> It seems like EU in general should be heavily invested in Mistral's development, but it doesn't seem like they are
The EU is extremely invested in Mistral's development: half of the effort is finding ways to tax them (hello Zucman tax), the other half is wondering how to regulate them (hello AI act)
Zucman taxes rich individuals (100m€+), not Mistral. AI Act rules are not that difficult to comply with by GPAI model providers as long as the model doesn't become systemic risk... They have to spend a lot more time on PR and handshaking with French politicians than on AI compliance. They probably don't even have a single FTE for that... So that's just prejudice I believe.
> Our first and default tool should be some form of lightweight automated testing
Manual verification isn't about skipping tests, it's about validating what to test in the first place.
You need to see the code work before you know what "working" even means. Does the screen render correctly? Does the API return sensible data? Does the flow make sense to users? Automated tests can only check what you tell them to check. If you haven't verified the behavior yourself first, you're just encoding your assumptions into test cases.
I'd take "no tests, but I verified it works end-to-end" over "full test coverage, but never checked if it solves the actual problem" every time. The first developer is focused on outcomes. The second is checking boxes.
Tests are crucial: they preserve known-good behavior but you have to establish what "good" looks like first, and that requires human judgment. Automate the verification, not the discovery. So our first and default tool remains manual verification
I suppose we could be talking circles around eachother, but I'd say many of what you've suggested as manual tests could be codified into an automated test just as easily.
Manual: `curl localhost:8080 | jq .` or whatever, brings value once.
Automated: `assert.ValidJSON(req.Body)` is basically identical, but can be repeated over and over again
I know few countries that reject poisonous US social media in favor of better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself: the peoples democracy of North Korea, the democratic republic of Iran, the not authoritarian society of Russia, etc
I see tremendous correlation between restriction of access to some websites and straight up dictatorship that pretend to protect it's population from the evils of foreign influences.
Or maybe it’s just strange classification. I see a lot of prompts on the internet looking like “act as a senior xxx expert with over 15 years of industry experience and answer the following: [insert simple question]”
I hope those are not classified as “roleplaying” the “roleplay” here is just a trick to get better answer from the model, often in a professional setting that has nothing to do with creative writing of NSFW stuff
I can't be sure, but this sounds entirely possible to me.
There are many, many people, and websites, dedicated to roleplaying, and those people will often have conversations lasting thousands of messages with different characters. I know a people whose personal 'roleplay AI' budget is a $1,000/month, as they want the best quality AIs.
Would be good to look into those particular statistics, then. Seems like the category could include all sorts of stuff:
> This indicates that users turn to open models primarily for creative interactive dialogues (such as storytelling, character roleplay, and gaming scenarios) and for coding-related tasks. The dominance of roleplay (hovering at more than 50% of all OSS tokens) underscores a use case where open models have an edge: they can be utilized for creativity and are often less constrained by content filters, making them attractive for fantasy or entertainment applications. Roleplay tasks require flexible responses, context retention, and emotional nuance - attributes that open models can deliver effectively without being heavily restricted by commercial safety or moderation layers. This makes them particularly appealing for communities experimenting with character-driven experiences, fan fiction, interactive games, and simulation environments.
I could imagine something like D&D or other types of narrative adventures on demand with a machine that never tires of exploring subplots or rewriting sections to be a bit different is a pretty cool thing to have. Either that, or writing fiction, albeit hopefully not entire slop books that are sold, but something to draw inspiration from and do a back and forth.
In regards to NSFW stuff, a while back people were clowning on OpenAI for suggesting that they'd provide adult writing content to adults, but it might as well be a bunch of money that's otherwise left on the table. Note: I'm all for personal freedom, though one also has to wonder about the longer term impact of those "AI girlfriend/boyfriend" trends, you sometimes see people making videos about those subreddits. Oh well, not my place to judge.
Edit: oh hey, there is more data there after all
> Among the highest-volume categories, roleplay stands out for its consistency and specialization. Nearly 60% of roleplay tokens fall under Games/Roleplaying Games, suggesting that users treat LLMs less as casual chatbots and more as structured roleplaying or character engines. This is further reinforced by the presence of Writers Resources (15.6%) and Adult content (15.4%), pointing to a blend of interactive fiction, scenario generation, and personal fantasy. Contrary to assumptions that roleplay is mostly informal dialogue, the data show a well-defined and replicable genre-based use case.
The way I think about it, the training data (i.e. the internet) has X% of people asking something like "explain it to me like I'm five years old" and Y% of people framing it like "I'm technical, explain this to me in detail". You use the "act as a senior XXX" when you want to bias the output towards something more detailed.
By who, exactly? It’s easy to call for regulation when you assume the regulator will conveniently share your worldview. Try the opposite: imagine the person in charge is someone whose opinions make your skin crawl. If you still think regulation beats the status quo, then the call for regulation is warranted, but be ready to face the consequences.
But if picturing that guy running the show feels like a disaster, then let’s be honest: the issue isn’t the absence of regulation, it’s the desire to force the world into your preferred shape. Calling it “regulation” is just a polite veneer over wanting control.
I’m surprised at how much regulation has become viewed as a silver bullet in HN comments.
Like you said, the implicit assumption in every call for regulation is that the regulation will hurt companies they dislike but leave the sites they enjoy untouched.
Whenever I ask what regulations would help, the only responses are extremes like “banning algorithms” or something. Most commenters haven’t stopped to realize that Hacker News is an algorithmic social media site (are we not here socializing with the order of posts and comments determined by black box algorithm?).
Most people on HN who advocate regulating social media don't only want to prevent those platforms from showing targeted inflammatory content, they want to make all algorithmic feeds other than strictly chronological illegal, as well as moderation of any legal content.
From that point of view, Hacker News is little different than Facebook. One could even argue that HN's karma system is a dark pattern designed to breed addiction and influence conversation in much the same way as other social media platforms, albeit not to the same degree.
At least HN karma is incremental and based on something approximating merit as opposed to being a slot machine where you never know which comment will earn Karma. More effort or rare insight, generally yields more karma.
That hasn't been my experience. How much karma you get is heavily dependant on how many people see the comment. The most insightful effort-filled comment at the bottom of a 4 day old thread isn't going to get you nearly as much, if anything, compared to a joke with just the right amount of snark at the top of a post currently at the top of the front page.
I would be astonished if a majority of people opposed to social media algorithms consider HN's approach to be sufficiently objectionable to be regulated or in any way similar to Facebook.
Hacker News doesn't use a strictly chronological feed. Hacker News manipulates the feed to promote certain items over others. Hacker News moderates legal content. Those are all features of social media algorithms that people are opposed to. It just isn't "objectionable" when HN does it.
And regulations of this kind always creep out of scope. We've seen it happen countless times. But people hate social media so much around here that they simply don't think it through, or else don't care.
> Most people on HN who advocate regulating social media...want to make all algorithmic feeds other than strictly chronological illegal
I don't buy that, at all. I think they want a chronological feed to follow, and they want the end of targeted outrage machines that are poisoning civil discourse and breeding the type of destructive politics that has led to our sitting U.S. president to call for critics to be hanged.
Comparing what Facebook has done to the U.S. with HN's algorithm is slippery slope fallacy to an extreme, and even if HN's front page algorithm against all odds was outlawed due to a political overreaction to the destruction Facebook has wrought, I'd call it a fair trade.
>Comparing what Facebook has done to the U.S. with HN's algorithm is slippery slope fallacy to an extreme, and even if HN's front page algorithm against all odds was outlawed due to a political overreaction to the destruction Facebook has wrought, I'd call it a fair trade.
You're trying to discredit my comment but it seems as if your anger just led you around to proving me right.
> But if picturing that guy running the show feels like a disaster, then let’s be honest: the issue isn’t the absence of regulation, it’s the desire to force the world into your preferred shape.
For example, we can forbid corporations usage of algorithms beyond sorting by date of the post. Regulation could forbid gathering data about users, no gender, no age, no all the rest of things.
> Calling it “regulation” is just a polite veneer over wanting control.
It is you that may have misinterpreted what regulations are.
> or example, we can forbid corporations usage of algorithms beyond sorting by date of the post
Hacker News sorted by "new" is far less valuable to me than the default homepage which has a sorting algorithm that has a good balance between freshness and impact. Please don't break it.
> It is you that may have misinterpreted what regulations are.
The definition of regulation is literally: "a rule or directive made and maintained by an authority." I am just scared about who the authority is going to be.
Control is the whole point. One person being in charge, enacting their little whims, is what you get in an uncontrolled situation and what we have now. The assumption is that you live in a democratic society and "the regulator" is effectively the populace. (We have to keep believing democracy is possible or we're cooked.)
By a not-for-profit community organization that has 0 connect/interest in any for-profit enterprising that represents the stable wellbeing of society with a specific mandate to do so.
Just like the community organizations we had that watched over government agencies that we allowed to be destroyed because of profit. It's not rocket science.
> By a not-for-profit community organization that has 0 connect/interest in any for-profit enterprising that represents the stable wellbeing of society with a specific mandate to do so.
Then you get situations like the school board stacked with creationists who believe removing the science textbooks is important for the stable wellbeing of society.
Or organizations like MADD that are hell bent on stamping out alcohol one incremental step at a time because “stable wellbeing of society” is their mandate.
Or the conservative action groups in my area that protest everything they find indecent, including plays and movies, because they believe they’re pushing for the stable wellbeing of society.
There is no such thing as a neutral group pushing for a platonic ideal stable wellbeing of society. If you give a group of people power to control what others see, it will be immediately co-opted by special interests and politics.
Singling out non-profit as being virtuous and good is utopian fallacy. If you give any group power over what others are allowed to show, it will be extremely political and abused by every group with an agenda to push.
- Ban algorithmic optimization that feeds on and proliferates polarisation.
- To heal society: Implement discussion (commenting) features that allow (atomic) structured discussions to build bridges across cohorts and help find consensus (vs 1000s of comments screaming the same none-sense).
- Force the SM Companies to make their analytics truly transparent and open to the public and researchers for verification.
All of this could be done tomorrow, no new tech required. But it would lose the SM platforms billions of dollars.
Why? Because billions of people posting emotionally and commenting with rage, yelling at each other, repeating the same superficial arguments/comments/content over and over without ever finding common ground - traps a multitude more users in the engagement loop of the SM companies than people have civilised discussions, finding common ground, and moving on with a topic.
One system of social media that would unlock a great consensus-based society for the many, the other one endless dystopic screaming battles but riches for a few while spiralling the world further into a global theatre of cultural and actual (civil) war thanks to the Zuckerbergs & Thiels.
That only treats the symptoms, not the cause. The purpose of algorithmic optimization farming engagement is to increase ad impressions for money. It is advertising that has to be regulated in such a way that maximizing ad impressions is not profitable or you will find that social media companies will still have every incentive to find other ways to do it that will probably be just as harmful.
Then lists at least four priorities which would require one multi page bill or more than likely several bills make their way through house, senate, and presidents desk while under fire from every lobbyist in Washington?
Recasting regulation as a desire for control is too reductive. The other point of regulation is compromise. No compromise at all is just a wasted opportunity.
I m not sure I follow your logic; are you saying that the regulation is not that bad because you are not fined enough if you don't follow it ? Some of us just follow regulations because it's the law - regardless of the fine. I feel like we should be allowed to express our opinion about their merits or shortcomings without considering the penalty aspect which is an entirely separate conversation.
I believe the point was the exact opposite: the regulation isn't enforced, which creates these absurd opt-out dialogue trees. If it were to be enforced fully, then anyone without a "reject all" button would be slapped with fines. Maybe even anyone who doesn't abide by the do not track/global privacy control headers.
Also businesses are not people. People may not do illegal things "just because they are illegal" or because they want to be "good" (e.g. I agree that we should not litter, I wouldn't even need a regulation for that).
Businesses are profit-maximising machines. If it it profitable to litter, a business will do it. The framework in which businesses maximise is set by regulations, which represent what society wants. That's how capitalism works.
The limit of capitalism is when businesses are more powerful than the entities in charge of enforcing the regulations. If "enforcing a regulation" means having lawyers work on it, but the businesses themselves have orders of magnitudes more lawyers trying to prevent those entities from doing their jobs, then we have a problem. That's a limit of capitalism, IMO.
I still believe that even with a reject all button, the regulation is absolute bullshit. The sheer fact that the regulation forbids that setting to be done at the browser level (the law specifically mentions that the consent - or rejection - has to be specific for each website and thus cannot be "once and forget"), is absolute dogshit.
I turn out to be the CTO of a mid-sized SAAS business (100+ FTE over 3 continents), and neither I, any legal advisor, or any other C-level that I have ever met are discussing "what's the fine ? should we just pay instead of complying ?" when dealing with legal stuff. I do not know who brainwashed you into thinking that all businesses are just gonna disregard any regulation given the chance but that has not been my experience at all. I am not saying that none are doing it, but this really isn't the norm. The whole "people = good, business = bad" is just some kind of cozy metal construction that fits in a TikTok video, but that not how the world works.
Usually when someone comes with that argument, I ask them to pick any week date in the past year and then I take a random item on my calendar on that day; I give them the time and address of where I need to be as well as the address of my home and I ask them how long it's going to take me and how much it's going to cost. That's usually enough to bring them down a notch from "train work" to "sometimes train work". (But they tend to forget very often, they need to be reminded regularly for some reason). Do you want to play that game with me to get your reality check in order ?
> I give them the time and address of where I need to be [...] That's usually enough to bring them down a notch from "train work" to "sometimes train work" [...] Do you want to play that game with me to get your reality check in order ?
I don't think the implied claim is that there should be specifically a train to every particular address, if that's what you're counting as failure in the game, but rather that with good public transport (including trains) and pedestrian/cyclist-friendly streets it shouldn't be the case that most people need to drive.
Cars are so flexible. It's the answer to so many questions outside "how to move one or two people from A to common destination B".
Need to move 3 or 4 people? Driving the car may be cheaper.
Don't want to get rained on? Or heatstroke? Or walk through snow? Or carry a bunch of stuff, like a groceries/familyWeek or whatever else? Or go into the countryside/camping? Or move a differently-abled person? Or go somewhere outside public transport hours? Or, or .. or.
Are there many cases where people should take public transport or ride a bike instead of their car? Obviously yes. But once you have a car to cover the exigent circumstances it is easy to use them for personal comfort reasons.
They’re also a joke when it comes to moving large numbers of people. I can’t imagine the chaos if everyone leaving a concert at Wembley Stadium decided to leave by car.
Dallas would look very different if they emphasized public transport. Outside of downtown it is so sparse, many of the suburbs suffer from crumbling infrastructure because it turns out pipes made to last 30 years do poorly after 40 to 50 years when all the low density suburbs have aged out and there is no remaining land to subsidize the infrastructure ponzi scheme.
Are they crap during peak hour traffic or mass public events? Sure are! They're not some miracle device.
But people claiming that you can live a life without cars don't seem to realise the very many scenarios where cars are often easier and sometimes the only answer.
Until everyone wants to go from A to B, when a traffic jam happens. If that happens quite often, it might be more convenient to use a bicycle, an umbrella or snow boots.
Yes, cars are flexible. They are jacks of all trades, but masters of none. At long distances, trains win handily. At short distances, bikes do.
> Need to move 3 or 4 people? Driving the car may be cheaper.
That's the issue―the average car occupancy is <1.5. Our goal should be to raise it, by offering alternatives to cars in cases where they're not appropriate.
> Are there many cases where people should take public transport or ride a bike instead of their car? Obviously yes.
Not many, most. Cars are a niche, they're only economical when transporting a few people with cargo over medium distances. Everything else is more efficiently covered by another mode of transport.
And "obviously", huh? Look outside. It's all roads.
> But once you have a car to cover the exigent circumstances it is easy to use them for personal comfort reasons.
You'd be surprised. The Netherlands is the best example of this―the Dutch own almost as many cars per person as Americans do, yet they cycle orders of magnitude more.
It's a matter of designing our built environment to make the most efficient mode of transportation for the situation the most convenient option.
My initial post had the context of "life as it is now". To further these thoughts though:
> > Need to move 3 or 4 people? Driving the car may be cheaper.
>That's the issue―the average car occupancy is <1.5. Our goal should be to raise it, by offering alternatives to cars in cases where they're not appropriate.
When I said this, I meant in terms of $ to the individual making the choice. Apart from city parking costs, and congestion charges, with modern phones being used a lot for transport these days could we do dynamic group discounts? IE my transport app shows a QR code, my friends who are coming with me scan it with their transport app and by travelling together(beeping on and off at the same locations within the same timeslot) we get a discount?
> Not many, most. Cars are a niche, they're only economical when transporting a few people with cargo over medium distances. Everything else is more efficiently covered by another mode of transport.
I agree in the context of city planning and public transport being a lot better than it is now. Otherwise, the last mile problem is a hard one to get past. As soon as you walk or ride a bike to the station/bus-stop you've introduced constraints on cargo, physical fitness and weather. All mostly easier with a car. Also, a car provides freedom/flexibility for midday decisions like "I'll do the groceries on the way from work" or "my wife had an issue at work, so I'll go pick up the kids this afternoon" or similar - harder to do if you've committed to pubic transport in the morning.
> And "obviously", huh? Look outside. It's all roads.
Where I am, public transport is buses. Bicycles are meant to ride on the road. So the roads are still used even if the car isn't.
> You'd be surprised. The Netherlands is the best example of this―the Dutch own almost as many cars per person as Americans do, yet they cycle orders of magnitude more.
This is one thing I find frustrating. But not everyone has a "default active" lifestyle. Many are quite sedentary. Also, a significant chunk of car costs - purchase/depreciation, yearly insurance and registration - are not mileage based. But it is frustrating that other options are not even considered. Again though, urban planning and current public transport shape the society we live in for generations. Maybe we'd all be more active if it was better done.
> It's a matter of designing our built environment to make the most efficient mode of transportation for the situation the most convenient option.
So much this. But there is a lot to overcome. Individualism, NIMBYs and cars themselves as a status symbol of freedom and "go anywhere, go anytime" flexibility. I don't see how to do it - but I'd support smart attempts to try.
The argument there is a little dishonest, given that if you only had the option of riding public transit that your schedule would indeed be well conformed to using public transit. I think everyone understands VERY well that they could get from point A to point B faster by using a dedicated vehicle which is solely concerned with getting them from point A to point B, that's not really debatable.
In the states at least if you're using public transit it's generally as an intentional time / cost tradeoff. That's not a mystery and taking a point-to-point schedule and comparing that against public transit constraints doesn't really prove much.
I live in Canada, which is similar to the US in this regard, and I can't believe how enslaved we are to the private automobile.
If you want the freedom to move across vast amounts of open nature, then yeah the private automobile is a good approximation for freedom of mobility. But designing urban areas that necessitate the use of a private vehicle (or even mass transit) for such essentials as groceries or education is enslavement. I don't buy the density argument either. Places that historically had the density to support alternative modes of transportation, densities that are lower than they are today, are only marginally accessible to alternative forms of transportation today. Then there is modern development, where the density is decreased due to infrastructure requirements.
To me, "urban planning" has a lot to answer for. They seem to have the foresight of a moth. However, they are probably constrained by politics which is similar.
Can you reasonably get by without a car? For most Americans the answer is no. Therefore, yes you are enslaved. You don't have the freedom to choose how you get to work, you have to spend money on a car.
Do you understand what enslavement is? Because it’s not “i can’t reasonably get by,” it’s “I am not recognized as human, I am legally property and have no rights.”
Heard an anecdote about a German engineer who was in California (I think San Francisco, but if it was Los Angeles then the distances involved would be even larger) for meetings with American colleagues, and thought he would drive up to Oregon for a day trip. His American colleagues asked him to take another look at the scale on the bottom right of the map, and calculate the driving time. Once he ran the numbers, he realized that his map-reading instincts, trained in Germany, were leading him astray: the scale of maps he was used to had him thinking it was a 2- or 3-hour drive from San Francisco to Oregon. But in fact it's a 6-hour drive just to get to the Oregon border from SF, and if you want to head deeper into the interior then it's probably 9 to 10 hours depending on where you're going.
So no, I don't think Europeans who haven't been in America have quite absorbed just how vast America is. It stretches across an entire continent in the E-W direction, and N-S (its shortest border) still takes nearly a full day. (San Diego to Seattle is about 20 hours, and that's not even the full N-S breadth of the country since you can drive another 2.5 hours north of Seattle before reaching the Canadian border). In fact, I can find a route that goes nearly straight N-S the whole way, and takes 25 hours to drive, from McAllen, TX to Pembina, ND: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BpvjrzJvvdjD9vdi9
Train travel is sometimes feasible in America (I am planning Christmas travel with my family, and we are planning to take a train from Illinois to Ohio rather than fly, because the small Illinois town we'll be in has a train station but no airport; counting travel time to get to the airport, the train will be nearly as fast as flying but a lot cheaper). But there are vast stretches of the country where trains just do not make economic sense, and those whose only experience is in Europe usually don't quite realize that until they travel over here. For most people, they might have an intellectual grasp of the vastness of the United States, but it takes experiencing it before you really get it deep down. Hence why the very smart German engineer still misread the map: his instincts weren't quite lined up with the reality of America yet, and so he forgot to check the scale of the map.
> there are vast stretches of the country where trains just do not make economic sense
There are plenty of city pairs where high speed trains do make economic sense and America still doesn't have them. [1] is a video "56 high speed rail links we should've built already" by CityNerd. And that's aside from providing services for the greater good instead of for profit - subsidizing public transport to make a city center more walkable and more profitable and safer and cleaner can be a worthwhile thing. The US government spends a lot subsidizing air travel.
> So no, I don't think Europeans who haven't been in America have quite absorbed just how vast America is
China had some 26,000 miles of high speed rail two years ago, almost 30,000 miles now connecting 550 cities, and adding another couple of thousand miles by 2030. A hundred plus years ago America had train networks coast to coast. Now all Americans have is excuses why the thing you used to have and tore up is impossible, infeasible, unafordable, unthinkable. You have reusable space rockets that can land on a pillar of fire. If y'all had put as much effort into it as you have into special pleading about why it's impossible, you could have had it years ago.
Personally, I'd blame California for American voters' distaste for subsidizing high-speed rail. They look at the massive budget (and time) overruns of California's celebrated high-speed rail, and say "I don't want that waste of money happening in MY state, funded with MY state taxes" and then vote against any proposed projects.
This is, of course, a massively broad generalization, and there will be plenty of voters who don't fit that generalization. But the average American voter, as best I can tell, recoils from the words "high-speed rail" like Dracula would recoil from garlic. And I do believe that California's infamous failure (multiple failures, even) to build the high-speed rail they have been working on for years has a lot to do with that "high-speed rail is a boondoggle and a waste of taxpayer dollars" knee-jerk reaction that so many voters have.
Focusing on remote spots is largely a different topic. If the majority of driving was to remote spots then we'd have 90% less driving and cars wouldn't be a problem.
Honestly people really just dont understand how far apart things are. And yeah the good remote spots are a 4 hour drive from the city (and you aren’t even half way across the state at that point).
The forests and wilderness of the PNW are much, much, much, much more remote and wild than virtually anywhere you’d go in Europe. Like not even close.
It seems like people are just talking past each other here. The fact is that 99% of driving is not done by people in the process of visiting remote nature destinations.
Also, the USA is not the only big country in the world... I live in a small city in Patagonia. The nearest towns are 60 km, 90 km, and 480 km away. But you can still live without a car in the city.
they can't also realize a country that ditches personal vehicles can invest in buses or more trains to "remote places". nor they realize the vehicle industry is one of the biggest pollutants on micro-plastic; which screws the "remote nature" as well our health
In the future, I hope this becomes a thing. As cars become more commodotised and self driving taxis can be ordered easily maybe there'll be competing mass fleets?
Or have a "car-cabin-without-engine-and-wheels" and treat it like a packet on a network of trains and "skateboard car platforms".
Is this satire? In the nordics we have allemansrätten, the right to use even private land to camp as long as you're not too close to where someone lives, not to mention huge national parks. In the US you have the right to get shot if you enter private land.
The average american mind can't comprehend this works out to a huge number of them having to commute by car 1-2 hours per day to get to work in some ungodly urban sprawl while living an alienated existence in crappy suburbs, and destroying the environment while doing so. At the same time working far more, slaving year round with laughable paid vacation time or sick day provisions, while being subjected to far worse homicide rates, and being treated as subjects by cops.
No I love being stuck in traffic every day of the week for hours, its totally worth it because I can drive to an empty patch of grassland that no one wants to go to and there's nothing there. That's why cars are so amazing and freedom granting. Trains can't take you to the middle of nowhere to do nothing for the 1% of the time you don't want to be near other civilization so cars are better
lol, yeah. Meanwhile they can't even comprehend that it's a false dillema: Europeans have cars just fine, even several per family.
They just don't have to use them all the time since they can take the more efficient public transport, and they can buy one after college even, they don't need to drive one from 16 yo just to be able to get around...
Are you arguing that trains are infeasible (due to cost or duration) for certain trips?
I'm curious how this changes (in your mind) if "trains" can be expanded to "trains, buses, bicycle", or if you consider that to be a separate discussion.
The Atlanta Metro has 6.5 million people across TWENTY THOUSAND square kilometers.
Trains just don't make sense for this. Everything is too spread out. And that's okay. Cites are allowed to have different models of transportation and living.
I like how much road infra we have. That I can visit forests, rivers, mountains, and dense city all within a relatively short amount of time with complete flexibility.
Autonomous driving is going to make this paradise. Cars will be superior to trains when they drive themselves.
The German metro area "Rheinland" has a population of 8.7 million people across 12 thousand square kilometers.
~700/sqkm vs the 240/sqkm population density of Atlanta metro. Train and metro travel in this metrk area is extremely convenient and fast. It's not that Atlanta (or anywhere else in the United States for that matter) couldn't do it because of vastness, there's just no political and societal will behind this idea. In a society that glamorizes everyone driving the biggest trucks and carrying the largest rifles, of course convenient train systems are "not feasible".
> The German metro area "Rheinland" has a population of 8.7 million people across 12 thousand square kilometers. ~700/sqkm vs the 240/sqkm population density of Atlanta metro. Train and metro travel in this metrk area is extremely convenient and fast. It's not that Atlanta (or anywhere else in the United States for that matter) couldn't do it because of vastness
Did you forget to support yourself? You're saying Rheinland has three times the population density of Atlanta, with convenient passenger rail, and that demonstrates that low population density isn't an obstacle to passenger rail in Atlanta?
I'm not following your logic. Having nearly triple the population density in Rheinland makes trains way _more_ feasible, not _less_. That means on average you have a train 1/3 the distance away from you. That's a big difference.
I live in NYC which has 29,000/sqkm in Manhattan and 11,300/sqkm overall. Public transportation is great here and you don't need a car.
but at 240/sqkm, that's really not much public trans per person!
I'm so stoked for what uv is doing for the Python ecosystem. requirements.txt and the madness around it has been a hell for over a decade. It's been so pointlessly hard to replicate what the authors of Python projects want the state of your software to be in.
uv has been much needed. It's solving the single biggest pain point for Python.
Having replied in good faith already, I also want to call out that your jab about trucks and rifles adds nothing to the conversation and is merely culture-war fuel.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
It seems like a fair point to me. You can't bring your rifle on the train but you can bring it in your truck. Whether or not that shapes Atlanteans choice of transport I can't say though.
Depending how expensive is gasoline in your country, when using a car people underestimate the cost of a travel by a factor two to five, because they don't count the depreciation of their vehicle's value and the maintenance cost (and sometimes even insurance price) driven by the kilometers ridden during the trip.
By that logic cars work also turns into sometimes cars work.
Ever heard of traffic jams and have you compared the number of fatal car accidents vs fatal train accidents.
Not to mention the negative effect on air quality with many cars in dense cities.
Cars main advantage is flexibility and that’s it.
For times were the place and time usually stays the same like work, trains are a valid option.
Don't need one in Toronto within a ½ day or so of the snow stopping for the major bicycle routes (including the MGT).
Calgary apparently also does a good job of clearing its bike lanes.
And I do my Costco shopping by bike year-round. I think I've used the car for large purchases at Costco twice in the last year.
I _rarely_ drive my car anywhere in Toronto, and find the streets on bike safer than most of the sidewalks in January -- they get plowed sooner than most homeowners and businesses clear the ice from their sidewalks.
And in Toronto we're rank amateurs at winter biking. Look at Montreal, Oslo, or Helsinki for even better examples. Too bad we've got a addle-brained carhead who doesn't understand public safety or doing his own provincial as our premier.
Personally I've also biked to work (and everywhere, really) in sub-zero degrees many times, because the bicycle lanes are cleared and salted. It's really not too bad. It actually gets a bit too hot even, because you start out by wearing so much.
In cold weather, one should always dress for 5℃ warmer than the temperature outside when you have a bike longer than 5 km. Runners pretty much have to do the same. Your body heat and good layering will take care of everything else.
Really? This is your go-to argument? And nobody's pointed out to you before how bad it is? Well then.
Do the opposite thought experiment for me: Pick any two points of interest on the map and see how well connected they are with roads. Keep doing it until you find somewhere not accessible via car. See the issue yet?
We've paved over the entire planet to the point that you can get anywhere you'd like with a car. We have not done so whatsoever for any other mode of transportation. Pedestrian walkways come close but we prioritize vehicles over those too. The investment into public transport & cycling infrastructure is a statistical error in comparison to roadways.
So no shit it's more convenient for you to take a car than a train, that's the entire point―it shouldn't be.
A 20 lane highway should be a train track, intra-city roads should be dedicated to bikes, not cars.
It's also worth noting that members of the second system had his picture pinned on a wall called "The wall of the assholes"[1] amongst other political and public servant they did not like. They still claim they are totally independent and impartial when judging any of these figures.
> It's also worth noting that members of the second system
Nope. This picture was found in the office of an Union related to "magistrats".
Magistrats is a broad term that also include Procureurs, Judges but also some Lawyers.
The union is not specifically associated to the position of "Juge d'instruction" by any means.
But yes, generally speaking Politicians do not like Magistrats and Magistrats do not like politicians in France.
And honestly, it is more healthy like that.
> Magistrats is a broad term that also include Procureurs, Judges but also some Lawyers.
The also is key: "Juge d'instructions" absolutely are "Magistrats" - just like Procureurs, etc are. Some of those "Juge d'instructions" are part of this union who put a target on the back of some politicians. How can they claim with a straight face that they are not biased ?
Either they know it's bullshit and they are simply lying; or they really believe their claims and they are just delusional. I don't know which one I prefer.
Question: Since when a random Union is representative of the political opinions of an entire profession ?
Spoiler: They never are.
Specially in France.
Even CGT, the biggest union in the country is currently a perfect good example of that.
CGT is loud. They are often extreme in there political opinions, regularly promoting extreme left ideology, some group historically had even close ties with the communists.... And they represent statistically nobody.
They represent less than 10% of people in France because this is currently the percentage of the unionized worker in the country.
They represent the political opinion of people who are affiliated with them. Once you getting involved in organizations that have a clear and defined political agenda; your whole argument that "nothing you do would ever be politically oriented" and that you are "fully neutral in all situation" becomes incredibly weak.
I am sure some "juge d'instruction" try their very best to be as neutral as possible. Some ostensibly aren't even giving this a flying fuck but both are repeating the same "we are non-political" any time they get the chance. When I hear this, I am unable to know if the person if of the first kind or the second kind. There seems to be 0 investigation internally to weed out the liars which thus casts shadow on the entire profession.
Trust is hard-earned, easily lost, and difficult to reestablish. This scandal touched the very essence of the French judicial system, yet had no major repercussion on the internal organization and processes of those "Juges d'Instruction". It's just business as usual. So until they come up with new systems to ensure better attempt at neutrality and they remove the people that have obviously been plaguing the system for years, it's normal and healthy that any mention of "neutrality" is immediately met with heavy skepticism.
So either: The EU commission is including trackers on their websites. And they should stop OR they acknowledge that it's almost impossible to build a website without some form of tracking that falls under the law, and they should look into the law itself.
I created a production web application which does tracking (although not necessary, could remove it within minutes from the application and probably nobody would notice) without needing a "cookie" banner.
How? I don't track any personal data, just anonymous interaction.
The author seems very set on following "the proper way of doing things in the linux ecosystem". If I remember correctly, a key principle from Linus himself is: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code". So did the author open any PR to fix any of the issues he surfaced ?
The EU is extremely invested in Mistral's development: half of the effort is finding ways to tax them (hello Zucman tax), the other half is wondering how to regulate them (hello AI act)
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