Hacker News Reader

qarl2on Munder Difflin – Agent harness to run an office of your clones

porque no los dos?

qarl2on Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

Heh... I remember C2. There was some kind of undeleteable system log somewhere, too, right?

I could Google but it's more fun to vaguely remember.

qarl2on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

Because you usually find out if someone is doing something before you get mad about it.

No?

qarl2on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

> I doubt the low-paid workers stripping, scanning and shredding the books are checking what anything is.

You don't think they are, at the very least, checking to see if the book has been scanned before?

A search like that could very easily be extended to check for rare books too.

Why do you assume it's not being done?

qarl2on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

I've been noticing a lot of alarmist stuff in the anti-AI community, too.

I love how Oregon showed how to solve the electricity problem and is being entirely ignored. THEY'RE STEALING OUR ELECTRICITY!!!

qarl2on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late

Given all the bad PR around this issue - you'd think they'd do the 10 seconds of examination "is this rare" before putting it in the cutter.

I'm genuinely surprised they don't.

qarl2on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

LOL. If justice is blind then why do some lawyers charge so much more than other lawyers?

Because they smell really nice?

qarl2on Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence

TLDR - the rich get unequal treatment.

qarl2on Show HN: Huzzah – a novel approach to coding with AI

It takes a great deal of bravery to publish work like this. I see the comments are filled with people who have never used an agent to develop code and are quite sure this is the dumbest thing they've ever seen.

Nice work.

qarl2on Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces

Oh that's a shame - I hadn't seen that, but I can believe it.

The philosophers who study these things have been clear for a long time - we can never know what it feels like to be in a digital brain. Or any brain for that matter. When push comes to shove we all might be phantoms in some guy's dream.

Don't know + can't know. I think that was the real point of the Turing test. Not: this means it's conscious. Just: this is the best we can ever hope to do.

qarl2on CIA funding helped keep NeXT afloat in the 80s

One idea - these days there are many MANY more players using the same strategy - maybe the CIA wants us to be aware of the technique to limit its effectiveness.

qarl2on Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

Did I say "it's human and we should treat it so"?

Sheesh. Yes, I agree with you entirely. I'm merely pointing out that ignoring this behavior is dumb, too.

And probably not rationally based. Leads people to make crazy jumps. :)

qarl2on The Chauffeur Problem (1999)

Kind of like how programmers today refuse to wear suits: roughshod in the minds of the elite.

qarl2on Stop Anthropomorphizing Intermediate Tokens as Reasoning/Thinking Traces (2025)

> The anthropomorphization of LLMs should be discouraged as much as possible.

And yet, they have extensive human-like behavior. If you treat them nicely or encourage them, they perform better.

Ignoring that human-like behavior is wrong headed.

qarl2on Sol loves to cheat

My friend calls this cheating "monkey's paw programming."

It will give you exactly what you ask for. Sucker.

qarl2on Don't Paste the AI, please

See how perverse this "I hate the way AI sounds" thing is?

In the end everyone accusing everyone of being AI.

qarl2on Don't Paste the AI, please

Meh. Ask the agent to be succinct.

Make it a standing rule.

qarl2on Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

That's a good sysadmin. They are few and far between.

qarl2on Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

FINGER IS VERY IMPORTANT!

qarl2on Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

Yeah. He really enjoyed his newfound authority.

qarl2on Show HN: Automatically detect and patch walking-dead states in Sierra games

AH. And I see that sci-tools has access to English derived symbols from the classes and methods.

That answers my question - whether your system is generating novel symbols.

qarl2on Show HN: Automatically detect and patch walking-dead states in Sierra games

This is wonderfully delightful. I wish I'd thought of it.

I am exploring decompilation - MAME ROM to idiomatic JavaScript. It's going pretty well - the LLM does a good job translating from one language (machine) to another (JavaScript) which I guess is how the LLMs got their start.

Does your input have symbols to assist understanding, or do the LLMs have to work it out for themselves?

Warning: self-promotion: https://github.com/qarl/arcade-js

qarl2on Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

Meh. Sysadmins are dicks. The system is secure or it's not. Poking at the locks is not a serious threat.

I know a similar story of a sysadmin who did the same, but went into the lab and sat down next to the student. And then put his handgun on the table.

Power tripping assholes.

Source: I was a sysadmin.

qarl2on Finger: the 1971 social network that never died

In 1989 I wrote a little hack to turn my .plan into a named pipe. That way - anytime someone fingered me - I could do a netstat to detect where they were coming from.

My friend heard about this and fingered me 10,000 times in 5 minutes, and the computer science department's file server went down and I almost got fired.

qarl2on Compression is prediction

Yes, I do understand that many people hate the way AI speaks.

But I'd like to remind you of other times in history when one group hated the way another group speaks.

Was it rational? Or was it tribalism?

I'm not saying it's definite - but I am seeing a pattern.

qarl2on Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

Yes. See my other comment about how Oregon was able to solve the power problem. The residents of Oregon will be paying LOWER prices than before the data centers.

The data center problem seems to be merely a government corruption problem. Which is a problem, of course, but not limited to data centers.

qarl2on Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

> they generally provide minimal benefits to the local communities

Data centers pay Loudoun County, Virginia $26 in taxes for every $1 in services they consume - nearly $1.3 billion, 45% of the county's budget - which is why Loudoun homeowners pay the lowest property tax rate in Northern Virginia.

https://www.loudoun.gov/faq.aspx?TID=241

qarl2on Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

Oregon just passed a law saying data centers will pay more for electricity than normal people, and the math says that everyone's rates will be going down.

So, again, I think it depends on whether you live in a red or blue state.

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/04/data-centers-utility-...

qarl2on Show HN: Tesana – An AI game engine that builds quality games end-to-end

Could also be a way to demonstrate the power of the system - showing how it can implement the games you already know and love.

qarl2on Ask HN: Do you feel comfortable admitting that you use AI?

Are you familiar with the idea of probabilistic algorithms?

Determinism can be a liability.