BLKNSLVR
I don't know you, but you've seemed to be pretty open and honest on HN, which is appreciated.
From a very cursory look at the Google breakdown, it looks as if devices connect out on port 8000 to a specific domain. In my increasingly paranoid setup of my firewall, I'm leaning towards blocking all outbound ports other than the very small number that facilitate regular browsing. I'm almost surprised that malware would use a non-standard port since it makes it easier to identify as outlier traffic.
Having said that, I like the (hatch-size more-so than the SUV-size) GWM Ora, which seems to be a divisive looking EV.
Current era is SUV-look for almost literally every car (even the Mini has the 'Countryman' variant, which makes a mockery of the very name 'Mini'), so EVs have essentially followed that bland-ness to now be leading it.
Polestar's are the nicest looking EVs, outside of the high-level performance cars that are out of the practical range of normal people.
I wonder whether Trump has long-recognised the decline of the US, and is planning for his legacy to be setting up his family well enough to be able to move to wherever else in the world opportunity presents itself (or where oligarchies would appreciate their contributions - after all, "there's always another oligarchy"). Essentially both shorting the US and forcing the downfall to occur (and making the progress of its occurrence faster).
I'm interested to see the Trump family's reactions to the inevitable disenfrachisement that the real, long-term outcomes of this will manifest.
In this 'throw away' scenario, though, I'd hope that car recycling becomes a thing pretty quickly (aside: I think any large product manufacturer should have a complete lifecycle plan from manufacture to entire breakdown and recycle/reclaim, especially if their products include non-renewable minerals etc.)
It would seem that a replacement entire car may be more economical than fixing anything. Like printers, buying a new one is cheaper than replacing the ink in the old one.
All manufacturing is moving this way, not even intentionally, but as a by-product of process efficiency.
Whilst Tesla is probably leading the way for car manufacture in the US, the other car companies are probably similar. EVs are also greatly helped in this by having far fewer moving parts, and so they're either more 'modular' or almost entirely monolithic. Makes for interesting hypotheticals about 'replacement' vs 'fix' into the future and manufacturing for 'ease of recycling/reclaiming'.
It basically started in the 70s with the outsourcing of manufacturing to China, and the short term thinking and naivete (hubris?) that China would not do anything and everything to use this to their global strategic advantage. Sure, lots of US executives made _mother-fucking bank_ but their bank was essentially for the sale of US dominance to China over the course of 50 years.
China wins because playing the long game wins - or having X billion expendable population under a dictatorship wins - possibly/probably the combination of both.
I'm pretty sure we're witnessing the accelerating confirmation of this right now, for all the reasons you've already stated. The US still has some niches at which it's ahead, but China is a mere intellectual property theft away from being able to pwn those areas as well (rightly, or likely wrongly, but even 'wrongly' by any law is 'rightly' by China's point of view, same as plenty of US decisions of late - the lens makes all the difference).
Tesla's have been around the place for a while, but are also increasingly present, but are a greatly decreasing percentage of EVs.
Relevant stats: https://solarcalculator.com.au/blog/ev-sales-statistics/
My extended family has three EVs now, and they're fucking great for our needs. They get us to where we need to go, and save us at least $350 a month in fuel.
Having said that, we're in the exact scenario pocket where EVs make sense: We can charge at home overnight, our daily commutes are 50km maximum, we have solar panels and cheap overnight electricity rates, we don't need to tow anything pretty much ever.
EVs are less niche than they were, but they're still not as commodity/utility friendly as ICE cars, but the niche is growing quickly. Interestingly, the haters I've encountered rapidly soften when they actually experience driving in an EV - they're still a ways away from looking to buy one for themselves, but they're noticeably less militantly/irrationally opposed than they were.
Caveat: 1 of the EVs is a 2014 Nissan Leaf, which is at about 80% of its original range. The other two are less than a year old Chinese EVs, and so I can't and won't speak to long term reliability - that's definitely a risk we were willing to take, and won't know whether it was worth it until a few years down the track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1jvvPRHJL0
The calm in the pilot's voice, then alternating with sheer terror and panic. Holy shit it's awful.
If the information doesn't exist, then AI can't create it for you, but it can help identify the areas in which to be asking the questions; where exist the vagaries and assumptions?
Mine _is_ connected to my network, but I have DNS blocking via self-hosted Adguard along with customer SmartTV block lists, plus a firewall for the 'entertainment' VLAN that's fairly tight. I'm also monitoring (and recording to a database) all outgoing traffic on the entertainment VLAN so I can add further firewall restrictions - once I have the time to analyse the logs, maybe after I've retired...
He's off his rocker and needs to touch grass for a good couple of years.
What they may be missing is that the domains in which it it's being used to great success is the pipeline to the expansion of is use into other domains.
Having said that, the potential legal issues of being a reverse engineering tool is a strong legal motivator. But I also doubt that any legal issues as a result of reverse engineering could be fatal to either Anthropic or AI/LLM usage; the tool, being general purpose, will allow for the legal responsibility to be put upon the person using it, especially if it's decided that Anthropic and OpenAI are protected national security assets.
At least one of the re-interviewees did that, and got a better paying job elsewhere. Good on them! They had 10-odd years of valuable systems knowledge, and we able to solve some complex environment issues quickly because of this. They weren't unique, but they were rare.
More than a couple of people with that attitude at any workplace and it's definitely not fun for almost everyone else.
I know this is just the wording of an analogy, but the thought process behind it concerns me. If a person or prices is "standing in the way" of flexibility, the reasons for it should be understood before simply removing it. Essentially the Chesterton's Fence argument.
Some rigidity is required to ensure things like quality and auditability. Boring things, but I would argue that these are boring things that are essential to a functioning and supportable product.
The following statement, however, seems to indicate they're being selective about where such a philosophy is being applied, which is obviously the smart play:
> A system that controls an aircraft or ensures a train does not pass a red signal is a piece of technology that includes software but must be designed, verified and validated by humans, Quadros said, and he does not expect that to disappear.
There's a certain amount of surprisingly rare 'self awareness' of the business and its processes required to know where to effectively apply AI, rather than blindly throwing it at everything.
Study: Schoolwide phone bans show no significant impact on road death toll.
Point being that patterns on small scales match patterns on larger scales.
:grimace:
Better if there's also something you can do with other people. I play tennis and I do inline skating. It gets me out with people, and not always people I would choose, which provides some amount of grounding / self-checking.
Start a little project, remind yourself of what you can do, and what you're good at doing, and what you enjoy doing.
If you have to sit and watch TV, I've found Halt and Catch Fire to be somewhat motivational to "do something" and find the dark corners that can be probed and pushed (and HCF likely fits well into the interests of HN folks).
If nothing else, the yawning chasm separating the two sides of politics is causing gross inefficiency:
> Board members and top executives inside big tech companies are trying to insulate their firms from potential future Democratic-led congressional investigations and respond to user and employee concerns, while still placating the Trump administration, people familiar with the matter said. Corporate executives anticipate Democrats will gain more power in Congress after the midterms, and some lawmakers are already asking why the companies handed over sensitive user information.
It's not possible to conduct normal business if you have to shift your feet all the time because the ground underneath you is not predictably solid.