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Tenemo

157 karma · joined January 31, 2018

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Tenemo··on I'm not addicted to the internet or my smartphone. I'm addicted to information
I don't think I've seen a less accessible *font* in my life, including all the dark grey on black and yellow on white ones. Those are hard to read, but this one makes my eyes hurt, they actually started to hurt after I tried reading it despite discomfort. How come? Reading random text for 10 seconds can cause people physical pain? I wear glasses for near-sightedness and slight astigmatism, I wonder if it's related, and if people with 20/20 vision experience it differently.
Tenemo··on How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy
Paying for an account doesn't opt you out by itself, right? Has he stated anywhere that he actually opted out? But if not, then I also don't understand why OpenAI's communications about this have been so vague, they could've just said that he didn't opt out, using those chats in training data follows their ToS and that's it (whether that's "fair" is a separate discussion).
Tenemo··on Duress Codes and How to Use Them (2024)
This is what TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt and similar software do already: you have two passwords to your encrypted drive, one shows the real data, the other one a whole another fake drive with whatever you put there. Additionally, there is no way to forensically prove that there is hidden encrypted data present and that there's a second layer: you have plausible deniability.
Tenemo··on Who manages the agents?
Serious question then: if you were the CEO/CTO and were employing 10,000 engineers, what would you do without middle management? Would you have 1k+ line managers each managing <10 ICs and then... yourself? How would you coordinate work, hire, or do anything, really?

I'm not saying corporations execute on this flawlessly, just any time when I wonder what I would've done myself, I end up with a similar structure (maybe a bit flatter)...

Tenemo··on AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
Others on Telegram? Some sort of a HN channel?
Tenemo··on Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup
I get what you mean but the GPU comparison isn't the best here, I think. Money-is-no-object-I-want-the-best approach is questionable, definitely. But no one can argue that an old Nvidia card is objectively better for e.g. 4k gaming than a 4090 if you don't mind the wattage. You can just measure it.

With LLMs the problem is more complex, it's people getting used to how a model works and to the ecosystem. Sure, you can make all your skills harness-agnostic and deal with Anthropic's stubborn refusal to adopt the common naming/directory structure. But most people don't. So then you end up with something closer to the ancient Android vs iOS discussion. Can you prove, in isolation, that iOS is more energy efficient, the hardware is faster? Yeah. But that won't speak to someone who has been on Android for 10 years and would have to migrate and get used to iOS to experience that, first.

I've noticed myself how I get used to common failure modes of particular models in my projects. GPT5.5 tends to create some checks/booleans I don't need, it heavily overcorrects on error handling, etc. While Claude 4.7/4.8 doesn't do those as often but gets derailed on our E2E test suite, forgets to run linting despite guidance. So even assuming fully harness-agnostic working setup, a new LLM model with its own quirks can be a lot friction for heavy users who might be used to Claude specifically and all their skills/guidance pre-address common failure modes.

E.g. I might be a Prius owner, then you gift me an objectively better, more efficient, safer, newer, same-size, physical knobs car ...and I might still swear by my Prius! I'm used to how it turns, how it feels, I can repair some issues myself. Isn't that a normal reaction then?

Tenemo··on YouTube now world's largest media company, topping Disney
Mandatory PSA for Android users because people tend to have similar complaints each time in popular threads: ReVanced allows you to have YouTube with Sponsorblock, background play, no ads, Shorts completely hidden, (estimated) dislike counter brought back etc.

Couldn't imagine using YouTube on my phone without it, it's night and day difference – that's despite being a premium subscriber anyway.

Tenemo··on Overestimation of microplastics potentially caused by scientists' gloves
> The authors acknowledge funding from the College of Literature, Science, and Arts at the University of Michigan. R. L. P. was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRFP) DGE-2241144. M. E. C. was partially supported by the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School through a merit and predoctoral fellowship. The authors would like to acknowledge the professors and students of the Mapping, Measuring, and Modeling Microplastics in the Atmosphere of Michigan team for their support and helpful discussions. The authors thank Jennifer Connor, Curtis Refior, Amy Pashak, Megan Phillips, Josh Hubbard, Bill Joyce, and David Lee for their community partnership. The authors would also like to thank former Dean Anne Curzan from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan for funding this work through the “Meet the Moment” grant program. The authors acknowledge technical support from the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization.

Is there anything wrong here? Not sure I understood your comment

Tenemo··on LLMs can be exhausting
I'm not 100% convinced, while iterating fast on an early prototype, what's wrong with legitimately not knowing what e.g. the data structure will end up looking? Just let it run, check debugger/stdout/localhost page and adjust: "Oh, right, the entries are missing canonical IDs, but at the same time there are already all the comments in them, forgot they would be there – neat". What's wrong with that? Especially at uni, when working on low-stakes problems.
Tenemo··on Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
Was the number of partners you picked random or you chose 2137 on purpose? As it's actually somewhat related to the topic...
Tenemo··on I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
I tested the latest flagship reasoning models (so the only models I use outside of coding for general questions):

- Opus 4.6 (Extended thinking): "Drive it! The whole point is to get the car to the car wash — you can't wash it if it's still in your driveway."

- Gemini Pro Deep Think: "You should definitely drive. Even though 50 meters is a very short distance, if you walk, your car will stay where it is—and it's pretty hard to use a car wash if you don't bring your car with you!"

- ChatGPT 5.2 Pro (Extended thinking): "You’ll need to drive the car—otherwise your car stays where it is and won’t get washed. That said, since it’s only ~50 m, the most sensible way to do it is often: 1. Walk over first (30–60 seconds) to check if it’s open, see the queue, confirm payment/how it works. 2. Then drive the car over only when you’re ready to pull into a bay/line."

A pretty reasonable answer by ChatGPT, althought it did take 2min4s to answer, compared to a few seconds by the other two models.

Tenemo··on Proton spam and the AI consent problem
I' migrated to purelymail.com around 2 years ago and. Reaaally cheap, easy to set up and without any bloat whatsoever. The webpage might look sketchy at first, but don't judge a book by its cover :)
Tenemo··on AI is a horse (2024)
You seem to imply that its outputs aren't found by people to be useful, which isn't true.
Tenemo··on Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities
That's super cool! Do you have any plans to commercialize it or it's just a pet project?
Tenemo··on Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities
I think it is true that it is a real problem (EDIT: but doesn't necessarily make "hosting untenable"), but you are correct to point out that modern pages tend to be horribly optimized (and that's the source of the problem). Even "dynamic" pages using React/Next.js etc. could be pre-rendered and/or cached and/or distributed via CDNs. A simple cache or a CDN should be enough to handle pretty much any scrapping traffic unless you need to do some crazy logic on every page visit – which should almost never be the case on public-facing sites. As an example, my personal site is technically written in React, but it's fully pre-rendered and doesn't even serve JS – it can handle huge amounts of bot/scrapping traffic via its CDN.
Tenemo··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://piech.dev/
Tenemo··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (January 2026)
I've been on-and-off working on a portable, sturdy electrical cloud chamber for a couple of months now. It's a device that lets you see ionising radiation with a naked eye, right on your desk.

It's already working, but it requires so many tweaks and adjustments that make the project hard to finish-finish.

It's controllable by an ESP32, can run automated cooling benchmarks (to find the power vs temp sweet spot) and is pretty much all made out of metal, not 3D-printed – I've learned a ton about working with metal, especially around drilling, cutting, and tapping/threading. Who knew precise drilling a solid copper block could be so tricky at times (saying this as a person who has never drilled anything except wood/concrete before)!

Tenemo··on 65% of Hacker News posts have negative sentiment, and they outperform
I'm not the person you replied to, but yes, I've been using RiF since the API changes ...with a small 4-month l break last year when I was automatically flagged as bot API traffic and instantly permabanned with no warning. Reddit's built-in appeals went unanswered and ignored. Luckily I live in the EU, I appealed under DSA and they unbanned me after actual human review right before the 1-month deadline.

Could have I created a new account instead? Maybe. Did I want to check if DSA actually works in practice and can get me back my u/Tenemo nickname that I use everywhere, not just on Reddit? I sure did! Turns out Reddit cannot legally ban me from their platform without a valid reason, no matter what is in the ToS. Pretty cool!

Back to using RiF with a fresh API key after that and haven't had any issues since.

Tenemo··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)
A portable, robust desk cloud chamber with a 10x10cm viewing plate. It's taking ages and having just one AIO cooler wasn't the smartest choice, but nothing else would've fit. It's a way harder project than I expected, at least if you want everything to be vibration-resistant for car transportation and for it to last years. I've learned a ton.
Tenemo··on “You should never build a CMS”
It does read very LLM-y to me, too. The short sentences, dramatic pauses – but maybe I'm oversensitive nowadays, it's really hard to tell at times.
Tenemo··on I got an Nvidia GH200 server for €7.5k on Reddit and converted it to a desktop
Huge fan of those AIOs as well! I have LFIII 420mm in my PC and I've successfully built a 10x10cm cloud chamber with another one which is really pushing it as far as it can go.
Tenemo··on What if tariffs?
So what you are saying is that no company has raised prices for any product after tariffs had gone live? That's easily proven to be false (https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-raise-prices-co...).

Going by your logic, tarrifs would have always no impact on consumers, even e.g. 300% tariffs?

Tenemo··on 42,600 ton ship to break the world record for the deepest drill at 7 miles
The topic and the ship are super interesting, but this whole article is blatantly AI-generated. Presumably they used an LLM to translate and summarize from Chinese?
Tenemo··on Surveillance data challenges what we thought we knew about location tracking
> We found Netflix producer Adam Ciralsky, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Benny Wenda, Austropop star Wolfgang Ambros, Tel Aviv district prosecutor Liat Ben Ari and Ali Nur Yasin, a senior editor at our Indonesian partner Tempo.

Political figures being there I somewhat understand, but a Netflix producer? Why would anyone need to track a Netflix producer?

Tenemo··on Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?
You have 120 wifi-connected devices at home?? What kind of devices? 100 smart light bulbs or something like that?

I'm just curious – I'm a relatively techy person and I have maybe 15 devices on my whole home network.

Tenemo··on Go ahead, write the “stupid” code
And reading the Linux kernel mailing list would allow him to... do what exactly? And by when? Compared to writing simple, working, usable apps in TypeScript, immediately after reading about how Deno/TypeScript/etc. work?
Tenemo··on How did we all miss the bacteria taking over her body?
I recommend to read the whole article, it's really well-written. Hard to imagine what her parents must feel, I would be absolutely livid at the NHS.
Tenemo··on EPA tells some scientists to stop publishing studies
I understood what you meant, but the word you were looking for is "successors", not "predecessors". His predecessors were the senate, consuls, and the rest of the governing bodies of the republic.
Tenemo··on Failing to Understand the Exponential, Again
I agree with all your points, just wanted to say that transistor count is probably a counter example. We have been keeping with the Moore's Law more or less[1] and M3 Max, a 2023 consumer-grade CPU, has ~100B of transistors, "just" one order of magnitude away from yout 1T. I think that shows we haven't stagnated much in transistor density and the progress is just staggering!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count

Tenemo··on EU Chat Control: Germany's position has been reverted to undecided
The UK has worse privacy than ANY other country on Earth? Really?
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