Maybe, but ideas like that are what you all will use to eventually turn against solar and seek to ban going off grid as you see a disparity between those who can afford to buy solar and those who can't. Why's that a problem? Those who can will go off grid and those who can't will be left on a grid that they can't pay for, and it will crumble. We are already seeing the beginnings of this in California.
Australia is leading the world in rooftop solar adoption. By June 2025, 4.2 million rooftop solar systems had been installed nationwide representing 26.8 gigawatts of clean power generation capacity connected directly to local electricity networks that serve homes and businesses.
“In the evenings homes typically consume power, which flows from large power generation plants, such as wind farms, hydroelectric, coal and gas-fired power plants. Let’s call this the ‘low-tide’ time in local electricity grid operation,” he said.
“In the middle of a sunny day, however, today about 40% of Australian homes generate their own power from rooftop solar panels. When the rooftop solar generation exceeds the power consumption in the houses, the excess power is ‘exported’, flowing back to the grid, supplying other homes and beyond. Let’s call this the ‘high-tide’ time in local electricity grid operation.”
Housing is out of range for most, but hopefully regulations will change to allow for balcony solar, which means that renters would be able to buy a tiny bit to offset their costs, and move it to their next place.
Also, frankly, as a fellow Canadian it's pretty clear that the biggest "rival" the US has right now is itself. Just passed out in the corner puking on itself shouting about all the foreigners who won't talk to it.
I'm from Europe and I hate America way more than China now. Used to be about equal but then Trump started extorting Ukraine, threatening their own allies and sending billions to Israel to help with a genocide. I think that exposed America for what it really is.
China is enabling russia way more than trump, China doesn't care too much about 'morals' either. Chinese companies have been quite important in the construction sector of the WB settlements. Even though I'm not a great fan of Trump I don't see a reason at all to prefer the chinese.
As a New Zealander, I would agree - no reason to prefer the Chinese. But Trump's America is not an attractive option either and there's no reason to prefer it. And given the choice between two ugly options, the rational choice is the cheaper one, surely.
>China is enabling russia way more than trump, China doesn't care too much about 'morals' either
The difference is China has a good reason to. China doesn't look appealing because they're more moral than anyone else, but what they have going for them is that they still behave like a rational actor. At least their behavior is intelligible in terms of their own interests. The world can deal with a long term selfish superpower but not an unhinged one
I don't think there's a person in China that has as much of a seething hatred for America's 'allies' in Europe as J.D. Vance or half of the American techbro commentariat does
China is a somewhat neutral player, supplying both Russians and Ukrainians. Their attitude and action is way less one-sided than Trump's; especially in the first year of his latest presidency.
With trump his actions being one sided you mean one sided towards ukraine? They still get lots of Intel from Americans and Americans hardly but anything from Russia. But you're right that china supplies both I wouldn't exactly call that neutral as much as just in their self interest.
Because at present the pedophile US president is making it his mission to molest my country. China, for all its faults (including espionage, which the US is also guilty of) is mostly focused on conducting trade.
Half of Canada now uses the word 'enemy' when asked for an adjective to describe America or China. We're equivalent in their eyes now because we elected Trump a second time and all that he has said and done in 2.0
It's closer to a cousin you used to be close with despite some moral failings, but who has now has a substance abuse problem and is lashing out at family and friends.
Eh, that's pretty misleading: in that poll, Canadians weren't asked for an adjective to describe America, they were given a list of three options “Ally/Neutral/Enemy”.
Yes, someone can still blow up a pipe and they look the other way. On the other hand, you can also draw parallels to themselves becoming increasingly reliant on US vs UK in the past.
Why do you on HN want AI to slow down (mainly OpenAI and Anthropic from what I see in the comments)? What's the driving force behind your opinions on this?
Humans not dying would be an excellent feature for the future to have. Not a hard requirement though, we'll see if there are some story points left in the sprint.
I've got bad news for you on the whole humans dying thing. Seems like actually literally everyone is going to die. Turns out that this has actually been happening for a really long time - possibly since day one - and we've got no idea how to fix it.
I keep reading about AI killing all humans but I have yet to see a practical scenario where that happens. Somehow everyone is scared of that but nobody can explain exactly how that would happen?
A lot of people have explained how that would happen, in excruciating detail. The reason why this wasn't a major part of the discourse is that most people (including myself) did not believe jumps in capabilities like those we have seen in the last few years were likely.
For a superintelligent AI trained with methods anywhere close to what we are doing now, killing all humans is the default outcome. I actually think researchers are downplaying the risks to make their arguments more normie-friendly.
"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible - but I hear the same people express fear. No other human activity poses this level of danger." - https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843#m
"Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. There are other threats that I think are more certain to happen (for example, an engineered virus with a long incubation period and a high mortality rate) but are unlikely to destroy every human in the universe in the way that SMI could." - Sam Altman
Yes, that's the point. It does no good for the US to stop if China doesn't. It does no good for the US to go full speed ahead to beat China, it still leads to a high probability of extinction. That would be like saying "I can't let China blow me up, I'll blow myself up first." Well, if you're unsure if China will blow you up, at least don't do it to yourself.
More time to proceed more cautiously in building this entity that will be faster and more effective at steering outcomes in the world than any human or, soon after, the entirety of humans combined.
More Japanese obsessed hacker news posts. What's up with this? There's a daily post on HN of various topics, usually something obscure, about Japan. Why?
I think it’s just that Japanese culture represents a very sophisticated antithesis to many western cultural pillars. Collectivism over individualism, incredible development of the aesthetics of simplicity and emptiness compared to the ostentatious and sometimes baroque western aesthetics, neat and tidy compared to cluttered, the fanatical emphasis on mastery of technique, or things that can’t be produced via shortcuts, etc etc. Overall I think the Japanese are viewed as much more disciplined and conscientious which is valued in the west. And a lot of these things seem like wizardry to Americans because we’re lacking the routines and building blocks that lead to it. In essence the Japanese are very process oriented, and Americans see the results and want them but don’t understand the process side of things as it’s not intrinsic to our culture. Yet the results are admirable… whether or not Americans would actually want to live the process that leads to those results is another story. That’s the gist of it I think.
> incredible development of the aesthetics of simplicity and emptiness compared to the ostentatious and sometimes baroque western aesthetics
We're just going to pretend that Japanese web design is identical to the rest of the world's, and that Japanese homes aren't half the size of elsewhere such that every horizontal and vertical service is commonly used for storage.
I live in Japan and in the rare event that there is an online option when I need to do something related to government documents, banking, insurance, or the like, all I can think is-- "wtf is this, geocities?".
It's always a clunky, awkward, boxed in mess of text that is a miracle in the case that it actually works. But that's just the way it is here. Lots of elderly, and the elderly prefer a nice helpful receptionist, I guess?
According to my Japanese GF, the elders don't understand it either. She had to setup some banking services for her dad and it was a painful mess, but doing it in person is equally annoying. So at this point it is a fucking mystery who actually likes the system and why nobody tries to change anything.
Cultural differences, especially with increased tourism in Japan lately. There's a lot we can learn from each other and people like to share their experiences. Is it really that surprising these topics come up more often?
As I understand it, Japan is seen to be like a parallel universe where the American South successfully seceded but became technologically advanced, even surpassing the North in some areas (by adopting a Meiji type constitutional monarchy)
Having been to Japan several times… and actually studying Japanese studies… I can see why you're saying this but it's very superficial. None of the southern "essence" that caused the split & war is there in Japan at this point. Or do you mean it's as if the South seceded, then proceeded to lose anyway due their policies being a natural disadvantage, and then developed, out-northing the North?
What is characteristic of "the American South" here?
When I lived in Japan and was asked "Why are you interested in Japan?", I used to respond "It is the only non-Western country(at the time) where I have seen an extremely high level of technical/economic development and it is interesting to see similiarities/differences". (This is of course, long long before the rise of modern China)
The society is based so strongly on group cohesion and de-emphasis of the individual, the experience of living there is very, very different than the West.
I think that this "deep cultural difference" is what the original comment was trying to get at. Sadly the reference point of "American South" ended up triggering a different (less useful) trajectory for the responses.
The kind of group cohesion you have in Japan tiday wasn't quite all there during the Meiji era (they'd just come out of a civil war, after all. Then there were also sporadic uprisings for decades after
That does actually kinda make sense, but it works very differently... the politeness is anything but superficial (even counters the racism and xenophobia to a limited degree, but also hides it, coming out to ±0), and the latter two are indeed present but coded as to be ashamed of rather than proud… (unfortunately the coding of shame is also different and doesn't spurn action).
It actually makes it harder to tackle the discrimination, since it's not openly admitted. Glass walls and ceiling.
The biggest historical commonality between the American South and Japan - or, at least, the Tokugawa shogunate that was ruling around the same time as the South - was that both of them were at one point ruled by a cabal of essentially feudal lords. There is a lot of convergent social evolution that happens when your country's economic elite all make their money by owning land - lots of strange social titles, honorifics start floating around, people start talking around problems, and the like. However, this comparison is only skin deep, and there's plenty of things the Tokugawas did that have no parallel, or even worked backwards, to what happened in the historically contemporaneous American south:
- Sakoku (the policy of keeping Japan completely closed to trade and immigration).
- While America generally has had a long streak of veneration of the police, they never reinvented anything close to the samurai in terms of being a hereditary warrior class with a tax stipend.
- Likewise, the American South did not have a caste system; Japan did (and so did France?!?)
This makes more sense when you remember that the Tokugawa shogunate itself is the time reversal of the American South: the Tokugawas were born out of a long civil war and ended with a foreign invasion (from America) while the American South was born from foreign invasion (of Americans) and ended with a civil war.
The American South is also, interestingly enough, a mirror of Japan in other dimensions as well. The reason why the Tokugawas shut the country's borders for hundreds of years was because they understood that Christian missionaries were a front for a larger invasion force that would pillage the country's resources and abduct people to become slaves in other countries. Of course, the South was buying slaves abducted in other countries in massive quantities.
Going back to the convergent social evolution I mentioned before, you can see some of this in Japan today. Kyoto is notorious for doing exactly the same kind of backhanded compliment bullshit the South loves doing. But even then, that's one part of Japan, that was formerly the capital city. One stop on the Shinkansen takes you to Osaka where people are about as open and outgoing as Americans are.
> The reason why the Tokugawas shut the country's borders for hundreds of years was because they understood that Christian missionaries were a front for a larger invasion force that would pillage the country's resources and abduct people to become slaves in other countries.
They simply didn't want another religion. Buddhism was already troublesome enough with a long history of popular uprisings and many monasteries having become as powerful as daimyos. Oda Nobunaga had been mostly tolerant of religions and also of Christians, but he is infamous for bloody curbing their power. The Tokugawa didn't want any of that from happening again, regardless which religion.
There was also a strong motivation to deflate the power of the port cities. They were often in the hands of untrusted daimyos because the Tokugawa prioritized controlling inland regions with farmland and important road connections to keep the economy running and to ensure that troops could be deployed everywhere and kept supplied in case of rebellions.
You may think that because of the nationalism, but that's a superficial similarity. Outside western europeans, almost everyone is nationalistic, so that's not a useful characteristic in comparing societies. Aside from that, the American south is more like the Arab world/India--disorderly, combative, face-saving culture, and food-, family-, and faith-centric. The Japanese are much more like Mormons.
Good. AI is a game changer. It's like having an expert sitting next to you at all times. It's understandable why all these experts who want to gatekeep don't like AI, but ultimately, AI will win out, it's just too good.
Hard agree. I've felt it already during outages or when I was traveling and didn't have internet on a flight, I couldn't function at the same level. I've been writing code for over 25 years, worked at the top big tech companies (still do) and it's remarkable how quickly I became dependent on AI.
Take a week or two off a quarter to do it manually. I did it a couple weeks ago and it took about a day or two to get back into the swing of it and knock the rust off, no pun since it was TS, YMMV, but I didn't find that it was that difficult. Even in languages I don't really write routinely, as long as you use the deterministic tools (lsp, linter, etc)
Now, is my code better than the AI's equivalent implementation? No shot. It's nicer for people, artisanal hand crafted, but... there's a reason I use AI.
It's not even that I'm slower at manual coding anymore, though I very well could be, it's that my expectation of my own progress has shifted. I'll be frustrated to only get a fraction of what I could have done.
Oh, fair enough, my goal was just to preserve "if Anthropic and OpenAI are having a bad day, and the local model on my laptop is too dumb to pour water out of a pot with the instructions on the bottom, how do I fix a bug", I accepted a long time ago that my productivity is going to be 0.1x if I have to go back.
If you're cut off for some reason, you won't code -- but if you're cut off from a power plant, you also won't code. We're reaching the end of scalability for human brains, so we're offloading it.
Sure, it means that selling intellectual labor is reaching the end of the line, and the value of learning will drop, but there's a lot more wealth that will be generated.
It's my understanding that this same debate raged when writing became a thing. Many viewed it with suspicious, or derision, as memorization was the big intellectual thing. So writing and reading back to remember was terrible. It's true it was a dependence, but the value was too high. With reading and writing a person could work on and synthesize from a far wider range of concurrent materials than one could with just memorization and recitation. Yeah, it's lame cheating, but writing enables a lot and so it won out.
Yeah, exactly -- when we automated muscles in the industrial revolution, it was fine. Today, we're automating thinking. And, while there are people that still lift weights for fun, it's not needed professionally any more. I think we'll end up in the same place with thinking -- education is probably going to be a hobby, not a requirement.
In any case you can say the exact same thing about reading. Take the book away and bam, you know nothing. A person who memorized the book is not dependent on an expensive, heavy thing like a book.
Experts don't want to 'gatekeep'. Experts have been producing FOSS for the benefits of everyone, and liberally answering questions on mailing lists, stack overflow etc for free.
Experts have been badly bitten by poorly written and badly architected software, lost their hairs trying to figure out bugs and poor design.
They recognize the first version of a piece of software is only a miniscule percentage of the work and majority of effort goes into maintenaning it for its lifetime.
They are viscerally horrified at a thousands of LoC codebase generated at the speed of GPU inference they are to be responsible for.
Yeah but only those experts could do that. Now average people can do what experts were doing, and the experts don't like that. They want to be unique. Same concept as "I knew that song before it was popular on the radio"
tl;dw -- louisiana has a ton of natural resources and wonderful harbors, but has allowed corporations to get away with almost anything without paying their fair share of taxes, cleaning up their waste, or generally being held accountable. And likely related, there is a long history of rampant corruption in the area. With sea levels rising and cancerous pollution filling densely populated areas, life in Louisiana has generally become very difficult :(
I haven't had time to watch the video but my understanding was a lot of the Louisiana coast have big problems with rising sea levels and much of it in the process of falling underwater. Perhaps it's relatively trivial to reinforce the coast for the forseeable I don't know.
The plans for the site involve extracting significant amounts of natural gas to make methane to burn for the rocket fuel. If they hit the launch levels they suggest (thousands of launches per year), this is not a small amount of greenhouse gases they'll be emitting which of course helps accelerate melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels, which could threaten the very site they've built it on.
They're also the folks working on the largest co2 -> methane converters in the world. Because that's how they'll need to make fuel on Mars, and no one else on earth wants to fund an expensive technology to replace an inexpensive gas pumped from the ground. By definition, these reactors will have to be capable of producing enough fuel for a rocket in order to be fit for purpose. That opens the door for carbon neutral operation. It's tough to imagine a greener rocket than a fully reusable one that's carbon neutral running on methane. Sure beats spewing hypergolics or solid rocket fuels.
What are the chances they'll employ cheap labor they can just use as election fodder for stealing hard-working american jobs?
Either that or pay decent wages for American workers that'll drive up construction prices and worsen the inflation which is already crazy due to these criminal tariffs.
They put themselves in that situation, the US admin, not me. I'm just commenting. Or is any of what I said wrong? I mean there's something called ITAR that requires American workers, but that doesn't mean the impact on inflation isn't real
To be clear, ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) restricts certain roles to "US persons". This is a weird term in US immigration/nationality law. A permanent resident (green-card holder) is classified as a "US person". As a result, SpaceX can employ non-US citizens for ITAR regulated roles.
That's a very narrow view of inflation. If you increase wages, there's more demand for goods, more demand means higher prices which means higher inflation. Same with tariffs, they are paid when importing goods, which is passed onto the consumer, resulting in higher prices and thus inflation.
It's the only correct one. For proof, consider the inflation that happened when Spain looted gold from S. America, then during the California Gold Rush, then the Yukon Gold Rush.
So you are applying economic dynamics from the... gold rush to the modern era? You do realise gold isn't the base value for dollar since 1933 at least.
Which money? The real money comes from the working class that make the world run, if it's manual labor, creative labor or managerial. The fake money comes from speculation.
How do you feel about people like me who own a home (multiple homes actually), have dozens of cameras around it, with license plate readers, and work with local police? As I enter retirement I plan on starting an open source style project where others can join a network of home owners that can upload video/data (with license plate number, bluetooth identifiers, etc) and have this publicly accessible and free. Cars have dashcams that we can integrate. Ring doorbells, etc. I made a fortune off of big tech at a relatively young age, now it's time to apply what I've learned toward my passion projects
I’d be happy to contribute to this effort, be it financial or technical or just uploading my video sources (home camera feeds and Teslas). I’m retired with young kids and community safety is a top priority for me. Some local police departments here (Orange County) would probably appreciate this as well.
I’ve always thought millions of camera-equipped cars on the road combined with AI/ML would be an excellent tool for catching criminals.
This is just crowdsourcing a surveillance state. For now, people can still record everyone passing by their property (not even through!), although there's an argument for changing it because your right to recognize people out of your window shouldn't automatically imply a right to digitally catalogue every one of them 24/7.
But even if we take the legal status quo. The ability to automatically tag people moving through different areas is what is really dangerous. Both well-meaning people going after criminals as well as stalkers, vigilantes and private businesses that will find a way to scrape this data love the idea.
Bluntly, whatever risks Flock has, this has too. Just about the only thing this would have over Flock is that it would be not for profit, which is not the concern people are expressing over the automated mass surveillance of everyone. Enjoy your fortune, please stop trying to bring online surveillance to the real world to watch over the rest of us. I'm still young, I want to live in the world that you lived in, not the hellhole that everyone is enthusiastically trying to turn it into now. We did just fine in the 20th century when violent crime rates were obscene compared to now, I'm sure we will survive without this.
There had always been some incentive for manufactures to publish device documentation, and yet it has often been quite lacking either in quality or overall existence. I doubt LLM/agents being the readers will change that at all. What I expect AI scraping and using without credit will impact is people publishing their own unofficial help and guidance, and the affect there is likely to be negative. It won't stop all of them, but enough to be noticeable. Another possible negative is the manufactures documentation being AI generated without sufficient review, so possibly more erroneous than before, or intentionally not producing full documentation at all and expecting AI to fill the gap (MS seems to be heading this way: pushing "ask copilot" all over Azure instead of links direct to good reference material). All this would add up to a situation that is somewhere between "a little worse than pre-AI" and "an absolute shit show".
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