HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

codemac

4,422 karma · joined December 3, 2008

http://codemac.net -- rarely updated

I am bad at collecting karma. I'm currently working on Human Data/Alignment Research @ OpenAI.

Previously Storage @ Facebook, Google, Pure Storage, Igneous Systems, IronPort, and NetApp.

What is the most important problem in your field, and why aren't you working on it?

email: j@codemac.net

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/codemac; my proof: https://keybase.io/codemac/sigs/4zxtt61QOyT7_BA8DDCHlGlNCkE2rw-VsKZclDl1U20 ]

submissionscomments
codemac··on Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
They go up much more than 2% in literally every other state, California is the cheapest place to own property for >10 years.

You can argue against property taxes entirely, but Prop 13 definitely means that families, businesses, and all property owners work very hard to never sell, never reassess, and never change their tax rate.

codemac··on Pixel 11 Pro Fold
To be clear, this is slightly smaller than the pixel 10 by ~1mm in each direction, but they are still too big.
codemac··on Big Food vs. the People
McGovern is not someone to hold up, but that's not the quote.

It was: "I would only argue that senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist does awaiting until every last shred of evidence is in"

codemac··on AUR packages compromised with Infostealer and Rootkit
It adds npm as a dependency, to a go build?

It changes the contributor email?

to install random npm packages?!

in /tmp?! in post_install()??! With a new random contributor email????

Archlinux is focused on enabling a specific type of user, and certainly ones that can read bash scripts, and understand reasonable depedencies vs unreasonable ones. And even then - this is specifically in the AUR and not a package the distro directly offers.

codemac··on AUR packages compromised with Infostealer and Rootkit
Exactly, these hacks really stand out to me, and used odd patterns (like .install files that just had 2-3 line post_install functions) etc.
codemac··on AUR packages compromised with Infostealer and Rootkit
Right, the PKGBUILD only helps you review if you're installing what you intend to - not verifying if what you're installing contains any hacks.

This hack in particular added random npm packages that would have been unneeded/unintentional, and was visible in the PKGBUILDs directly.

codemac··on AUR packages compromised with Infostealer and Rootkit
> isn’t that also the case for every browser extension, VSCode extension, nuget package, Cargo crate, python package, npm package

Yes, and all of those have supply chain hacks in them, and have happened within the last year? In this specific case, it's a malicious npm package being installed with official npm tooling in the PKGBUILD.

The advantage to the AUR is just that you can reasonably review every PKGBUILD for what you're installing, they are very simple bash scripts. It'd be great if more people would donate resources to help verify and validate AUR scripts, but the AUR specifically exists for packages that the trusted users and devs of arch don't have time to personally maintain.

codemac··on Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI
emacsclient + codex has been a game changer.

I probably add or change a feature in emacs once a day, or every other day. I've been using emacs for some insane amount of time, maybe 20 years? And still I had more customization to go.

Emacs and programs with it's level of programmatic user customization will survive the AI period in my opinion. Anything static will falter.

codemac··on Jensen Huang says Nvidia is pulling back from OpenAI and Anthropic
> Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said his company’s recent investments in OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to be its last in both, saying that once they go public as anticipated later this year, the opportunity to invest closes

ok, sounds obvious

> Nvidia, for its part, isn’t offering much more on the matter

ok, so no more news from nvidia

> Still, a few other dynamics might also explain the pullback..

Wait it's a pullback?

This is terrible reporting, right?

codemac··on Training LLMs for honesty via confessions
Please reread (or.. read) the paper. They do not make that mistake, specifically section 7.1.

A reward function (R) may be hackable by a model's response, but when asked to confess it is easier to get an honest confession reward function (Rc) because you have the response with all the hacking in front of you, and that gives the Rc more ability to verify honesty than R had to verify correctness.

There are human examples you could construct (say, granting immunity for better confessions), but they don't map well to this really fascinating insight with LLMs.

codemac··on How to Attend Meetings
You are thinking in terms of utility, instead of organizational power. Which is fine - but misses why the meeting behavior continues imo.
codemac··on How to Attend Meetings
While I have several disagreements with this deck, there are two large ones:

1. In my experience, a lot of teams don't have long enough meetings to avoid the litany of small meetings. For example, a lot of staff meetings could easily be 2 hours and then cancel many project specific meetings that have 50%+ of the same attendees later in the week. They also enforce a cadence of execution - everyone knows they need to prepare for the weekly staff meeting, rather than many small meetings every day. It also avoids the problem of people feeling not included - you're always invited to the one huge meeting every week, it's up to you to attend or skip.

2. The problem with meeting culture cannot be solved with education on how to say no, it's about admitting that attending meetings actually does convey a lot of things. Lots of information is not shared outside of meetings. Seniority of attendees actually does have a huge impact on visibility in folks' careers. A lot of the advice in this slide deck feels like it should work, but doesn't in practice because of self interest.

The education that needs to happen is quite different imo:

- leadership needs to be done through writing

- meetings should be recorded and minutes sent out broadly, along with allowing silent attendance.

- decisions need to give time for dissent outside of meeting attendees before committing.

codemac··on I made a quieter air purifier
I've bought a few of these, and love them: https://www.cleanairkits.com/
codemac··on Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine
Math notation is high context, so it's great to just ask llm's to print out the low context version in something like lisp where I can read and decompose it quickly.
codemac··on Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix
As of this morning, they should be. My app sent me a notification today.
codemac··on FocusTube: A Chrome extension that hides YouTube Shorts
attention required: 10 minute video > 10 second short

When the written word took over with the printing press, the same concern was levied. The amount of attention required to listen and memorize a story/poem is a lot more than just reading it.

The change with smart phones is just one of access/time spent on these things. There are people who are spending ~5 hours/day watching this content. There is a big difference between someone listening to 5 hours of a single poem, to reading 5 hours of a single book, to reading 5 hours of blog posts, to watching 5 hours of a youtube video, to watching 5 hours of random videos, to 5 hours of <10s videos.

codemac··on Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
... a lot isn't even close though.

The US is at 120.5 guns per 100 civilians, and Canada is at 34.5

I think being ~4x the ratio of guns per capita, (and 30x the total!) has to do something, right?

codemac··on Meta is spending $10B in rural Louisiana to build its largest data center
There is a big matrix of risk/reward for any DC location.

You bet Meta asked for incentives, but sometimes a guarantee of future power capacity, fast permitting, or ideal locations are worth more than the incentives the state could afford.

codemac··on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android
I have little to no evidence that there is sensible behavior and knowledge around software on personal computers.

The biggest difference these days is most folks don't even use a personal computer.

codemac··on Git-Annex
While Yann has built many things with git-annex, we should be clear that the creator of git-annex is relatively singular, Joey Hess.
codemac··on Google agrees to pause AI workloads when power demand spikes
Everyone has similar agreements with local power grids, and pretty much all DC operators respond to demand reduction calls from the grid.

It's extremely rare for a DC to put an entire community's grid at risk, and they are usually working closely with the upstream power providers during any storm, increased demand, etc.

I think there is a lot of hand wringing from folks who have never worked in DC operations.

codemac··on Writing a good design document
I should write a lot more, but the two paths I see are: B.O.O. and Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

B.O.O.: Background, Objective, Overview. Basically, a history lesson for how you got here, an objective for what you want to fix/change, and an overview of how you'll implement that change.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: An amazing book, but the organization is similar to boo. Problem Diagnosis, Guidelines/Assumptions/Requirements, and Actions.

I find BOO is better for targeted design documents in a google-like culture where you should write up a design document for almost any architecture change. The Good Strategy/Bad Strategy method scales pretty amazingly up to almost anything, but you need to be a much more experienced author to get things to fit it.

codemac··on Hundreds of agencies tap Atherton surveillance system for feds; Fails own rules
You have to be more specific about the "bad situation" imo.

A lot of crime gets blamed on all kinds of causes, but with a cause so vague all kinds of counterfactuals can be listed out: poverty doesn't explain why countries with more surveillance and more poverty have less crime like home invasions (CCCP).

codemac··on Hundreds of agencies tap Atherton surveillance system for feds; Fails own rules
SF uses flock cameras as well[0][1].

I am curious if merely by having a published policy, larger cities have less scrutiny in the actual use by federal law enforcement - though likely just as frequently accessed as any Atherton camera.

[0]: https://www.sf.gov/news--san-franciscos-new-public-safety-ca...

[1]: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/2021-...

codemac··on US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
Nowadays a problem is the subscriptions are all multiplexed through apple, google, and amazon.

I used to religiously use things like ynab, but now I need to find ways to export my amazon transactions, google play, etc. It's nearly impossible, and it makes me feel completely out of control.

codemac··on Claude Code SDK
receiving audio = slow

sending audio = fast

codemac··on A Research Preview of Codex
watch the live stream, it shows you the diff as the completed task, you decide whether or not to generate a github pr when you see the diff.
codemac··on First American pope elected and will be known as Pope Leo XIV
they certainly don't appreciate it on their hot dogs.
codemac··on Shortest-possible walking tour to 81,998 bars in South Korea
Sure, but Ohio has ~4200 bars[0]. Which is roughly 1/4 the ratio of bars to people.

[0]: https://rentechdigital.com/smartscraper/business-report-deta...

codemac··on Don't force your kids to do math
It's not about forcing your kids to "do math", but to excel at important skills far before the benefits of being good at that skill matter.

The amount of homework/study per day that maximizes math scores on tests is significant, 1+ hours/school day by the time they're in middle school, with it helping even more for those who are starting out poor at math[0]. You'll note the referenced study doesn't even max out progress for any group - meaning most could have studied more and improved more.

I don't know any kids that voluntarily did an hour or more of solely math study per day. I know plenty that were forced, and ended up loving math or other technical fields as adults.

As a parent of young kids, obviously I haven't gone through high school yet - but I don't think many children who reach their potential in math, english, music etc will have no pressure from their parents.

[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8025066/

Page 1 of 34Next →