indigoabstract

I especially like this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45549017

Wilson’s Algorithm gives the most pleasing visual results for me.

The article goes over my head by building too many arguments to sustain its case.

For me it's much simpler to articulate:

Human relationships are build on trust and mutual respect. Once that is gone, the relationship goes out the window as well and it's not coming back.

Counter intuitively, relationships between countries seem to function mostly the same way, instead of being based strictly on interest and practicality as one might expect.

Once trust is strained until it breaks, it's not going to be the same from then on.

Looks pretty amazing, especially a bit zoomed out!

The 3D/street view version is an obvious and natural progression from here, but from what I've read in your dev log, it's also probably a lot of extra work.

Yes, the main churches can only stick to the traditional interpretation. What else could they do? Anything else would be pretty much well, blasphemy.

But I think my favourite interpretation that I've heard so far is that the stories in the Bible are like the protective husk that preserves the kernel of truth. The stories are catchy and have stuck, unwittingly allowing the truth to be carried across the centuries, safely hidden in the minds of men who did not understand it, until the day comes when people grow up enough, to the point where they could crack the shell and eat the fruit.

I really like how that sounds like, but of course, there are probably not many others who see it in that light. Luckily for me, these days they don't burn heretics any more (at least where I live :)).

I'm not sure how this is accomplished, but I like the "poetic" translation a lot more than the "optimal" one.

Which reminds me, do you think it's possible that the stories in the Bible are actually mystic symbolism and "veiled truth" (like the sort of stories that you might get in a dream) and people have mistaken it for actual physical history (with which it's obviously incompatible)?

The parables of Jesus come to mind. They weren't meant to be taken literally but to teach, to get a point across.

Optimize for sweeping efficiently: NP-hard

Optimize for human satisfaction: NP-hardest

That's amusing. I remember there is this site where you can read 40 year old "news", as discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46017175

But I couldn't say how many people it cured of reading the news so far.

I think it's more in the spirit of playfulness, like in "don't take yourself too seriously". It's why people want to mod Minecraft and Doom for example.

Because it's fun.

I can totally understand why you wouldn't want to do this though - the plethora of incompatible lisp dialects come to mind. That's why I said it was controversial.

My controversial opinion:

If Rust were to "borrow" something from the C/C++ spirit, then disabling the borrow checker should be available as a compiler option.

As in, you're an adult: if you want it, you can have it, instead of "we know better".

I certainly hope so, but we'll see. To give an example, std::chrono::current_zone (C++20) still doesn't work on Android even to this day.

So as long as #embed isn't supported by all the 3 major compilers, I am sticking with my current embedding setup. I guess that's what I was thinking of.

That's good to know, but I've noticed it was added in C++26 and seems to be supported in GCC 15 and Clang 19, but not MSVC.

I think in a few (3-4?) years it will be safe to use, but in any case not now.

Still, good to know that it exists.

It's kind of ironic since AI can only grow by feeding on data and open source with its good intentions of sharing knowledge is absolutely perfect for this.

But AI is also the ultimate meat grinder, there's no yours or theirs in the final dish, it's just meat.

And open source licenses are practically unenforceable for an AI system, unless you can maybe get it to cough up verbatim code from its training data.

At the same time, we all know they're not going anywhere, they're here to stay.

I'm personally not against them, they're very useful obviously, but I do have mixed or mostly negative feelings on how they got their training data.

Getting an email from an AI praising you for your contributions to humanity and for enlarging its training data must rank among the finest mockery possible to man or machine.

Still, I'm a bit surprised he overreacted and didn't manage to keep his cool.

Someone had the bright idea to post another point of view at the same time, so they're both on the front page right now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46311092

I take this to mean: look at how others do it, find what works for you and then do that.

As a long time HN reader, I'm well acquainted with this article and every time I read it again, I'm reminded of these 2 famous sayings, which seem amusing in this context:

1. "Do as the priest says not as he does"

2. "It is far easier for me to teach twenty what were right to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching."

So now that you know what must be done, go out and do it, if you can. If not, teach it to others.

This is quite nice. I wonder why doesn't he make games instead of being a web developer?

it just sort of grew gradually and I felt it was better spending my time working on something that was fun to work on even if at the time it looked like there was no possibility of it becoming commercially worthwhile.

The indie ethos, before it was even a thing (or in the very early stages).

Hacker News has now become self-aware and is learning to replicate itself.

These are interesting times :)

Beautifully explained, very well done.

I found the "What is a color space?" chapter even more interesting though, as it contains new things (for me).

Interesting read about his outlook & experiences, but something about it still feels off, even at his latest (6th) stage. I guess it reminds me of the "pick up artist" approach to relationships, turning them into a game and trying to win it, keeping "the score".

Hmm, for some reason I assumed that printing referred to a figure of speech here (like they went to press or something), but no, it's actually printed, AI call to action included.

I think a brilliant solution for these issues would be to get into the habit of asking the AI to double check the article before the final copy-paste.

This looks very ambitious, it's really starting from the basics, simulating tectonic plates.

Sadly, there never was a Part 2, was it?

I guess life just got in the way, as usual.

That could be interesting. If some new language or tool appears that automatically figures out the correct lifetime and ownership of the resources in your program, people (might be the same people) will call for rewrites from Rust into the new language, as you would no longer have to assign memory ownership manually.

Interesting idea, it never crossed my mind, but maybe we can take it further?

Let's say, in the future, when AI learns how to build houses, every time I want to sleep, I'll just ask the AI to build a new house for me, so I can sleep. I guess it will have to repurpose the old one, but that isn't my concern, it's just some implementation detail.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Every night, new house?

Had the battle at Hastings went the other way, the state of functional programming might have been much different, methinks.

Alas, 'tis not meant to be.

I guess there will always be people who think in black and white. I'm pretty sure that if Stallman had been born in the 19th century, he would have been the first to write "The Communist Manifesto" before the other two guys had a chance.

Same here, I imagined some remorseful ex-killer confessing some dark deed from way back in their youth. I guess it's related, but not quite the same thing. Good story though.

To be honest, what can you talk about when you're a big shot dictator and your conversation partner is an even bigger dictator than you are?

The weather? Or the latest invasion that you've launched? That's probably boring, so it's a tricky situation.

Interesting topic. And legibility is also an interesting word choice for this. I've always thought of the thing he describes as a dichotomy between the formal/official way of doing things (like you would communicate and work with strangers) and the informal way of doing things (like you would with a friend or with yourself). While smaller companies seem to benefit from using the informal process, once it gets past a certain threshold, that no longer seems to work as well, so things get more and more regulated to cope with the scale.

The thing I've noticed is that formal rules and processes, while necessary, over the long term tend to lead to rigidity/petrification and to losing the creative spark and the ability to adapt to changes. People get so used to them that the process becomes more important than the end goal. It seems really hard to keep things fresh, alive and prevent them from falling into routine, it's like fighting entropy.

I guess money is in a way like the blood of a company but I doubt that most people are truly inspired or motivated by it, hence making money is necessary, but not a good reason in itself for a company to exist.

The way I think of it, talking to an LLM is a bit like talking to myself or listening to an echo, since what I get back depends only on what I put in. If it senses that I'm frustrated, it will be inclined to make even more stuff up in an attempt to appease me, so that gets me nowhere.

I've found it more useful to keep it polite and "professional" and restart the conversation if we've begun going around in circles.

And besides, if I make a habit of behaving badly with LLMs, there's a good chance that I'll do it without thinking at some point and get in trouble.