The water use actually isn't all that high - it's just easy to make "a million gallons of water every year" sound like a lot, but compared to a 500 acre farm which could easily use 3 million gallons every day, it's not very big.
The electricity use is really substantial though, but that's harder for people to visualise so gets less media attention.
Right, this argument completely lacks context. Agricultural use of water is astounding. And even that is generally much less than the enormous amount of water that is available in agricultural states (CA notwithstanding).
Minnesota where I live gets approximately 3x10^13 gallons of rain / year. Yes, almost none of that is captured for use, but it's not like we're talking about a fundamentally physically limited resource here. It's just that there's a bad time/phase mismatch.
Hell, a 500 acre data center has >200 million gallons drop onto it out of the sky in MN, each year (20in avg * 500 acre = 10,000 acre-inches)
This is unfair and why people see HN as largely a pessimistic crowd. Just because someone might be wrong doesn't mean they are actively trying to deceit you, which I assume you mean with "bullshitting".
It's a new and shiny object and people tend to get over-excited. That's it.
We currently don't really know what intelligence is so we don't have a good definition of what to expect from "AI" but anyone who has used current "AI" for anything other than chat or search should recognize that "AI" is not "I" at all.
The "AI" does not "know" anything. It is really a fuzzy search on an "mp3" database (compressed with loss resulting in poor quality).
Based on that, everyone who is claiming current "AI" technology is any kind of intelligence has either fallen for the hype sold by the "AI" tech companies or is the "AI" tech company (or associated) and is trying to sell you their "AI" model subscription or getting you to invest in it.
My work is basically just guessing all the time. Sure I am incredibly lucky, seeing my coworkers the Oracle and the Necromancer do their work does not instill a feeling that we know much. For some reason the powers just flow the right way when we say the right incantations.
We bullshit a lot, we try not to but the more unfamiliar the territory the more unsupported claims. This is not deceit though.
The problem with LLMs is that they need to feel success. When we can not judge our own success, when it is impossible to feel the energy where everything aligns, this is the time when we have the most failures. We take a lot for granted and just work off that but most of the time I need some kind of confirmation that what I know is correct. That is when our work is the best when we leave the unknown.
Does anyone get the demos at https://www.gpt-oss.com to work, or are the servers down immediately after launch? I'm only getting the spinner after prompting.
Fantastic product! I almost feel bad for Screen Studio as he's a solo creator and charges for the product, this will most certainly be bad news for him
I've seen this comment a couple of times. What would be a better way of doing it? Also consider that if they would've had a more complex formula, what would be the cost of needing to explain it publicly? Would they then need to start defending the fairness of each tariff vs doing it the simple way and having a single formula across the board?
US industrial output is much lower than it has been relative to our consumption. We should mostly make in the country the industrial products we consume.
We are a consumer nation because we are more prosperous than our peers. It's the same reason you buy your food at a grocery store.
Generally, the clamoring for domestic production comes down to:
1. Employment. But because we are more prosperous, our employment is aimed elsewhere. We have jobs for people that are less dangerous, less manual, and better paid.
2. A fear that without domestic production, we're at a strategic or military disadvantage. But it's not that we _can't_ produce in an emergency, we can and have historically (see: oil in the 1970s). What protects us most is hegemony, which is threatened by things like across-the-board trade wars.
3. Nostalgia for the good ol days. Look, if you want to work in a factory, we have lots of them here, still. Nobody will stop you from putting on the hard hat. But in all likelihood you have a less stressful, less dangerous, and better-paying job today.
There really isn't an argument for this. Our trade was - as all trade is - mutually beneficial. Right now we're pushing the glass to the edge of the table when it was perfectly fine where it was.
One other important note: there are things we literally cannot produce domestically due to lack of natural availability (food products, certain textiles)
I think people look at "national debt" as though we're buying trillions of dollars of stuff and not, fundamentally, two things:
1) mandatory saving for future, like a Social Security for the country (which is ironically also comprised of Social Security)
2) investments made into the future of the country. People buy T-bonds because they're reliable returns. Low risk, relatively low reward. If suddenly our future looks less bright, our debt will slow, but it will be a pretty telling canary in the coal mine.
It's baffling to me that people generally don't grasp this. They treat it as though we're just ... buying stuff on a credit card.
Manufacturing as a share of GDP is bound to fall. It is inevitably going the way of agriculture.
The US is in the envyable position of having developed a globally dominant service sector. Putting that at risk of retaliation by imposing tariffs on all imports, including the lowest margin stuff like screws and bolts is utter insanity.
> We should mostly make in the country the industrial products we consume.
You state this as fact that we should all agree on. Why should we do this? Why not rely on our allies and friends to do what they do well, while we continue to do what we do well? Is trade not the basis of peace? If we stand alone, we must ask why we must.
I'm curious, are you personally volunteering to work in the factories? Or is it a situation where we need industrialization to come back but you personally are not willing to see it through?
I mean, is the poster in question a senior robotics engineer? Because that's whose going to be working in any factories that open. Maybe they'll have some security guards and janitors, I guess
By looking at where things are made rather than by using hedonic adjustments to multiply up INTC revenue until it hides the problem (or whatever the strategy is today now that INTC is flagging).
Assembly is one example of manufacture, so that distinction isn't really the one you think it is. Output is tracked by value added, so the mythical "car comes missing a single bolt which gets added in Flint" doesn't really show up in the output numbers, if that's your worry.
Interesting, so basically no growth since 2007 if you exclude computers, even with increased productivity. And the drop in employment is insane and it's no wonder that there is a huge political movement with fixing that as a pillar. Not even to mention regional problems that have been going on longer in the Rust Belt. Yeah I find it pretty disgusting when workers in service based industries like here have no sympathy for the workers in these industries.
That it's relative share in GDP is down during that time means that other sectors were growing even faster (think Google, Netflix and so on, so services instead of things). That the service sector gains in relative importance is actually a sign of an advanced economy, every modern economy looks like that, not just the US.
In the end, the problem is that China manufacturing output is $4.6 trillion according to those numbers while the US is $2.5 trillion, while it was around the same back in 2010. This, along with its decline in percentage of GDP is causing the perception, and it also is causing decline in employment in manufacturing. The perception matters ideologically and the employment issues matters materially, and so we have these tariffs as an effort to bring manufacturing back to the US.
Basically if you ignore computers, there was zero growth in manufacturing sector. If you take computers into account but ignore processing power increase, there was zero growth. So pretty much the only driving force in the manufacturing sector for the last 20 years was Intel, AMD, Nvidia. This is even with the increased productivity per person in manufacturing sector (so there was also massive reduction in employment).
It is highly concerning and the numbers were very much cooked up.
It is. But it's really a lousy conversation to have you two going back and forth several times, with each of you asking the other to substantiate their position, and neither of you actually doing so.
Jobs is not the same as production. Many of the jobs are lost due to automation. If you bring manufacturing back to the US you’ll be “hiring” a lot more robuts than humans.
Um, by picking and choosing what goods need protection in the long term?
Like, we can't make more fish. Avocados take a few years to grow new trees. Steel mills don't just appear in Ohio.
The worst part is that, even if you believe Donny, he's so mercurial with these tariffs that no one is going to give you a loan to do anything about any of this. This Katy Perry doctrine [0] he's established is just poison to any sort of capital investment. You've got no idea if any of these tariffs will make it to Monday, let alone to the time it takes the mortgage on your t-shirt factory to be paid off. And then you've got a new administration in four years and no idea if they will keep that protection for you either. How are you going to plant a whole vineyard and get it profitable in 4 years when grape vines take 7 years to mature to fruit bearing?
There's no point to any of this, even if you believe him.
[0] 'Cause you're hot, then you're cold
You're yes, then you're no
You're in, then you're out
You're up, then you're down
You're wrong when it's right
It's black, and it's white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
Overall I agree, but I'm not sure there's literally no point. American primary producers will likely benefit - people who own mines, oil wells, farms, etc., and some American manufacturers too as long as they source enough of their raw materials from within the US that the price hikes on resources from overseas don't bite them too much. Still an overall loss that will be borne by American consumers, but a small section of the population who are already wealthy will greatly benefit...
I genuinely thought his cabinet was at least competent, they have credentials like they are at least, but then fucking Signal happened and made it obvious what they actually are:
The exact same kind of fail-upwards, born on third thinking they hit a triple, grindset grifter, loser mid-level management nepobabies.
Huge swaths of midwestern farmers will go bankrupt if tariffs are imposed. Subsidies and exemptions are being specifically added to prevent the complete collapse of multiple red state economies due to the harm from the tariffs.
Even things like oil and mines aren't guaranteed safe, because of complexities around where refineries are, loss of export market, or weakness of dollar offsetting any nominal gains when looking at actual purchasing power.
Exactly, tariffs may be a wise way to protect parts of your industry that need protection and investment. The Chinese for example have been using this tactic for decades. But you need to choose which sectors to invest in. The way Trump is doing is nothing more than an instant devaluation of the dollar purchasing power.
The problem is it's economically illiterate. Trade deficits aren't bad in themselves - they can be a sign that you're getting a good deal. Consider the case where a country with low wages exports raw materials to the US, and doesn't buy back as much from the US. This is the situation for lots of poorer countries who are exporting cheap raw materials to the US, and the US gains from these situations. Trump's policy simply makes all these raw materials more expensive.
Another way of reducing trade deficits would be to make Americans so poor that they can't afford to buy things from overseas. Eliminating trade deficits in itself isn't a rational economic goal.
Having said that, American manufacurers on average will likely benefit (though maybe not if their raw materials are too much more expensive), but this benefit will only come at the cost of American consumers, who are denied cheaper options from overseas by the tariffs
You’re calling Trump “economically illiterate,” but what you’re saying will happen is exactly the motivation of Trump’s policy. He just thinks it’s a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Trump’s bet is that the upsides will be borne disproportionately by his base, while the downsides will be borne disproportionately by Democrats’ laptop-class base. It’s not irrational to think that will be the result.
How much do production workers get paid in China? How will our production goods be affordable at American labor rates? This strategy just makes everything more expensive - nothing cheaper.
Exactly and even if it does work to reshore factories (which will take years and we'll just ignore the question of where all the workers for these factories will come from, and that the goods needed for making those factories are also being tariffed) they'll only be competitive in a protected market so they're only really producing for the US market which will be stunted because costs would have inflated through the roof!
Not to mention these are blanket tariffs, not protecting specific American industries. So anything that's not feasibly produced here will be more expensive anyway.
Yes everybody, we are taxing all of your groceries - but all of those American coffee and banana farms (!) will be protected.
I mean, a large point of their campaign was that price increases were a major national concern, right? Can we agree that they repeatedly made that point? I recall many lawn signs to that effect.
So given that, I would have assumed that this administration would focus on making things more affordable. Instead, I'm seeing people try to explain to me that, actually, raising the prices across the board is a good thing!
To put it plainly, it seems like the administration raising prices is, in fact, not a good thing for Americans. And I don't see how American labor can produce things that are more affordable than what we can buy now. So it seems like a net negative, because ultimately they are choosing to make everything more expensive for consumers.
What kind of financing has Trump made available so that the average American company (companies of what 5-20 people) can setup multi-hundreds of millions of dollars mining operations, smelters, manufacturing plants? Because it's gonna be a stretch for the average 5-300 person factory around me to vertically integrate into a billion dollars of supply chain infra business.
Trump did decent in the rust belt. Many of them have lost their good paying manufacturing jobs. If, and this is a big if, we can bring back manufacturing in the US they can get their jobs back.
If I'm company leadership, I'm not doing anything but trying to limit damage while this guy's in office. His tariffs can turn on a dime- his petulance is business poison.
I mean he's gone bankrupt 6 times including managing to bankrupt a casino a business where on average people give you money to get less money in return... He also confuses simple economic terms like equating trade deficits with tariffs.
I was just talking last night about how ironically the things Trump is doing fall not to far from what Bernie bros have dreamed of. Heavy tariffs and no income tax is pretty much the conservative version of liberal hand outs.
What do they expect to happen if the heavy tariffs either move the manufacturing of those products to the US or make the imports expensive enough that consumers switch to domestic manufacturers?
That tanks the revenue from the tariffs, which would make them an ineffective replacement for income tax.
Consider actual tariffs? A trade deficit isn't a tariff or trade barrier it's just the natural flow of commerce from them selling more stuff than they buy. They're dressing it up like these countries are charging US imports these crazy tariffs but they're not at all, especially not across the board.
That's imminently doable but would require more work than plugging in 2 numbers from the US trade delegation website so we get this complete lie instead. Trump has had it in his head for ages that trade deficit == tariff (or is lying about that to make his supporters swallow this as the US just fighting back) and it's a completely broken understanding of trade.
> Consider actual tariffs? A trade deficit isn't a tariff or trade barrier it's just the natural flow of commerce from them selling more stuff than they buy
That’s just defining what a trade deficit is, it doesn’t explain why trade deficits arise. For example, other countries have cheaper labor and laxer environmental regulations. Simply looking at the country’s tariff rates on U.S. goods doesn’t account for the whole picture.
Other countries also have different population numbers. To take a random example, why would e.g. Uruguay (population 3.5M) buy as much from the US (population 100x) as the US is able to buy from them?
Besides, if the trade volume is what determines the tariff, why would any country want to have a trade surplus with the US? The best solution for other countries is to artificially limit their exports, or find more reliable trading partners.
On the face of it that sounds reasonable, but then you look at say China with a 35x population over Canada yet Canadians don't just buy as much from China as vice-versa, they buy CAD$65 billion more. So I don't think the argument that larger countries necessarily have a deficit against their smaller trading partners holds water.
I do agree that this madness will only encourage other countries to conduct their trade elsewhere.
> Other countries also have different population numbers. To take a random example, why would e.g. Uruguay (population 3.5M) buy as much from the US (population 100x) as the US is able to buy from them
Because the U.S. can buy from Uruguay only as much as 3.5 million people in that country can produce.
First we don't import any where near all of Uruguay's exports, in fact we're only about 8% of their actual exports which should tell you this isn't the reason we buy more from them than they do from us.
Next that's always going to be imbalanced because they produce goods cheaper and can't afford as much as the equivalent chunk of people in the US.
GP said other countries, not "Europe". And Europe does have cheaper labor. Even in western europe you can find a 5x-10x difference in certain salaries especially in white collar industries.
> cheaper labor and laxer environmental regulations
So we've exported our worst paying, most environmentally damaging industries? I mean the rivers catching fire was probably exciting but I'm not exactly pining to bring that back...
Tariffs can only set those industries up for internal markets, other countries will just continue to buy from the cheaper source so the protected industry has to continue to be protected.
Additionally who's going to work these labor intensive industries? We're already at 4.1% unemployment, there's not vast masses of people waiting for low paying work as seamstresses and one of the other major prongs of the Trump ideology is reducing immigration drastically so we're going to squeezed on that end too.
Finally we've done mass tariffs before and it always ends badly. Remember Smoot-Hawley? it deepened the Great Depression because people thought they could turn to protectionism to prop up and bring industry to the US. It just doesn't work when broadly applied.
I wish I could do this for Spotify. Paid plans still include ads.
They cram ads into podcast episodes which themselves also have ads, so you'll get the read ads + Spotify's local ads + Spotify laughs all the way to the bank.
I believe over time not having ads will be a thing of the past, and you'll instead pay for fewer ads. Like where else are people going to go for exclusive content?
I've never heard an ad on Spotify, so this is true only for podcasts then, correct? In that case I can at least be thankful that Spotify is the worst option for listening to podcasts.
I canceled my Spotify premium subscription because they showed sponsored content in the app. Not as egregious as jamming ads in between songs, but I still don’t want to have to scroll past a “sponsored” UI element to get to what I’m actually interested in.
Just buy the content and play it from your local devices. I use streaming simply for "auditioning" new music (and there are podcasts, YouTube channels that do that without a subscription, FWIW). I prefer then to buy the tracks from Bandcamp. Hopefully the artists get a bigger slice of the revenue that way.
I don't really listen to much Spotify but I feel like just the free plan in Firefox with uBlock Origin gave me an ad-free experience the last time I used it.
Sadly I think we're in need of the AriZona Iced Tea of streaming. A company that sells a streaming service, at a fixed price, makes a small profit and is happy with that profit.
The issue is that the current streaming services have cost billions to develop and companies and investors want that money back, times a 100. The money hasn't gone into a long term product that people will be happy with for decades, it has gone into a product that needs to return large chunk of money in a short time frame (and cover up other failed ventures).
The issue is that such a company either needs to make their own first-party content, or pay licensing fees for third-party content, and the companies those license fees are paid to are always looking to either cut out the middle service in favor of their own or increase what they're charging.
Wondering how they’re educating the market about federated learning at scale. It’s still a nascent technology and fairly hard to wrap one’s head around.
See I kind of buy the database argument but also kind of don't. A database needs an operator whereas a LLM doesn't. You're basically melting the product into a piece of goo and the UI can be approached using natural language.
For products that still need a UI you could claim that LLM operators take over, so that's still a tax you pay to the incumbents as you interact with a product. It's sort of like we take the money which was paid to SQL operators and engineers and instead pay it to the hyperscalers.
LLMs absolutely need an operator - who runs the servers and GPUs that hosts the models? Who writes the system prompts? Who fine tunes and trains the models? This can be a big cloud api like AWS, but it can also be a custom-in-house service for a company.
Users of LLMs don’t quite have an equivalent employee to a DBA, but neither do most customers of AWS DynamoDB or RDS or whatever.
Many use cases of LLMs won’t be chat bots like ChatGPT. They’re be tools for automated summarizations, classifications, etc. They’ll be automated assistance and basic tool calling, etc. They’ll perform OCR and documentation analysis. Automated translations etc.
Emergent basically means ‘we didn’t design this capability but it’s there’, it’s always been a thing, not sure why you associate it with AGI so strongly.
Do you think its not emergent because you think this behavior was explicitly coded in or you dont think its emergent because you dont like the implications of thinking it?
Words like emergent, hallucinate, reason, think, infer.. they carry additional meaning. Their use as terms of art in some cases is because for the cognoscenti it helps understand intent by simile, but for the person in the street it is read to mean much more. There are of course lots of interesting emergent behaviours, the patterns in bistable chemical reactions which fascinated Turing, patterns from fractals, flocking models for particle animations from a few rules.
