I know this website is tongue-and-cheek but I did want to address this part. It's seems to be referring to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47257803

I personally don't see re-implementing a project's specification from tests as theft. I also find it morally okay as long as the re-implementers don't lie about the original project (e.g. saying it's the clone to theirs, the original is X times slower when it's not, etc.). Legally, it would also be permissible since re-implementation of a spec, and even an api interface, has been established to be fair use:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/05/google-oracle-supre...

We know the representation (weights) and the computational processes, but we don't know the "why" behind the convergence of the model to a particular structure within that framework

What real life example is this from?

Yes, especially since it would be considered a business minutiae in the grand scheme of things.

> Literally a made up outcome with zero basis in reality. And a rather disgusting defense of his practices “no, no, you don’t understand, he has to be horrible or Amazon will falter and fail and then those people will lose their jobs!”.

I'm curious as to what you think would happen? If schedules were loosened and drivers were paid more, what do you think would be the long-term impact? Tell me how the way you would change things would improve the world.

He doesn’t hold dollars, he mostly holds equity. Also it doesn’t seem like he’s directly involved in the day to day tasks assigned to delivery drivers so it’s weird to assign blame to him for that as well.

One could argue that if drivers were unhappy with the work, they could just quit. Another would argue that that’s a callous way to view the problem as a new job may not be easy to get.

I’d link these 2 issues and say my view is that if Bezos were to sell his stock to give to charity, Amazon’s own stock would plummet which would indirectly force the decision to leave Amazon onto their drivers. A depreciating stock price means their corporate RSU grants look less attractive, which I speculate would make working at Amazon less attractive, leading to worse talent and declining company performance. If a decline was to happen in this way there would probably be more demands on drivers, potentially decreasing demand for the job as the whole, and leaving the drivers who stay behind in worse conditions.

I don't think this takes codex into account, but the 'What they’re using it for' section shows there's definitely a huge demand outside the use case of programming: https://openai.com/index/how-people-are-using-chatgpt/

I think it's normal to want to stop doing things you dislike, but I don't think that this feeling stems from "complexity." Instead, human progress has given us the option to stop doing things we dislike at a relatively low cost. For example, if you didn't want to hunt, migrate, or battle in prehistoric times, the consequence for those things would be death.

> To look at the birds, feel the wind and the water in our own hands, and ... nothing more. Eat when we are hungry, laugh when we are happy, cry when we are empty. And maybe that is the greatest gift to ourselves as well.

I believe those things sound nice and worthwhile, but looking at the birds and feeling the wind and water in our hands require safety and surviving requires us to utilize our biological advantages (like our complexity-generating brains). Eating when we're hungry require us to find food, laughing comes from finding safe things to laugh about and/or people to laugh with, etc.

"I'll go in the other direction and say that if you're spending a lot of your time learning to [program] better then you're wasting it because [computer]s are only going to get better at [computing] regardless of "[software] engineering". The JSON API example to wire up a database can be [run] pretty easily by the latest [computer]s without much [design] and without setting up any [optimizations]. The more time you spend perfecting your [program], the more time you would have wasted when the next [computer] comes out to make it obsolete."

I am talking about space in general. Data size. The relation of data stored in one place vs another is the fact they both store *data*. The components to store data can be cheaper or more expensive based on how it's architected. The fact I still see 4GB as an acceptable cost in ram exaggerates the point because it shows that I'm okay with 4GB being consumed in a relatively expensive component used for data storage (meaning I'd obviously be okay with it being stored on hard disk).

> if and when they decide to pick a model that isn’t half brain dead (apparently it’s based on Gemma 3)

Gemma 3 is far from brain dead and can be used for a variety of different tasks, translation being one I've personally used it for.

I never conflated anything. I said it's a neglible amount of space for current hardware, which I still believe.

If anything, the fact that I think the amount of space is acceptable for the amount of ram a modern laptop has exaggerates the point.

> There’s a reason they picked an opt-out model for this, and not an opt-in approach.

That's the approach they take for most of their features.

> But then, a web app that shows people a loading screen while it downloads a 4GB model probably wouldn’t be a best-selling UX.

Which seems to be the motivation of having these local models embedded in the browser's available resources: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/prompt-api

> The roughly 4 GB × N devices of disk-storage cost, sustained, on user hardware. SSDs have a per-GB embodied carbon cost of approximately 0.16 kg CO2e per GB of NAND manufactured [18]

The estimated environmental aspect of the download also seems like an overblown point, noted for sensationalism. There are always hand-wavy numbers involved and I had to look no further than the quote above to find evidence of this. The reference for [18], "The dirty secret of SSDs: embodied carbon", incorrectly links to "Toward Carbon-Aware Networking" and makes no mention of the environmental cost of SSDs. After looking up "The Dirty Secret of SSDs: Embodied Carbon" myself, I was able to see the same methodologies as I was expecting used [1].

> We conducted an analysis encompassing 94 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) reports, which collectively quantify the embodied cost of SSDs. Owing to the scarcity of direct and up-to-date LCA studies focused specifically on SSDs. We compiled a dataset comprising LCA reports pertaining to Server, Workstation, Desktop, Laptop, and Chromebook products, all of which feature SSDs

All these studies rely on metrics extrapolated from layered assumptions and end up being used by those who try to use them as objective numbers.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.10793

In the case of Uber/Lyft, the company can say a ride to the middle of nowhere costs more than a hotspot destination because the odds of finding someone hailing another ride from there are low. This would mean the driver would have to spend more on gas picking up their next customer. Although this seems reasonable, it's probabilistic in nature. This may also not be the case, but the company must price this risk to keep their drivers happy. Well what of the case where the destination is a dangerous neighborhood where the driver feels like their life will be in danger? How do we price the risk then? And that says nothing about the possible mismatch of perception between the seller and the customer.

How about if a grocery store sells goods at a higher price to customers in lower income areas because they notice that it lowers the number of high income area customers to the point they make less profit? Is it right for that store to raise the price for identifiably lower income area customer to make up for the lost profit?

> Offering the same service or product (a specific flight if you will, a chunk of butter of the same brand in the same store at the same time) to two independent customers at different prices based on prior knowledge about them unrelated to the specific good or service is fundamentally unjust

Your statement includes things like loyalty programs and memberships. Presenting these credentials at checkout means customers are willingly giving the company "prior knowledge about them" (that they've shopped at the store before and how much they're willing to spend) unrelated to the *specific* food or service they're purchasing. Should these practices be allowed?

The point of this reply isn't to say what should or shouldn't be allowed, it's to show that I believe the issue is more nuanced than you can account for in your statement of what constitutes unjust business practices.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination