HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

leopoldj

778 karma · joined December 20, 2023

submissionscomments
leopoldj··on Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason
Western tradition has firmly put pure reasoning in a cage. It serves its purpose only as a source of hypotheses, conjecture and thought experiments. Abrahamic religions, while still not accepted sensu proprio by many, are much less mystical than the Eastern Religions. You can see the difference in the unusual creative process of Ramanujan.

Which tradition are we to follow then whilst training the AI models? Pushed beyond their limits today's models tend to hallucinate and cannot be accepted sensu proprio. Philosophers will call it speculative reasoning. And yet, some speculation can be useful in breaking new grounds. Anyway, I have no answers. Just musings.

leopoldj··on Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason
Supervised training uses this precise loop. The difference between inference and observation is called the loss function.

Models are now starting to show emergent behavior that they were not explicitly trained for. This is leading to the current debate.

leopoldj··on Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason
Sorry, I misinterpreted your question:

Do we have evidence humans have an independent set of beliefs not shaped by knowledge and reasoning?

As:

Do we have evidence humans have an independent set of beliefs not shaped by observation and experience?

Because, that will be a priori or pure reason.

leopoldj··on Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason
You made me start listening to Critique of Pure Reason [1] :-)

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyhXtJN2AQQ

leopoldj··on Clef: Open-weight decision models, and new RL fine-tuning platform
I hear what you're saying. But this is not such a model. The article says that various internal teams had to fine-tune Clef to suit their specific needs. They're even rolling out a RL training product line for it.
leopoldj··on Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason
Philosophers like Kant, Descartes and Locke wanted to draw a distinction between a priori and a posteriori beliefs (or knowledge). I believe AI will be very much bound by these discussions. Some knowledge can be had purely by reason. Some other knowledge will require observations.
leopoldj··on Clef: Open-weight decision models, and new RL fine-tuning platform
The model supports both instruction and RL fine-tuning. It looks like people have started training it already [1]. The RL tuning may be only available to the Cloudflare customers, I couldn't be sure.

1. https://huggingface.co/solanaclawd/clef-solana-research

leopoldj··on German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol
Happy to see the uses of standard C++ including std::shared_ptr etc. in C++.
leopoldj··on Waymo pulls over, calls cops on juvenile riders who had 'ghost gun"
Please do not encourage your children to carry and brandish replica guns. This is never a good idea. Unfortunately I see this more frequently than I like. Kids don't just carry, they aim and pretend to shoot. Even in an open carry state like Florida brandishing a gun is illegal.
leopoldj··on AlphaGenome Atlas: a high-resolution map of human DNA
Videos. [2] is for the scientists to start using AlphaGenome Atlas from AntiGravity.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aToL5C-bQ

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2qw3rDNX0Q

leopoldj··on Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber
Blog: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/ge...
leopoldj··on The D-Day in Color. Rare WWII Historical Footage Restored [video]
These are colorized after restoration. Not originally in color. You can find some of those here:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/d-day/rare-b...

leopoldj··on Gemini Distillation Service
Original link from Google is taken down. Returning 404
leopoldj··on What to Know About Americans Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers
This is a better link, no?

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/americans-leaving-the-us-migrati...

leopoldj··on Airbus Takes Flight from AWS
This link is an opinion piece. For a better technical and legal background this link from the same The Register is much better:

https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/07/16/airbus-...

leopoldj··on FDA approves new kind of cholesterol pill
Wow the guy did Mechanical Engineering and Applied Math before going into medicine and surgery.
leopoldj··on CIA director gives chilling account of AI's battlefield lethality
> Paywall

Mr. Ratcliffe gave a speech in the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit. In summary: "The average life expectancy of a Russian recruit right now arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes".

leopoldj··on US Corporate Insiders Are Selling Stocks at a Near Record Pace
The article states a few reasons. Mainly that the chip stocks "have rallied too far, too fast and spending on artificial intelligence has become excessive".

Relevant facts: Corporate insiders sold $77.6 billion of stock during the first half of 2026, a 20% increase from the first half of 2025.

leopoldj··on DeepMind AI Control Roadmap [pdf]
Blog: https://deepmind.google/blog/securing-the-future-of-ai-agent...
leopoldj··on Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass
Ah, a litany of left wing grievances. Got it.
leopoldj··on Canadians told to "Exercise a high degree of caution in Germany"
US state dept has the same level advisory and was updated a year ago.

https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advi...

leopoldj··on Canadians told to "Exercise a high degree of caution in Germany"
That's right. Is this advisory new or hasn't been updated since 2010?
leopoldj··on Danish Pension Blacklists SpaceX over 'Catastrophic Governance'
the balance heavily relies on a mix of state bailouts and new tax revenues
leopoldj··on Danish Pension Blacklists SpaceX over 'Catastrophic Governance'
New York City Comptrollers published similar concerns [1]. I suppose you could apply your point equally to NYC these days :-)

1. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/letter-to-spacex-re-ipo-...

leopoldj··on The Most Surprising Capitalist Makeover Is Under Way in Sweden
Gift link.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/the-worlds-most-surprising-...

leopoldj··on Map of Metal
Most awesome site ever created.
leopoldj··on Lidar threatens to rewrite everything we know about photography
Related video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msrvH_nivHI

leopoldj··on 2-D Mathematical Curves
There's something wrong with the cartesian equation for scarabaeus [1].

I think it should be:

(x^2+y^2) * (x^2+y^2+bx)^2 - a^2 (x^2-y^2)^2 = 0

Also the plot images seem inverted (reflected) along y axis. See plot of the above function in desmos [2].

1. https://www.2dcurves.com/sextic/sexticsc.html

2. https://www.desmos.com/calculator/esrche1qtv

leopoldj··on Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court
I am not a lawyer. But I think cases need to work their way up to SC. Before today's ruling a Federal Trade Court ruled the tariffs illegal [1]. And later, a Federal Appeals Court did the same [2]

The process takes time.

1. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/29/court-strikes-down-trump-rec...

2. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/trump-trade-tariffs-appeals-...

leopoldj··on Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court
"The ruling was silent on whether tariffs that have been paid under the higher rates will need to be refunded." - from CNBC
Page 1 of 3Next →