HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

arpowers

283 karma · joined January 25, 2010

submissionscomments
arpowers··on Our position on open-weights models
its not the tech CEOs its the financial interests behind them (they own all the AI companies)
arpowers··on Claude Code feels like magic because it is iterative
Has anyone actually gotten productivity improvements from Claude Code?

What’s the use case?

(I tried some things, and it blew up. Thus far my experience w agents in general)

arpowers··on Ex-OpenAI board member provides her first detailed account of CEO ouster
Past a certain point, money doesn't matter to people of principle.
arpowers··on Carapace: A multi-shell completion library and binary
Reminds of of Project Hail Mary. Never heard the word "carapace" before that book...
arpowers··on Four new models that are benchmarking near or above GPT-4
Could use some examples of the improved output. It shouldnt be that hard.

What are each models strengths? I know GPT4 has a strength with code.

arpowers··on Dark patterns in UX design and how to avoid them
This article should be called “how to get fired as a UX designer”
arpowers··on Hitler-Mannerheim Recording
Someone told me Hitler is seeing a massive surge in popularity lately.

Anyone know why?

arpowers··on BBC gives up on Threads, sticks with Mastodon
X dying? It seems like it gets better every day
arpowers··on YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
While sexual assault is serious if true, it's also the only crime that can ruin someone's life and livelihood with no evidence or actual crime taking place.

Additionally there is often large financial incentive for accusers (and their lawyers) via lawsuits and it serves as a fantastic method of hurting people politically even if they are exonerated.

arpowers··on Google to pay $93M in settlement over deceptive location tracking
Two weeks ago i was in San Francisco with a friend that works in "big tech" discussing "profit motives" in technology.

They told me that the lobby behind their company had all sorts of tricks to help government "ignore" all the clearly negative things they are doing in the name of revenue. Lobbying, anonymous stock trading "tips" (see Pelosi), influence pedding, etc..

Modern technology companies are all doing what the Tobacco companies did, only they have more plausible deniability.

arpowers··on Don't "find" your niche, "develop" it
Niche gymnastics are the realm of seriously good zero to one entrepreneurs.
arpowers··on OpenAI admits that AI writing detectors don’t work

    const pattern = /I hope this (\w+) finds you well\./;

    if (pattern.test(text)) {
      console.log("is ai.");
    } else {
      console.log("not ai.");
    }
arpowers··on Bun v1.0.0
As of today, what are the primary use cases for bun vs Node?

what type of project can I use Bun on without regretting it (due to unforeseen bugs, incompatibilities, etc)?

arpowers··on Chrome now tracks users and shares a “topic” list with advertisers
My friend Jake runs an analytics company.

He's faced enormous challenges due to Google's "privacy" policies... Google is removing nearly all access to user data, they don't even like you looking at the user agent string (which issues a warning)... not to mention its impossible to know about search traffic and even referring urls.

Meanwhile Google has access to all this data, so he tells me all this is just gaslighting so they can illicitly protect their monopoly on web data.

arpowers··on The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes
Let me tell you a story...

Years ago a friend of mine in SF started a review site, it gained traction by being fair and balanced. Once the website was a top 1000 site on the internet, my friend started to try and make money with advertising.

After a while, he grew dependent on a few select advertisers. Too dependent.

While he had built the business with integrity, at some point, he decided to start "helping" his advertisers get better reviews... to build goodwill and keep the checks coming.

This is fine, except it undermines the purpose of a review site. This is the time when his traffic plained out and started to decline.

I'm sure the same is happening here.

arpowers··on Histoire: A new way to write stories, powered by Vite
Looks awesome.

I always check for committed and professional open source devs before I consider a project. The devs behind this one are experienced Vue folks.

Looking forward to giving it a try.

arpowers··on LK-99: Phonon bands, Localized Flat Band Magnetism, Models and Chemical Analysis
Well written article, the conclusion is a bummer to me… suggesting again that analysis leads to the ferromagnetic conclusion…

Perhaps the original authors didn’t realize that and got over excited… then fell victim to confirmation bias elsewhere…

I still have some hope!

arpowers··on WeWork Raises ‘Substantial Doubt’ About Staying in Business
This is more of a “CRE is overpriced” issue than a WeWork issue.

Likely they will use bankruptcy or a complete restructuring (perhaps w re-brand) and use it to renegotiate leases

arpowers··on Svelte 5 is going to be radical
Is Vercel officially backing Svelte now?
arpowers··on Why not tax private jets out of business?
Does anyone, without subversive motives, actually agree with the premise that removing all incentives to be successful is a good idea?
arpowers··on Ferromagnetic half levitation of LK-99-like synthetic samples
My main concern: Where are the original authors and why are they not helping people synthesize the replications?
arpowers··on Mortality patterns for patients hospitalized during cardiology meetings (2016)
They suggest mortality is lower during meetings because:

"the intensity of care provided during meeting dates is lower and that for high-risk patients with cardiovascular disease, the harms of this care may unexpectedly outweigh the benefits."

Not sure if they accounted for delayed surgeries in the study.

arpowers··on The past is not true
“Who controls the past, controls the future…

Who controls the present, controls the past…”

— Orwell

arpowers··on Nvidia could invest in AI cloud operator Lambda at $1B valuation
I could understand an acquisition to quickly launch an Nvidia cloud services platform.

This would also resolve a branding problem for Lambda, people always confusing it w AWS’ similarly named product..

arpowers··on Anchor Brewing Was San Francisco
Not enough good things said about the Germans and their influence in American culture
arpowers··on Chemically induced reprogramming to reverse cellular aging
Summarized with AI:

- The study demonstrates that certain molecules can effectively 'reverse' the aging process in cells without changing their core identity.

- A system called NCC has been used as a successful indicator of biological age reversal, paving the way for broader research into rejuvenation factors.

- An important element, OSK, helps improve aging cell health, potentially leading to treatment strategies for aging-related diseases.

- Various interventions have shown to reduce signs of aging in cells by changing the way genes are expressed. Six specific treatments significantly decreased both biological and chronological age of cells.

- The study found that early stages of cellular 'reprogramming' can rejuvenate cells without making them behave like stem cells. One particular treatment, VC6TF, showed the most potent rejuvenation effects.

- Further research is required to understand how this cellular 'age reversal' works and how it compares to other similar processes, particularly one triggered by the OSK element.

- Certain compounds play a big role in the process of cellular rejuvenation by affecting the way cells express their genetic material.

- Safety tests in animals are crucial before these rejuvenation treatments can be tested in humans, especially to check for potential signs of abnormal tissue growth or cancer.

arpowers··on Svelte is a language
Specifics needed (please)
arpowers··on A physicist who bets that gravity can’t be quantized
If I understand you correctly, Ive long thought about this as well!

Note you should clarify that by "slowing of light" you mean a lowering value of the absolute speed of light.

While Einstein assumed it was constant, yet said speed and time we're changing. It's actually simpler to say the opposite; speed and time change because speed of light (c) changes .

arpowers··on Don't Take VC Funding – It Will Destroy Your Company
I'd add a caveat here: you guys were a Harvard founding team w prior experience and connections though...

Just like everything else, the real approach to this is nuanced. It's important to highlight that as many fundraisers are operating under misguided thinking on this topic.

arpowers··on Langchain Is Pointless
Proper term is that it's a "false abstraction"...

It abstracts some work only to introduce introduce it's own API (which is ultimately more complicated, less documented, introduces limits and constraints, and comes with its own bugs and dev politics)...

But nobody asked me, keep using it

Page 1 of 3Next →