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heylook commented on AI fakes duel over impeachment of Vice-President in Phillipines   factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp... · Posted by u/anigbrowl
baxtr · 2 months ago
Text can be mass faked since Guttenberg, photograph since at least decades.

What makes you think fake videos will have an outsized impact?

heylook · 2 months ago
A picture is worth a thousand words.
heylook commented on AI fakes duel over impeachment of Vice-President in Phillipines   factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp... · Posted by u/anigbrowl
rightbyte · 2 months ago
I don't agree. 3 letter agencies have been able to fake videos since the inception of videos. Even more so with CGI.

It has always been about trust in the authors.

The main difference is petty fakes would be cheap. I.e. my wife could be shown a fake portraying me for whatever malicious reasons.

heylook · 2 months ago
You're being obtuse. There's an obvious difference between "state-level actors can produce misleading films" and "anyone with an internet connection and 5 minutes can make anything they want".
heylook commented on US Supreme Court limits federal judges' power to block Trump orders   theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/leotravis10
hayst4ck · 2 months ago
Did this centralize power or distribute power?

Is the constitution more protected or less protected?

Will trump have a harder time breaking the law or an easier time?

Many in this thread arguing about the legal minutiae of a system that only became problematic in the context of an anti-constitution anti-law president... and I just don't understand. I don't understand what reality you're living in where this is something to defend.

heylook · 2 months ago
> I don't understand what reality you're living in where this is something to defend.

Hacker news has become a much more depressing place post-Covid. Musk, Zuck, the All-In guys, Bezos, Altman. All of them role models for the people here, and all of them have gone mask-off to one degree or another in their pursuit of power and wealth and public adulation.

One side of the hacker/startup coin is "look at how I [built this company|escalated privilege|retired early] by [twisting the rules of the system|exploiting a loophole|penetration testing]", and that ethos isn't entirely that far away from "did you know you can get the laws changed just by spending $50k on a senator?" or "Twitter only needs 50 engineers as long as they're all H1-B hostages".

It really feels like what we've lost is empathy and humanity.

heylook commented on How to negotiate your salary package   complexsystemspodcast.com... · Posted by u/surprisetalk
esseph · 2 months ago
Seems like a fight against reality
heylook · 2 months ago
There are plenty of places where this is the standard.

Anecdote time: I joined a not-quite-FAANG in an acquihire. Some of my teammates negotiated hard on the way in; I did not. After I got into management, I learned that they're perfectly willing to give you an extra $10k on your initial salary offer, but then you just get a lower raise after the first year, so everyone ends up in the same spot almost immediately anyway. The $10k was a rounding error in the total comp, and anyway they preferred to have steady employees who could be happy in a good situation for many years, rather than mercenaries who were more likely to chase vanity metrics and leave half-finished projects when they left in 18 months. Equity comp was generous and non-negotiable.

heylook commented on College baseball, venture capital, and the long maybe   bcantrill.dtrace.org/2025... · Posted by u/bcantrill
dmurray · 2 months ago
What's the rationale for funding those niche sports?

Mostly if a university gets some extra no-strings-attached funding it will set up a new research lab or endow a new chair or build new buildings or perhaps just stick it in the bank or give all the senior administrators a raise.

They could get this windfall money by cutting funding to rowing, but they don't. Is it somehow advantageous to invest sports money back into sports?

I know there's a mandate through Title IX to fund women's sports, and sometimes they have to be pretty creative to find "sports" they can spend enough money on that engage the women students, but that doesn't explain what I'm asking about.

heylook · 2 months ago
> What's the rationale for funding those niche sports?

You've been capitalism-pilled. Sometimes it's worth funding things that "aren't worth funding". Not everything needs to return an easily measurable 10% YoY. Investing in the richness of experience for your population or student body or community is a good thing, even if it doesn't always pay itself back in an obvious way. Well-rounded people are happier, more resilient, and yes, more productive.

Don't blow the whole budget on underwater basket-weaving, but investing a bit in enrichment and supporting niches is an important part of life.

heylook commented on US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists   apnews.com/article/spywar... · Posted by u/01-_-
edanm · 2 months ago
If you're claiming that Iran's government is somehow morally equivalent to Italy's, you're massively wrong.

It's not about "the white mans burden", whatever that means. It's about Iran's government not being democratically elected, being massively unpopular with its own populace that can't do anything about it cause it's not a democracy, enforcing religious laws on people that often don't want them, not respecting minorities. And oh, btw, investing billions of dollars in promoting terror all across the Middle East, with the stated goal of eradicating Israel (and, eventually, the US).

So, I don't really care how Iran's rulers feel about the US - they're evil. If you can't recognize that, you've lost the plot.

heylook · 2 months ago
> It's not about "the white mans burden", whatever that means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

I'm not reading the arguments closely enough to make a judgement, but the reference is to an imagined moral imperative to spread "civilization" and whatnot to "lesser" cultures and peoples. We covered it in high school where I grew up.

heylook commented on Building supercomputers for autocrats probably isn't good for democracy   helentoner.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/rbanffy
exiguus · 3 months ago
I'm not entirely convinced that nations will play as significant a role in the coming decades as they have historically. Currently, we observe a trend where affluent individuals are increasingly consolidating power, a phenomenon that is becoming more apparent in the public sphere. Notably, these individuals are also at the forefront of owning and controlling advancements in artificial intelligence. Coincidentally, this trend is often referred to as 'tech fascism,' bringing us back to the dictator schema.
heylook · 3 months ago
Focusing on "nations" specifically is a waste of effort. "Power structures" generically are enough. It doesn't matter whether it's technofascist fiefs, nation-states, the Illuminati, or an up-jumped HOA.
heylook commented on Building supercomputers for autocrats probably isn't good for democracy   helentoner.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/rbanffy
fooker · 3 months ago
> that it is only practical

You're missing the point, it doesn't have to be practical, only the illusion of it working is good enough.

And if authoritarian governments believe it works well enough, they are happy to let a decent fraction of false positives fall through the cracks.

See for example, polygraph tests being used in court.

heylook · 3 months ago
Exactly. The President of the United States held up a terribly photoshopped picture of some tattoos and claimed it clearly showed membership in MS13. Half the country immediately decided that was good enough proof for extrajudicial rendition. Authoritarians only care about a thin enough veneer of evidence to give them just enough cover with just enough people to get away with what they want and then move onto the next thing.
heylook commented on US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/master_crab
k4shm0n3y · 3 months ago
No question the executive has had its powers extended beyond the original vision, but I don't often see the same criticism of the judiciary. Judges are more akin to a monarch than the US executive (courtroom is their kingdom), with very little recourse for ordinary citizens.
heylook · 3 months ago
Except judges can't do anything proactively and are forced to rely on the executive to enforce their decisions and the legislative to fund them. Really, they're absolutely nothing like a monarch. Especially compared to the guy who appoints all the secretaries, commands the military, and decides foreign policy.
heylook commented on US Trade Court finds Trump tariffs illegal   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/master_crab
rayiner · 3 months ago
The court’s power is limited to determining whether the President made a finding in the nature of the finding required by the law. What the court can’t do is then second guess that finding—analyzing it substantively to determine whether it is correct or not.
heylook · 3 months ago
That's just not true. This case is a specific example of exactly the opposite. Read the opinion. It's literally a panel of federal court judges, one a Trump appointee, going through each justification and calling bullshit on each one.

u/heylook

KarmaCake day242July 15, 2017View Original