I’ve got mine set to cynical and have the objectivity personalisation (found here a year ago) in place:
> Strict objectivity mode: be as scientifically grounded and unflinching as possible. Be unbiased and only base your answers on facts. Do not react with emotion, but with logic and patterns. Answer in short where you can.
And I got this:
> It’s 2025 right now, so 2026 is indeed the next calendar year. Wild how counting still trips people up, but yes, that’s how numbers roll.
Some people actually studied this already, and used embeddings to determine the differences between Grokipedia and Wikipedia: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09685
Some things I found interesting:
* Grokipedia uses Twitter a lot more as authoritative evidence than Wikipedia
* Grokipedia uses Grok’s own responses to user questions as authoritative sources, eg after a user asks “Can you dig up some dirt about $politician” and Grok responds, this is then used as source in Grokipedia, which may or may not be hallucinated
* the articles on politicians and Wikipedia’s curated list of “controversial topics” differ the most. they cite some examples from the “masculinity” article.
It’s a pretty interesting starting point imho. Let’s just say that the methodology of Grokipedia is at the very least highly questionable.
I think the parent was asking you for evidence of articles with bias, though. Not evidence of Musk making fun of Wikipedia.
I’m also curious to see any egregious violations where grok also dug its heels in a biased way when presented with an edit/correction with credible evidence.
I’d love to see some evidence of it. (Not in a sarcastic way, I’m genuinely asking)
Its' entire (stated) raison d'etre is that wikipedia is biased and wrong, so let's swap the question and instead ask for evidence of wikipedia sticking to wrong edits. If not, then grokipedia must exist for some other reason.
Edit: Of course edit spamming/concerted efforts can affect wikipedia, but I'd rather that possibility than the entire thing be edit controlled by a person with an endless string of scrupulous behaviour.
Do you really believe, Elon is watching over all Grokipedia articles and edits them as he pleases?
And, to engage in your whataboutism, it’s not that Wikipedia is inherently publishing wrong facts. It’s about their editors omitting inconvenient facts about their favourite political people. Here’s a paper about how the (German) articles of ruling party members are usually shorter than those of the opposing parties. Cross-checked against the same articles in other languages (which those German editors wouldn’t edit) and all.
No. But do I believe he directs engineers to lobotomise grok everytime it frames reality in a way he dislikes? Absolutely. And do I believe that grok is used to output grokipedia? Also yes.
It's 2025, not 2015. Complaints about lies of omission must be contrasted with how remarkably comfortable Elon and Trump and the right wing in general have become with lies of commission.
It favors things like "Vaccine Skepticism", climate change, and some more esoteric topics like Gamergate. It's been well covered and when the owner says "we're going to make it biased so our AIs trained on it are less 'woke'" I'm willing to accept they're doing the bad thing they say they're doing.
Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users.
People that have it already enabled can still use it as Apple is not allowed to talk about the "secret" order to disable it. However, there are rumours that they will block iCloud sync at some point until people disable the encryption again.
But the company wants a proper invoice. And not every single developer is interested in founding a Limited and getting the tax office breathing down their neck every year.
Also, look at Gitea. People got paranoid and forked the project after the original author did exactly that.
> But the company wants a proper invoice. And not every single developer is interested in founding a Limited and getting the tax office breathing down their neck every year.
I feel like it shouldn't be poor form to say on this site - a site that predominantly has been about building tech companies and revenue streams - to get over it and charge them.
Depending on the local laws, that's easier said than done. E.g. in Germany, a private entity (read: person) can't just bill a company. And you can't just write something that resembles an invoice either. Especially, you're not allowed to make it look like a business invoice by putting net sums on it.
A German business on the other side of the transaction rarely will pay anything if there's not a proper invoice (listing net sums and VAT separately) on file. And they usually also require the (business) tax ID of the other party.
To be fair, founding a business is a matter of filling in some form, paying a small fee, and a few days of time (depending on the workload of your local trade office). But still - if this is a one-off thing and you don't even know whether there will be more... I'm not sure I'd want to go through the hassle. Especially if it means having to hire an accountant with monthly costs, when I don't even know whether there will be more income.
In case it wasn't clear from my other comments up and down this comment chain, I don't really care about the specifics of Germany. If it's hard for you[1] to do it in Germany, then suck it up and figure it out.
More than enough has been written about how the ecosystem in various EU countries stifles entrepreneurship. It's not new information, but it's not a problem for the vast majority of people reading this site. This site is also focused on supporting entrepreneurship, we should be supporting the default approach of getting paid for your work.
Germany needs to change, not the stance of this site or the argument of charging for your work/time/etc.
Germany doesn't need to change, just Germans need to change talking lot of bullshit.
I registered a private SW development entity in Germany easily, without any costs. You just need to declare it as System SW, not Applications, or you'll have to pay Gewerbesteuer and Kammermitgliedschaft. Which is a lot and not needed at all. Your yearly taxes are trivial, no need for an accountant.
Especially a site that frequently champions, shall we say... more creative forms of running a company in its early stages (like how Spotify started out charging money for pirated music). If it's okay for OpenAI to launder copyright, it's okay for you to send a net-30 PDF to a Fortune 500 company.
Alternatively, people could just stop complaining about it.
Well the laws are like spider webs that only catch small bugs. It's "okay" for a Spotify or OpenAI because they can hire lawyers and expect to blitzscale. Harder to take those risks for a random solo developer who just wants to make things.
At least where I live you can hire an accountant from an accounting company for $n/hr so you can ask them
>"hey, can I do this?"
<"no, you'll need fields from forms X,Y and the price needs to be at least Z with them"
Same goes with a law-person. Then if you're lazy you'll just look at how much they cost you in some timeframe and add that to the price, and find that you've lowballed so hard you'll get laughed out of the bidding
You aren't wrong on either; Germany's tax law is insanely complex but also many people don't want to change the tax law as they can deduct a million and one things.
Since Hacker News also centers on entrepreneurship: I know quite some entrepreneurs in Germany who think this way about the bureacratic chicanery that companies have to handle, and already thought about whether hiring a hitman for these politicians would be a good idea. The hate for the political caste in Germany among many people is insane.
These laws may very well be terrible, but no need to mention on an internet forum you want to help (hire?) someone to mass murder people involved in making them. Jokes and sarcasm don't always land as intended.
As to a more constructive path: bureaucracy all over EU is definitely considered a big problem (for startups, and for many others) and there are a bunch of movements aimed at addressing them at all kinds of levels. For example look at the eu acc movement.
One should hire an accountant to handle the bureaucracy, and of course charge enough to make that viable. And you should stop airing your murderous dreams in public, that's disturbed no matter your feelings towards politicians.
Startup founders dislike any regulation that doesn't let do heinous stuff to earn some money, so I'm not really sympathetic with their plight honestly.
You should definitely charge enough to hire an accountant to handle the bureaucracy. This might be multiples of the payment for the technical bits but probably still cheaper than a hitman/woman.
Come on, stop with this slave mentality please. You can make invoices without funding any company and without the tax office getting in your hair. It's not illegal to charge for your services and never has been. You can declare that income just fine, or skip it. The tax office won't bother you.
This is entirely jurisdiction specific, so I can't say for certain, but in almost every country I've looked into it for, there is a set of paperwork that an individual can use to independently invoice for work, without the effort of setting up an incorporated company. You will definitely need to record the income you received, and declare it on the relevant tax forms.
There is often a scale variance too - in Australia, "hobby" income is treated differently from "business" income. [0]
In Germany, there is the concept of the "Freien Berufen" ("liberal professions"), in which you can freelance without a company. [1]
> ... the client also will demand...
The client may also demand these things of you.
They are certainly capable of dealing with sole traders, and will have some services provided by people who do not have those things. (Your boss does not check if the receipt you submit for the new bookshelf for the office comes from a registered company or a sole trader carpenter.)
Depending on the scale of the services you are providing, they may prefer to deal with a registered entity, but for small one-off things, that may not be necessary.
If you are regularly working with large businesses who are funding your work, it's worth looking into the most effective tax and legal structures for you. But if you just need to send the occasional invoice off to someone who wants something quick done, it's useful to know what your options are.
One final thought - even when dealing with organisations who prefer to deal with registered businesses, you have options. You can choose to be employed by a company which does that on your behalf. Either a business which you have a good relationship with, and is willing to enter into a casual employment contract with you and bill for your services, or a dedicated contractor management company. Either way, you give up a percentage of what you bill, but in exchange, they take the paperwork and liability overhead.
> There is often a scale variance too - in Australia, "hobby" income is treated differently from "business" income. [0]
I have an ABN and I am registered for GST for side hustles beyond the hobbyist income threshold. This costs me about 10 minutes of extra admin per year when I do my tax return.
All I need to do is give the tax office three figures: How much money I earned, how much GST I charged, and how much I paid (ie how much they need to give back to me.)
You don't seem to understand the power balance here. The client is in no position to demand anything, since the article author can just tell them to scram, and they can solve their own problems.
Working with corps is not a problem. Unless you have a slave mentality that is, and let them bully you and stomp all over you. If they have their wits with them, they will fully understand what negotiating position they are in, and not make unnecessary demands on the software creator.
I have a company in Estonia for cases like this. The amount of paperwork is nearly zero, the corps are happy they’re working with an actual company, and you can do things like holding money there (for business purchases) and paying no taxes in your home country (unless they have a CFC rule, notably US and Japan, in which case eh good luck).
It depends. Sibling thread has some horror stories about Germany, for example.
Estonia has been trying to get foreigners to open their businesses there for a while now: https://e-estonia.com/ But I don’t think that helps US residents too much (ask your tax advisor about CFC rules; I have only a vague understanding that it’s a PITA).
It also mostly doesn't help EU residents. If you live in another EU country, your tax office will treat your Estonian company as a local one since that's where the business takes place in truth.
Not sure about elsewhere but ot took me 15 minutes to setup my LTD in the UK and I paid a monthly fee for accountancy which was about £100 and another yearly fee of about £100 for them to do my tax return (as I am lazy and didn't want to do it).
Unless you are getting paid in cash or monero, HMRC will absolutely know if you are getting paid under the table.
The IRS will definitely bother you if they figure out you have unreported income. Will they find out? Maybe not if it’s a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. More than $10K? Then it gets more likely. If a client sends you a 1099 then they’ll certainly know.
They’ll know because in the US and abroad the banks send the balances and transactions to the IRS. I get letters every year/6 months that I’m subject to additional withholding because they haven’t gotten any $$ but they show I have.
Reporting income from freelancing is no more difficult than reporting income from your day job. So we're left still mystified what mbirth was talking about.
Two things I haven’t seen mentioned at a first glance:
- headlight covers fogging up/getting cloudy or even yellowing from sun exposure; these will scatter the light so more of what should go onto the street will be visible by oncoming vehicles
- 3rd party aftermarket LED replacement bulbs; usually illegal and completely mismatching what the mirrors in the headlights were made for, but that doesn’t keep people from buying and using them
