Semi-related, I've wanted to learn Plankalkül for some time but have had immense difficulty "getting it". Has anyone on here gotten the hang of it?

For the downvoters, he's referring to this instance when (then) Senator Obama jokingly referenced bubble sort during this Google event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koMpGeZpu4Q

It was one of the many viral moments during Obama's original campaign where he seemed cool and in touch.

Of course, being able to call out a sorting algorithm is the kind of thing that makes you very "cool and in touch" in the grander scheme of things, unlike, say, playing sports or lifting 500lbs.

It was also when Google seemed cool and in touch.

>surely they can ally to resist culture war nonsense from making its way into their employee handbooks?

I think that's the point, using "pressure from the administration" as an excuse to nix culture war entanglements they got themselves into over the previous ~10 years. I think the "modern titans of industry" have wanted to dip out of this stuff for some time and felt stuck. Now they can do so while having plausible deniability (it was da govamint made us do it!)

I disagree with Walter here but the US wasn't founded by urban immigrants. There's a difference between pioneers, like the Mennonites in Mexico, and immigrants, like digital nomads in Mexico. The former are almost always more popular than the latter.

Even so, do you think the Mennonites or Mormons in Mexico would agree with no community sacrifice as as part of their narrative?

I mildly disagree with your take but it's still mindblowing how I can read some random political flame on HN and it's WALTER FUCKING BRIGHT. Your one of my tech heroes, so cool to spot you on here. If this were real life I'd ask for a selfie to prove that this happened but maybe you could, idk, sign a message with your PGP key so I can prove I interacted with you

LOL, thanks for the kind words! I just happened to like working on compilers, as few programmers will touch them. If you're ever in the Seattle area, we have a monthly D Coffee Haus where we drink and talk about languages, compilers, airplanes, cars, and physics. All are welcome!

(Even C++ people show up! All in good fun.)

>How come the US government allows this?

Allows? The government works for the wealthy and powerful. That includes the masses, who (if they organize) have their own power, but it also includes every other powerful group or individual.

Why would the government want to stop this? It's the average person who would want to disallow this, and they'd have to pressure the government enough that the pain of popular opposition outweighs the brazillions of dollars they're making.

Okay. But then you could say the same for a human, isn't your brain just a cloud of matter and electricity that just reacts to senses deterministically?

> isn't your brain just a cloud of matter and electricity that just reacts to senses deterministically?

LLMs are not deterministic.

I'd argue over the short term humans are more deterministic. I ask a human the same question multiple times and I get the same answer. I ask an LLM and each answer could be very different depending on its "temperature".

If you ask human the same question repeatedly, you'll get different answers. I think that at third you'll get "I already answered that" etc.

We hardly react to things deterministically.

But I agree with the sentiment. It seems it is more important than ever to agree on what it means to understand something.

I'm having a bad day today. I'm 100% certain that today I'll react completely different to any tiny issue compared to how I did yesterday.

Right, if you change the input to your function, you get a different output. By that logic, the function `(def (add a b) (+ a b)` isn't deterministic.

So the idea is this will rehabilitate Sarkozy? Do you believe that this experience will rehabilitate Sarkozy, or even that he's an active threat to commit more crimes in the future? It seems like the only conceivable social benefit of incarcerating him is to punish him for corruption as a deterrent to others. But his luxury prison room probably won't do that, so it's basically just an expensive legal formality to satisfy public demands for "justice" (ie, retribution for wrongdoing)

It's not a luxury room like drug lords have had in corrupt countries. He's in the VIP wing, which means life generally sucks except he won't have to worry about random violence or gang politics. It's a lot better than normal prisoners get, but it's hardly a vacation.

I agree that the point is punishment and deterrence to other public officials, proving no one is truly out of reach of the law.

Future corruption is less likely if punishment is expected. Not that complicated.

It matters if you like to travel. I dislike having to apply for a visa to travel somewhere. I'm blessed with a Mexican passport which means I can go almost anywhere in the world just with my passport.

I did this to someone. But it was my best friend Pancho, and I made it so his computer loudly exclaims "I love white wieners!" at random points when Zoom is open.

Pancho, if you're reading this, sorry I exposed you like that