HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ur-whale

5,464 karma · joined January 11, 2018

submissionscomments
ur-whale··on Could a modern chess engine on a Pentium have defeated Kasparov in 1996?
Get it to play Magnus, that'd prbly ground the whole affair.
ur-whale··on Resisting Cognitive Surrender
> Resisting Cognitive Surrender

The economics of the whole affair unfortunately point squarely in the opposite direction.

ur-whale··on European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative
> European RISC-V Industrial Computing Initiative > Based in Europe, open worldwide

So European, right?

I'm immediately thinking: there's got to be some sort of sovereign aspect to the initiative ... right?

I mean, if there's one place you want a silicon stack that wasn't manufactured in China, it's most definitely in the guts of your industrial infrastructure (assuming you still have one, yes, point taken).

But, if you look at the "The silicon is here." section and dig a little:

> "Shenzhen MilkV Technology Co., Ltd" [1]

[1]: https://milkv.io/about

Wake me up when someone can actually build a computer from scratch with EU-made parts.

ur-whale··on Mathematics has changed. Let's act like it
Wake me up when AI solves Collatz.
ur-whale··on Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance
My take: unless they're a sovereign-backed team (North Korea, Russia, Iran, etc...the usual suspects) the hackers are very likely to get caught given:

a) The amounts stolen

b) The very poor uncensorability and anonymity guarantees offered by the kind of crypto they stole

Regarding uncensorability, some of these cryptos score so bad on that axis that the stolen goods can likely be recovered by a simple decision from the folks who manage/own the chain.

ur-whale··on Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance
> It seems better when it's on an exchange like Binance, because they cover you when it gets stolen.

Assuming they actually can cover the losses financially.

And if they don't good luck suing them.

ur-whale··on I went to Mexico to test-drive the cars Americans can’t buy
https://archive.ph/sGqBh
ur-whale··on Formlabs Studio 1 $699 Resin Printer
Is HN an advertizing site now?
ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Carbon
My general impression of all Google models I've tried so far is a general "goody two shoes" feeling which I find very, very frustrating.

I'm going to experiment with this one (assuming they ever get around to actually releasing it), and I'm really hoping the lame cultural aftertaste is gone.

ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Carbon
> some people are 100% Gemini, some are 100% Claude, some are using both.

Does that mean Anthropic now has a copy of Google's source code?

[EDIT]: thanks to people in the know for their answers.

Follow-up question:

if Anthropic models run in a Google cage, does that not also mean Google can distill Anthropic models even easier (both fast and unseen)?

ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Carbon
> When you are a megacorp, perhaps here even the megacorp, every mistake you make is worth millions to someone, the government, the media, individuals, or all of them

I don't buy it.

SpaceX is not exactly a small corporation, and they nevertheless strike me as far less risk-averse than GOOG and they deal with actual hardware that actually effing explodes.

ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Carbon
> it’s pleasant

for whom?

ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Carbon
Great to see Google reclaim the frontier, however, as usual with most Google launches, an announcement for a product that no one can actually try outside of a tiny circle of users.
ur-whale··on Microsoft and others tell crypto platform not to tokenize their stocks
> Microsoft and Others Tell Crypto Platform Not to Tokenize Their Stocks

Do they actually have a legal say in the matter?

ur-whale··on GPT-6.1 Terra
> If you have suggestions on how to name our products better, I'm all ears.

Hire an actual marketing person instead of letting engineers / ML researchers do things they're clearly terrible at ?

ur-whale··on Kimi K3.1 Pro and K3.1 Pro Highspeed
> How many frontier labs are there right now?

As long as LLM's can be distilled, and all these "labs" (what a weird name) can distill one another, there are going to be as many as capital is available to be burnt on the topic.

ur-whale··on It's still ok to enjoy programming
> It's still ok to enjoy programming

It is indeed, and full disclosure, I am 100% one of these folks.

Much like there are people that still forge full-scale two-handed swords in their garage.

Magnificent and fulfilling work, but with questionable economic value.

ur-whale··on Theranos-Style Fraud Has Become the Norm
https://archive.ph/BdlXw
ur-whale··on Websites are closing their doors to AI agents
https://archive.ph/kqpFJ
ur-whale··on A History of Curves and Surfaces in Computer Aided Geometric Design [pdf]
This document strikes me as quite dated.
ur-whale··on How the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” is deceiving
Worth a read about Nathan Fielder, brings a bit of context.

https://archive.ph/sDeDD

ur-whale··on Libreboot 26.10 "Ominous Olive" released with UEFI, Chromebook support
> Having political strings attached is antithetical to the movement.

I believe you may have a rather narrow notion of what politics are.

In my book, politics is the art of making choices when your ability to predict the future is limited, and therefore the willingness, courage and fortitude to make choices under uncertainty.

Under that definition, they're making a choice, one that materially and obviously can't be backed by sound reasoning or logic (because predicting the future is hard), that's politics.

ur-whale··on Libreboot 26.10 "Ominous Olive" released with UEFI, Chromebook support
> I'd rather have the project that works,

You didn't get my point. It might very well be that the only project that lets you actually freely boot a computer in 5 years will be this one, specifically because they did not let an AI touch it.

In that regard, it will be the only project, like you put it, "that works".

Like I said, I don't necessary subscribe to their view, but the diversity of opinion matters, it helps with minor things like, oh, survival.

ur-whale··on Libreboot 26.10 "Ominous Olive" released with UEFI, Chromebook support
> Cool, that's why open source projects get left behind. The attitude

They're making a political choice. It's a free country, and more power to them.

It's not a choice that I necessarily agree with, but one that may - who knows - prove prescient 5 years down the road.

No one can predict the future, that's what politics are partly about and the reason why diversity of opinion of choice matters.

Do you have a crystal ball?

ur-whale··on Redesigning source control at Anthropic
> it seems that this repo will be in a constant state of continuous change and we constantly roll forward with automated code and obviously no direct human supervision

The whole thing, including ingestion and review, is not meant to be used by humans.

This is the shared memory / history of a horde of coding agents.

ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Argon
> How on earth do they keep an engineering org on the 'right track'?

They don't.

If they did, neither OpenAI nor Anthropic would even exist, as the core of what they're all doing was invented by Google engineers and researchers.

ur-whale··on Gemini 4 Argon
> The Google Gemini subscription landscape is such a mess...

The others are quite bad as well in that regard, but on this particular metric, Google has always been top dog. Goes back to way before AI ever took off, BTW.

ur-whale··on Apple's new 'Switch to Safari' campaign details why you should ditch Chrome
> Nope

Really well argued, congrats.

ur-whale··on Apple's new 'Switch to Safari' campaign details why you should ditch Chrome
> I would consider Safari, if Apple open sourced it and it ran on Linux.

Yes, absolutely. But then they wouldn't be able to lock the flock in the barn, which is so contrary to Apple's DNA that you can't event talk about it in a 1 mile radius of 1, Infinite loop.

ur-whale··on Apple's new 'Switch to Safari' campaign details why you should ditch Chrome
> I don't think people realize that you can go back to a website after you've visited.

This is about as wrong as you can possibly get.

This would be true in a stateless world (assuming you can remember the site you want to visit).

Which the web hasn't been since a very long time.

Page 1 of 34Next →