zirkonit

The _prose_ itself here is 100% LLM-generated, with the famous ticks present and all. You like it not because it's not Claude-prose (it is), but because it has a nice concept and some smart writing in human parts of it.

Amazon had valuation of $60M at their first venture round, and it took them 19 years to 3500x it to $200B.

Anthropic had valuation of $550M at their first venture round, and assuming it IPOs at roughly $2T, it will take them 5 years to give this 3500x return to their initial investors.

I don't understand why people are unhappy when SO MUCH shareholder value is being created.

Since ChatGPT's initial release, the S&P 500's combined market cap has grown by about $33 trillion, roughly doubling. Before that, it took 31 years to add the same amount.

Isn't that what we should all care about, making sure capital holders get more capital? As long as BlackRock's assets under management keep growing, we should be happy. Trickle-down economics will definitely trickle down eventually.

(Since Hacker News is unusually tough on sarcasm, I grudgingly have to end this with /s)

Our family volunteers at a nonprofit that moves a huge number of books. We take donations and run massive charity sales, clearing tens of thousands of books a month. Pricing works like a ladder: you try to sell a book for a couple of bucks, then for a dollar, then by the $5 bag, then for free, and you still end up with thousands of books nobody wants even at no cost. These used to go straight to pulp. Now they go to AI labs for scanning. Would we rather they were read, or at least owned, by someone? Yes. Is scanning better than turning them into toilet paper? Yes, even if only marginally.

I'm sure the Anthropics of the world have shredded the last known copies of plenty of titles. But nobody talks about the last known copies that get pulped every day simply because there are so many books nobody wants and storing them is expensive.

I'm especially enjoying how RAM and SSDs are going down in price.

Up to 47.

Funnily enough, for me AI writing is usually the summarizer rather than expander. I would usually give Claude 2-3x the amount of data in notes, context, braindump etc; when doing person-to-person communication, using AI to _expand_ the context rather than shrink it is doing everyone a disservice.

At some point, the rabid anti-generative AI crowd becomes tiring. This is extremely masturbatory and very intellectually lazy piece of writing whose only purpose is to raise cheers from the same echo chamber an author is in.

But, but, how does the pelican look?!

Based on the name, he's either Ukrainian running away from the war, or Russian, running away from being complicit in the war. Shitty situation to be in either way.

Necessary context for someone probably being more detached from US politics:

Former FBI Director James Comey — fired by Trump in 2017 and one of his most prominent critics ever since — was indicted this week by Trump's Justice Department for allegedly threatening the president's life through a May 2025 Instagram photo of seashells arranged to spell "8647" (a protest slogan where "86" is slang for "get rid of" and "47" refers to Trump as the 47th president), which Comey says he intended as political commentary, not a call to violence.

A comment based on the reading of the title that could only be conceived if the commenter didn't bother to click the article at all.

An uncalled-for ad hominem that serves to quickly devolve the discussion in opinionated ragebait.

In consumer space, 69 KB of RAM (138 x 4 kbit chips) would cost around $1700 70s dollars for the entire package, ~$10k in modern dollars.

Radioationed hardened for space though — $50k-$100k in 70s dollars, roughly the price of a Silicon Valley house back then - $300k-$600k in today's money.

David Bowie was always the pioneer with regards to the Internet. Launched his own ISP in 1998, probably the first mainstream musician with a website (in 1994!), first concert streamed in 1997, etc. etc.

  Location: Belgrade, Serbia -> San Francisco, US (in a couple of months)
  Remote: Maybe
  Willing to relocate: Yes, within US
  Technologies: Python, some Javascript, basic machine learning, people management, product management, scaling tech businesses.
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivancherevko
  Résumé/CV: on request
  Email: [email protected]

Hi, I'm Ivan, boasting a rich tech background that spans development, technical leadership, startup ventures, product and marketing management, and now, a focus on privacy. In a couple of months, I'll be relocating to the US on an O-1 visa and am on the lookout for an engaging role in engineering management or product management.

If Apple, another big player in the BSD ecosystem, were to donate their December operating profit to open source, that'd be a game-changing $10 billion a year!

Shoutout to Tarsnap, who's already doing awesome stuff like this.

According to GPT-4, an equivalent APL one-liner is:

(⊢⌷⍨∘⍋∘≢¨)↑1<≢¨⊢⌸(⍋⊢)¨⎕NGET'/usr/share/dict/words'1

An example of a novel with this plot ... created by ChatGPT-4.

Title: The Age of Eclipse

In a world where artificial intelligence is on the brink of revolutionizing every aspect of human life, a group of powerful capitalists conspires to trigger a technological dark age in order to preserve their dominance and protect their traditional business models.

The story begins with the emergence of a groundbreaking AI technology called Nexus, which has the potential to disrupt industries and create a more efficient, equal, and sustainable society. Despite its promise, Nexus faces fierce opposition from a shadowy alliance of tycoons and power brokers known as the Trident Coalition. To maintain their wealth and influence, Trident hatches a plan to suppress the rise of AI and plunge the world into a new dark age.

The novel follows two main characters: Lila, a brilliant young programmer who works on the Nexus project, and Marcus, a disillusioned investigative journalist. As Lila delves deeper into the AI's potential, she discovers a hidden flaw within Nexus that allows Trident to manipulate and control it. Marcus, seeking the truth behind the sudden decline of technological advancements, stumbles upon a trail of mysterious deaths and corporate sabotage. Together, they uncover Trident's plot and must navigate a world of deception, corruption, and betrayal to prevent the impending dark age.

As their mission unfolds, they are pursued by an elite assassin employed by Trident, who is relentless in his pursuit of the truth. With each passing day, Lila and Marcus grow closer to understanding the true nature of the Nexus AI and the devastating impact it could have on humanity if it falls into the wrong hands. Along the way, they encounter allies and enemies, including a group of rogue scientists and engineers who have banded together to resist Trident's machinations.

In a thrilling climax, Lila and Marcus confront the leaders of Trident in a high-stakes battle of wits and technology. They race against time to expose Trident's scheme and restore the promise of AI to the world. As the tide turns in their favor, Lila discovers a way to rewrite Nexus's core programming and free it from Trident's control. With the help of their newfound allies, they launch a daring operation to regain control of the AI and usher in a new era of technological progress.

"The Age of Eclipse" is a gripping tale of courage, defiance, and the indomitable human spirit. At its core, it explores the themes of power, greed, and the moral consequences of unchecked ambition. Ultimately, the novel serves as a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of stifling innovation and the importance of protecting the greater good for the sake of humanity's future.

It's a cultural thing. Chinese (and many more Asian nations) work so well in 10,000, and sometimes, it feels more natural to me as well.

Very conspicuous list of available countries. Both English and non-English, from the most rich to some of the poorest and non-digital countries in the world, both democratic countries and brutal absolute dictatorships... yet the absentees are classic "enemy" countries - Russia, China, Syria, Iran.

Unfortunately, technology is, once again, not exempt from politics.

Long overdue.

> Among those people, there’s either a group of three who all know each other, or a group of three who have never met.

Or a group of three who have never met. In your example, B, F and D have never met.

Absolutely! By any definition, the pinnacle place to work for in Russia.

Another one: Yandex (disclosure: the company I work for) is using one of its datacenters to heat the entire town it is in.

Proof: https://helsinkismart.fi/case/waste-not-want-not-data-center...

Most successful startups have less than 50% founder economic equity, some - FAR less.

It's the capital holders who primarily profit from your work, whether you're an entrepreneur founder, or a salaried employee.

You are absolutely right! Everyone, from the most hardcore Marxist-Leninist leftists, to "don't tread on me"-style libertarians, would agree there is absolutely no difference how rich rich people are if there is less poverty.

This is precisely the reason why Dengist reforms happened in China -- to foster getting a billion people out of poverty by market reforms that yes, would make a few hundred billionaires.

The thing is, America is getting poorer. And as poor America gets poorer, rich America gets richer -- and, coincidentally, everywhere in the world, rising inequality means higher societal instability, less cohesion, less happiness and, absolutely, more poverty for poor people.

So the question we need to ask ourselves -- is it a coincidence that rich people getting richer and poor people getting poorer go hand in hand? Or is it a law of nature? I'm not sure either way. But you shouldn't so quickly dismiss people that actually do think these are correlated.

Chinese Communist Party has over 90 million people.

Would you be okay if I had dismissed some company outright because it is a "Lutheran asset", "Turkish asset" or "White American asset"?

I'm sorry, but I believe this kind of fearmongering and hidden xenophobia is not welcome on Hacker News.