But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Most threats from from palace coups not popular revolt. Most normal people in uncertain times like order and aren't going to flip the table on a system that gives them stability, food and shelter.
My recollection from Roman history is that was certainly a part of it, but that 'I command the palace guard, so I should command the empire' also played a large role.
Just pay them well enough. Or pay the people at the top a good amount of money to keep the people below in check and have some hope you can rise to the top for a small portion of the people.
That is why you need The Boring Company to drill your private bunker beneath a granite mountain. No bunker buster is going to reach the middle of a Swiss tunnel.
You don’t think Anthropic belongs on that list? They’re working as hard as possible to plunder most of human creation and disturb all human life so that they can enrich themselves.
We have different definitions of obvious. They've yet to do a single thing of note. In fact, as of yet they have less balls and conviction than the Jan 6th retards.
The key is to look and act innocent and to throw them some batteries, then when they are concentrating on their food you skip right past. They can smell fear so that's the one thing you shouldn't feel while you're doing all this.
Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.
Yes, but in those cases - the assassinated generally trusted those who were assassinating them. If you're holding somebody's family hostage or otherwise coercing them, there's no trust and you're gonna get killed.
Grunts are regularly mistreated and coerced. You can kidnap people off the streets, throw them in a trench and make sure they don't run away by the presence of "motivational troops" in the rear (who kill their own side for fleeing) but you don't let those sort of troops anywhere remotely near the people responsible for their predicament for very obvious reasons, let alone when armed.
These billionaires who have always relied on the power of the state for their security and asserting their property are absolutely delusional if they think they can keep it without it.
When states collapse, the one who emerge victorious aren't the well-mannered business people, it's the warlords (a.k.a. the heads of organized crime).
I mean, if you were already a security guard before the apocalypse, it would kind of make sense to find a billionaire bunker for you and your family, and just continue being a security guard in order to stay there. Whatever that entails, the alternative is probably so much worse.
There have been plenty of times in history (almost all times) that physically weaker men have secured the loyalty of soldiers with wealth and influence during periods where strong centralized civic authorities did not exist.
But the soldiers didn't have the mobile phones then. This was possible by manipulation the information about reality those soldiers had.
For example, how Mallory can gain power over Alice and Bob who don't directly communicate.
First, Mallory tells Alice: "I am stronger than you. If you don't do what I say I'll kill you." So Alice decides to submit.
Then, Mallory takes Alice to Bob and says to him: "Together with Alice we are stronger than you, and kill you if you don't do what I want." So Bob submits.
This only works if Bob doesn't talk to Alice, otherwise they would together see the empty threat.
With more people, it becomes a bit trickier but hopefully you see how blocking communication helps to gain power over people. Often the blocking of communication is done through propaganda, e.g. Mallory might entice Alice and Bob to hate each other, so they wouldn't get together and figure he's the manipulator. Or Mallory might just kill someone randomly to motivate people not to talk to each other.
Anyway, this shows the importance of free speech (which is really a misnomer; it should be called a right to listen). If you can freely talk (and listen) to other people, you reduce your chances to being subjugated by someone.
(This is also why in a war, people are incentivized to dehumanize the other party and not to listen what they say, because together they could figure out that the real enemy are the war profiteers on both sides, colluding. And besides, killing is the most reliable way of silencing someone. That's why people should also universally reject killing - based on someone else's word - unless they are directly threatened themselves.)
Sorry, but I think you've kind of just dug yourself into some concept you think is neat but which doesn't really hold up. Like, this just doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all.
First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group.
Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
The end of Covid in China is interesting. Even the CCP, and their level of surveillance and control, were unable to maintain control of an entire population fed up with sheltering in place. If there aren't fair and open elections in 2028, it will no longer be the United States of America.
And there have been plenty of times when the armed thugs have staged a coup and overthrown their masters.
In the absence of civic order, personal relationships between the elites are what matters. Your thugs can easily take everything you own, but they don't inherit your relationships. A billionaire in an isolated self-sufficient bunker has nothing to offer to thugs who are already inside. A billionaire in a bunker that relies on trade with other nearby bunkers is in a much stronger position.
If it happened, they better don't run polls for popular support. If the building were empty at the time of the strike, you'd probably get 70% among college students (Luigi had 41%).
At this point if news broke Anthropic’s office was bombed my first thought would be the US government. Didn’t they label the company a national security threat?
The idea of Anthropic allowing a contractor to squeeze such a tiny cost center at such a massive PR cost right before their IPO is just an objective blunder, IMHO. They should've replied to that email with a quick "No, you will be negotiating with the union tomorrow morning. You maybe eventually saving millions right now could cost us literally billions."
Ik the building intimately - it's not Anthroptic but the building's security company (which Anthropic does not own and is subleasing). SEIU is working to organize Allied Universal in California.
Support SEIU organizing them (their fighting the good fight in this case), but this specific article is clickbait.
So you go to the building owner and say, "give them what they want or we walk." Security team probably doesn't want outrageous changes. Building owner probably just being greedy.
You can't in most cases. These buildings are owned by larger conglomerates and are out of scope of landlord-leasee negotiations especially as it's a sublease.
Allied United is one of the larger security augmentation firms in the nation, which makes is harder. For example, my Alma mater was secured by Allied Universal as well as a dedicated PD because the dedicated PD didn't want to be bag check for a library when they have been dealing with real crime (eg. A comrade in their sister PD across town's was shot by the Boston marathon bombers).
Contractually, you cannot depending on the sublease, which is between the original owner (a F500) and I think JLL or CBRE, and even then is specifically veteeen JLL and Allied Universal.
Anthropic is anyhow leaving this specific building.
When I worked at a building in SF (where we leased, exactly like this situation) and SEIU demonstrated in front of the building, we were told to consider staying home just because we'd have to walk through the picket line.
It wasn't anything to do with whether we could have gotten our own (e.g.) security.
Exactly. And honestly, most of us in white collar industries and managerial roles are aligned with SEIU organizing Allied Universal - their "security guards" are undertrained, underpaid, and are basically left to fend for themselves by AU. They absolutely need to be unionized.
You absolutely can call them and make it clear that their playing games is causing you reputation damage ahead of an IPO — so you need that fixed.
A large conglomerate isn’t interested in pissing off a client because their subcontractor has a middle-manager playing fuck-fuck games with a union. That’s exactly the sort of business situation that executive communication can fix.
The only relation Allied Universial employees and Anthropic has is that Anthropic is temporarily subleasing this specific office in Rincon Hill from another F500 before moving to nicer digs a couple blocks down, and that F500 has a contract with Allied Universal.
Like HOW HARD is this to get for everyone on here?!? When you take out a temporary sublease, what the management company's vendors do completely outside your negotiating scope.
All this is showing is further proof that almost no one on HN is from the Bay anymore.
Imagine a world where 20% of the world compute is allocated to cheerleader-agents encouraging the other agents, and that’s the actual secret recipe to build an AGI
Most likely a typo (fixed by now), but in some (most?) non-English languages billion is the correct word for 10^12 instead of 10^9, usually the error happens when translating from English though, not into English.
Apparently it's different between Portugal and Brazil? (e.g. Portugal => long-scale, Brazil => short-scale - but that's just what ChatGPT is telling me). E.g. maybe it's more of a 'Europe-except-UK vs Americas' thing?
Same in Greek. It's "ekatommyrio" with a prefix of the order of magnitude "dis" from two for billions, "tris" from three for trillions, "tetrakis" from four for quadrillions and so on.
Wow, this is bad news. Without in-office collaboration, company culture will collapse. The organic moments of spontaneous synergy won't take place. Perhaps OpenAI or even xAI will take over as leading company. Grim.
IDK what I would do if I was working and couldn't hear my coworker loudly "spontaneously collaborating" on the phone with the contractor installing his kitchen floor. At least I have an hour commute each way, $25/day in parking costs and another $20/day in food costs to comfort me.
You're wasting more of their money by using it. I've personally siphoned probably a few million in electricity costs alone from them while giving them pennies.
Claude, I need a strategy for defeating unions trying to up their rates, please research union defeating settlements done in the past 50 years and build a case against them to keep our rates at the lowest possible.
Most of the stats show it being less productive for the company. But in my opinion its more efficient because the company prod takes a slight hit while the workers life productivity also goes up quite significantly.
Pretty crazy. The security team denies there ever was a threat of a strike? And generally you do announce strike threats, it's kind of the whole point with strikes that your employer knows of the possibility.
Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
It's possible that they just took the state of contract negotiations as an implicit threat of a strike without waiting for the union to explicitly announce the threat.
"based upon the intercepted emails and language used in discussions with the union, we predict with 63% accuracy that they will strike within ~3 months"
Well isn't that a damn terrible idea? Who convinced them that was a good idea? "We have a heard faint rumors of a whiff that you may one day threaten a strike, so we're gonna try insane overreaction as a tactic"
a week of wfh from a company that's equipped to support remote work anyway and only wants in-office 25% of the time hardly qualifies as "insane overreaction". I'd says it's probably more along the lines of "a single email".
wonderwonder | 14 hours ago
bpodgursky | 14 hours ago
ceejayoz | 14 hours ago
bpodgursky | 14 hours ago
But, historically, strongmen/chieftains have not had incredible trouble keeping their goons under control. Most threats from from palace coups not popular revolt. Most normal people in uncertain times like order and aren't going to flip the table on a system that gives them stability, food and shelter.
ceejayoz | 14 hours ago
Sure. But some of them seize power from others on their way up via force.
nemomarx | 14 hours ago
GolfPopper | 13 hours ago
stymaar | 14 hours ago
Yup, but those aren't the same people as the one who get to become tech billionaires.
sensanaty | 5 hours ago
john_strinlai | 14 hours ago
dayvid | 14 hours ago
inigyou | 14 hours ago
fullshark | 12 hours ago
derwiki | 14 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 14 hours ago
wrash-qwtr | 14 hours ago
jcranmer | 13 hours ago
Razengan | 13 hours ago
nathan_compton | 12 hours ago
kridsdale1 | 12 hours ago
fragmede | 11 hours ago
GPerson | 12 hours ago
phoghed | 11 hours ago
GPerson | 11 hours ago
Ha! Look as these useless non-acting larpers!
phoghed | 9 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 9 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 9 hours ago
jacquesm | 10 hours ago
philipallstar | 14 hours ago
zbentley | 14 hours ago
Awful, but not without historical precedent.
philipallstar | 14 hours ago
Tade0 | 14 hours ago
somenameforme | 14 hours ago
Grunts under coercion has a rich history that's still ongoing, but these sort of guards are those that would have both weapons and the guarded in their direct vicinity. I can't think of any historic example where this wasn't the loyalest of the loyal types.
jcranmer | 13 hours ago
somenameforme | 12 minutes ago
Grunts are regularly mistreated and coerced. You can kidnap people off the streets, throw them in a trench and make sure they don't run away by the presence of "motivational troops" in the rear (who kill their own side for fleeing) but you don't let those sort of troops anywhere remotely near the people responsible for their predicament for very obvious reasons, let alone when armed.
stymaar | 14 hours ago
These billionaires who have always relied on the power of the state for their security and asserting their property are absolutely delusional if they think they can keep it without it.
When states collapse, the one who emerge victorious aren't the well-mannered business people, it's the warlords (a.k.a. the heads of organized crime).
stronglikedan | 12 hours ago
deadbunny | 14 hours ago
tracerbulletx | 14 hours ago
js8 | 14 hours ago
For example, how Mallory can gain power over Alice and Bob who don't directly communicate.
First, Mallory tells Alice: "I am stronger than you. If you don't do what I say I'll kill you." So Alice decides to submit.
Then, Mallory takes Alice to Bob and says to him: "Together with Alice we are stronger than you, and kill you if you don't do what I want." So Bob submits.
This only works if Bob doesn't talk to Alice, otherwise they would together see the empty threat.
With more people, it becomes a bit trickier but hopefully you see how blocking communication helps to gain power over people. Often the blocking of communication is done through propaganda, e.g. Mallory might entice Alice and Bob to hate each other, so they wouldn't get together and figure he's the manipulator. Or Mallory might just kill someone randomly to motivate people not to talk to each other.
Anyway, this shows the importance of free speech (which is really a misnomer; it should be called a right to listen). If you can freely talk (and listen) to other people, you reduce your chances to being subjugated by someone.
(This is also why in a war, people are incentivized to dehumanize the other party and not to listen what they say, because together they could figure out that the real enemy are the war profiteers on both sides, colluding. And besides, killing is the most reliable way of silencing someone. That's why people should also universally reject killing - based on someone else's word - unless they are directly threatened themselves.)
applfanboysbgon | 11 hours ago
First, general power dynamics are in no way inherently predicated on misinforming people. That can help, but it's really quite a lot simpler than that: A commands B and C. A approaches D and says get in line or we'll kill you. D says OK or dies. ABCD approach E and repeat this process. The person with the most connections, actual real connections, wins. The challenge to building more connections than A is not having a cell phone, but rather attempting to find connections who aren't truly loyal to A, because anyone who is loyal will out you and have you killed for treason. Indeed cell phones make this harder, not easier, because they leave a paper trail of evidence that you were attempting to betray the existing group.
Second, mobile phones do nothing to change this dynamic in favor of the weak, and in fact, are one of the most powerful tools for cementing existing power structures ever created. They are both the ultimate channel to propagate misinformation, and are also 24/7 surveillance devices that will betray any attempt to conspire against those in power. If you want to foster rebellion against your evil overlords, your organization absolutely cannot use phones without giving themselves away, which puts you at a massive technical disadvantage. And even if you try to forbid members from using phones, they're so deeply ingrained into daily life that somebody will inevitably slip up and give the surveillance state info on your planned rebellion. I would go so far as to say we can expect to never see a successful rebellion against anybody with the level of surveillance as the US, in our lifetimes.
bladeacidic | 11 hours ago
jltsiren | 10 hours ago
In the absence of civic order, personal relationships between the elites are what matters. Your thugs can easily take everything you own, but they don't inherit your relationships. A billionaire in an isolated self-sufficient bunker has nothing to offer to thugs who are already inside. A billionaire in a bunker that relies on trade with other nearby bunkers is in a much stronger position.
sailfast | 14 hours ago
malfist | 13 hours ago
matheusmoreira | 11 hours ago
doughnutstracks | 14 hours ago
wrash-qwtr | 14 hours ago
ModernMech | 11 hours ago
staticman2 | 10 hours ago
throwa356262 | 9 hours ago
Half of the employees deported and a few shot dead just for good measures should be enough to bring Dario to the negotiations table.
actsasbuffoon | 9 hours ago
We’re invading spreadsheets now. Anything is possible.
red-iron-pine | 9 hours ago
bbor | 14 hours ago
alephnerd | 14 hours ago
Support SEIU organizing them (their fighting the good fight in this case), but this specific article is clickbait.
forestrywat | 14 hours ago
alephnerd | 14 hours ago
Allied United is one of the larger security augmentation firms in the nation, which makes is harder. For example, my Alma mater was secured by Allied Universal as well as a dedicated PD because the dedicated PD didn't want to be bag check for a library when they have been dealing with real crime (eg. A comrade in their sister PD across town's was shot by the Boston marathon bombers).
AnimalMuppet | 13 hours ago
Except they can. Anthropic could just hire their own security for when the other guys go on strike.
alephnerd | 13 hours ago
Anthropic is anyhow leaving this specific building.
mh- | 11 hours ago
It wasn't anything to do with whether we could have gotten our own (e.g.) security.
alephnerd | 10 hours ago
zmgsabst | 13 hours ago
A large conglomerate isn’t interested in pissing off a client because their subcontractor has a middle-manager playing fuck-fuck games with a union. That’s exactly the sort of business situation that executive communication can fix.
alephnerd | 13 hours ago
Like HOW HARD is this to get for everyone on here?!? When you take out a temporary sublease, what the management company's vendors do completely outside your negotiating scope.
All this is showing is further proof that almost no one on HN is from the Bay anymore.
t098i3 | 14 hours ago
kennywinker | 14 hours ago
forestrywat | 14 hours ago
ReptileMan | 14 hours ago
dgellow | 14 hours ago
geori | 14 hours ago
jasonjmcghee | 14 hours ago
irthomasthomas | 14 hours ago
zarzavat | 14 hours ago
womitt | 12 hours ago
mimischi | 11 hours ago
BoingBoomTschak | 7 hours ago
lukan | 14 hours ago
flohofwoe | 14 hours ago
cassianoleal | 13 hours ago
Is it? In Portuguese it's thousand, million, billion, trillion... (Milhar, milhão, bilhão, trilhão, ...)
flohofwoe | 13 hours ago
fallingbananna | 11 hours ago
Hardwired8976 | 11 hours ago
elorant | 11 hours ago
HeavyStorm | 13 hours ago
MandieD | 13 hours ago
dotwaffle | 10 hours ago
flohofwoe | 13 hours ago
The Wikipedia article has a nice map what countries use which convention (search for "Current Usage"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
ralfd | 12 hours ago
zem | 6 hours ago
neysofu | 13 hours ago
Specifically:
> [...] giga- is always 10^9, which is 'billion' in short scale but 'milliard' in long scale.
kelvinjps10 | 12 hours ago
francisofascii | 11 hours ago
bediger4000 | 14 hours ago
fluxusars | 14 hours ago
- You're absolutely right!
ratelimitsteve | 9 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 9 hours ago
chihuahua | 9 hours ago
mandarinclips | 14 hours ago
Legend2440 | 12 hours ago
kridsdale1 | 12 hours ago
vizzier | 12 hours ago
abrenuntio | 11 hours ago
stronglikedan | 12 hours ago
rfgplk | 11 hours ago
zeafoamrun | 14 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 9 hours ago
you can trust them with AI code, you can trust them with a full-on rifle
bastard_op | 12 hours ago
Freedom2 | 12 hours ago
lbreakjai | 12 hours ago
mawadev | 12 hours ago
jambalaya8 | 11 hours ago
Aboutplants | 11 hours ago
Valodim | 10 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 9 hours ago
AuthAuth | 6 hours ago
bel8 | 8 hours ago
delduca | 11 hours ago
vintermann | 11 hours ago
Did Anthropic get "warned" about this strike by its own AI models?
ratelimitsteve | 9 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 9 hours ago
"based upon the intercepted emails and language used in discussions with the union, we predict with 63% accuracy that they will strike within ~3 months"
vintermann | 8 hours ago
ratelimitsteve | 8 hours ago
throwa356262 | 9 hours ago
tantalor | 9 hours ago
goryramsy | 9 hours ago