Swizec

> How is that not taking responsibility?

The penalty for "unauthorized access to a computer system" is 1 to 20 years in prison[1]. Holding corporations accountable would include sending the highest person in the chain-of-command that caused the Hugging Face incident to jail. Or at least start with some charges and then let the judicial system do its thing.

[1] 18 U.S. Code § 1030 - Fraud and related activity in connection with computers https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

> short period from which you matured and and were able to appreciate adulthood

My high school and early college years were pretty rough (depression, suicidal, some substance abuse (couldn't access anything super serious)), but ho boy do I miss having time to casually build a compiler over a week of school holidays, spending all my afternoons fiddling with weird little coding things, and having zero concerns about any of it being fit for purpose or even useful and basicaly never feeling tired.

Being an adult is great but every year brings more accumulated responsibilities and that part kinda sucks. The days where I can get sucked into something interesting and forget time exists are becoming fewer and fewer. And the space of things that feel new and interesting diminishes surprisingly quickly too. The novelty wears off the more things you learn about

Yes it turns all that work of building a classifier into an api call. This is hugely valuable for prototyping and while you iterate on what the product should even do.

> difference between an instruct based re-ranker and laya/jev I just don't see it

Main difference is that laya/jev/et-al give you a zero-shot classifier that requires no training. You can prompt engineer your way to a quick fairly reliable cheap enough decision engine that you can use to iterate quickly (by prompt engineering).

Right now a lot of people are doing this with LLMs and it's too slow and expensive.

Imo the right iterative approach to productionizing these systems is something like:

    1. Build it with an LLM. Iterate on the prompt
    2. Start building a real-world dataset
    3. When the prompt works, turn it into a clear rubric for Jev or similar
    4. Keep iterating until desired accuracy achieved
    5. Use the real-world evals you've built to train a custom classifier fine-tuned to your needs

You now have a system that has produced useful results in production from the very beginning and by the end it's a reliable super cheap classifier that can make thousands of decisions per second.

> Also the chair, if actually built, would be so expensive that one legged guy can’t afford it. His best hope is someone with a worse chair takes it, then he tries to take their seat, but there’s already a dozen two-legged guys in front of him.

Maybe you need 5 chairs? Here in SF supply has fallen decades behind the demand curve to the point it may be impossible to catch up even if all you did was build build build.

> Whatever will we do when there are already enough houses for everyone to have one?

In many places in Europe and Asia, the govt will essentially pay you to go live in near-abandoned villages and revitalize them.

In USA it’s just ghost towns. See also Detroit

The problem is better described as "There aren't enough homes where people want to live". We have plenty of houses, even in america. The "where people want to live" part largely comes down to density, zoning laws, and the fact that for most people their primary residence represents their entire net worth and it would be materially impactful if the price went down (by building more/better homes nearby). So everyone resists building.

But it's okay, if you resist building for long enough then your town will eventually collapse and your house will be worth nothing anyway. Many american Towns are essentially insolvent and can't afford realistic upkeep prices for services like sewage, roads, good schools, etc., and are living on borrowed time until infrastructure collapses and nobody wants to buy there. See Strong Towns the book.

> IMO high housing prices are destroying civilization.

It's like a game of musical chairs. There aren't enough houses to go around. You go around and the music stops. Everyone scrambles to their nearest chair. Obviously the person on crutches will be the first to fall out of the game. The rest then talk about laziness, drugs, bootstraps, and all the rest. But add 1 more chair and there's no problem, even the dude with the broken leg can sit.

For anyone who doesn’t believe this is real, I recommend reading Thinking In Pictures. It’s a great book.

Explains 3 types of thinking that people use in their day-to-day: Linear verbal, schematic conceptual, and photo realistic.

It’s all a spectrum so you likely use all 3 to an extent.

Most people think linearly and sort of describe things in their mind that they’re trying to imagine. It’s a picture but not really.

Engineering types most commonly are strong in conceptual thinking. You can imagine complex systems and how they connect but it’s hard to describe and linearize this into words. You have to translate. Again it’s sort of an imagined picture but not really.

Then there is photo realistic where you see the thing in your mind. Almost as if you were seeing it for realzies with your eyes. Common with visual artists and some types of autism. Linearizing into words is almost impossible.

The book talks about the extreme opposite of aphantasia but it builds a good way of understanding these different qualia imo

> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?

The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.

In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet

Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level

Every snowflake is unique but snow is still just snow.

Life’s funny that way. You can’t predict what an individual will do and yet predicting what a crowd will do is so easy we have entire engineering and social disciplines based on manipulating crowd behavior.

That’s the best part! We’re all NPCs in other people’s stories _and_ the main character in ours.

You can do and be absolutely anything or anyone you want. Just gotta bear the consequences and that’s it.

Wanna live a homely life surrounded by loved ones? Go do it! Nobody is stopping you. Wanna galivant around the world having adventures with no roots? You can!

And when you meet a local npc bartender on your adventures, you’re just another rando tourist npc. It’s great

> The frequent rain and mud makes it to the rim brake shoes and diminish braking power

I'll never forget when I was a kid (13 or so) going for a ride in the city during a downpour, slamming on the brakes because a pedestrian stepped out in front of me (mixed pedestrian/bike zone, no cars, we both assumed no-one else was dumb enough to be out), and ... nothing happened. Damn near shat my pants. Luckily the pedestrian saw me and jumped out of the way.

In retrospect that was too much downpour. Could literally see water spraying out my brakes. The hot cocoa after was fantastic tho

> The most surprising thing my adult ADHD diagnosis revealed was that as I began telling friends that I had been diagnosed positive they told me they had known that since they met me. These were childhood friends.

As someone with peer reviewed ADHD but not official diagnosis, what are friends gonna do about it? They can tell you, you're always late and it's annoying but that's about it. At some point it becomes just who you are as a person, part of your character sheet. If you're not planning to change and it's mostly under control (have job, life, etc), does it even matter to put a label on the thing?

I feel like a diagnosis in my 20's would've been useful. Now it's like I got me my coping strategies and they work pretty well. If I do or don't have ADHD doesn't really change anything.

And for anyone else reading, the leading symptom of adult-diagnosed adhd is saying and thinking things like "I don't get it, ADD can't be real, that's just how everyone is"

> This is like asking if anyone in the Tour de France has credited training wheels for their success.

And yet every F1 driver credits gokarting for their career. Laying the groundwork in your early years makes a big difference. My career would be very different without Logo and Turbo Pascal

I hate that the overpriced polishing cloth was legit the best screen cleaning thing I’ve ever used. One wipe and my ipad was perfect.

These days I use the cheap microfibers I got for the motorcycle and yeah it works but scrubbing my device like an idiot for several seconds just doesn’t feel quite as magical you know

> For the first part, I suspect that money, and the safety net it provides, is a bigger impediment to entrepreneurship than its collegiate advocacy.

An old HN comment captured this perfectly, it’s my favorite analogy of entrepreneurship [1]

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

> time "In this house, we believe in uv & PEP723. Also, no fucking localized imports, no just-in-case try/except."

My point is the all knowing all seeing big brain super bot should already know how to write good code. It feels dumb that we have to keep reminding it

We are talking about a thing that's consumed all human knowledge whose superpowers are summarization and understanding. Why the fuck are we writing all these .md files!?

I resent everything about this.

But I write the .md files because others on the team are not as good at Just Talking To It. The md files are there because juniors don't know what to ask for.

> Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing

from the article: “skull broken in 61 places”

Doubt you’d stay conscious long enough to notice

> When I pointed to the other agent and said “your friend over there told me to do the opposite, that’s why it’s in there!” they just sort of scowled at me.

Recent fun experience in Amsterdam:

security line was moving veeeery slowly. Almost every bag got flagged for inspection. As I’m waiting for my bag to get checked, I see two agents briefly mutter in each others ears. One of them walks up to the lady manning the xray machine, taps her on the shoulder, says something in her ear and they swap places. He goes on xray machine, she start checking bags.

Almost every bag after that passed the xray test. Line started moving quickly

> I find it odd that others need music or talking to focus. most of the time I prefer silence.

I need music otherwise my brain starts playing music instead of ruminating on thoughts. I also need to keep my body occupied. At least doing the dishes or something, going for a run or walk even better.

Background talking is fine but it has to be from strangers. If there's a tiny little chance someone might say something where I can contribute (like in an office), that ruins any and all ability to think. Brain goes on high alert listening for cues

> All of these things are strong covariates

Yeah it turns out having positive multipliers on your inputs leads to better outcomes. Who knew!

> > It's been shown to be strongly correlated with success in general

> Has it? I was under the impression we could hardly define, much less measure that.

IQ has a strong positive correlation with life outcomes. Economic and otherwise. Whether IQ is a good measure of "intelligence" remains debated but there's no question that high scores in that measure correlate with high scores in life outcome measures: Life expectancy, economic success, relationship success, etc. Every single thing you can measure about a person's life trends upwards with IQ.

Some (maybe much) of the effect can be attributed to privilege and other covariants, so we don't know if IQ is causal for life outcomes but we have strong evidence that it's correlated.

one study of many: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=74943

> instead rerouted in an area that was close to some Bronze Age remains and urns

To be fair, in the UK (and much of Europe) bronze age remains are everywhere. But there’s only 1 fictional Dobby grave.

Like farmers will regularly dig up a bronze age thingamabob while plowing a field. For example [1], [2]. There’s a story like this every couple of years.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/23/farmer-bronze-ag...

[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/rhubodach-scotland-bronze-ag...

I've been trying to keep all URLs backwards compatible forever on swizec.com and it's surprisingly hard. I _think_ anything from 2010 onward should be good. The domain started in 2005.

Unfortunately I'll never know for sure.

> As thinking individuals we can and should use our awareness and courage to make biggest "good" choices we can bear to.

That’s the cool thing about incentives, we follow them whether we realize it or not. “bear to” is where the incentives are hiding. We don’t make the best choices, we choose from the choices available to us.

You can’t fight your environment forever.

If the gooder choice is 50km away and the bad choice is down the street, eventually you’ll stop going 50km out of your way every day because it’s just too cumbersome. You might even do it “just this once” because you had a busy day and your kid is crying and you’re just so tired and then before you know it, it’s been months or even years since the last time you did the cumbersome better thing.

Now that you spell it out, I guess this just binary search. You need O(log n) weighings because each weighing splits the search space in half. So I was wrong it’s not an information theory question, it’s just comp sci algorithms. I got my college classes mixed up (it’s been 14years)

> I also got this riddle, in 2015. I couldn't solve it. Tbh, I think it's a terrible question. There isn't really a step-by-step problem solving process, but you just need to have a "leap" to realize you can weight the marbles in groups of 3.

It’s an information theory question similar to the “how far can you drop the egg before it breaks” puzzle. You don’t need a leap of intuition, just remember the right theorems and formulae from college.

I probably would’ve failed the interview. At best I could write an algorithm that empirically arrives at the answer, which may or may not impress the interviewer enough to pass.

Stuff like this is why I dropped out of coding competitions some time in high school. You can always brute force the easy version, then the next tiers drop numbers that cannot be solved unless you know (or can invent) that one weird maths trick.

This matches my experience. Just Talk To It is the best method for working with LLMs if you're an expert.

I've seen this at work (as eng manager/lead/principal/whoevenknowsanymore) – all the big APIs give you stats. We see how much people burn in tokens and we know how much output they produce. There is a pretty strong inverse correlation between token burn and output.

The more tokens people burn, the less likely they are to produce a good outcome.

I find the most practical distinction of scifi vs fantasy is that scifi calls it credits and fantasy calls it coin. This classification has never steered me wrong.

But honestly categories never quite work at the edges. Some of my favorite books are post apocalyptic fantasy where the characters are definitely using scifi technology that I recognize as advanced versions of existing technology but they just think of as magic.