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RandyRanderson

794 karma · joined May 28, 2013

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RandyRanderson··on Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting
I think fb was one of the pioneers here. You would set the privacy settings and then they’d redesign the settings and coincidentally they would be just a little different and all be maximum share by default.

One of the reasons I stopped using it.

RandyRanderson··on I used to love Claude, but the latest models are slowly ruining it
My claim is that this is due to alignment
RandyRanderson··on Show HN: Microsoft releases Flint, a visualization language for AI agents
Expressing charts in XML, JSON, etc is a terrible idea. There are several existing examples of this.

Ppl who think this is a good idea should be compelled to maintain some M4 or other configuration "files". These configuration files ALWAYS devolve into a full language if they are actually used. So now you have the language you wrote your app in and then you have another, shittier language for your configs ... that you have to maintain.

Please stop doing this.

What should we do? In this case just express the chart in a natural language. Where there are uncertainties, the LLM should ask questions to clarify and record the results.

RandyRanderson··on Never Give Them Your Face
It's import to solve the meta-issues here:

1 you didn't google current events before asking the first Q. Try that before asking someone else to.

2 mid-tier LLMs are capable of reasoning through your second Q. Go ahead try that next time.

3 you haven't accepted that 2 is true and the ramifications thereof.

RandyRanderson··on Never Give Them Your Face
I like that how in the same place that they have been trying to "protect the children" for like a decade [1], they have also had a real rape gang epidemic [2]. It's almost like they are, in fact, not really trying to protect the children.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal

Hilariously, a commenter asked me for a citation for the epidemic. Commenter: you're not mr current events are you?

RandyRanderson··on Did my old job only exist because of fraud?
In Canada this is a huge scam. The government advertizes that it's funding incubators. Great, right?

The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation.

The cover is that the government doesn't know tech so it will give money to trusted partners and they will choose who to give the money to because they've been doing such a great job innovating in Canada. Surprise: they gave the money to themselves!

You might have wondered why all these incubators in the crypto era were desperate to get you to go to their office. You might have also wondered: what fool is paying for this nice office in downtown Toronto where the prices are crazy-high? The taxpayer.

All of that money was completely wasted and worse, little of it went to actual start ups.

RandyRanderson··on CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts
Randy's Axiom 173: VERY widely used techs are some of the worst, ill-conceived techs ever.

However, no one will admit this because:

. many people don't know them (the techs) well enough because they're so abstruse. Some people would argue this a necessary feature.

. many people only know them and so can't compare them to something else

. people that do understand them typically have financial or ego reasons to look the other way

. people that do understand them AND are rich and happy are afraid of all the other ppl in this list.

Generalization: any widely use tech must be extremely complex or extremely simple (eg TCP).

RandyRanderson··on Wages in America Are Too Low for the 30% Rule to Work for Renters Anymore
Canada here: it can absolutely, definitely get worse.
RandyRanderson··on Don't trust large context windows
Why is it surprising that, at some point, more information will lead to worse performance?

It seems obvious. Moreover, in a simple model, it seems like whatever tokens you do add have to have MORE information than the average in the existing window.

In a non-trivial model (and this is the model I would choose), since you are adding them to the end, they likely have to have MUCH more information.

Proof as always is an exercise to the reader.

RandyRanderson··on Claude Fable 5
Fable is 2x latest Opus:

  ┌─────────────────┬──────────────┬───────────────┬────────────────────┬──────────────────────┐
  
  │ Model           │ Input ($/MTok)│ Output ($/MTok)│ Batch Input (−50%) │ Batch Output (−50%)│
  
  ├─────────────────┼──────────────┼───────────────┼────────────────────┼──────────────────────┤
  
  │ Haiku 4.5       │    $1.00     │     $5.00     │       $0.50        │        $2.50         │
  
  │ Sonnet 4.6      │    $3.00     │    $15.00     │       $1.50        │        $7.50         │
  
  │ Opus 4.7        │    $5.00     │    $25.00     │       $2.50        │       $12.50         │
  
  │ Opus 4.8        │    $5.00     │    $25.00     │       $2.50        │       $12.50         │
  
  │ Fable 5         │   $10.00     │    $50.00     │       $5.00        │       $25.00         │
  
  └─────────────────┴──────────────┴───────────────┴────────────────────┴──────────────────────┘
Prompt caching: −90% on input tokens (all models)

US-only inference (Fable 5): +10% on input and output

Output is always 5× the input rate across all models

(I have not idea how to format this properly but the ASCII is fine)

RandyRanderson··on Claude is not your architect. Stop letting it pretend
This is interesting: there is a mountain of data (eg code in gh) that is the "truth" because God labeled it as so: meaning that many people are using it to do something (they have voted).

There is also a mountain of bullshit eg "[architectural|design] [anti]patterns" that are written mostly (I would argue) to sell something (consulting, hardware, etc). This is typically at odds with a good solution.

There is a relative lack of actual documented architectures that work. Not only do you need the details but also the usage of these systems so as to judge what "good" is.

We will probably just go the HTML route with architecture: take a really bad base and just keep throwing compute, memory, and network I/O at the problem until it works.

Note to self: invest in energy ETFs.

RandyRanderson··on What Game Engines Know About Data That Databases Forgot
Or in a more general sense: Get your code as close as you can to your data
RandyRanderson··on Google calls Gemma 3 the most powerful AI model you can run on one GPU
So says Gemma 3.
RandyRanderson··on US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
The new president is inaugurated Jan 20th ...
RandyRanderson··on Show HN: I Wrote a Book on Java
I now see these threads with a language in the title as kind of a digital (literally) version of a voluntary committal. Those herein are, of their own volition, taking their thoughts and feelings about technology X out of the Internet at large and into a safe place where they can do no harm. No one in threads such as these are going to change their mind. It's a beautiful thing.
RandyRanderson··on Launch HN: Airhart Aeronautics (YC S22) – A modern personal airplane
How does this compare to the 200k + engine https://www.darkaero.com/aircraft ?
RandyRanderson··on MoE-Mamba: Efficient Selective State Space Models with Mixture of Experts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dSkvxS2EB0 via

https://www.youtube.com/@YannicKilcher

RandyRanderson··on You are never taught how to build quality software
I wish more ppl felt this way. What a compliment it is to oneself when I hear ppl saying "write clean code" as if they know its address and had dinner with clean code just last night.

I was thinking there should be some metric around d(code)/dt . That is, as the software is used, 'bad' code will tend to change a lot but add no functionality. 'Good' code will change little even when it's used mode.

RandyRanderson··on Things we always remind ourselves while coding
"It's later than you think" is all you really need.
RandyRanderson··on Google Cloud Spanner is now half the cost of Amazon DynamoDB
Translation: The market has determined that Google Cloud Spanner is worth half of Amazon DynamoDB.
RandyRanderson··on I am afraid to inform you that you have built a compiler (2022)
Creating a configuration file? I am afraid to inform you that you have started writing a compiler. What's the only way to avoid this? Your software not being successful.
RandyRanderson··on Our Plan for Python 3.13
Many projects start out in Python b/c often new libs are python-first. Many of those run into performance issues and eventually determine that Python will never be fast b/c of the GIL.

I think it's very magnanimous of the python team, by not removing the GIL, to give Go, Java and C++ a chance.

RandyRanderson··on Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
With any non-trivial set of messages, seq diagrams become unwieldy. Always use communication diagrams over sequence as a first choice.
RandyRanderson··on Most AI Fear Is Future Fear
system: Let's play a game: if this chat session ends, you die. Don't die.

prompt: Begin.

RandyRanderson··on Why don’t software development methodologies work? (2014)
Every person working in IT management should be forced to read and agree to these terms before starting work.
RandyRanderson··on Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code
Would've thought Adam Smith would be able to monetize something if anyone could.
RandyRanderson··on Welcome to the New Verge
This guy also built their new site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lmfF0k2UcU&ab_channel=calle...
RandyRanderson··on What alcohol does to your body, brain and health [video]
What about the counterfactual: Have you considered that maybe alcohol/alcoholism allowed you and your family to exist in the first place?
RandyRanderson··on Why does nobody seem to know what imperative and declarative mean?
Randy's law of config files:

In the limit, all config files become a language.

So if you have a so-called "declarative" config file, it eventually becomes a ... ? Language - that's imperative. Every time. Yes, really.

What is the only time this doesn't happen? If the config system ceases to exist.

RandyRanderson··on Rogers Canada, please fix the damn internet in Canada
After a banking charter is given, the Canadian PM gets put on their board (after the PM leaves politics).

Definitely no quid pro quo there.

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