> Eve independently screened some 1,600 chemicals and modelled how their structure related to their activity to predict which ones were worth testing. King and his group armed the robot with background knowledge and a machine-learning framework for developing hypotheses. Eve then used those elements to design experiments to test these hypotheses and, crucially, performed them itself.
> King plans to use the system — which occupies one-fifth of floor space than Eve does — to model how genes, proteins and small molecules interact in cells. Part of that will involve taking around 10,000 mass-spectrometry measurements each day.
The throughput here is astounding, especially when driven by researchers who really know how to chart a path. I feel every time a critical feedback loop is made both faster and cheaper, it makes everyone participating better. I wonder whether we will see many more "whiz kid" scientific researchers than we have today.
This is an interesting perspective. What happens if there is a large global war? Do researchers who were previously against working with the DoD end up flipping out of duty? Does the war budget go up? Does the DoD decide to lift any ban on Anthropic for the sake of getting the best model and does Anthropic warm its stance on not working with autonomous weapons systems?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but if the answer is “yes” to at least 1 or 2, then I think the equation flips quite a bit. This is what I’m seeing in the world right now, and it’s disconcerting:
1. Ukraine and Russia have been in a skirmish that has been drawn out much longer than I would guess most people would have guessed. This has created a divide in political allegiance within the United States and Europe.
2. We captured the leader of Venezuela. Cuba is now scared they are next.
3. We just bombed Iran and killed their supreme leader.
4. China and the US are, of course, in a massive economic race for world power supremacy. The tensions have been steadily rising, and they are now feeling the pressure of oil exports from Iran grinding to a halt.
5. The past couple days Macron has been trying to quell tension between Israel and Lebanon.
I really do not hope we are not headed into war. I hope the fact that we all have nukes and rely on each others’ supply chains deters one. But man does it feel like the odds are increasing in favor of one, and man does that seem to throw a wrench in this whole thing with Anthropic vs. OpenAI.
"We" here clearly means USA+israel. There isn't a distinction between the two when they're working towards the same goals, bombing everything in sight, together.
The one who pulled the trigger is irrelevant here, because both have pulled the trigger hundreds or thousands of times in the past few days, dividing up targets between them for the joint operation.
> Given that direct assassination is still prohibited by EO 11905 / 12036 / 12333
It sounds like you think this means something?
Obviously it doesn't when we're talking about an administration that openly breaks laws, much less EOs, and issues whatever EOs they want saying whatever they want, even in violation of previous EOs. There aren't even any repercussions to the president "violating an EO".
So, the pedantry here is irrelevant. The two parties are on the same team, working towards the same goal, doing the same things, divvying up the list of targets to strike.
Given that you totally ignored the substance of my post, and instead focused on attacking me personally, it does seem like you're not interested in a discussion, and not a good fit for the HN culture and guidelines. So yeah, maybe you are right and it would be better if you left.
But! That's not who you always have to be! I'm confident you can coherently articulate your point without resorting to that. Feel free to come back if you're willing to share why you feel the president not complying with a presidential executive order is significant here, rather than insignificant.
Might be a dumb question, but isn’t the risk of cold joints proportional to your skill in soldering in general? Important context: I am definitely a noob to soldering
It is, yes. After some practice, you will not get cold joints. Or when there is a danger of a cold joint due to massive heat sinking around, you will know and be extra careful
I will be honest. I love open source. But something that really annoys me about the open source community is that the developers take this holier-than-thou approach to backing up maintainers in circumstances like this, but obviously they are not paying with their own money. They are just complaining, and it feels a lot like virtue signaling at worst and pure naivety at best. It feels extremely disengenous at this point, and it's annoying.
What do we actually know?
1. People are inherently selfish. If you give me this shit for free, I'm gonna use it for free. Obviously everyone is doing this. Spare me the "but I go to this conference or that conference".
2. Code is cheap. Why would I ever pay for something that is not gated behind a service with API limits and costs?
3. Coding as we know it is getting commoditized. That's correct. We are all going to lose our jobs as we know it today. Clearly that's the future. Wake up!
But when making these points, open source devs (and honestly a lot of people on hacker news) whine and complain. I don't really know why I'm leaving this comment - I just feel like I'm at an annoyance breaking point. This guy is obviously struggling to pivot and all the grandstanding and virtue signaling just feels like additional noise and wanting to feel good with very little action.
Because of point 3 most SWE's are also hesistant to pay for software. The positive feedback loop of "I did well out of this so i will support others as well" is over.
When you are thinking your days are numbered any cost to develop software (even token budget) is measured. As coding becomes commoditized the ROI in code will drop of that code (capitalism rewards scarcity; not value delivered) and you suddenly become cost conscious. We are moving from a monopoly-moat like market to a competitive cost based market in SWE as AI improves.
There are agentic ways to submit to the journey even if it’s going to suck for a while and there’s no apparent end in sight. Gratitude. God. Whatever. Lots of people submit by withering away and letting their emotions take them down a path of steady erosion. That is not high agency.
I cancelled my ChatGPT subscription today in favor of using Grok. It’s literally the difference between me never using ChatGPT to using Grok all the time, and the only way I can explain it is twofold:
1. The output from Grok doesn’t feel constrained. I don’t know how much of this is the marketing pitch of it “not being woke”, but I feel it in its answers. It never tells me it’s not going to return a result or sugarcoats some analysis it found from Reddit that’s less than savory.
2. Speed. Jesus Christ ChatGPT has gotten so slow.
Can’t wait to pay for Grok. Can’t believe I’m here. I’m usually a big proponent of just sticking with the thing that’s the most popular when it comes to technology, but that’s not panning out this time around.
I really wish the release videos made things a ~tad~ bit less technical. I know quantum computers are still very early so the target audience is technical for this kind of release, but I can’t help wonder how many more people would be excited and pulled in if they made the main release video more approachable.
If you have programming experience, you might find this interesting: back in 2019, when Google announced achieving quantum supremacy, I worked on a personal project to study the basics of quantum computing and share my learnings with others in my blog:
> King plans to use the system — which occupies one-fifth of floor space than Eve does — to model how genes, proteins and small molecules interact in cells. Part of that will involve taking around 10,000 mass-spectrometry measurements each day.
The throughput here is astounding, especially when driven by researchers who really know how to chart a path. I feel every time a critical feedback loop is made both faster and cheaper, it makes everyone participating better. I wonder whether we will see many more "whiz kid" scientific researchers than we have today.
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