if I had a 32 GB desktop w 2GB for OS, set up to donate CPU cycles to a distributed computing project. I 100% of the time use the RAM on the desktop, even when I use just over 5% of the RAM.
Note also that Altman said nothing about how often people use less than their entire RAM. If I have 32 GB because I regularly use 28 GB and want some in reserve, then knowing that I only need the extra 4 GB about 5% of the time doesn't mean it's worthwhile to take away 4GB and have my code crash 5% of the time.
> You've changed the baseline.
Altman said that people use all of the computer's 32G of memory at most
1. No, I think you changed it - I just re-listened to that section, and I don't hear any mention of "at most", nor any mention of "all of the computer's" DRAM, nor any mention of "32G" - what are the timestamps you are referring to? The only other piece he mentioned was that he was speaking in terms of "a global allocation perspective".
> Consider if I had a 32 GB desktop w 2GB for OS, set up to donate CPU cycles to a distributed computing project
2. The scenario you laid out seems incredibly uncommon - are you actually using a 32GB PC w/ 2 GB for the desktop and donating the rest to a distributed computing project, or are even you not doing the scenario you laid out? Are you commenting on HN using a ≤2 GB RAM OS w/ the rest donated? Regardless, the 2GB desktop out of 32GB + donated scenario seems like an incredibly uncommon one that is not at all representative of the norm. I'd guess a far more common scenario than that is a device that was bought but only got a little use before being abandoned, etc.
I said 32GB because that's what's on my desktop, and because my previous comment, in a parallel thread, was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50324468 where onion2k proposed that Altman was right because "Having 16GB or 32GB as standard on a PC when Apple's 8GB M1 demonstrated you can do a huge amount of work with much less proves it."
I chose 32 GB as the high-end of that range, so I could have something concrete.
We are indeed talking the same quote: “But from a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used 5% of the time,”
I'm fine with having misinterpreted it, but, what does that 5% number mean for global DRAM allocation, how is it determined, and how do you apply the same measure to extra homes?
I use my bicycle far less than 5% of the time, so what does that say about bicycles from a global allocation perspective, and why should that change anything?
> The scenario you laid out seems incredibly uncommon
I was trying to demonstrate how there are at least two very different ways to define what '5% of the time' means. The inspiration for that was a friend who donated processing time to GIMPS, but I don't know how much memory GIMPS needs these days, and the details were beside the point.
> I use my bicycle far less than 5% of the time, so what does that say about bicycles from a global allocation perspective, and why should that change anything?
If you're looking for a transportation analogy, I think a far better analogy would be if there was an incredible shortage of rubber for vehicle tires, with possible allocations of each tire including either a bus that would be used ~24x7 for a large number of users simultaneously, or for a car that would be used by 1 person a relatively small percent of the time. And I understand that people would disagree about desired outcomes there as well. Also, what do you mean by 'why should that change anything?' - is your question about why someone might say allocating limited resources to a use that is used by large numbers of users simultaneously 24x7 is different than allocating the resource to something to be used 5% of the time by a single user?
(Also, how would the bike analogy work - what's the shortage of and what's the alternate use of the constrained item would serve a large number of users simultaneously ~24x7 if it wasn't instead being used for your bike for 1 person ~5% of the time in the bike example?)
Since I don't know what the 5% in the RAM statement is supposed to mean, all I can do is use analogies to show why I am confused. Asking me to clarify my confusion doesn't help me understand what Altman is trying to say.
> is your question about why someone might say allocating limited resources to a use that is used by large numbers of users simultaneously 24x7 is different than allocating the resource to something to be used 5% of the time by a single user?
No. The whole point of gruturo's top-level comment which started this thread was that Altman clearly does not apply the same logic to housing, any generic "limited resources" logic cannot be what he is referring to.
Even if it were, I don't know what those numbers are. How many users? Where does the 5% number come from? How does it compare to other forms of allocation (eg, housing, or personal car ownership vs. mass transit) where we've long since decided that an unequal level of access is well within reasonable cultural norms?
As far as I can tell, this is a made up scenario to justify his use of centralized data centers, and it implies a strong centralized planning state should be preferred over a (well-regulated) free market.
In war time we know the government decides where rubber goes, how food is rationed, and can enforce travel restrictions. But this ain't war time, and Altman isn't the War Production Board to decide these matters.
If the question really concerns the ~24x7 use for a large number of users, vs. the limited benefit of a few, then use that centralized planning state to cut CO2 emissions so the next generations of humans will not suffer so much. That's another clue how we know this point isn't really about generic concepts of resource allocations.
> Isn't the view that people having extra homes they use 5% of the time a very well-known and common criticism?
Not by Sam Altman, surely. Hypocrisy is an individual sin, you don't get out of it because everyone else thinks you're wrong.
To murder the humor: the joke is funny because the idea that we should centrally plan resource usage for the benefit of society as a whole and discourage/disallow individually driven use of those resources for individually popular but socially wasteful applications is... communism, basically.
You can repeat this analysis for pickup trucks or cross-continent travel or desert agriculture, ad nauseum. And we do. And people like Sam Altman tend very strongly to be on one side of the argument. Until they need more DRAM, then it's all "let's pull together comrades".
But that is not an example of hypocrisy, correct, as it's an area completely separate from what Altman said was badly inefficient? For example, if someone said "fast fashion is badly inefficient", but then cut down a bunch of trees to build their home, or sometimes wasted food, that would not be an example of hypocrisy, not unless the person said we should never negatively impact the environment, or never waste, etc. Merely pointing out that something is badly inefficient does not mean that they are a hypocrite if they themselves do something bad in an area completely separate from what they talked about.
> if someone said "fast fashion is badly inefficient", but then cut down a bunch of trees to build their home, or sometimes wasted food, that would not be an example of hypocrisy
Uh... sure it would?
You lost me. I don't think there's a "hypocrisy claims about arguments based on efficiency must be about the same general category of efficiency to qualify as hypocrisy" rider on the definition of the term in common use. But I guess I'd be willing to entertain a cite.
Certainly as I and most people understand the argument, yes, it's hypocrisy.
Famous Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki a climate change (yes I agree it's real and bad) champion so much so he suggested polluters be eviscerated, he owns multiple homes. Also apparently he is an arrogant asshole to anyone he interacts with.
It isn't generally a problem to hoard unused room. It is a problem to hoard unused room in an environment where room is scarce. It is not a problem to extract wealth from other people's work. It is a problem to extract money from other people's when you pay them wages from which they cannot live. It is not a problem to fill water into swimming pools, but it might be a problem if you are in a desert city and others need to ration water.
Context and amount matters deeply. People like Sam Altman often like to refer to utilitarian principles, when it helps further their goals. Whether that is really their true motivation can be seen in small things like whether they apply the same principles to the same decisions of their lifes.
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