HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Royce-CMR

118 karma · joined September 19, 2023

submissionscomments
Royce-CMR··on I'm the mom in that viral Giants clip. Let me tell you about my husband
Regardless of the truth of the times, if you ever write a book with this view and cite your research where possible I suspect many of us would read it. The concept is fascinating.
Royce-CMR··on Claude Opus 5.5
I honestly don’t think deepseek is as good inherently as we treat it… but it thinks so much so fast it gets itself there. I’ve been super impressed.
Royce-CMR··on Anthropic's best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive
I dropped back to Opus 4.8 and it's so much better. Opus 5 was - to your point - actually driving me insane.
Royce-CMR··on The bottleneck might be the air in the room
I’ve had a Co2 monitor for years. I get headaches from increased Co2 levels plus the lethargic state. It’s been revolutionary - including on long drives where it’s def saved me from crashing.

Personal opinion, you can see cognitive decline at 1000 ppm. Not “ur a zombie” but it’s there. Airflow has vastly improved my life.

Another personal opinion - the coporate stupidity and inane behavior we all see tracks back in part to Co2 levels turning people into quasi zombies. It’s a lot easier to just not care, and things don’t click like they should, when in higher Co2 environments - pushing everyone to rote, process, unthinking approaches. Sounds familiar?

Royce-CMR··on Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
I was home schooled - so my perspective of education is at best, unique. I finished a dual major undergrad at 18, got an MBA at 21.

Based on my own experiences and those of people I’ve watched, I have three points. Sample size of 1 and all that; but it’s a lowkey passion topic for me.

- The argument that AI is “the next calculator” and education testing and overall methods need to adapt, is true.

- The distance between learning concepts to passing memorization tests(or worse, non-reality test specific logic) has grown significantly in my lifetime, and the AI education problems are really a mix of the cascade impacts of this issue + the AI impacts on conventional education measures.

- The problem with students who use AI to get past (often arbitrary) difficult courses or testing scenarios may look like one problem compensating aka solving for another (and I love AI for it!) but the parallel problem of AI (and our education system baseline) enabling students to normalize non-cognitive drone like approaches to any problem is super problematic.

The last point is an admittedly recent eye opening moment for me. Working with younger students recently, they are shocked at anything less than a fully clearly defined problem (education system training) and anytime thinking is required, they go to AI (which is fine!) and they can’t think beyond the AI output (which is super not fine!) The latter has been astonishing for myself and coworkers and really has us reconsidering our young talent programs.

Royce-CMR··on DeepSeek Introduces Vision
I’ve long wondered if this was deliberate - only conversations where the participants are overtly using the translator get parsed.
Royce-CMR··on Hacker News but for independent blogs
The post (after reading it) is not political in the today sense. It’s connecting an in vogue concept to toxic thought patterns and notes a correlation in both the patterns and trending association of some influencers to a specific political segment.

The point the author is trying to cover is that a lifestyle and aesthetic the author naturally aligns with actually actively excludes her - and that pattern is seen elsewhere and (author opinion) has wider implications.

I’d argue it’s a fair and not a political statement (there is some text that indicates the preference of the author) but a human realizing and sharing their exclusion from a group and that the exclusion expands into (again, author perspective) defined categories of people. Talking about thoughts and opinions is… what I expect from a blog.

Royce-CMR··on Apple WWDC 2026
Damn I thought this was just me. I figured it was a temp thing - device too hot for ongoing high brightness, and the photos app overrides because someone decided if you are trying to show a photo, do the job right to the limit.

Ugh so newer phones have this too? (15 pro max). Another reason to not upgrade.

Royce-CMR··on Apple WWDC 2026
You have to remember that Steve spent months, stories say half a year, preparing for the keynote. Arguments would get so heated he’d fire people and bring them back the next day to continue.

Hate him or love him; he knew that was the single largest stage for Apple and put the effort into each one. The keynotes today are like Apple overall, a fantastic organization that is starting to drift toward.. fake.

Royce-CMR··on My Agent Skill for Test-Driven Development
I can't find the link now, but Anthropic has a post about using either a light model call or other logic (regex etc) to dynamically decide what tools to expose per incoming request.

I've run into the same issue and I still end up manually curtailing what's exposed to the model, limiting to the task at hand, but I like the idea of another (smaller I hope) model doing 70% of the clipping instead, automagically.

Royce-CMR··on SANA-WM, a 2.6B open-source world model for 1-minute 720p video
The site notes all starting images are GPT2 imagine gen or nano banana - so that’s probably part of it too.
Royce-CMR··on Tesla is recalling its cheaper Cybertruck because the wheels might fall off
You know, this comments page saddens me. I came to hacker news years ago because every single post had careful, intelligent discussion. Countless times people clearly put their emotions aside and carefully followed the guidelines - be kind, don’t be snarky, be substantive, and when refuting a position don’t say that’s idiotic; say 1+1 does not equal 3.

Shock about the standards that led to cybertruck wheels falling off? Totally right. Discussion about Tesla engineering practices, servicing and business operations, and the influence of their leader on product - absolutely.

But statements like “No one is hauling anything in these anyway. The Cybertruck is a midlife crisis car for white-collar Indian dudes with money.” (Which, to be fair, was flagged so 100% thank you to the community)… or another user I won’t name who has multiple 3-4 word replies like “no it can’t” which is totally helpful in a discussion, are growing.

I know this is a messy topic; hate on the cybertruck and Tesla overall is high and we are all in a different headspace vs pre-covid. And I still come to hacker news because this is the best discussion forum left… but I’m sad about what we’ve lost along the way.

Royce-CMR··on Apple Says Mac Studio and Mac Mini Will Be in Short Supply for Months
I think the outliers have burned them more recently and even Apple loses historical memory over time.

That said I remember everything you said and 100% agree - the nano killed everything around it. It’s been awhile since Apple had a similar home run; not an excuse for the clear lack of vision/leadership but a factor nonetheless.

Royce-CMR··on GrapheneOS: Duress Pin/Password
If you need this, it’s a useful function.

For me, a expanded duress feature would be unlocking into a fake home screen/instance where my banking apps or messenger apps are not available, but otherwise the phone works. Or even unlocking into a mostly empty phone.. but wiping the main instance in parallel.

As someone who had their passport forcibly taken away while on foreign soil, when you are at the mercy of deranged people every option has its value. The key is to have those options… better than none at all.

Royce-CMR··on Windows: Microsoft broke the only thing that mattered
Once upon a time you could live in a world of Windows apps designed like Notepad++. Launchy or other apps gave you the spotlight style of opening apps fast from the keyboard, and the start menu was for edge cases... and life in windows was good!

Now... I'm glad I got a Mac.

Royce-CMR··on Transparent leadership beats servant leadership
From Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Royce-CMR··on All about automotive lidar
I think the safety of other humans eyes (lidar exposure) is the real negative for lidar use.

The MKBHD YouTube video where he shows his phone camera has burned out pixels from lidar equipped car reviews is revealing (if I recall correctly, he proceeds to show it live). I don't want that pointed at my eye.

I love lidar from an engineering / capability perspective. But I grew up with the "don't look in a laser!" warnings everywhere even on super low power units... and it's weird that those have somehow gone away. :P

Royce-CMR··on So you wanna build a local RAG?
Super noob in vector embeddings: I never considered that tables would be a complexifier. (beyond defining in a parseable format for ingestion).

Do vector databases do better with long grouped text vs table formats?

Royce-CMR··on Show HN: MkSlides – Markdown to slides with a similar workflow to MkDocs
Slight tangent counterpoint; sometimes conveying knowledge requires the prettier / flair of a miro/lucid/figma or even full infographic style solution.

I like md, and I like mermaid, and I like text / simple. But I know to help others, sometimes the visual medium and storytelling justify the alternatives.

Royce-CMR··on Trying out Gemini 3 Pro with audio transcription and a new pelican benchmark
This is a high area of focus for me and I agree: following a complex convo, especially when it gets picked up again 20-30 min later, is difficult.

But not impossible. I’ve had success with prompts that ID all topics and then map all conversation tied to each topic (each seperate LLM queries) and then pulling together summary and conclusions by topic.

I’ve also had success with one shot prompts - especially with the right context on the event and phrasing shared. But honestly I end up spending about 5-10 min reviewing and cleaning up the output before solid.

But that’s worlds better than attending the event, and then manually pulling together notes from your fast in flight shorthand.

(Former BA, ran JADs etc, lived and died by accuracy and right color / expression / context in notes)

Royce-CMR··on Cities panic over having to release mass surveillance recordings
American here; very accurate.

On the digital ID part, the government + regulated industries like banking will enforce validating specific types of IDs via third party companies and data sources to use said government / regulated industry services - which is used as a hacked duct tape and silly string version of digital ID. Other than that… yep you got it.

Royce-CMR··on Hacking India's largest automaker: Tata Motors
My guess - he’s avoiding political risk. If something goes bad, it’s better to say “it was encrypted but they got the keys” than to defend data wasn’t encrypted.

It’s semantics in terms of actual difference to an attacker, but it’s a world of difference when explaining to executives.

Royce-CMR··on Pre-record your demos
Yeah I agree. But I’ll split it slightly.

From a trust perspective I want a real demo. Technical team, deep dive, concept sold now talk me through it type stuff.

From a “show non-tech executives the art of the possible as part of 2026/2027 planning” I want a recording.

Failure in the latter isn’t a 3/10, it’s a -10/10.

Royce-CMR··on Things you can do with a Software Defined Radio (2024)
I’d encourage you to pursue it. I remember the old @breakingnews on Twitter when it first started, people listening to police scanners and typing info-dense one liners on what they heard. To this day the best news service of my life (until someone bought it).

A real time, AI snips version for my area in a running feed would be amazing. There are lots of formats and use cases; and the info is already out there.

It’s a great idea. Don’t let citizen sway you away from it.

Royce-CMR··on Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones
I want to say thank you for writing this. 100% same opinion. I've stuck with Apple - despite their downsides - specifically for their zeal in areas like this.

My phone works, I'm glad it blocks others from integrating because I need it to always just work. That's why I still have an iPhone over all the often paper superior alternatives.

Royce-CMR··on The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
Small review, 2013 BMW 335xi (drove for a test drive). Loved iDrive. Remained my benchmark for car infotainment UI for 10+ years. The main thing, you could DRVIE the car, aggressively, and give commands to infotainment without missing a beat.

Truly a lost art today. Fond memories.

Royce-CMR··on Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far
Agreed. Different for different people. Notification summaries are a lifesaver for me.

Work MS teams but no copilot, lots of group chats about lower environment issues or prod issues that move super fast. The summaries have legit saved me 10 min of getting up to speed, and let me decide quickly if I need to intervene or keep working my separate workstream.

The only downside for me - it keeps the summaries VERY short. Another 5-8 words as a in between notification and full app open would be great for me. (But, I acknowledge I’m likely an edge case)

Royce-CMR··on Story points are pointless, measure queues
I would love to hear your view of handling ambitious changes in a large system.

(In the middle of this scenario. Mix of experienced/talented and low trust environment.)

Royce-CMR··on Boeing Is the Canary in the Trickle-Down Coal Mines
Opinion: It never will. Boeing could have been a 100+ year firm; their prior engineering organization was nothing to scoff at. They could have pivoted to a dozen industries and made it work.

Again opinion - The returns don’t make up for the longevity potential Boeing had.

Royce-CMR··on ChatGPT-4o vs. Math
So for a whim, I took this to ChatGPT and asked it to explore a philosophical position and then assess its own assessment for logic vs statistical.

Longer prompt responses here: https://text.is/1V0OJ

Closing position below.

*Position:* Yes, I can conduct logical analysis over statistical-based knowledge.

*Justification:*

1. *Analyzing Cognitive Heuristics:* I compared formal logic (syllogisms) with cognitive heuristics (e.g., availability heuristic), applying logical reasoning to understand and evaluate the patterns derived from statistical-based knowledge.

2. *Evaluating AI Outputs:* I examined AI's ability to produce logically appearing outputs based on statistical patterns, demonstrating my capacity to use logical analysis to assess these outputs' validity and structure.

3. *Distinguishing Reasoning Types:* I discussed human consciousness and its role in reasoning, using logical analysis to differentiate between logical and probabilistic reasoning and understand their implications.

*Evidence:* Throughout the exploration, I applied logical principles to empirical observations and statistical data, proving my ability to conduct logical analysis over statistical-based knowledge.

Page 1 of 2Next →