Voice chat with LLMs is a complete interface, and it's one that already works and can be slotted right into the product. You can prototype voice chat-based ordering app via no-code tools today, and without much effort going into it.
Dynamically generated interactive UIs are something people are barely beginning to experiment with; we don't know if current models can do them reliably for realistic problems, and how effort has to go into setting them up for any particular product. At this point, they're an expensive, conceptual solution, that doesn't scale.
I find it fascinating how communication channels are subject to some form of Goodhart’s law. Channels that are recognized as valuable by subscribers become more desirable by publishers, receive more noise, and then cease to be useful.
I worked for an academic support program at a college once. They used texting to communicate with their small population of target students. It worked so well that the institution started texting. For everything. Everything.
After about three weeks, students blocked all texts from the institution's numbers.
We can't have nice things because there are so many of us to ruin them. Ever read the Consul's Tale in Hyperion?
The reaction is that people disable notifications. Only, it’s really hard to get data on this as a publisher. You just, silently, get decreasing click-through rates on subsequent messages.
“This app would like to send you push notifications!” -> Deny. “It’s just for (legitimate reason)!” Fine. “And marketing!” -> Uninstall app. “Are you sure?” - I’ve never been more sure in my life.
There’s a setting in chrome & Firefox to block websites from even being able to ask for the ability to send notifications. It’s one of the first things I set when I setup a new computer.
It's funny because in a group crowded channel there is feedback so long as you are part of the channel. But I think even in those circumstances, the feedback you get from the noise of everybody else, you don't interpret that as the same thing as you sending just "your one message".
Humans are really bad at understanding distributed harms.
Honestly the idea of a valuable communication channel getting abused for selfish purposes feels like it needs its own law. I'd happily call it csharps law. Maybe it's already got a name. We have the idea of spam, but it's vauge, nebulous, and doesn't concretly identify the systems and forces in place that lead to this innevitable outcome. It casts this outcome as not even a problem of individuals, but something like "the problem is someone sent me a message I didn't want." As if that person had not done that, then this wouldn't be a problem.
I think this is important because it feels like an endless surprise to everyone that this keeps happens. It feels like we have to cover the same ground again and again in discussions about it, and it feels like if we could tackle this problem more generally, the benefits to society at large would be massive.
Product reviews are valuable, producers capture reviewers, spam fake reviews.
Email is valuable. Spam nearly destroyed it until we migrated the entire decentralized system to Google.
Public discussions like these are valuable, and God knows how much work Hacker News does to moderate all this.
None of this feels like it's designed to resist this problem.
I truly wonder if this is an “any publicity is good publicity” tactic on their part. It’s now national news that OpenAI supports conversational voice. Buying this level of publicity would likely have cost more than the lawyers and damages.
More people need to know about the role unions play in obstructing new construction.
From locking up permits in CEQA reviews to blocking pre-fabricated structures, they are one of the driving factors behind a housing unit costing $700k at the very minimum. This puts housing out of reach for anyone making less than $150k/year.
It’s a 3rd rail issue for anyone in the democratic machine, which is why we won’t see meaningful progress in housing or homelessness under the current incumbents.
I’m actually pro union in most other contexts, especially when workers are underdogs. But in CA there are some unions which are quite powerful, exclusionary, and have negative effects on society.
I bet the unions are seeing pre-fabricated structures the same way actors and writers are looking at AI, technology taking away jobs. I’m sure we’ll see much more of this in the future.
Apparently the city was outsourcing to prefab firms outside of SF and many of the projects had safety violations that couldn’t be inspected because everything was already put together on arrival.
Put aside for a moment that this is a classic tactic to ban something. Tear through a bunch of them looking for any imperfections whatsoever, ignoring any equivalent imperfections in the status quo, then exaggerate the issue and propose prohibition as the solution.
Even if the problem is real, why is the solution prohibition? Put liability on the manufacturer for regulatory non-compliance, the same as we do for cars or appliances or any other prefabricated product.
Another tactic in the bay area is for a union to demand the environmental impact assessment until they are put on the job, then they withdraw their objection.
> I’m actually pro union in most other contexts, especially when workers are underdogs. But in CA there are some unions which are quite powerful, exclusionary, and have negative effects on society.
The premise of unions is "bargaining power". Bargaining power comes from having alternatives. Nobody can make you take a deal worse than your next best alternative, so the way to get a good deal is to have a lot of alternatives. The best way to get it for labor is to have lots of prospective employers for people with your skill set, i.e. for your industry not to be a monopoly.
Unions nominally do this the other way around. Instead of giving employees more options, they try to give employers less. But most of the time that doesn't work. You can unionize some baristas or something, but then you go on strike and the company hires different baristas and doesn't care.
By contrast, if the employer is a monopoly, then they often have to hire most of the people with that skill set. If they're all in the union, the employer can't just replace them because there are no more. This is when unions can behave like a monopoly themselves and dictate terms.
But monopolies are bad. When a union has a monopoly, they do exactly the sort of things which are happening in this case, which is terrible for society and especially anyone who needs the product the union makes.
The correct solution isn't unions, it's to break up monopolistic employers so that individual workers -- and customers -- have bargaining power. Which is to say, alternatives, not their own adversarial monopoly.
Indeed. And the primary method employers use to gain monopolistic leverage is limiting competition by barring new entrants through government regulation, licensing, permitting, etc. Anytime we give government bureaucrats power to regulate, license, permit, etc, that power becomes a highly desirable target for crony capture, either legal through lobbyists, campaign donations etc or illegal through bribes and revolving-door influence peddling.
Like you, I have no problem with unions in concept. Employees should be free to organize and choose who to work for (or not to work for) as they see fit — as long as employers also have the corresponding freedom to choose who to hire (or dismiss) as they see fit. When everyone is free to opt-in or out, everyone has an incentive to find mutually agreeable terms. This creates a naturally sustainable market-driven balance between the parties.
The problem comes in those states which don't have "right to work" protections. In those states a union can legally force an employer to hire only union members (or the government sends police to shut the business down). It can also force an existing employee to join the union (ie give the union part of their paycheck) or they lose their job, even if the employee sees no benefit to joining the union (which happened to a friend of mine). As you'd expect, once any party in a transaction loses their freedom to choose, this imbalance is eventually exploited and abused.
I won't say that Unions don't have issues or can't be corrupt, but I also have a hard time buying the idea that employers and employees can have symmetrical relationships under "right to work". Employers have far more resources at their disposal than individual workers typically do. The terms look symmetrical on the surface, but in practice the they clearly favor capital.
Maybe what you mean is that we need better unions.
> Employers have far more resources at their disposal than individual workers typically do.
But how does that help them?
Suppose a corporation needs a mechanic to service their vehicles. There are a thousand such corporations and they each have a billion dollars. Meanwhile the individual mechanics have no resources whatsoever. But what they do have is a thousand different employers they could work for, so they pick the one offering the best compensation and working conditions.
How is a corporation supposed to use its billion dollars to gain an advantage here? Anything they do to make themselves less attractive to workers would just cause the workers to pick one of the other thousand prospective employers. To do otherwise would require some kind of deception or collusion, which are illegal.
> Maybe what you mean is that we need better unions.
This is like saying "maybe we need better corporations". The reason the cable company sucks isn't that their leadership is uniquely malevolent -- I didn't even have to specify which cable company it is. The reason is that they aren't under sufficient competitive pressure, and that's what happens then. Unions are not exempt.
Meanwhile the remaining "good" things a union is supposed to do can be served just as well by e.g. hiring an agent or buying certain types of insurance, which anybody can do individually regardless of what anybody else is doing.
the point is that the relationship is obviously asymmetric, which you can clearly see.
> How is a corporation supposed to use its billion dollars to gain an advantage here? Anything they do to make themselves less attractive to workers would just cause the workers to pick one of the other thousand prospective employers. To do otherwise would require some kind of deception or collusion, which are illegal.
This line of thinking assumes that corporations are unwilling or unable to use economic and political leverage to avoid the consequences of their actions or to change the law to let them do what they want. I don't think that stands up to scrutiny.
We should have better corporations AND better unions. Cable companies are good examples of corporations that get away with collusion by working with municipal governments to create exclusive contracts.
> the point is that the relationship is obviously asymmetric, which you can clearly see.
Everything is always asymmetric. The same thing happens when you go to buy something. You're some individual and the seller is Amazon, a trillion+ dollar corporation. And yet you get competitive prices and free two day shipping with Prime and no hassle returns etc., because they have competition.
> This line of thinking assumes that corporations are unwilling or unable to use economic and political leverage to avoid the consequences of their actions or to change the law to let them do what they want. I don't think that stands up to scrutiny.
But now you're talking about an entirely different battlefield. The premise of a union is negotiating with employers for employment terms. If your issue is lobbying, what you're looking for is a PAC or, if we could ever replace first past the post voting with score voting and thereby stop having a two-party system, a political party.
Sometimes labor unions get drafted into that role, but if that's the only good they're doing then they should just be a PAC and stop trying to do the things they're bad or harmful at, like negotiating collective employment contracts.
> We should have better corporations AND better unions. Cable companies are good examples of corporations that get away with collusion by working with municipal governments to create exclusive contracts.
Unions are good examples of organizations that get away with collusion by working with national governments to carve out an anti-trust exemption for themselves.
The way you make organizations better is by subjecting them to competitive pressure.
If not the unions, there is always someone else that drives the prices up. In Sweden we don't have this problem with the Unions but it's still very expensive with housing.
The same problem can have different causes. Forgive me, but this sounds like rationalized fatalism. I’m genuinely curious, what keeps Sweden from building more cheap housing?
> This puts housing out of reach for anyone making less than $150k/year
Then more labor sectors should unionize! Make the wealthy pay the true cost for living in their communities. Not live with all this government protection and regulations, then outsource production to a free state a
thousand miles away. If regulation and taxes are the problem, then fix the problem. You can't have it both ways.
IMO teaching people about passkeys and making the onboarding experience as easy as possible would be many times more effective at actually preventing phishing.
Boom (and supersonic aircraft) are a strategic investment priority for Saudi Arabia to sustain demand for oil. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about their impact on emissions I don’t know what else does.
It’s one of those experiences you didn’t realize you wanted until you have it.
- No need for chit chat, you can just work / talk on the phone / play music
- No 18-hour shift sweat and deodorant smell
- No cursing at other drivers or awkward apologies because of fear of a bad rating
- Smooth, predictable driving. I have yet to have a “holy shit” moment in a Waymo, but this happens regularly in Uber / Lyft.
Also on safety, about 50% of the population has to worry a lot more about being abducted/hit on/stalked/etc. Uber and Lyft know this and have gone to great lengths to recruit female drivers, set up safety hotlines, etc. Not having to worry about the driver is a big deal.
IDK, It just sounds like some people have bad experiences and is using negativity bias to justify early tech (and ofc a skewed audience who seems to abhor socialties). All my uber rides were boring and uneventful. I see no need to pay a premium to guarantee that.
Meanwhile the driving experience of autonomous drivers is still not at a satisfactory stage for me. Maybe it worked fine in SF, but LA has some pretty rough, unmaintained roads to navigate.
In my previous job I took 1000s of taxis all over Europe getting all kind of experience (including getting in an accident with a drunk taxi driver). Uber are an improvement that removed a lot of shady things but riding a Waymo in Phoenix is for me the best experience as there is almost no unknown.
> and ofc a skewed audience who seems to abhor socialties
At the same time every other story involves a horror over "going to dinner." They apparently don't abhor socialities, they just abhor having to be in the presence of the "lower caste."
And Delta has an outstanding order for 100 of them, with delivery scheduled throughout 2025. We'll see if these continued incidents alter that, but I think the inertia is that this is what boeing selling these days. Everyone will have them.
On the other hand, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Spirit, Allegiant and others are all strapped with Airbus A320neos that are going to be grounded shortly due to engine issues related to P&W's GTF engine.
Agree with this. For folks not familiar with Twilio leadership, I would liken Kho to Twilio's version of Tim Cook. For the size and stage of growth that Twilio's at, he's the best possible replacement for Jeff.
I’ve noticed these near-death-experience videos coming up in my recommendations and found it truly odd. They don’t seem to have anything to do with what I normally watch. I have to wonder if they’re the top of the funnel for religion campaigns like “hegetsus”.
That's interesting to me because they showed up in mine but I'd already expressed interest. I don't know why they're being tossed at you.
I honestly don't believe there's much money in the "NDE space". Certainly less than "hegetsus". Which is funny because the vast majority of NDE accounts really make all of the most popular world religions look pretty wrong (including Christianity, although its message of love over all remains... Not that its adherents follow that much or anything).
