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Maxatar

1,630 karma · joined April 21, 2024

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Maxatar··on Ask HN: Where is the programming profession going?
There's nothing shocking about this. The vast majority of software/source code is pretty terrible anyways, code that is full of bugs, slow to use, has little to no automated tests and very hard to maintain.

To the extent that it gets fixed or works at all, it's not because of competent developers doing rigorous analysis of the software, it's because either someone testing it or using it gets annoyed, reports an issue, and then that specific issue gets patched out.

If using LLMs to perform a similar function shocks you, then you should have been shocked already by the proliferation of pretty bad software for the better part of the last couple of decades.

So many criticisms of LLMs assume that people have been writing software very diligently, applying a high standard of engineering, subjecting the code to a battery of rigorous tests, passing it through a strict review process... and that does happen for some software, especially software that is commonly used, but it's not true for the vast majority of software developed.

Maxatar··on Anthropic says Alibaba illicitly extracted Claude AI model capabilities
Seems legit:

https://www.folklore.org/A_Rich_Neighbor_Named_Xerox.html

Maxatar··on GTA 6 will cost $80
My post contains two sentences... for some reason you completely disregarded the second one.

For the sake of participating in a discussion, avoid doing that in the future.

Maxatar··on GTA 6 will cost $80
This doesn't track with actual game releases, on the contrary it tends to be smaller/simpler games that release exclusively digitally and the big triple A games continue to release physical discs.

As far as bugs go, the solution for this has been and continues to be that after you install the game from the disc, you download a patch to update it. It's been this way for almost 20 years now (XBox 360 and PS3 both launched with explicit support for this).

Maxatar··on There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days
Any form of media can be criticized, that's the nature of it... but RDR 2 is widely considered to be among the best games ever made.

Is there going to be someone out there who doesn't like it? Sure, take absolutely any game whatsoever and there's someone out there who will tell you it's not good... but by any reasonable measure: critical reception, awards, lasting cultural impact, influence on future games, it's almost across the board on the positive end of the spectrum. You're of course free to dislike it, but claiming it to be a "serious letdown" treats your singular point of view as if it were a consensus, when the actual consensus is overwhelmingly the opposite.

Maxatar··on GTA 6 will cost $80
PS5 and XBox support Blu-ray discs with capacities up to 100 GB. Both GTA V and GTA IV used multiple discs (there was an installation disc and a play disc). Heck the PC version of GTA V required 7 DVDs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/18hkrvj/you_c...

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
Which is why almost no employers ask for SAT scores as a way of screening candidates, and why this article was written to showcase the specific reasons doing so is ineffective.

Of course you'd have refrained from making such a vacuous reply if you bothered to read the article.

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
The submission isn't about academic tests involving academics... it's about the relevance of using such academic tests for the purpose of job screening.
Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
>Ground school comes first at IFT

There is no singular "IFT"... you happened to find one IFT among hundreds across the U.S. that has such a syllabus, great... but it does not come first as requirement mandated either by law/regulation or convention. Here is the syllabus for a different FAA Part 61 and 141 approved IFT program that uses an integrated approach with the following quote:

"Each Module contains both a flight and ground lesson. This presents an integrated flight training process and will promote easier learning and a more efficient flight training program"

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ad1e29b372b96bedc6b1...

>Note that a tree implies it is made of wood. If you find a stick of wood, odds are it came from a tree.

This is false, not all trees are made of wood (palm trees) and there are natural sources of wood that don't come from trees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_plant

But of course... instead of just admitting you were wrong to make that logical fallacy... free to continue doubling down and making things up.

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
Because I'm not trying to make a universal claim about all tests.
Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
Given that I'm not responding to any claim about the efficacy of math tests... it's actually your statement which is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.
Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
So you are making things up... thanks for confirming that. While I appreciate that you reviewed what Google "sez"... you have misunderstood the relevant context which is that the U.S. Air Force also requires that you complete Initial Flight Training (IFT) before you start the Air Force's own formal training program (UPT). In IFT you will not be required to pass ground school before you get to fly.

Furthermore, even if the Air Force did not require IFT before UPT (the Air Force's own training program), you've completely changed the nature of your argument. I have no dispute about whether the Air Force may or may not have stricter requirements for their pilots, but that wasn't your argument.

>I stand by my statement.

You've proudly planted your flag on a point nobody was contesting, which is a strange hill to celebrate on but you do you.

>But that does not rule out B implies A. A and B can be strongly related to each other.

Discussing a topic with someone who not only uses logically fallacies as justification for their argument but brazenly doubles down on said fallacy is a good sign that this is probably not a good discussion to continue spending time on. Like am I supposed to simply accept your logical fallacy and take on the burden of disproving every claim you can dream up simply because you've asserted it isn't logically impossible? The person making the claim carries the burden of supporting it, and "they're strongly related" is something you have to actually show, not something I'm obligated to refute on your behalf.

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
Yes, if you took your SAT among a cohort of people where none of you practiced for the SAT, then what you're saying holds true.

That's not really the case anymore. Top tier students nowadays prepare for the SAT, they don't go into it blind and haven't done so for the better part of 20 years.

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
This has to be a joke...

Ground school most certainly does not involve a lot of math, it's not like there's any calculus or algebra involved... it's basic arithmetic. Furthermore it's categorically false that you need to pass ground school before you're allowed to fly.

Are you just making things up?

>A teacher that cannot explain how calculus works cannot teach it to anybody.

This is a strawman argument, I never made anything that could even remotely be interpreted as this.

>I've seen too many coders using bubble sort because they don't know enough to look for a better algorithm.

This is committing a very basic logical fallacy. The fact that someone who is incompetent likely can't pass a test is not the same claim as someone who can't pass a test is likely incompetent.

Hopefully you are able to identify this logical mistake that you're committing and revise your position accordingly.

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
Straight from the College Board themselves:

https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/osp-technical-re...

That report also references another study showing that each hour of tutoring was associated with an increase of 2.34 points on the SAT score which unfortunately is behind a paywall:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282492223_Preparing...

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
I feel like it's a common misconception that IQ only tests some narrow intellectual abilities like math and logic, likely because online tests and fake IQ tests tend to focus on those kinds of puzzles. Actual IQ tests actually do place heavy emphasis on language skills like vocabulary, verbal abstraction and comprehension.
Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
That's not how it plays out in practice. There is overwhelming evidence that students who otherwise excel academically score fairly mediocre SAT scores on their first attempt and then jump substantially after weeks of targeted practice and/or tutoring, even though they didn't learn anything new in the classroom.

If attention in class were all it took then that improvement couldn't happen. What changed was familiarity with the test, not classroom focus.

Maxatar··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
Not really comparable... the overwhelming majority of flight tests involve flying an aircraft. There is no meaningful way someone can be excellent at flying an aircraft but can't pass a test which involves flying an aircraft.

The same can't be said for many other tests. If the test involves the practical application of the very skill being tested, then that test has direct relevance to he competency of said skill.

But many other tests are not like that. A teacher can be brilliant in the classroom yet stumble on a standardized certification exam full of pedagogical jargon. A chef can cook a variety of excellent dishes but fail a written culinary theory exam testing the French names of techniques they perform by instinct. And perhaps more relevant to this audience, a coding interview that relies on whiteboarding algorithms from memory can easily fail an excellent engineer who builds great software every day but doesn't recall the optimal solution to some puzzle on the spot.

Maxatar··on Semiclassical Gravity Efficiently Solves NP-Complete Problems
Hmm... I suppose it can come across as pedantic, but physical processes as a whole can do anything that can be done, hence it shouldn't come as a surprise that there exists a physical process that can perform a Fourier transform, or any computable process whatsoever.
Maxatar··on Never talk to the police
If you genuinely have evidence as a witness that can help police solve the case, then you get an attorney present.
Maxatar··on Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible
What's the significance of his "ideas" with respect to economics if they don't lead to actual predictions?

Why did he decide to make these predictions if his ideas supposedly have no bearing on how predictions are created?

Does economics no longer even have the pretense of being a science, which by its very nature exists to make testable predictions?

Maxatar··on Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible
>Please, not even poor starving destitute people in 3rd world countries live in thatched huts anymore.

UN data on housing somewhat disagrees with you. The somewhat is only because people living in such housing aren't starving/destitute, but they are still incredibly poor.

Maxatar··on Sam Bankman-Fried applies for a pardon from Trump
Just to clarify, a pardon in the ordinary sense can't be refused. If you're imprisoned and the President pardon's you, you can't decide to refuse the pardon and remain in prison. As soon as the pardon is granted you are released, whether you like it or not, whether you "accept" it or not.

The Burdick case had to do with an individual who had not yet been convicted of anything being offered a pardon in exchange for testimony that could have otherwise incriminated him. The Supreme Court ruled that in that specific scenario someone accepting a pardon could be seen as admitting guilt, so the pardon couldn't be forced on Burdick to strip away his fifth amendment right and compel his testimony.

Maxatar··on Sam Bankman-Fried applies for a pardon from Trump
Unlike CZ, who made Trump and his family hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, SBF has absolutely nothing to offer Trump. He's broke and a complete outcast.

Ross Ulbricht became a cause celebre among libertarians, but SBF was always genuinely despised by pretty much everyone.

Maxatar··on C++: The Documentary
I don't know if this is true. In the 80s there were many languages that were C with additional features or C preprocessors that added and experimented with features similar to cfront. You had OOPC (object-oriented pre-compiler), Objective-C, C*, Concurrent-C. People were experimenting in all kinds of ways by taking C and trying things out with it.
Maxatar··on C++: The Documentary
CMake has support for named modules but does not support header units or C++23 module features such as import std;
Maxatar··on C++: The Documentary
They may be humble in their older age but the good majority of people on the list were known for anything but their humbleness back when C++ was a much more dominant language.
Maxatar··on CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch
It says it's for self-study, ie. those who are not enrolled in the course.
Maxatar··on Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC
You pretty much always do a late-stage private round shortly before an IPO, that is the standard. The goal of the late-stage funding round is to give a better idea of how much capital can be raised by the IPO. It helps reduce uncertainty about expectations of what the company is worth before going public.
Maxatar··on Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC
It's the contents of the submission that are confidential, not the fact that they are submitting.

The contents themselves contain a lot of detailed information about the internals of the company including financials, revenue, ownership details etc... those details are what's confidential until the SEC gives its approval, at which point the public can then review the document.

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