Books written by AI is yet another case of an application of AI that does nothing to solve existing problems that consumers have (too few books in this case) but instead focuses on the producer side of things.
Worse yet, increasing the quantity of books while simultaneously decreasing the quality just makes the situation worse for readers: more slop to filter out.
> worth keeping in mind that there is more to programming than just programming.
As a side note, this is what I keep pointing out when people talk about code generated by LLMs. As an activity, this is just one thing that programmers do.
I think the answer to your question (a good question indeed) is "both", or rather to balance development of both capabilities. The decision of how to spend time won't be a single decision but is repeated often through the years. The Staff+ engineers with whom I work _mostly_ excel at both aspects, with a small handful being technical specialists. I haven't encountered any who have deep domain knowledge but limited technical depth.
I only skimmed the article but it seems like the idea that Lacks was a "Scientific Hero" is something the author implies was implied by others and then goes on to argue that it isn't the case. This strikes me as disingenuous, a way of trying to rally against sympathy for her case by addressing a claim made up by the author.
He gave many examples of people treating her as a her as a hero. Eg:
> United States Rep. Kwesi Mfume (D-Md) filed legislation to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to Henrietta Lacks for her distinguished contributions to science. The award is one of the most prestigious civilian honors given by the United States government
They gave the medal to everyone who died in 9/11, and while I think there was probably several acts of heroism involved on the day, the aim there seems to be recognizing victims more than heros.
But the actual criteria for the medal is nothing to do with heroism:
> made a major and long-standing impact on American history and culture.
Which I think is a bar she (and 9/11 victims) clears easily.
This is the HN thread I didn't know I needed until I saw it.
I often wonder how many of Brutalism's ardent fans grew up in an environment dense with Brutalist structures. I'm not here to bash the movement (the finest examples are wonderful) but just a reminder that the median Brutalist building is often a bleak, bleak affair.
There's probably an analogy in there somewhere for programming too. Perhaps the best of Golang is wonderful but the median just doesn't compare.
ETA: Either way, thanks for the taking the discussion down this direction. Certainly made me chuckle.
Retrospectively framing technologies that succeeded despite doubts at the time discounts those that failed.
After all, you could have used the exact same response in defense of web3 tech. That doesn't mean LLMs are fated to be like web3, but similarly the outcome that the current expenditure can be recouped is far from a certainty just because there are doubters.
Often the discussion around these kinds of tech/AI dwell on the wrong things: questions like "will GenAI put artists out of work?" or "should photographers worry about AI-generated headshots?" miss the point that headshot photography probably only accounts for work for a small subset of working photographers, or that most artists are not making the same things that people use GenAI for.
Did Google Translate put professional translators out work? Probably not so much. Certainly not based on the discussions I've had with professionals, who may use AI translation but spend more time on copy-editing the results now.
Most of the time the AI-generated outputs are fine when you don't value the results more than the cost of getting better results. If you're doing translation of legal or technical documents, getting more accurate results is worth paying for.
Same thing for headshots: if they're important you probably pay for them, if not you weren't going to pay for a professional to do them anyway.
More than though: the whole point of portrait photography is displaying the individual, in all their idiosyncratic differences that make them distinguishable from others. These headshots have a blandifying effect of making the person look less like themselves the individual and more like a smoothed out, generic version of themselves.
This is my experience too. I frequently require a single queue for some very specific task but it does not form part of a greater application.
My current work (data engineering) is such that I don't have a relational database instance that it would make sense to use instead. SQS is very straightforward and just works.
None of this is to say that I would necessarily advocate for a user-facing app to be _based_ on a queue-based architecture.
This is adjacent to "why would I need EC2 when I can serve from my laptop?"
In terms of maturity of solution and diversity of downstream applications you'll go much further with BigQuery/Athena (at comically low cost) for this amount of data than some cobbled together "local" solution.
I thoroughly agree with the author but the comments in this thread are an indication of people who haven't actually had to do meaningful ongoing work with modest amounts of data if they're suggesting just storing it as plain text on personal devices.
I'm not advocating for complicated or expensive solutions here, BigQuery and Athena are very low complexity compared to any of the Hadoop et-al tooling (yes Athena is Trino is in the family, but it is managed and dirt cheap).
This type of conflation is extremely dangerous. Criticism of the actions of the government of Israel is not the same thing as anti-semitism (a real and very bad thing).
To make this claim essentially gives the government of Israel the go ahead to do absolutely anything without any possibility of criticism, because that criticism is never engaged with on the basis of its content but dismissed as anti-semitism.
I've seen thousands upon thousands of people protesting with my own eyes but never caught onto anything anti semitic. In fact I often see Jewish groups attending as well.
I'm sure there often are people espousing vile views, that's a statistical inevitability almost, but it's clearly far from the norm.
Yes, I know it well. I remember a very striking moment during some protests in London. The GB news was presenting it as having turned violent, with close ups of protesters clashing against the police. At the same time many individuals who were at the events themselves were able to broadcast on social media showing thousands of people peacefully walking together in a very positive atmosphere totally unaware that a small alteration had taken place elsewhere on the fringe of the event.
This is, by definition ("the protesters" used to generalise to all protesters), a gross generalisation. Based on what evidence? All the protests I have been to people have taken great pains to make that distinction.
Comments like the above merely reinforce what I'm saying: the basis of criticism is never engaged with in terms of its own merits or content but is dismissed using ad hominem.
I do sincerely apologise for omitting the word "often". My point remains that generalisations should not be made based on the views of a minority.
I have noticed that US media in particular presents a very one-sided accounting of protests. Axios, for examples, implies that Pro-Palestinian protests at colleges are a form of anti-semitism.
Again, I apologise. That was in error, not malice.
The same thing is happening to this protest as what happened in many other protests in the US. The news is finding outliers and representing it as the norm. January 6th, the majority of those people weren't trying to overthrow the government, but all the protesters were branded as doing just that, and many got pretty harsh sentences for it. BLM protests were similar with the fires and the riots. The vast majority of BLM protesters were non-violent but they were all branded as rioters and fire starters. The media is now running that play against the pro-Gaza protests and trying to paint them all as antisemitic by pointing out some antisemitic things some people in the protests said.
It's the standard playbook that happens again and again and again. It's almost as if the large media companies work for the status quo and feel any protests is a threat to that; which it is.
You appear to have fallen victim to a similar attempt at conflation, Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land of thousands of years. Being antizionism is antisemitism because it negates the right to self-determination of the Jewish people.
I realize though that what you actually means is anti-Israel, or if we are being more specific, I assume anti-Israeli-far-right or anti-Israeli-right. E.g. if you are for a two-state solution you are in agreement with the Israeli center and left (mostly, but that's just going into too many details).
> Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land
The thing is, though, it's not a right, it's their belief. They're very welcome to hold their beliefs and take democratic means to achieve their aims, but in a free and peace centred society they should not be allowed to take violent means to pursue their aims. Certainly if they want me to be happy taking financial and material support from a government that I'm supporting with my tax then they need to follow these basic ideals of respect for the other.
Long story short, we can accept their belief in their promised land without accepting it as their right to take it by whatever means necessary.
> The thing is, though, it's not a right, it's their belief.
Would you also say you have no right to live in the United States, and it is only your personal belief? If you think it is equally fictional then at least I can't fault your views for their internal consistency.
> They're very welcome to hold their beliefs and take democratic means to achieve their aims, but in a free and peace centred society they should not be allowed to take violent means to pursue their aims.
Are Jews prohibited from taking violent means to pursue their aims while Arabs are permitted? If not, then how do you accept Arab use of violent means to conquer and settle Israel 1,400 years ago?
> Long story short, we can accept their belief in their promised land without accepting it as their right to take it by whatever means necessary.
First, we aren't talking about a promised land being taken, we are talking about at land that was taken away from them and is at best being taken back.
Second, you aren't required to support anyone in any endeavor. You can even be pro-Israel and pro-Zionism and still not think they deserve your financial support. But if you single out Jews as being the only people in the world that are not allowed to have a state and not allowed to live in their native land of thousands of years (especially for the reason "but the Arabs took it away from them, so it isn't theirs anymore"), then you are indeed being antisemitic.
> Would you also say you have no right to live in the United States, and it is only your personal belief?
I'm not American so I would of course agree. But I believe I have a right to live in my current state because those rights are granted to me by the law. The distinction with Zionism is that the right for "the Jews" (i use quotes because of course this is not an homogeneous group, just as ideal) to claim, inhabit and govern Israel as their own is ordained by God. I find this as contrary to the ideals of equality and akin to totalitarianism.
> But if you single out Jews as being the only people in the world that are not allowed to have a state...
Wow there, that's quite a leap. I'm not saying anyone should be made stateless, only that if they're claiming to do the whole democracy thing then they need to recognise the right of their neighbours not to live by the rules of their Gods.
> then you are indeed being antisemitic
I would appreciate if you asked me to clarify when I was saying instead of delivering uncharitable readings, presumed arguments, and conclusions like these.
> I would appreciate if you asked me to clarify when I was saying instead of delivering uncharitable readings, presumed arguments, and conclusions like these.
Apologies if I have offended, but that's why that sentence begins with an "if", implying that statement is only correct conditional on some theoretical claim that might or might not be implicit from your statements. Since the discussion originates from the topic of antizionism and antisemitism, it is meant to refer back to the conclusion of my own parent comment clarifying where such a statement falls (as opposed to just being an ad-hominem). Maybe I'm not being entirely clear as English is not my native language and much of communication tends to be cultural rather than linguistic (for example, in the United States "That's a good start" is usually a scathing critique whereas in Israel it is usually a genuine compliment :))
> I'm not American so I would of course agree
I assumed by your reference to having your taxes go to Israel, a common American talking point. What taxes then are you referring to that are going towards Israel?
> But I believe I have a right to live in my current state because those rights are granted to me by the law.
Sure, and Israel also a rule of law country and acts within the boundaries of its laws, so you are going to have to go into more details into what you feel separates your rights from Jewish rights.
> The distinction with Zionism is that the right for "the Jews" (i use quotes because of course this is not an homogeneous group, just as ideal) to claim, inhabit and govern Israel as their own is ordained by God. I find this as contrary to the ideals of equality and akin to totalitarianism.
That is incorrect. In fact, the Zionism movement originated with secular Jews, seeing how they are persecuted around the world and desiring a return to their native land where they can band together and protect themselves under the mechanisms of state. Your conclusion about inequality and totalitarianism are therefore misguided. As a side-note I'll add that the more fundamental ultra-orthodox Jews that desire an Israel ruled by biblical law tend to be antizionist as well.
> if they're claiming to do the whole democracy thing then they need to recognise the right of their neighbours not to live by the rules of their Gods.
First, no such thing happens, Palestinians are not bound to the rules of a Judaism, neither those that are Israeli citizens, nor those that are not. Specifically for Muslims in Israel they have their own religious authorities with the ability to govern in matters of their religion. For example, Muslims can marry each other under Muslim law, in Muslim ceremonies etc. It is true though that Jewish courts currently have too much authority in governing Jewish customs like marriage, and that to my mind religion is too intertwined with state mechanisms, but not nearly so far as I'd say that it is ruled by religious law.
Second, I'm not actually sure what this has to do with the topic of the discussion, which is Zionism, which is not a religious movement (remembering that Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity).
Don't the Palestinians also have the right to self determinization in their native land?
My understanding is that anti-Zionism is not opposed to Jews living in Palestine having self determination. It is opposed to preventing Arabs living in Palestine from having self determination and/or oppossed to Israel existing as an ethnostate (since most people on the left are opposed to the concept of ethnostates).
> Don't the Palestinians also have the right to self determinization in their native land?
Sure, in fact Israel's declaration of independence (which doesn't have an official legal status, but is considered to be the base of a future constitution for Israel) calls for peaceful co-existence with its neighbouring Arab states. It would be an interesting alternate history to observe where Israel was not attacked by all of its neighbouring Arab states, could we really have peaceful co-existence? (I'd like to think the answer is "yes").
Now if you define "Palestinian native land" as the Jewish native land that was colonized by Arabs around 1,400 years ago, then you'll have a problem since that will legitimize Jews to themselves recolonize (and regular colonize) whatever areas they please thus making it their own native land. Of course, reverting the borders to 3,000 years ago is also not practical (especially as that would revert the peace agreement with Jordan which would have to give up a substantial piece of land). That's why IMO something like a two state solution makes the most sense, maybe along the lines of the agreement that was almost signed in 2008?
> My understanding is that anti-Zionism is not opposed to Jews living in Palestine having self determination.
No need to keep to the Roman convention of renaming Israel to Palestine.
> My understanding is that anti-Zionism is not opposed to Jews living in Palestine having self determination. It is opposed to preventing Arabs living in Palestine from having self determination
That just sounds like you are redefining "Anti-Zionism" to mean "Pro-Palestine". Sure, under a different definition it means something else, but how is that useful? If I define "Jews" to mean "Bananas" can I say that I think Jews are disgusting because I actually mean bananas are disgusting?
Anti-Zionism means exactly that, against the right for Jews for self determination in their native land.
> Israel existing as an ethnostate
I think this term is a bit excessively vague. Naturally the Jewish people want to live in their land of the Jewish people in much the same way that the French or Palestinian people want to live in their land of the French or Palestinian people.
A right of return for the Jewish people to the land of self-determination for Jews is only natural, just as much as an emerging state of Palestine should want a right of return for Palestinians into it (it sounds like madness for Palestine to refuse Israeli Arabs from moving to it).
It would also be madness to deny Israel a right to control immigration to it, especially as it is already very densely populated.
That said, I agree that current policies are too extreme, and I'm generally for a much greater separation between state and religion in Israel.
Don't you think 1400 years is a bit long? If you considered 'native people' to go back that far, you could get all sorts of really strange 'native lands'.
Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan, but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.
To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.
Any threshold you set is arbitrary and then tends to be motivated by personal politics. I have some difficulty with setting any specific threshold since if you say the threshold is 1,000 years for example, then it follows that you have set a rule on how it is morally achievable to set or expand your territory; You take some place by force and then hold it for 1,000 years and then no one is allowed to contest it, which means that Israel should be allowed to take whatever land it wants as it is merely following the proper procedure you have set (and of course, Palestine and Iran are equally allowed to follow this procedure ;)).
> Normally, right of return is for people who were living somewhere, or have parents or grandparents who live somewhere. So it's obviously very strange when that applies to jewish people, who potentially have some ancestors in biblical times that were living in Jordan,
Much of the original push for the creation of Israel originates in world wide persecution of Jews, so it makes sense to me to allow all of them into Israel where they can band together. I also think that limitations on "parents or grandparents" are meant to imply some sort of test of "are they really still French if they left France two generations ago and haven't tried to come back since then?", whereas for Judaism many communities have been rather insular and managed to maintain their Jewish identity going back all the way to their original exile, so it is easier to see that they are still part of the same people. I do somewhat agree though in thinking that there eventually has to be some limit and the right to return should be drastically altered/reduce/abolished and replaced with more "normal" immigration controls. Maybe something like "You have a right to return by default if you are the grandson of a Jew who lived during the Holocaust. If you are the son or grandson of such a Jew (i.e. grandson of grandson) then follow this procedure, beyond that you are considered to have waived your right to return". Though this is off-the-cuff random internet talk and not a sound opinion :)
If talking specifically about Jordan, where Jews do not have a right to return, I'll add the other countries of the Middle East and North Africa where Jews who left (often but not only to go to Israel) are definitely not welcome back. It seems like morally you'd expect such a thing, though in practice I'd be surprised if there were any Jews willing to use such a right.
> but doesn't apply to Palestinians, who had grandparents living there.
Since you mentioned Jordan specifically, I'd just say that it is up to the Jordanians to provide that right to return (which I don't think they do).
For a Palestinian state (in a hypothetical 2ss) it will certainly make sense to have a right of return for Palestinian people, but I don't think it makes sense to have a right of return for Palestinians into Israel or Jews into Palestine, since the whole point of such an agreement would be to draw lines on what is Israel and what is Palestine, and drastically mixing the populations would just blur those lines and reignite conflict.
> To be honest, I have more sympathy for the argument that, yes, Israel is a typical colonial enterprise, but it's also been a while (70+ years), and people have made their lives there, so 2SS makes sense. It seems more consistent with how words like 'native', 'colony', and 'original inhabitants' work everywhere else.
Indeed I feel that is what follows from your initial statement, and I'll agree that your views are self-consistent and sound. Ideologically I don't fully agree with your thoughts, since I feel it incentivizes war-making as I mentioned.
Of course, as I said in my previous comment, in the real world I don't think it is practical or entirely fair to pursue something like a 3,000 year reversion, so a two state solution is a reasonable compromise, and it will require some strong guarantees to make sure such an agreement is kept and war-making is deterred.
I guess my intuition for how a 'right-to-return' should work would be, if you have your property stolen and you are driven out of the land, and it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is yours by inheritance, then you should be able to get it back.
It's to the eternal shame of Poland, Germany, and many other countries in Europe, that this is not what they did after the war. It's frankly shameful that this is rarely enforced anywhere.
If you do 'right of return' without the implicit return of property thing, it's pretty hollow if you've actually had your house/farm stolen, but it also becomes just a way of having an immigration policy that discriminates on an ethnic or religious basis.
I feel like people are generally pretty fine with accepting colonial borders: basically the whole world outside europe is divided by them. As long as they have a chance to live in peace, build businesses, live normal lives, I don't think people get that exercised about these things, on the whole. If you look at the lives of Palestinians, they look pretty humiliating. If I lived that life, had no chance to build anything or hold onto anything, I expect I would be pretty angry about it.
No need to keep to the Roman convention of renaming Israel to Palestine.
It's the historically accepted term for the region. The Zionists themselves used it in their literature. Quibbles about it are disingenuous and absolutely irrelevant to the current situation on the ground.
Anti-Zionism means exactly that, against the right for Jews for self determination in their native land.
No, it means being against an ideology which fundamentally rejects the right of self-determination to the non-Jewish population living on their land.
Israel as an ethnostate is vague
It's now written into the Basic Laws of Israel,
thanks to 2018 Nation-State bill.
If you define "Palestinian native land" as ...
We all know what it what is meant by "Palestine" and "Palestinians". And even Jabotinsky recognized the Palestinians as indigenous.
I still don't follow your logic, I can't find a more charitable interpretation then you just saying that Jews are inherently murderous and the French are inherently not.
Somewhat ironic as currently the average French person is probably safer in Tel Aviv than the average Jew is in Paris.
So here is my understanding of your point, feel free to correct it in a clearer statement, since your point still seems incomprehensible to me.
You are saying that denying the rights of Jews to self determination in their native land is not antisemitic, because Jewish identity is tied into both an ethnicity and a religion, making Jews inherent murderers and thus undeserving of a state. This is as opposed to say the French or German people, whose identity is mostly ethnic, who have a long history of peace, devoid of genocide, murder and disenfranchisement.
Not sure what you mean by a fairy tale definition of a promised land, we are talking about actual land that they've actually lived in for thousands of years (though naturally not all of it continuously, after the Roman exile not that many Jews were left. Though if you accept that as removing their right to live there then surely you'll have no problem with Israel doing the same to the Palestinians).
> Not sure what you mean by a fairy tale definition of a promised land, we are talking about actual land that they've actually lived in for thousands of years (though naturally not all of it continuously, after the Roman exile not that many Jews were left.
This is false, there's a reason for modern Palestinians and modern Jews sharing around the same genetic material with ancient Israelites, and that is conversion. The conflation of the ethnic group and the religious group is where your entire argument falls apart. What you are arguing for is not just an ethni-nationalist state, it is one steeped in religion, which is as good as any definition for fascism.
>> You appear to have fallen victim to a similar attempt at conflation, Zionism is a movement to fulfill the right for Jewish self-determination in their native land of thousands of years.
That doesn't make sense. I am Greek and we lost our ancestral lands in Asia Minor when we were slaughtered and expelled from them by the modern Turkish nation [1]. The same thing happened to the Armenians, Cappadocian Christians and Assyrian Christians, also.
And yet it is not anti-hellenic, or anti-christian, or anti-anything to deny that all those people and the Greeks have a right to return to their ancestral lands, where Turkish people now live. Resisting irredentist nationalism is not racist.
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[1] The Jewish are not the only people who were kicked out of the land they lived in for thousands of years, lost their greatest city and had their greatest temple turned into a mosque: this also happened to the Greeks: Asia Minor, Constantinoupolis and Agia Sophia, were Greek for thousands of years and now they belong to the Turkish nation. If the Greeks and every other ethnic and religious group claimed their "right to self-determination in their native land of thousand years", there would be bloodshed and war without end.
Germany isn't banning criticisms against Israel. They're banning antisemitic symbolism (whatever that means) that gets used in the protests. They have been like that for a long time with Nazi symbolism that isn't explicitly antisemitic.
The general dynamic remains: protests against specific actions of Israel are dismissed as anti-semitic by definition.
Banning Nazi symbolism is a good thing. Trying to equate neo-Nazis to anti-war protesters is disingenuous.
Far-right conservatives in Germany have claimed to be persecuted in this way for a long time, claiming that they aren't antisemitic. My point is that it's nothing new.
That can be true but it doesn't logically follow that the people being shut down today are from the same group or are employing the same rhetorical strategies.
Far-right conservatives in Germany claim to be "not antisemtic" by using dogwhistles (similar to the US, e.g. "elites" - the Nazis literally used "international bankers"). However they generally don't oppose Israel's right to self-defense and they are anti-Palestine because they don't like Muslims. In fact "actually the rise of antisemitism is caused by all the Muslims in our country" has been a major right-wing conservative talking point in Germany (and other parts of Europe) because it serves as a distraction. As there's no "risk" of increased Jewish immigration to Germany and Israel actually literally wants the opposite (i.e. for Jews to leave their home countries for Israel to increase the Jewish population in the Middle East, especially if they're the "right" kind of Jew), being pro-Israel is actually an effective strategy even if you turn around to blame all ills on a nebulous group of Jewish "elites" (and in Germany this is usually very nebulous as even far-right conservatives aren't dumb enough to be openly antisemetic).
Anti-Zionism is not antisemitic and antisemitism is not anti-Zionist. Historically the German far-right was actually indifferent to Zionism because it provided a way to get rid of Jewish people domestically. They placed restrictions on emigration to prevent wealth drain (i.e. rich Jewish people taking their money/property with them when leaving Germany) but the only reason they shut down the Zionist emigration project was that they invaded Poland and suspended all legal migration because of the war.
There is a line between being pro-Palestine/anti-Israel and being antisemitic. That line is when you insist on people being evicted from Palestine/Israel simply for being Jewish. Yes, some protests have seen people cross that line and some groups who have organized protests were firmly on the wrong end of that line. But the narrative that you can't be anti-Zionist without being antisemtic or that you can't be opposed to Israel's government's action without being opposed to the existence of Jewish people in Palestine/Israel is in itself antisemitic by deliberately conflating a state with individuals, many of whom don't even live in that state nor agree with it.
There have been many Jewish opponents to Zionism and Zionism in Palestine especially since the inception of the modern Zionist movements. Until the state of Israel was created there was a strong divide between Jewish Zionists and Bundists, the latter arguing for a stateless nationhood. Bundists and other Jewish anti-Zionists still exist, they're just relegated to obscurity because Israel dominates the international conversation and most Jewish interest groups have aligned themselves with Israel for pragmatic reasons.
Also, finally, Israel's current government as well as the illegal settlers in the West Bank (and prominent figures who fantasize about a "Greater Israel" including at least all of Palestine but potentially also parts of the surrounding countries) are in fact most accurately described as "far-right conservatives" as well.
Worse yet, increasing the quantity of books while simultaneously decreasing the quality just makes the situation worse for readers: more slop to filter out.