First time I hear about oil shell. Funny name, but that aside, I have a hard time taking a shell seriously that started out written in python. They describe it as having "python-like types", interesting. And they say it's a shell targeted at people who "write scripts, which may get into the hundreds or even thousands of lines" rather than end-users. If you write complex scripts, please use a proper language. Also, I've been writing "complex" bash scripts since ages, and of course it can be somewhat annoying with bash's quirks. But it runs almost everywhere without extra dependencies, which is the main reason I use it. If I had to install oil on all machines running my scripts, why wouldn't I go ahead and use rather go and distribute binaries? Well, my guess is this will never catch on.
(sarcastic take on the article) Well, thank god it can only be used for Russian or Chinese disinformation. We just need to ban anything Russian or Chinese and we are safe! Do avoid mass outrage among our own western population, we can facilitate tools like ChatGPT to make it appear there's a broad consensus among the population for these measures, and to automatically attack all criticism with consistent talking points. Democracy is saved!
I keep seeing artist use acrylic paint, such a blatant rip off of long established art styles. This has to stop.
EDIT: let me take this opportunity to also point out how better copyright enforcement could have saved us from the likes of this fraud Picasso, who just ripped off the style of Braque
>Hotter take: ML would have advanced faster if another front-end language had been available and widely adopted instead of Python.
One that is interactive yet fast & compilable, multithreaded (no GIL), isn't bloated, doesn't care about white spaces,...
E.g. Julia or some Lisp.
> Even hotter take: the fact that ML and Computer Vision researchers were largely using Matlab held back progress for years, mostly because implementing something like a ConvNet in 2005 Matlab would have been a total nightmare.
And there are arguments back and forth about that. It’s funny, though, because a lot of the leading 1990s-2000s ML work was default-Matlab and people mostly loved it. Kevin Murphy used to advise Mathworks on bayes net implementation, and a lot of researchers from that time really liked the “numerical shell” that the Matlab REPL offered.
But of course one can see Yann’s point that the lack of clean capability for abstractions (I think struct’s came in the later 90s, lambda’s in the mid 2000s?) and licensing costs did hold the field back.
I did the original machine learning coursera course from Andrew ng, the homeworks in matlab were a horrible experience, seared into my memory till this day.
Sorry, I did not check the repo itself, I don't think I even have a cvs client anymore. On the linked page there's a section prominently placed, titled "Latest News". If you check there, the latest of such news is titled "A first Lush 2.0 beta is out!" with a date of 2009-10-19.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US? And what would be an example of a "large hierarchical structure" without a clear "outside"?
Can you give me an example of such a position? I would argue that, for example, social programs in Europe are more popular, but still following a left-leaning position that is just more broadly accepted
Having universal health insurance available for everyone is a consensus opinion in Germany, no party disagrees with that. In the US "socialized medicine" is a controversial topic.
That's because we (in Europe) didn't know anything else and people are reluctant to change seeing the negative PR coming out of US. I'm pretty sure majority of people in Europe hate how our massive taxation is for the most part wasted.
Generalizing over the entirety of Europe is not useful, the countries and political positions are too diverse for that.
And at least in Germany I don't see anyone questioning universal healthcare. There are of course discussions on the details, but nobody is trying to abolish it. And while there are inefficiencies, the US health care system is even less efficient. So we would not save any money by making our system worse.
So a consensus position is by definition center? So (democratic) countries can't lean to either side of the spectrum because by definition their positions are supported by the majority, and thus a center position?
It depends on how you’re defining “the spectrum” of healthcare policy. If you placed all European nations on a spectrum comparing their healthcare systems, Germany would be on the right of the spectrum because the private sector has a significant role in their healthcare system. Countries like the UK and Denmark would be on the left of the spectrum because their healthcare system is mostly public. Germany’s healthcare system is only left-leaning if you include the US on the spectrum.
I don't mean a majority supports this position, I mean that really nobody opposes it at all. The US Republican position on health care is entirely outside the German political spectrum, it does not exist here in any party that is represented in parliament.
Typically, if there is no majority in opposition of a position, it is typically referred to as "consensus". I do not understand your argument. Germany has a left-leaning position on health care, historically introduced and defended by left-aligned parties but generally accepted across the spectrum. Just because the far right does not want to abolish socialized health care does not make it a center position, at least that is the argument I am trying to make
Hm, that was the whole point of my argument I believe. That this is an inherent left-leaning position, regardless of who is subscribing to it; possibly because in the discussion on how to handle such healthcare, it defends the social and idealistic dimension ("left") rather than the self-responsible and pessimistic perspective ("right"). Now we can argue about political relativism and that no position is inherently and objectively "left" or "right" and it only depends on who articulates that position - and as you might have guessed this is an idea that I am slightly opposed to. Of course we can start with the Overton window and shifting beliefs and the possibility than in a century from now on, universal healthcare might be considered, for whatever reason, a hardcore right-wing extremist position.
That's an American perspective. The right, in Europe, support universal healthcare (because they own the companies that provide the services and receive the tax money). It's been this way for a very long time.
Therefore, characterising Europe as left wing on this issue is a mistake.
I believe the position you're starting from is already biased by the notion that only a left/right directionality can exist and that other degrees of freedom are not allowed in political systems. Of course this is why I think first past the post the the R/D split in the US is so bad.
Well even if you disregard ideologies, just the legislations that are in place influence what the center of a position could be.
For example in my country our right wing government had made good on a right wing promise to increase the maximum highway speed from 120kph to 130kph.
Some years later however it turned out that the presence of highways contributed to dangerous levels of nitric oxides (edited from nitrogen) in the air and a judge forced that same administration to reduce the maximum speed from 130kph to 100kph.
Now legislation (and reality) has changed a right wing position from being "disregard the environment, prioritise economy and increase the speed" to "disregard health, prioritise economy and increase the speed". The same position was basically transformed into a more extreme position due to the circumstances changing.
I imagine that same thing holds for many topics. It sure feels a lot more extreme to advocate gun regulation when doing so in opposition of school shooting victims. I generally support the idea of gun ownership, but the shootings definitely forced me to have a more nuanced opinion that shifted my position from the conservative side to the progressive side.
Dutch media is terrible and refuses to name the actual compounds involved (NOx and NH3) because that would require them to distinguish between the different sources of this pollution. So they've just been calling it "nitrogen" and so you get people repeating the assertion that there are dangerous levels of "nitrogen" in the air.
This heavily depends on which part of policies you take into account. Many European countries are shifting to the right concerning migration. But when looking at the fiscal / economic policies of for example the PVV in the Netherlands (the far-right party of Geert Wilders) you will find that those policies are very comparable to left-wing parties.
that's what most people in Europe refuse to see. is common for even left-wing Europeans to hate on certain ethnicities, on other nationalities, to be very nationalistic in general.
What a weird argument. I guess you also don't use encryption ever because authoritarian governments can just extort the keys from you. Somehow I doubt you grew up in an USSR country or ever cared about the life back then in more detail
Encouraging children to read is not covered by the law. You read the article.
Having a library of books is an easy way to encourage literacy, probably even the best way. It is not the only way.
Far more important to the development of literacy in children is the presence of books in the home. There are decades of statistics on the impact of just having a stack of books in the same home as the child.
All of this is also failing to touch on the problem that drew this overreaction. To be sure it is a huge over-extension of what the government ought to do. But the thing it was a reaction to... That never had anything to do with literacy, and everything to do with ideology. When one uses literacy as the shield, and depends on the perpetual good graces of people one has spent years demonizing on ideological grounds, one should expect damage to the very thing everyone thought was sacrosanct.
> Far more important to the development of literacy in children is the presence of books in the home.
Of course, but that's not something schools have control over. Unless they can give a child a book on loan to take home. And that requires books in the school. And because different children have different interests and different reading issues, a wide selection of books is better than a narrow one.
> That never had anything to do with literacy, and everything to do with ideology.
Do you mean that the ban is about ideology, sacrificing children's access to reading in order to indoctrinate them into a state-approved ideology?
> When one uses literacy as the shield, and depends on the perpetual good graces of people one has spent years demonizing on ideological grounds, one should expect damage to the very thing everyone thought was sacrosanct.
They clearly don't think it's sacrosanct if they're sacrificing it this eagerly to hurt the people they want to demonize. I guess we're talking about gay people here? They want to demonize gay people, and want to restrict the book supply in order to indoctrinate children with that?
Best I can tell these new laws apply to all grade levels. What justifiable reason is there for limiting what books high schoolers can access other than "I don't want my kid to come across facts or opinions that might contradict my worldview."
High schoolers are going through puberty and many are sexually active so statutes (s. 847.012) banning "detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement" in books are just puritanical nonsense. That would definitely rule out ASOIAF and probably 1984. I'm pretty sure it would even rule out some young adult novels I read in high school and high schoolers are the target audience.
For lower grade levels I suppose there is maybe a more reasonable argument to be had over what is age appropriate but "felony for unapproved books" seems like a pretty absurd conclusion to reach.
Frankly I don't think I need any cover to demonize parents calling for book bans.
I think the disconnect is that some parents see children as property to be managed and controlled, and many other adults see children as individuals with agency and autonomy (to the extent that is developmentally appropriate).
I also believe that most of this backlash is about children being able to freely access information that contradicts their parents' worldview. I have also seen strict parents punish their children for expressing differing beliefs and values. Queer kids get physically abused by their religious parents. I absolutely believe schools should be a safe place for students to learn and experiment with ideas and values.
Not to mention, strict informational control has long been a mechanism for abuse. I think there's probably a nexus between parents who object to their kids reading what they want and parents who utilize various physical and psychological abuses as "discipline".
Exactly. Conservatives try to paint this as protecting their kids from left-wing ideology, but it's really about being able to force right-wing ideology on them.
I'd strongly prefer exposing kids, in an age-appropriate manner, of course, to the whole breadth of human ideology and life experiences, with different views on it, and teaching them to think for themselves.
But mostly, I've got a kid that's struggling to read, but has a couple of very strong interests (trains!) that I leverage to get him to read more. Restricting the diversity of books available because they need to go through some slow approval process first, will make it harder for him to access books that he's eager to read. Because the whitelisting process means that even books that aren't even the slightest bit objectionable, won't necessarily be available, and may have to wait until more mainstream books have been approved.
This page states it was introduced with 1.7, which was released a long time ago (maybe 2 years?) and it's still in prototype stage since. I have never used it since then, and given how bad the less popular parts of PyTorch tend to be, I'd be reluctant to even trying. Quickly checking I see some active development going on there still, however. I guess mostly to get stuff on Android
Almost more interesting in that article I found that Sama, the Kenyan company, was also asked to collect CP and brutal/gore images for OpenAI. After delivering 1400 images, Sama cancelled the contract as this was even too much for them. OpenAI then talked about "miscommunication" and they actually did not really want those CP images. Well, they made its own category for it and asked Sama to collect images of several other categories, but somehow it was lost in communication that for one of theses categories, no images should be collected. Because they are illegal. OpenAI swears they never opened the images they received (and paid for).
Is there a source for this claim? This would be life-ending for OpenAI if true.
edit: This is mentioned in the original article. From TFA:
>Sama delivered OpenAI a sample batch of 1,400 images. Some of those images were categorized as “C4”—OpenAI’s internal label denoting child sexual abuse—according to the document. Also included in the batch were “C3” images (including bestiality, rape, and sexual slavery,) and “V3” images depicting graphic detail of death, violence or serious physical injury, according to the billing document. OpenAI paid Sama a total of $787.50 for collecting the images, the document shows.
> Within weeks, Sama had canceled all its work for OpenAI—eight months earlier than agreed in the contracts. The outsourcing company said in a statement that its agreement to collect images for OpenAI did not include any reference to illegal content, and it was only after the work had begun that OpenAI sent “additional instructions” referring to “some illegal categories.” “The East Africa team raised concerns to our executives right away. Sama immediately ended the image classification pilot and gave notice that we would cancel all remaining [projects] with OpenAI,” a Sama spokesperson said. “The individuals working with the client did not vet the request through the proper channels. After a review of the situation, individuals were terminated and new sales vetting policies and guardrails were put in place.”
> Well, they made its own category for it and asked Sama to collect images of several other categories, but somehow it was lost in communication that for one of theses categories, no images should be collected.
Be careful here. Read the article closely, here is what it says:
> [Sama] said in a statement that its agreement to collect images for OpenAI did not include any reference to illegal content, and it was only after the work had begun that OpenAI sent “additional instructions” referring to “some illegal categories.”
Note how carefully this is worded - if Time could confidently say that OpenAI asked for C4 images, they would have absolutely put that in the article. Now, this is filtered through PR statements, but it reads to me like a poorly-worded email went out from OpenAI that didn't actually ask for C4 images, but one of Sama's employees interpreted it as an ask, and started collecting without raising any red flags up the chain. And they got fired for it.
If your interpretation were true, it would be hard to understand why Sama also cancelled the entire deal with OpenAI. It's much more likely that a (possibly rogue) employee of OpenAI asked an employee of Sama for those images explicitly as part of additional work on the existing contract. The Sama employee agreed, but when the hire ups found out, they fired them and cancelled the whole deal, since they were not comfortable handling this material (whether for legal reasons, moral reasons, or both is of course unknowable).
I think you're reading too much into this. The natural reading is quite clearly that the illegal categories referred to were or included "C4", and it'd be highly unethical for them to have framed the paragraph in that manner if they believed that not to be the case. It's worth noting that OpenAI's PR statement only goes so far as to call the situation a miscommunication, and doesn't directly assign blame to Sama, while Sama explicitly claims OpenAI asked for illegal categories in subsequent instructions.
Also, I'm not up on the laws regarding this stuff, but are the other, awful categories illegal to collect? If not, there's not much room for ambiguity.
Directing someone to commit a crime is still a crime. OpenAI most likely has criminal liability in this instance and the FBI should open an investigation if they haven't already.
Crime is not the appropriate word but there's clearly a well documented history of abusing conditions toward data labeling workers [1] [2] [3]
For those looking for an AI data labeling service also tries to help workers along the way, here's a plug to the company I started "dataprep.be" [4]
We have a small preference for working workers with special needs (deaf, mute and employees with small handicaps). Public subsidies for these type of workers help our case in the EU as well as contraints for some public institutions in the EU to hire more handicap workers.
With clients more sensitive to costs, we also work with remote data labelers from developing countries. We help putting checks in place to limit forced and child labor. We pay 5% extra so they have time to learn high demand tech skills. (Using Khan Academy and free access to a normally 250$/year Datacamp subscription)
Happy to work with the HN crowd or just receive feedback and mentoring!
(My email is in my profile)
The fact that you refer to workers in "developing countries" as being leveraged for clients "more sensitive to costs" should tip you off that what you're doing is exploitative and dehumanising.
You have it backwards; OpenAI was the one that made the request. OpenAI claimed that the Kenyan company misunderstood the request. Your parent comment is claiming that OpenAI is criminally liable for making the request.
