FLeXMurphy

The whole dashes debacle never made any sense, because many people are aware if you press and hold the hyphen "button" on your mobile touchscreen, it presents you options with different lengths you can choose from. That it was ever used as a signifier of LLM-written text meant that it can only show a false positive. For the last 20 or so years, a lot of web designers and content creators were "trained" on Elements of Style and other "best practices" cookbooks. People knew when to use what type of dash through these sources, as it gave a bit more of an elegant look to the presentation.

Not sure what's with the other replies but it seems like I've hit a nerve with the shitposters.

It is not a flaw in the system if the system is theirs.

Also - what he is talking about was true for well over a year. It is just that a lot of day-to-day gaps between prompt and output were closed in the meantime. In a sense, Ruby on Rails/37 Signals is a late adopter.

One thing with the newer models, especially Samsungs and the like, is they started using potting compounds to cover their circuit boards (within the plastic casing!), making simple fixes like replacing a voltage regulator or a capacitor essentially impossible. Yes, you can dig through the thing, but you're likely to slice through a trace if you don't slice your hand first. I unfortunately have a stack of these and I don't know what to do with them. [1]

Slightly older models, mid to late 2010s and earlier, are often easier to deal with because their circuitry is based more on simple analog controls for which a replacement part is not only widely available, but is cheap and can sometimes be improvised if needed, than on digital boards. I'm thinking of fridges which use a rheostat for the thermostat control. If one was so inclined and could absolutely not find a replacement, a bespoke set of resistors with a clip to choose termination point could be used instead.

If someone does want to get into this sort of thing, get something that already has a service manual + plenty of youtube videos. "Spare Parts" companies have tons of videos on how to do things, but they usually stop at probing and debugging circuit boards. You have service manuals that -do- contain, on the rare occasion, the schematics. But it's best to go with appliances that have incredibly simple, analog and discrete component systems rather than a plethora of digital ICs and processors.

As this blog post plainly mentions, the parts themselves often cost more than the appliance is worth. I have a box full of carbon brushes and ball bearings when I need to pull out a washer machine motor. A new motor is the cost of the machine, whereas the brushes, even if they are not OEM, work just fine for a few dollars and let the machine work for another one to two years under heavy daily use.

[1] Highly unlikely here, maybe in China, there could develop a second-hand black market where de-potted control boards are highly sought after due to their repairability, but it's a cyberpunk kind of dream at this point.

Don't give Dario any ideas please.

> next week: Mathematicians are solved [214 points, 891 comments]

If this is your first HN account and you haven't seen the site in the prior decade, the "emotionally charged responses centered in the personal credentials of the author" is the SOP. The site has yielded to that attitude because dang never enforced a sensible code of conduct, and relies mostly on favoritism and in-groups. Who says is more important than what is said, and the critiques you give are ranked according to whom you are critical of.

Think of this as a propaganda channel of a VC startup incubator who is brazenly looking for a product-market fit for anything and everything AI. Look at the roster of the recent startups and how many are AI-focused. Adjust expectations from there.

Next up: "CCC is mostly a sex cult" [231 points, 180 comments]

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I have a lot of mixed feelings about AI and LLM technology. I’m fascinated by its effect on our profession, excited by the potential gains in productivity - and thus the products we could rapidly build. On the other hand, I’m fearful of the damage AI might cause: agent swarms taking over our virtual and physical infrastructure, designing bio weapons. But, back on my first hand, LLMs might also design miracle cures, and come up with clever ways to raise our prosperity. Fundamentally I don’t think we have a choice about riding on the AI technology train. It’s a wild ride and I just hope we’ll get through it OK.

But as I mull on this more, I realize that among this mix of contrasting feelings, there is one emotion that dominates - one that comes from my direct interactions with LLMs. I don’t like them. They talk to me in this grating LLM-voice, an uncanny valley of talking to a real human. They confidently bullshit me - often giving me useful, helpful answers. But also just making stuff up with the same assurance - and with only a veneer of fake remorse when I call them out on it. That’s not enough to make me feel we should avoid them. As Jessica Kerr put it “not only are they useful, it is irresponsible not to use them…. They’re more thorough, as well as faster.” This contradictory reaction comes through in polling, where people say they find these models are useful, but also that they think they will be bad for society. Much of this may be because LLMs are young - we haven’t trained them to grow up yet. Maybe I’ll like them once they mature. (I hope we get to find out.) But I’m not encouraged when I think of the kinds of environments that cultivate them. I’m wary of the Silicon Valley brogrammer subculture, and these LLMs are their products, so naturally lean toward their world-view. When we think of AI agents, we shouldn’t anthropomorphize, treating them as conscious beings with their own will. They are (software) machines, developed by people working in corporations. While the agents’ behavior aren’t explicitly programmed, they are nurtured with the values of their creators.

One of my most successful life-hacks is to avoid people I don’t like or don’t trust. I decline to interact with them socially, and make a deliberate effort to avoid working with them too, even if they are doing much that is beneficial. I feel that hanging out with pleasant, capable people, the people with integrity, has made my life a far better one. Hence my visceral dislike of interacting with an LLM that’s not just making a pretense of being human, but also posing as the kind of human I walk away from.

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Ads in their current form are predominantly a nuisance and malware. Only incidentally do they help the person actually find what they are looking for. This has to change.

> I’m not certain that that’s what we’re facing now. I said that I don’t like making sweeping statements about the relationship between technology and cultural change, and I meant it. If a more relational world is the most serious problem AI causes, I’ll certainly be relieved. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it. I like my job, and I like liberal individualism. If the former will one day be a casualty of progress, I hope the latter will survive it.

After it spends too many paragraphs making the author feel important by reciting a bunch of historical just-so's. Interesting trivia, but otherwise nothing to hold any points together. There are no points however, because it just moves from one scene to another.

This is not a depiction of "a world without work" and you can substitute the timelines of the years covered, with today, and nothing would change.

Thanks for the great article surprisetalk. Did you even bother reading it or do you just cross-post the drivel that asterisk publishes?

The examples where arch students gave higher scores, like with that god awful-looking house, I don't have an answer to. Maybe they had terrible taste. Just because you are a student of architecture it does not mean you have good taste or how to build beautiful things that evoke a specific emotion.

Who do you think employs the top-level criminals?