Hacker News: DFHippie

New comment by DFHippie in "Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely"

DFHippie — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:31:51 +0000

Right. You can vote for a government that will tax you and then fix misfortunes and injustices. It's probably a lot more effective and efficient than writing a check to a megachurch.

New comment by DFHippie in "Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely"

DFHippie — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:22:57 +0000

Qualia is an interesting topic, but "they don't have qualia so they aren't really slaves" doesn't have a great track record. This mental game is what tech overlords are engaging in when they characterize losers in their world as NPCs and deride empathy as pathological. It's what Descartes was doing when he vivisected animals.

New comment by DFHippie in "Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely"

DFHippie — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:13:55 +0000

It is my understanding that this claim about Americans' charitable giving does not disaggregate giving to food banks, Girl Scout cookie drives, political causes, the environment, cultural events, religious institutions, etc. Much of this charitable giving does not feed the hungry or house the homeless.

New comment by DFHippie in "Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely"

DFHippie — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:10:08 +0000

We used to live in a world where individual virtue was what everyone fell back on. That is the default state. It has many problems -- free riding by the selfish, for one, but also a lack of capacity to prepare for large-scale disasters like the Great Depression. We have a government precisely to solve this sort of problem. It works (when it is competent and not corrupt) for defense, international trade, and the enforcement of law. Solving resource distribution and aid coordination is right in its wheelhouse.

New comment by DFHippie in "Australian energy retailers must offer three hours of free daytime electricity"

DFHippie — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:15:56 +0000

The US is paying developers billions of dollars to scrap renewable energy projects. This is Trump policy. We're in a league of our own for sure.

It's not all Trump, of course. It's also the people who put him in office twice, the folks who block upgrading the grid, etc. etc.

New comment by DFHippie in "Europe's new climate in seven charts"

DFHippie — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:30:25 +0000

It isn't the fact of change but the rate of change which is anomalous.

New comment by DFHippie in "Europe's new climate in seven charts"

DFHippie — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 12:29:13 +0000

Russia is great at stuff that can be automated cheaply like influence campaigns. They're not so great at physical hardware and logistics and so forth. Not everyone is good at everything.

Messing with elections by fooling the most volatile and eager to be fooled is not a genius move.

New comment by DFHippie in "22-year-old Mozart's handwritten notebook unearthed in 'major discovery'"

DFHippie — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 21:37:34 +0000

In the town where I live there are buildings from a 19th century pipe organ factory. My wife used to work in one of the buildings. The employees had scribbled various names and dates and witticisms on the walls in pencil. Their handwriting was beautiful. I was gratified that no one had thought to beautify the walls after the factory closed. In the loft above there were ancient mechanical drawings of organ parts rolled up and stored on racks, and at the end of the loft was a designer's desk still waiting for him to come back and make more drawings.

New comment by DFHippie in "Russia's 'family values': R*ping, beating women and girls to death"

DFHippie — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:49:05 +0000

It's striking to me how people who claim to speak for men and traditional values think that men are incorrigibly bad and that this is good and just.

Maybe family formation would be better in Russia if marriage less often led to misery.

New comment by DFHippie in "Flock-Powered Police Chiefs Stalking Women Shows Why Warrants Are Needed"

DFHippie — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:13:50 +0000

You mean "lawyers", right?

New comment by DFHippie in "U.S. science is in chaos"

DFHippie — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 21:39:27 +0000

Everyone wants someone else to deal with it. It's like we have a live grenade and rather than defusing it or disposing of it we keep passing it around hoping it explodes on someone else.

New comment by DFHippie in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"

DFHippie — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:07:03 +0000

> Such people are the worst of the worst of humanity.

I don't know. There's a plentiful supply of bad humans.

New comment by DFHippie in "US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance"

DFHippie — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:58:35 +0000

There's also a propaganda feedback loop. It's not like Trump's voters are innocent, though. They want to be told lies.

New comment by DFHippie in "Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time"

DFHippie — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:36:27 +0000

Your comment reminded me of this classic: https://youtu.be/EYMjvXdrZIw?si=rYpJm3SP2kcAWPs_

New comment by DFHippie in "Mercedes‑Benz starts large‑scale production of electric axial flux motor"

DFHippie — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 09:46:10 +0000

I got the impression that there were three motors altogether and they were integrated with the axles.

New comment by DFHippie in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

DFHippie — Thu, 28 May 2026 17:47:32 +0000

I think you also named Alabama's problems. It's one of the poorest states and seems bound and determined to stay that way.

New comment by DFHippie in "The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism"

DFHippie — Mon, 11 May 2026 10:47:42 +0000

> A rich person and a poor person can train LLMs on copyrighted material in 2026.

Updating an old adage for the modern age:

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” ― Anatole France

New comment by DFHippie in "Richard Dawkins: Claude (for one) has 'passed' the Turing Test"

DFHippie — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:36:10 +0000

The problem the Turing test was meant to solve is that we had, and still have, no means of recognizing a conscious mechanism. We lack a theory of consciousness that can be used to make a better test than "It could fool me", so the Turing test accepts that as the test.

In other words, the mechanism may be what consciousness is about, but we can't say anything useful about this as relates to consciousness.

New comment by DFHippie in "Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense"

DFHippie — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:49:39 +0000

Somebody, in a conversation of which there will be no record, told him it was a good idea, telling him it would be quick, he would be lauded as a hero, there would be vast mineral riches, etc. This person wanted to break up NATO, but this wasn't part of the sales pitch, I imagine.

New comment by DFHippie in "The Onion to Take over InfoWars"

DFHippie — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:32:33 +0000

What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation.

If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.