Google wasn't the first search engine but they were the best marketing google = search. That's where we are with openai. Google search was a better product at the time and chatGPT 3.5 was a breakthrough the public used. Fast forward and some will say Google isn't the best search engine anymore (kagi, duckduckgo, yandex offer different experiences) but people still think of google=search. Same with chatGPT. Claude may be better for coding or gemini better are searching or Deepseek cheaper but equal but chatGPT is a verb and will live on like Intel inside long after it's actual value has declined.
That happened long after they completely dominated search. They succeeded because of quality, and because of how low quality all the other engines were.
There was a time when Google was thought of as a respectable, high-quality, smart and nimble company. That has faded as the marketing grew.
Do models matter to the regular user over brand? People talk about using chatGPT over Google's AI or Deepseek not 4o-mini vs gemini 2.
OpenAI has done a good job of making the model less important and the domain gptGPT.com more important.
Most of the time the model rarely matters. When you find something incorrect you may switch models but that rarely fixes the problem. Rewording a prompt has more value than changing a model.
For the rest of us using free tiers ChatGPT is hands down the winner allowing limited image generation, unlimited usage of some model and limited usage of 4o.
Claude is still stuck at 10 messages per day and gemini is less accurate/useful.
These are sometimes called memento mori calendars. Memento mori being a Latin phrase that translates to "remember you must die". It's a pretty popular phrase/reminder with the modern day Stoic community.
It gets me down a little too just because I know I am so weird that I can't understand why anyone would want this.
I actually would have interesting things to put on the timeline. Why anyone would do this though just doesn't make sense to me on any level and I know I am in the minority on that.
Are the Chinese carrying out espionage in the U.S.?
Yes.
But Indoubt China’s key AI CEOs that need to be warned not to travel to the U.S. will be the ones doing espionage for the Chinese government. If they were, then the govt wouldn’t need to announce not traveling publicly…they’d just pass on the message through their handlers.
The point is that the Chinese (and now, even allies) governments would be justified in thinking that the U.S. despite its reputation for a fair legal system, will arrest or detain a Chinese citizen for no legitimate reason at all.
Is the opposite also true? Should the US government be warning its AI CEOs not to travel to China? Absolutely.
But it’s disappointing that the US’s reputation has fallen so far over the past decade.
It has been eighty years since a nuclear weapon was used in an act of aggression.
It would appear a state sort of only really comes to have nuclear weapons when it has got its act together sufficiently to be well enough behaved to not use them.
A sort of maturation process, if you will.
The meek[1] shall inherit the Earth, and all of that.
If we’ve got data, let’s go with the data. If all we have is opinions, let’s go with mine.
1. this is best as interpreted as those who have the ability to use force, but do not use it, except maybe to defend themselves.
It has been threatened recently by a few nations. It almost got set off by mistake.
Increasing the odds by introducing hundreds of players some willing to gas their own people is rolling the dice. The few countries that have the ability has been responsible but that does not mean that will always be the case or new players will be as responsible.
In about five billion years the sun will run out of hydrogen and expand, engulfing Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth.
In the mean time, you could respond to the argument I actually made.
The level of organisation at the state level required to build a working nuclear weapon, along with the forces working against that, eg. how difficult it’s been for Iran to get across the line, and the fact of the near miss you mentioned, allows most of us, it would seem, to sleep well at night.
This seems like a tautology. By definition someone with superior political power can grind down someone else with less, if they were maniacal enough about it, or at least negate their efforts.
If they couldn’t, then they wouldn’t be considered to have superior political power.
I think you might be counting on way too many decision makers to remain rational and wise enough to avoid and defuse non-trivial situations that want to escalate.
In the 8 billion times 8 billion potential nuclear exchanges that universal nuke would enable (64 quadrillion!), there is at least one scary bad one. At any time of day. That you are standing too near.
Please acknowledge my wisdom here. (Hard unblinking stare. Wiggling finger wanders toward red button… “Kind person, I have no interest in harming you, but my sources inform me you have at most one nuke. So I must be prepared to be first. Please keep those hands where I can see them while I only, and with full peaceful intent, rest my finger here.”)
I read the discussion. What does unrelated views not expressed on your subreddit matter. Why the need to get rid of a mod who at worst has a sidebar to other subreddits they control. If the mod is black, white, Asian, wears fur coats or believes in a flat earth; none of that should matter unless it's affecting your subreddit. Let people be themselves you would be surprised by many of your co-worker real life.
Put mildly, the moderation was affecting not only the subreddit, but the referenced site (xkcd) itself. And then some.
There is a reason that commercial and noncommercial organisations are so absolutely obsessed with brand management, identity, and reputation, much as I generally find that to be a somewhat absurd concern. Moderators have an absolutely vast impact on how a discussion proceeds, and ultimately on impressions going far beyond just that discussion, including the rest of Reddit (or whatever platform is involved); commercial, social, and political impacts; and the idea of a general online communications themselves.
HN would be a very different place if, say, /u/soccer were mod rather than dang, and I suspect much of its present status and value would be lost in very short order.
We've had plenty of experience, over many decades and much scale, of poorly-functioning moderation, and in general it ends quite poorly. As I've noted many times, one of the most surprising things about HN is that it's retained its status and value as a forum for as long as it has. Far longer than the original and revered Usenet (of which I was a small participant, pre-eternal-September), or Slashdot, Friendster, Digg, or even Reddit (itself a YC launch, slightly pre-dating HN, but unlike HN retaining far less of its original spirit and quality).
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