Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Synaesthesia's commentslogin

AI was always particularly well suited to military use and mass surveillance. It can take huge amounts of raw data and parse it for your, provide useful information from that. And let's face it, companies exist for profit.

True, and that has been going on for awhile now. But what does that have to do with Anthropic's genai chatbots with comparatively tiny context windows?

I thought Anthropic had sophisticated AI, but I am not an expert.

It is, but it is not optimized for that use case.

Yeah but China is a low cost economy, rent, food and things like transport and electricity are cheap. That means employers simply can pay workers less than the USA because the cost of living is so high in the USA.

Right…which means China is managing their economy better. It’s not like the commenter above us who claims it’s all about repression and restriction.

Literally last night the US president stated that his policy is to keep real estate expensive, and his main attempt to lower housing costs is by lowering mortgage rates, a policy which is incredibly short-sighted and squeezes American workers more. It also won’t work as housing is sold at market value: lowering rates will increase sale prices as buyers compete on available supply and the amount they can pay on a monthly basis.

I am not specifically trying to get political about it, but the Republican Party is generally opposed to public transit and is essentially anti-urbanism. They view cities as dangerous bad places with evil Democrats in them. They have done things like holding federal transit project funding hostage to MAGA demands.

Meanwhile, you don’t need to own a car to live in China and get around. They built out the world’s premier high speed rail network, and they’ve built massive metro systems in their cities rapidly.

Those “ghost cities” in China? That’s also known as “available housing.” They usually eventually get filled. Americans paying above-inflation rates for homes would envy that sort of thing.

Most other countries including China would consider the high cost of healthcare to be a pressing national emergency, but the US government has allowed the insane status quo fester.


If you build good infrastructure you reap the rewards.

They do, the state permits a free market but they also coordinate strategically to make decisions which benefit the country.

Altavista search engine is a throwback for me.

PRISM. The agreements which Google and other major tech companies have with the government.

So don't use Google services?

You are feigning ignorance.

I only use old.reddit.com

Reddit is the epitome of enshittification.


Funny how South Africa has a way more sophisticated banking network than the USA.

I think nearly every other country has instant and free/low-cost bank transfers, without relying on some Apps.

I haven't seen a cheque my entire life, and I'm born in the last century


Well yeah that's the problem. The Google monopoly. Google and Apple are the only one out there, in the West at least. It's a huge problem. We have given all the power to two giant corporations. Really the only institution which can compel a change is the state.

The government has to step in and regulate. In China the regulation specify that Google cannot preload a whole bunch of apps on the device. It's perfectly reasonable. The government is picking the side of huge corporations ahead of people. So the people need to make some kid if a mass movement to rebel.

> The government has to step in and regulate.

The government supports this, and might have demanded it through backchannels.

The government loves the concentration of media, because it usually limits the people who can own information flows to a very few people who are already deeply connected to government, or at the very least it limits the number of people you have to threaten or bribe to get what you want.

> So the people need to make some kid if a mass movement to rebel.

The point of controlling media is that people are isolated and can't do anything like this. They have no idea what is going on other than what they are told by massive corporations, and have all interpersonal communication mediated and regulated. They're even convinced to demand this, or evil people from other countries might take over their minds and molest their children. If they advertise these beliefs as often as possible, they will see this reflected in better, easier jobs with far higher salaries.

People who ever publicly contradict these beliefs will be put on many, many lists and their friends, family, random strangers, current or potential employers, providers of credit or banking services, and people who rent housing will be encouraged to also mock, threaten and isolate the people on the lists, or be mocked, threatened and isolated themselves.

When you're isolated, it doesn't matter if you're right and if what has been done to you is obviously unfair. Nobody will notice.


Americans use a lot of power. Buying big houses means they have higher heating and cooling costs. All this makes a big difference.


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

Search: