HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

methodical

572 karma · joined January 14, 2022

submissionscomments
methodical··on Twitter launches new Pro tier for $5000/month
I can't be the only person who noticed the double space in the first bullet point...

Anyways, while I understand wanting to monetize their API instead of having it just be used by tons of people for free, the tiers here just seem like insanity. This might be one of the few instances where I'd actually be happier with a usage-based billing model. $100 for a hobbyist? I personally can't remember the last time I paid $100 on a monthly basis for any non-essential service that I was using as a hobby. Would be interested to see the amount of customers each one of these tiers was actually fielding...

methodical··on Container shipping has cratered, as ship owners try to avoid unprofitable trips
The bulk of your comment was just a strawman...

Yes, interviewing a faceless "cartel" member with zero verification would be poor journalism, which isn't the same as bringing a camera into XYZ location and recording/describing the conditions, which classifies as journalism in the same way that war journalists who go into warzones and describe situations are journalists.

I think ironically enough your personal feelings regarding the founders of Vice are coloring your perspective on their earlier work which meets the textbook definition of journalism.

methodical··on Berkshire Hathaway sells entire stake in TSMC
Sorry, I should've specified that I was specifically talking about potential economic incentives for China. I am aware to a lesser degree that they wanted the land for alternate reasons.
methodical··on Berkshire Hathaway sells entire stake in TSMC
Want to point out that the global economic importance of Taiwan will decrease if TSMC is able to diversify away from Taiwan in any significant manner, meaning China stands to gain significantly less economically by invading Taiwan. Most of Taiwan's importance currently seems to be directly related to their position as the primary supplier of chips for global corporations.
methodical··on Berkshire Hathaway sells entire stake in TSMC
Not sure how many producers have the available long term supply to meet Apple's demand. Samsung might already have contractual obligations for their short term supply with other manufacturers so it might not quite be as straightforward as just switching overnight.
methodical··on Berkshire Hathaway sells entire stake in TSMC
I'd probably lean towards Apple making their own chips, it would definitely seem to be a logical continuation of Apple's agenda, and they are certainly among the few companies that have the capital to make it happen. They already seem to be close to running into issues in terms of securing chip supply (e.g. having to purchase 90% of TSMC 3nm process ahead of time), so I suspect they already have plans to expand into chip production in the long term future.
methodical··on Don't believe the hype: why ChatGPT is not the “holy grail” of AI research
I think a lot of people on here are for some reason believers in the idea that if a technology has detractors, then it must be another case of the steam engine, human flight, or some other technology that had doubters before completely revolutionizing our world. In reality, there is no such law of the universe that says that some technology will be wildly successful because it is heavily controversial, and, in some cases, it turns out that a lot people were correct in predicting a technology's short/long term uselessness (crypto, web3, AR). Every time some article is posted highlighting AI's shortcomings in relation to its posited ubiquity in professional settings about 10 people wax poetic about how the internet/cars/etc. were doubted heavily, when they clearly are not similar in nearly any regard. I wish we could appreciate new technology without blowing its applications out of proportion and then being disappointed when it falls short of an impossible bar, which is my main gripe with both AI doomers and people who are entirely dismissive of the technology (despite basically nobody saying anything of the sort).
methodical··on The Epic Stack
Epic in complexity and setup time perhaps?
methodical··on The Epic Stack
Curious what alternative you believe is a better option for building applications in this day and age... Angular is basically dead and Vue abstracts too much (imo), unless you think vanilla JS is the way?
methodical··on The Epic Stack
It will never cease to amaze me how people can overcomplicate simple applications in such a fashion, particularly in JS land. I have never, and likely will never, understand the need for the addition of these bloated libraries on top of barebones React or JS which can achieve the same functionality at a fraction of the bundle size if you're a halfway competent software engineer.
methodical··on Total Crap – A magazine written by AI
The difficulty with that is that trying to define "true understanding" crosses deeply into the philosophical realm. Moreover, a lack of ability to define a term does not invalidate my position. That being said, I'll instead present you with a question intended to display what I believe is the difference between the two. If I write an example of an integral, it clearly shows that I know what an integral is, but does that mean that I understand integrals? Even if I could concisely answer any question you asked about integrals (i.e. an all-knowing AI), that is not the same as my definition of "truly understanding" integrals. To pose another philosophical question which highlights what I believe it is to "truly understand" something: Does the library of babel understand? I would say that despite it having the answer to any question you ask, it does not "truly understand" anything. I wish that I could put the difference between these two into concise wording, but alas I've been unable to quite put my finger on it despite having spent some good part of the day giving thought to it.

Some of these concepts are explained/explored much better than I could do on the wikipedia[0] page for understanding, particularly the "Assessment" section.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding

methodical··on Total Crap – A magazine written by AI
Not at all. Being able to give an example of something or spit something out that resembles a concept is not the same thing as understanding it, at least in my opinion. Keyword being true understanding, although I'll concede that it might have arguably basic understanding of such concepts.
methodical··on Total Crap – A magazine written by AI
There's a distinct difference between asking somebody to write/copy/show a complex concept and understanding it. What I don't understand (get it?) is how people are still conflating LLM's behavior with true understanding of concepts when it's obviously not the same thing.
methodical··on Total Crap – A magazine written by AI
My position here is certainly debatable but IMO the pace of development in AI as a whole is actually pretty lackluster, and instead appears monumental because of the massive influx of VC dollars (and development of computing hardware!) which allows for these more and more monolithic models. Training larger and larger models doesn't really represent "development" to me in the sense I usually think of it. The largest hurdle with AI, and one that LLM has not and likely will never solve, is that it doesn't truly understand anything at all, but is just instead (in simple terms) a large matrix of inputs to outputs. The areas where current AI falls flat on its face are areas where it will never be able to encroach as it works today, no matter how many TPU hours you waste on learning.
methodical··on Total Crap – A magazine written by AI
Or maybe we've just moved onto the "next they laugh at you" part which will continue for a decade or so before any actually advancements in AI happen besides creation of larger matrixes of inputs to outputs, with equally poor top level performance. I don't think anybody is laughing about LLM's or their potential, but rather laughing and mocking the people who are AI doomers saying that everybody's job is kaput because LLMs can spit out empty copywriting and junior level code samples.
methodical··on The core problem with hamburger menus
I read that part, but I don't think trading off massive amounts of usability for the majority of people to slightly increase the usability for the minority is the right decision in almost any case.
methodical··on The core problem with hamburger menus
I don't understand this take at all. Why would you bury your navigation on your (hypothetical) marketing site in the footer on mobile? Most users don't even scroll far enough to make it to the footer and they certainly wouldn't expect the navigation there.
methodical··on Could the dodo come back from extinction?
How exactly is his/her comment racist?
methodical··on Bing AI can't be trusted
Traditional google searches are a take it or leave it situation. The result depends on your interpretation of the sources google provides, and therefore, you are expecting a possibility of a source being misleading or inaccurate.

On the other hand, I don't expect to be told an inaccurate & misleading answer from somebody who I was told to ask the question to- and doesn't provide sources.

To conflate the expectations of traditional search results with the output of a supposedly helpful chat bot is wildly inappropriate.

methodical··on We come to bury ChatGPT, not to praise it
I mean this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison isn't it...

On one hand, you're talking about how AI produces artwork from prompts, where you're expecting the output to be made up/fictional.

And on the other hand you're talking about ChatGPT which is something that a lot of laymen are looking like a replacement for tons of things like copywriters, software engineers, Google search, etc. Every single one of these things have a pretty high requirement for the output to be at least pretty close to accurate. If anything I don't think a lot of the people who have an issue with ChatGPT (myself included) actually have an issue with ChatGPT itself, but rather with the tons of people, laymen and otherwise who have pointed to it as the metaphorical AI singularity when in reality it is little more than a iteration on existing AI models packaged in a better form for people to understand it.

methodical··on Show HN: Flappy Bird and Wordle
Two QoL things I noticed within 1 minute of playing: please add backspace and start registering key presses as soon as someone starts typing! Having the text "type to start", and then my initial keypress being lost into the void was really frustrating, especially when there isn't any backspace.
methodical··on Ask HN: What are those strategic skills to master for the next 5, 10 years?
lol
methodical··on Ask HN: Those making $0/month or less on side projects – Show and tell
https://www.budgetable.io/

This feels like the 3rd budgeting application post on here lol, but here we go.

A next-generation budgeting application, offering everything YNAB does, except at a lower price point, mobile application available (iOS & Android (soon)), plus with added features such as balance projection into the future as well as the ability to input fictional transactions and see outcome of those transactions on disposable income, etc.

Integrates with Plaid for banking, AI categorization and recurring transaction detection, auto-syncing transactions, the whole bunch.

I have a lot of features in the works to bring it much further than YNAB, although I think I already have feature parity. I don't have really much free money currently (saving for something big), so I don't really have much to allocate to marketing, so currently just spreading via word of mouth.

I really just made it as a budget replacement for myself, as I was running out of a google sheet which made it difficult to really use.

methodical··on Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public
> All lies.

Doesn't bother to point out what part of it was a lie (because it isn't a lie)

> Lies. Just write them down and store them securely.

Welcome to the future of finance, make sure you don't lose your seed phrases written down on paper (it's the future, trust me bro)

> Yes, you can't be utterly careless

Contradicts saying that I was lying that you can lose your life savings due to phishing, scamming, or hacking, and that if you lose your seed phrases and can't access the wallet then your digital doubloons are gone forever

etc.

methodical··on Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public
Almost like handwaving is the only way to disregard any of the real concerns people bring up about Bitcoin or crypto because there's not really any good way to dispel them with much logical proof.
methodical··on Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public
The difference of course between all of the rubbish that crypto/Bitcoin is (since they are, at the end of the day, in the same boat), is that by entrusting central parties to handle financial transactions in our traditional financial systems we have methods by which we can reverse transactions, whereas in any blockchain system there is no real authority, by design, so any stolen assets are lost forever. There aren't security "tradeoffs", because there is not a way in which any blockchain based currency is any more secure than current finances, outside of the fact that no bank or government entity could take your digital beanie babies because they don't have the token, which isn't an issue in traditional banks either unless you're a criminal for the most part. And in order to get this "advantage" of blockchain, you have to completely remove its ability to be used as a currency since for any amount of crypto or Bitcoin to be useful in the real world it almost always has to be converted back into fiat, once again centralizing it. The whole concept is extremely flawed, hasn't really gained any ground outside of FOMO'ers, and will likely die out again soon, thankfully.
methodical··on Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public
And by using Bitcoin to automate all these transactions you get a bunch of very cool features such as constantly being at risk of losing your life savings due to phishing, scamming, hacking, etc., etc., etc. unless you store a hard wallet in your intestines and memorize the recovery words (better hope you don't forget any or your life savings is gone!). The cool thing about all of this is that it's a feature of Bitcoin to be able to irreversibly lose your life savings, without any ability to recoup your losses.

All of this to say that Bitcoin is obviously the way forward for global transactions, despite the fact it processes transactions as slow as molasses and the only way to make it faster (Lightning Network) is to sacrifice the checks and balances that maxis praise as the hallmark of Bitcoin lol

methodical··on Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
Their spending has 10x'd since 2010, yet their traffic and scope remains relatively the same. This reeks of mismanagement and overspending. That being said, I more-so dislike their wording they use to gather the donations more than anything else, as I said, it feels disingenuous. I'm not entirely sure what the original parent comment was on about when he stated they were; "biased, corrupt, etc.", but my gripe with the Wikimedia foundation is the profiteering of community-generated content, with dubious expenditures that don't seem to actually advance the wiki itself, via dishonest means (and don't say that nobody is profiteering just because they're a non-profit, I'm sure the money is ending up at least partially in someones pockets). In the same vein, I wouldn't donate to wikimedia for the same reason I wouldn't give money to a broke alcoholic, if the reason you need money is because you're spending too much on the wrong things, that's not really a cause worthy of anybody's money. (All of this being IMO, obviously)
methodical··on Ask HN: Why is the Wikipedia Foundation's begging tolerated?
Can't speak for corruption, but the fact they are fundraising while having >$150m in the bank and begging for donations in their donation banner seems a bit disingenuous to me. https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/wikipedia-wikimedia-fou...

Or you could just do a single google search about "wikimedia funding" and have gotten this article and about 100 others.

methodical··on John Carmack Leaves Meta
This once again represents a sentence which omits a lot of important details.

This happened in an experimental setting, not an actual production setting. It was a net positive energy output when ONLY accounting for the energy input of the actual lasers, not when accounting for the mechanisms which fired the lasers (which had an energy efficiency of about 1%, although this efficiency could be higher if they used more advanced laser generator/whatnots). It was generated in a way that in no way resembles what current attempts at a production ready, maintainable, fusion reactor look like (tokamaks), and was instead, as stated before, essentially a design meant for experiments where fusion occurred (basically by shooting a pellet of fusion material into the central focus of a bunch of powerful lasers).

The LLNL is, and always has been, a experimental laboratory meant for primarily nuclear weapons testing and maintenance, and as such, have the ability to test nuclear fusion (via this inertial confinement setup), as fusion occurs in thermonuclear bombs, of which the US certainly has many in its stockpile.

This test, while a big "milestone", is the equivalent of building a specialized fuel efficient vehicle which gets 500 miles to the gallon by sacrificing almost everything that makes a car a car, and then equating that as to say that every car on the road will be getting 500 miles to the gallon any day now. When in fact, the only thing achieved was the ability to say that we've made a car get 500 miles to the gallon.

← PreviousPage 5 of 6Next →