By "worth" in this context, I mean "authority to speak in a context claimed to be limited to a certain kind of person" (a limitation I do not acknowledge exists on HN, or anywhere, really).
For the record, my net worth increased by about $1M before taxes based on the 1 year of options I got at amzn. But not relevant in this context.
I find your claim that there is a monopoly on computing laughable. No other technology has improved in quality or dropped in price as much as computers over the last 40 years. If this what you get from a monopoly, then we need more monopolies.
Modern semiconductor fabrication is a very narrow field.
As far as monopolies go I don't think it's our biggest concern, like you say.
If we want to continue to wage wars and seek conquest, it's not great to have it located in one/few countries. But instead if we want to work towards peace, we should continue breaking down barriers to trade (while maintaining protections for labor).
What fictional universe do you live in where people are not getting water because they have been outbid by some data center? As for commercial use of water, we absolutely should do it that way instead of the archaic water rights system we have now.
It's not a fictional universe. It is precisely the waters rights system you've mentioned. Capital-rich entity buys water senior water rights, extracts water, others find their wells descending/drying.
This hasn't happened yet in New Mexico with a data center because these are new. But it has happened numerous times with other capital-rich entities that have bought water rights (sometimes, just cities buying rights from adjacent rural county land).
A small community near where I live no longer has functioning wells because new residential construction below them sucked the water out of the aquifer. They tried to drill deeper, without much success. County is now having to build a water line to the community.
It's not just "small business". If the barriers to entry are high enough, you can keep out pretty much any company that isn't already part of your oligopoly, pretty much indefinitely. That could be anything from a well funded subsidiary of another technology company to a foreign competitor.
Well, there probably are some in there. Data centre designers, comms experts, architects, electricians, etc. Lot of smaller organisations benefiting from the work.
That code isn't going to be open source. And if you use someone else's closed source code you are violating laws that have nothing to do with copyright.
I'm not sure I understand. I'm not talking about stolen/leaked code here. I'm saying: imagine you claim you're the author of some piece of code. You may or may not have written it with an LLM, but even if so, assume you have the full rights to all the inputs. You post it publicly on GitHub. You don't attach a license, or perhaps you attach a restrictive license that doesn't permit much beyond viewing. Someone comes across your code, finds it brilliant, and wants to use it. If that code was non-copyrightable (such as generated via an LLM), then they're fine doing it without your permission, no? But if that code was copyrightable, then they're not permitted to do so, correct?
So now consider two questions:
1. You actually didn't use an LLM, but they believe & claim you did. Who has the burden of proof to show that you actually own the copyright, and how do they do so?
2. They write new code that you feel is based on yours. They claim they washed it through an LLM, but you don't believe so. Who has the burden of proof here and how do they do so?
1. You copy their code. They bring a copyright claim (let's assume this isn't a DMCA thing and they're actually bringing a claim to court). Your defence is "the LLM wrote it so no copyright attaches". Since they're asserting their copyright claim, they would have to provide evidence for that claim (same as in any other copyright case), including providing evidence that a human wrote it (which is new, and required to defeat your defence).
2. They copy your code. You bring a copyright case. Their defence is "I used an LLM to wash the code without copying". Since they're not disputing your copyright claim to the original code, you don't have to defend or prove your copyright. But you do have to prove that their code infringes on your copyright, which would mean proving that the LLM copied your code when creating the new code. This has been done before by demonstrating similarity.
> What makes the leak illegal other than copyright? The occasional piece of software might be a trade secret, but a person downloading a preexisting leak isn't affected by those laws.
That's completely false as far as I'm aware. Where did you see this? A simple web search shows numerous sources to the contrary. Are you confusing them with patents by any chance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret
Of course they are going to question you further. But they still do have to prove it to convict you. If the prosecution provides no evidence that you were the shooter other than the fact that you were the owner of the gun, then you are going to get off.
Universities were just elite finishing schools. It's a status signal to be able to afford to spend 4 years of your youth not working, partying, and paying tuition to "study" subjects that have no economic value (studying practical things like medicine and law was not elite because it shows that you need to work for a living). This stopped being a status signal with the advent student loans because it removed the exclusivity, but it takes generations for the non elite to figure that out.
This also explains why so many people tell you that you really need that $50k to $100k a year ivy league degree.
For some reason people keep telling you that you will get a better education if you pay a ridiculous amount of money for it and even if it's not better and you can't figure out how to pay the student loan off, you should still go for it, because education is it's own goal, as if it was a consumer product.
This obviously doesn't make sense from an educational perspective. If education is good for you, why make it unaffordable and out of reach? You'd want education to be as cheap as possible so nobody gets left behind, but getting left behind seems to be the entire point behind these inflated tuition fees. Low cost colleges are supposedly inferior and not everyone gets to become "an educated well rounded individual".
> For some reason people keep telling you that you will get a better education if you pay a ridiculous amount of money for it and even if it's not better and you can't figure out how to pay the student loan off, you should still go for it, because education is it's own goal, as if it was a consumer product.
Only rubes think this.
The formal education at most elite universities trends towards quite bad, with a few exceptional classes.
The access to resources (academic, social, professional, etc.) at universities is phenomenal, but this only matters if the student uses those resources (most don’t).
Elite colleges typically have a great education, but they are usually just as expensive as elite universities, but with much less prestige — they are only “worth it” (if you’re looking for value) as a stepping stone to something else.
> This obviously doesn't make sense from an educational perspective. If education is good for you, why make it unaffordable and out of reach?
If someone chooses to go to an elite school while not understanding the value prop (or lack thereof), that’s on the applicant rather than the school.
> Low cost colleges are supposedly inferior and not everyone gets to become "an educated well rounded individual".
Low cost colleges serve an important function, and imho it’s just as easy to be “an educated well rounded individual” at one of these schools. They may not be as prestigious, but the value of most average or better universities and colleges is largely based on the efforts made by any given student (which trends towards being very low effort).
Quite some time ago, I read the claim on HN that in the USA, elite universities rather serve the purpose that
- "rich/elite" kids, and
- highly smart and ambitious kids
get mixed together so that when they finish university, these groups become (mostly) indistinguishable. The reason why this a central purpose of elite universities is that these two groups need each other.
> get mixed together so that when they finish university, these groups become (mostly) indistinguishable
Sort of.
1. It’s a place where capital can make friends with capable people who will be willing to work for them later.
2. It gives the smart and ambitious “commoners” enough exposure to elite social circles such that they can learn and adapt some/most of the social standards (if they choose to do so, which most don’t). This is important, as all the brains in the world won’t do you much good if you don’t fit in, especially when it comes to the bigger money positions.
3. The social shibboleths between the two groups are very real, and it usually takes less than 5 minutes hanging around someone to know which group they are in. There can be some false signals about being higher status, but those are hard to sustain for very long.
Note that many “commoners” who go to elite schools end up hitting a glass ceiling in their 30s or so due to focusing on being smart and a skill person rather than being a socially savvy person. The social people will be able to make it rain later in life, and the skill people just get shifted around as needed.
Reminds me of a quote from some otherwise forgettable movie I saw: "My father left me with very little, except for all his money."
reply