HN user
There are many valid critiques of AI, but “there’s not much there” isn’t one of them.
I have solved more problems with tools like sed and awk, you know, actual tools, more than I’ve entered tokens into an LLM.
Nobody seemed to give a fuck as long as the problem was solved.
This it getting out of hand.
Valve selling skins is just so trivial relative to dopamine-inducing doom-scrolling, social media in general, the toxicity of the news cycle, I can keep going.
It would be super democrat-american to address valves loot boxes before, say, fucking healthcare.
We need a government priority Jira board of things that need to be addressed. Loot boxes _might_ make the backlog.
More to the point, I think part of being a senior is being able to dig up code you wrote a few years ago and say “how awful”
You really think if they had the unchecked power of Stalin or mao they would be… better?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s a no-kidding literary tool used throughout history.
Jacobin is not a whole journal on literal communism. It’s a magazine with a professed socialist view point but it’s more aligned with left-of-center American politics. Think Sanders or Mamdani rather than Stalin or Mao.
Sanders or Mamdani
Sanders and Mamdani are about as far left of center as one can get at the moment, such that they almost meld into Stalin or Mao.
The mental gymnastics you’re doing to blunt that fact is absolutely incredible.
I worked on a C codebase once, integrating an i2c sensor. The vendor only had example code in asm. I had to learn to inline asm.
It still happens in 2025
Gamed tests?
Using US VC dollars. Where their desks are isn’t really important.
Oh, the bill was 12.3k
Does a computer understand how hot or cold it is outside? Does it understand that your offspring might be cranky because they’re hungry? Or not hungry, just tired? Can it divine the difference?
Does a computer know if your boss is mad at you or if they had a fight with their spouse last night, or whatever other reason they may be grumpy?
Can a computer establish relationships… with anything?
How about when a computer goes through puberty? Or menopause? Or a car accident? How do those things affect them?
Don’t bother responding, I think you get the point.
Discover, not invent
Which bits cost 100k? The $75 ibproufen? The $47 towel? The $19,563 bed charge? Oh, the $32,925 imaging that NFL players get instantly?
Insurance in America is a fucking joke.
I am a male breast cancer survivor. I had a mammogram the other week. $620.
No, nobody benefits from insurance in America. Well, nobody ill.
If i could understand what the brain scans actually meant, I would consider it a good representation. I don't think we know yet what they mean. I saw some headline the other day about a person with "low brain activity" and said person was in complete denial about it, I would be too.
I expect to see responses like yours on Reddit, not HN.
I suppose that says something about both of us.
something fundamental has changed that enables a computer to pretty effectively understand natural language.
You understand how the tech works right? It's statistics and tokens. The computer understands nothing. Creating "understanding" would be a breakthrough.
Edit: I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I sincerely wasn't. I don't "understand" how LLMs "understand" anything. I'd be super pumped to learn that bit. I don't have an agenda.
The conflict has essentially been going on since Jacob and Esau, if you view the Bible as a historical record.
Just get a ps5. I went through the same adventure.
People pay for this?
Umm. I guess not?
Six years ago, I wrote that it was a terrible idea for LEGO to acquire Bricklink and revisiting some of my thoughts I expressed then, it sure seems like there’s some dodgy stuff happening behind the scenes.
To be fair, I acknowledge that there may be compliance challenges operating in some of these countries, where things like local laws, logistics, import restrictions etc may make it difficult for LEGO/Bricklink to do their business there, but surely there could’ve been a better way to communicate this, or invite community feedback instead of turning the whole site off in 2 weeks.
“Statistical matrix math outperforms statistical matrix math!” More at 11
I graduated high school in 2005. I had been making and running websites and forums (phpbb anyone?) since 1998…ish?
I went to a solid state college, started my degree in EE, bounced around a bit, landed on comp sci, almost failed out, and now (given that story) I’d never have been hired anywhere.
As it turned out, it the value I provided to my first job was… significant? I kept solving problems, usually with zero code and just technical suggestions.
I loved going to college. I loved everything about it. I wish I could do it again. I learned nothing.
Don’t climb that ladder and eat that food! We will beat you!
Ah. I was responding to:
Your average web app can have security-critical issues but they probably won’t have safety-critical issues.
How many air-gapped systems have you worked on?
I think you identified the problem.
subcommittee of the committee assigned to fix the process
That bit, is the problem.
Safety-critical systems aren’t connected to a MAC address you can ping. I didn’t move the goalposts.
Or getting something down now, as close as possible to what happened yesterday and the day before, to unblock the larger process—then refining it after the fires are out?
In my experience, the refining never happens.
Yeesh. I’ve never worked with a smart group of people who came to that conclusion. That sounds toxic. :(
Most people around here are too busy evangelizing rust or some web framework.
Most people around here don’t have any reason to have strong opinions about safety-critical code.
Most people around here spend the majority of their time trying to make their company money via startup culture, the annals of async web programming, and how awful some type systems are in various languages.
Working on safety-critical code with formal verification is the most intense, exhausting, fascinating work I’ve ever done.
Most people don’t work a company that either needs or can afford a safety-critical toolchain that is sufficient for formal, certified verification.
The goal of formal verification and safety critical code is _not_ to eliminate undefined behavior, it is to fail safely. This subtle point seems to have been lost a long time ago with “*end” developers trying to sell ads, or whatever.
If that's what you inferred was being sold based on random HN commentary, then you probably want to revisit how you absorb information.
Heard, chef.