HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

timmb

277 karma · joined August 24, 2019

submissionscomments
timmb··on Show HN: I trained a 125M model to autocomplete piano on-device
Reminds me of Francois Pachet’s Continuator (all the way back in 2003, using hierarchical markov models)

https://www.francoispachet.fr/continuator/

timmb··on Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude
This is exactly why something more advanced than copyright is needed to protect human creative endeavour against AI appropriation. Copyright is demonstrated here not to be up to the job but it doesn’t mean there isn’t regulation needed to give human creators rights and a reward for their contribution
timmb··on GitHub Compromised
They’ve been developing git and GitHub for over a decade. It really isn’t surprising they have made thousands of internally available repos. They probably have hundreds just for running automated tests alone.
timmb··on Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions
Because writing is a process suited to some minds more than others. And if your bar to receiving an idea is that it came from a competent writer then you’ll be limited to ideas that reflect a certain way of thinking (and one many mistakenly conflate with intelligence).

Conversation is a different process that may be suited to other types of thinking. And so on.

It’s true that LLMs can enable unoriginal and shallow thinking to be expressed with a false veneer of original thought. But it does not follow that all LLM-written text is the result of laziness nor that it is without value.

I’m just suggesting, come with an open mind rather than judging the whole thing based on a gut reaction to style. That reliance on a gut stylistic reaction is itself lazy and has led many an intellectual community into echo chambers of groupthink.

timmb··on Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions
I don't understand why so many of these comments HN is getting are so fixated on writing style. I appreciate that stylistic traits associated with AI-written text are often indicative of contentless slop. But lots of people also write like that. To moan about writing style without even considering the value of the content just sounds cranky to me.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading the experiment, and the starting premise, and the embracing of a fairly mundane outcome. Reminds me of running various generative systems and looking for emergent states.

Shame there's no rss feed to follow along.

timmb··on Robots move Shanghai city block [video]
In Romania in the 80s, a number of churches were moved to make space for new building projects. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/dec/14/bucharest-mov...
timmb··on Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work
How did we end up with bitcoin before this?
timmb··on Tuta Launches Post Quantum Cryptography for Email (2024)
Post quantum - as in designed to resist quantum computer based attacks under which rsa would quickly crumble. Why do you associate this with snake oil?
timmb··on 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised
The parking lots mentioned are municipal not private.
timmb··on Breakthrough a step toward revealing hidden structure of prime numbers
Something inspiring about this: "In dedicated Friday afternoon thinking sessions, he returned to the problem again and again over the past decade, to no avail."
timmb··on [dead]
Title seems a little clickbaity. It's on-device scanning, which is off by default, and seems primarily designed to help you get content warnings on incoming content.
timmb··on Sorry, wrong number
The UK’s road numbering system feels like it was designed for the convenience of the people in Whitehall filing their maps rather than those using the roads. Giving adjacent roads very similar numbers is the maximally confusing thing to do. For my brain at least - I have to choose between the M73, M74 or M77 and I often get it wrong. It would be easier if they’d reversed all the numbers to put the zone at the end - I feel M37, M47 and M77 would be easier to remember between.
timmb··on British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages
Because they would have obviously known it was their friend making a joke.
timmb··on OpenAI – Application for US trademark “GPT” has failed
I love how terrible the name is from a branding perspective. It actually makes it feel more legit like a new tech rather than yet another wannabe assistant. And from what I can see, few have heard of Gemini, Bard, Cortana, Copilot, or Jeeves compared to ChatGPT, which has something of the charm of R2D2 or C3PO.
timmb··on Undisclosed tinkering in Excel behind economics paper
I disagree, I think it means “my actions have demonstrated that I’m not trying to cover anything up”
timmb··on British man appears in court over bomb joke sent in private message
Not the constitutional protection like in the US. It just creeps in bit by bit.
timmb··on British man appears in court over bomb joke sent in private message
I’m guessing this wouldn’t have had the same response if the guy was white. Feels like the guy should be due compensation by the Spanish government. Is there really a law that prohibits private jokes that may alarm an unknown surveillance system?
timmb··on Show HN: An open-source, self-hostable synced narration platform for ebooks
Looks great! Is there an e-ink e-reader it’s compatible with? Would love to abandon the Amazon castle but could not go back to reading on a screen.
timmb··on US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal
> Between direct public spending and compulsory, tax-driven insurance programs, Germany spent about $380 billion in health care in 2022; France spent around $300 billion, and so did the U.K.; Italy, $147 billion; Spain, $105 billion; and Austria, $43 billion. The total, $1.2 trillion, is about two-thirds of what the U.S. government spent without offering all of its citizens the option of forgoing private insurance.

Is it fair to include Germany here? I thought the German system required everyone to have private insurance through their (breadwinner’s) employer. But I’ve only heard this via self-employed people complaining of having to pay €300 a month in health insurance. To me it sounds more like the American system than the UK one of everything just being free and state-funded. But as I say, I only know through hearsay.

timmb··on Show HN: DataSheetGrid, an Airtable-like React component
Looks great at first glance… but the page keeps wobbling up and down as the endlessly changing hero text at the top shifts between 3 and 4 lines, so a little hard to read the rest of the page. (On Firefox iOS)
timmb··on Email obfuscation rendered almost ineffective against ChatGPT
Sheesh just got its first one on the same day as posting this. Feels like someone's personally taken the time.
timmb··on Email obfuscation rendered almost ineffective against ChatGPT
For all the comments saying obfuscation is pointless. I have an email address listed publicly on a project website with basic obfuscation (something like x <at> y <dot> com), plus a bit of javascript to automatically deobfuscate it in the browser. It's been there for years and never received a spam email.

But then I have another address which I've been similarly careful with but have also used on a few registrations and that gets a bit of spam (not that much though).

Reckon it'll still work a while more yet.

timmb··on Remove Half of Your Documentation
The pointless comment is definitely going to get worse with copilot, where you write a comment to prompt the generation.
timmb··on Remove Half of Your Documentation
Dont forget:

* What it does * What it's for

timmb··on Researchers find link between plastic additive and autism, ADHD
> The percentages are confusing me, BPA intake can vary greatly - if there was a stronger link shouldn't this be much obvious just in folks with higher BPA exposure?

Presumably it’s much easier to measure someone’s ability to eliminate BPA from the bloodstream than it is to calculate how much they consumed in uteri and throughout their life.

timmb··on Prophetic Perfect Tense
I think it should be “you are already failed”.

It seems to work better on verbs that have a different form for “I failed” and “I have failed” which “fail” does not.

Try “you are already fallen at the first hurdle”.

timmb··on Prophetic Perfect Tense
That’s basically what the tense is.
timmb··on Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002)
Definitely bolsted my faith in statisticians.
timmb··on Tell HN: Reminder that your LinkedIn profile is fully visible to site members
Only if you spell it right! I got “Spearfishing is fishing using handheld elongated, sharp-pointed tools such as a spear, gig, or harpoon, to impaling the fish in the body”
timmb··on The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection
I think it’s more complex than that. Wealth is often created by monopolising things (e.g. enclosures) instead of by creating them.
Page 1 of 2Next →