Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | ncomments login

A rule that dates back to when books were rare, expensive, and useful I suspect.

Many books are just electronic garbage at this point, and backing them all up is like going to a landfill and saying "We should make another one, exactly like this one, in case this landfill proves to be valuable to someone, someday."

It might be useful for LLM training to produce garbage. Although many say they already do a good job at that already.


Hmm, maybe we need some "Over2Chars' Future Value Law of Garbage" that says for any pile of garbage there is someone who thinks it will be extremely valuable to someone someday.

How plausible the argument to the value is depends on the eloquence of the person under the Law.

This is the logic of hoarders everywhere.


Most of these EV companies in China are going bankrupt, selling each car at a loss. Recently, Ji Yum Auto, founded by Baidu and Neely, shut down last December. A live streamer was live streaming selling the car. Upon hearing the news, she was bawling and told the listener to not to check out the car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYdm2K81bW0.

As Chinese EV makers close, drivers of “smartphones on wheels” say software updates and maintenance are in jeopardy. https://restofworld.org/2024/ev-company-shutdowns-china/


I agree! 90% of all books shouldn't be backed up.

Providing service to sparsely populated rural areas is a good fit for Starlink, but doesn't justify the astronomical cost of the system: they need the "I got rid of Comcast and life has never been better" crowd for that, and they can't do that without inevitably running out of spectrum, bandwidth and physical space in the sky.

So, while technically very interesting, and providing some value before it all comes inevitably (and literally -- see: space junk) crashing down, all that talent and money spent on Starlink would better be put to use elsewhere.

But unfortunately it's easier to get investment for space dreams than for running fiber, even though it's the latter that's mostly needed, and despite plenty of success stories.


Hmm... Godwin's law much?

My argument is that the symbolic rejection, not the practical destruction of books, was important. Also, I pointed out through a subtle (too subtle for you so I'll spell it out: this is a wholly irrelevant argument - arguing that books don't deserve to be backed up has nothing to do with book burning) - so I played along - as I noted. Get it?

The practical destruction of all books considered non-German, or Gandhi's destruction of all British fabrics - might have been a desire, but there's no need to publicly burn books to destroy them. They can be efficiently destroyed privately. The Nazi's could have destroyed all the books they liked in some private little place.

Ergo, my argument stands! PUBLIC book burning is about PUBLIC rejection of something (non-German elements, or Foreign made goods, etc) and may in fact be less efficient than simply quietly and privately putting them in a landfill which no one will see. Get it?

I'm not making stuff up about World War Two, I'm arguing about a ridiculous analogy to not backing up romance novels being akin to book burning. Apparently, not wanting to back up romance novels and cookbooks makes one a holocaust denier. Go Hacker News.

Mr. Godwin? Are you around?


What are those games being run?

Anyone who takes a position you don't like is, presumably, a troll.

Well, it takes one to know one. So there.


Are we talking spacetime?

The ability to do less than worthwhile things, at reasonable cost and effort, hardly implies the necessity or justification for it.

There are lots of worthless things we can do, quite practically. Let's not do them and say we did.


41% of all future historians will be AI LLMs. Hell, I'd be surprised if there are any historians in the future at all, honestly.

As the saying goes GIGO. In case you're not familiar with the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in%2C_garbage_out

Let's back up ALL the garbage. Someday it will be mined as gold, by hypothetical and probably never to exist future historians.


This seems to be the new hotness is generic replies.

"No, I think you're an LLM-powered bot! So there!"


Hello Mr/Ms/Xe @globnomulous,

1) tldr: you're wrong. I am not suggesting that "backing up books" is subjective or subject to biases. You'll need to reread my response: I'm talking about the judgement of doing so. And deciding that it is worthwhile (or not, as I joked with my made up 41%) is a judgement that is subjective and biased (if you subscribe to that sort of world view).

2) tldr: you're wrong. I openly indicate in my reply that I am exaggerating and extending his position (a reductio ad absurdam for you Romans reading this). However, he is suggesting that my position is wrong, or should give me reason to hesitate, as it might be "biased" et al. So I think my take is quite on the money. If you think your actions are biased and subject to historical revision, are you going to march along confidently? Or will your fingers tremble at the next book burning while you wonder "will history condemn me for this?"

3)tldr: you're wrong again. You resort to ad hominem attacks after demonstrating a complete inability to understand my position. I'd say you demonstrate both your intelligence (or lack thereof) and worth as a being (or lack thereof). I suggest you consider the unbiased subjective absence of your existence as a priority.

4) tdlr: I expected nonsensical windbaggery, and you delivered! Thank you. You advanced exactly zero of the positions involved and reduced this thread to garbage. YOU are the cancer killing the internet. Have a nice day.


LOl, at least someone has a sense of humour here :-)

Indeed, enforcing brackets here would be the proper fix, IMHO. :)

I always use brackets too. That's simply a less error-prone style.


Bernie

they shouldn't, but my point was everyone is a hypocrite here, because secretly we know that protectionism is necessary, and it works - despite proclamations that companies in a capitalist model embrace competition and employees want meritocracy.

TaoClock emerged from my journey in AI art creation. After months of exploring and refining prompts, I accumulated a collection of artworks that captured a unique blend of serenity and beauty. Rather than keeping these pieces private, I wanted to share them in a meaningful way - as dynamic backgrounds for a minimalist clock that everyone could enjoy.

I can't help but notice (believe me, I'm trying not to notice!) that this comment is getting some downvotes. I'd love it if a downvoter could let me know why they're downvoting, and how I can improve!

I had a terrible experience trying to load the SF Rec and Parks website on my phone a few weeks back, and checking the PageSpeed Insights showed that I wasn't the only one. I spent some weeks putting together a new site, using Selenium to crawl and scrape the original site content and a Haskell script to parse the HTML and translate it into Markdown for Hugo. Wanted to share here in case anyone else found this interesting/useful, I'm planning to refresh the site weekly.

I am at the point I just browse arXiv because everything else sounds like bullshit.

Not that arXiv doesn't contain bullshit also but outside of that, in English at least, the internet has completely failed.


It’s a know phenomenon. A friend of mine had a reasonably important public office position. Always on the phone, constantly demanded, giving interviews, etc. The first few months after a change in administration were a great relief. A year after being let go and he was devastated. No one called, knew or cared who he was. There’s probably a name for this syndrome.

Uncle Bob approved this article!!

Incredible history, I feel like Clojure makes magic. What I like about functional programming is that it brings other perspectives of how things CAN work!!

Congratulations by the life change


neat

Or maybe they're discriminating against no one now?

Every change came with pros and crons, I believe that you can't employ people based on personal characteristics, genre, race, and etc. But if person fit the requirements of the open job, what important is the skill.

I know that world ins't fair, and some people (like me by example) have to put more efforts that others, but this is life, we have to conquer our space and be pride by our achievements.


Can home-educated teenagers with government issued ID join? Throughout the site, high school student and teenager seem to be used interchangeably. At https://hack.club/high-seas-faq: "Who can participate in High Seas?" "Anyone 18 or under can participate in High Seas![...]" "Why do I have to verify?" "We need to make sure that you’re a high school student.[...]" "What form of ID is accepted?" "A government issued ID (eg. drivers license or passport), or A dated school ID[...]"

block access with Tiananmen Square date. google it and read up, might help

Purn hub

You do not understand the difference between inspiration and copyright infringement, do you? Inspiration is using an idea from another work to create something new by using your own skill, labor, judgment, and effort, while copyright infringement is copying a substantial part of someone else's work.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: