Hacker News Reader

somewhereoutthon Hallucination is inevitable: An innate limitation of large language models

Yes, imagine a pocket calculator that gave a completely wrong answer 10%? of the time, and calling it 'capricious' instead of simply broken.

somewhereoutthon Things I don't know about AI

- What happens if everyone realises that the areas where LLMs can be usefully applied are few and not particularly lucrative?

somewhereoutthon Measles erupts in Florida school where 11% of kids are unvaccinated

and of the 89% that are vaccinated, about 3% will be unprotected (because vaccines aren't perfect) and so will be vulnerable, through no fault of their own [parents], with a 1 in 20 chance of developing pneumonia and a 3 in 1,000 chance of dying of the infection (per the article).

somewhereoutthon UK middle classes 'struggling despite incomes of up to £60k a year'

While wealth is not zero sum, neither is it infinite sum, and indeed some components (e.g. living space in desirable locations) are very much zero sum.

Wealth also has a tendency to agglomerate. We need wealth taxes now. Anything above say 2MM belongs to the People (remember them?) anyway, perhaps we continue to license some proportion of that back to the rich for entertainment value (and to provide a funding mechanism for potentially valuable but 'bonkers' projects that might otherwise go unfunded)

somewhereoutthon No focus, no fights, and a bad back – 16 ways technology has ruined my life

> 8. It’s given stupid people unfiltered access to each other’s opinions

This is a big problem. Previously, 'the mob' only came into being when things got really bad. Now it is a constant (virtual) presence.

somewhereoutthon Torching the Google car: Why the growing revolt against big tech just escalated

I see it from the perspective of a great photograph.

somewhereoutthon Torching the Google car: Why the growing revolt against big tech just escalated

A car driven by a human is an extension of that human (for better or for worse) - and we can relate to that, no matter how much steel, glass and rubber there is.

A car that drives itself is something alien, an abomination, a threat, a dangerous animal, small wonder we want to kill it - that is our most primal instinct.

somewhereoutthon Torching the Google car: Why the growing revolt against big tech just escalated

That is a such an emblematic, iconic, fantastic image - the carcass of the car and all it represents, surrounded by humans somewhat curious but also somewhat satisfied, much as the first woolly mammoth kill must have been.

somewhereoutthon SafeTest: A novel approach to front end testing

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Interfaces used by humans must be tested by humans. These can either be your staff, or your customers.

Yes that does mean wading through each interaction pathway every time you make a release, there really is no substitute.

somewhereoutthon PEP 701 – Syntactic formalization of f-strings

> Arbitrary nesting of expressions without expansion of escape sequences is available in many other languages that employ a string interpolation method that uses expressions instead of just variable names. Some examples:

  # Ruby
  "#{ "#{1+2}" }"

  # JavaScript
  `${`${1+2}`}`

  # Swift
  "\("\(1+2)")"

  # C#
  $"{$"{1+2}"}"

To which I might add

  # Perfect
  "\{"\{1+2}"}"

basically Swift but { instead of ( as { is 'more decorative' so a better indicator that something special is going on. \ is already the escape character for such thing as \n and friends, so no extra escaping needed for e.g. ${

somewhereoutthon PEP 701 – Syntactic formalization of f-strings

I prefer the js:

  ys = [1, ...xs, 5]

It is more visually indicative of a 'spread' of values.

somewhereoutthon We need to talk about parentheses (2020)

  ~ let* 
    ~ ~ foo 10
      ~ bar (+ foo 32)
      ~ * foo bar

somewhereoutthon AI Is Starting to Threaten White-Collar Jobs

People tend to become as you treat them - if they weren't meat robots before, they will be soon enough.

somewhereoutthon Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?

Except that consumption is exactly what capitalism drives - particularly manufacturing, where a relatively fixed amount of capital (factories & machinery) can drive higher overall profits if more products are made for people to consume - even if those people don't actually need the products.

Apparently (I can't find the source for this, but it stuck in my mind), faced with a glut of production after WW2, the US could either consume more, or work less. The choice was made to consume more, not least because the industrialists could cream off a larger slice of the pie that way.

somewhereoutthon Has LA cracked the code for building affordable housing?

Not necessarily. The housing market is very complex, and there is such a thing as induced demand - for example building lots more apartments in SF would make it even more attractive for e.g. tech companies to locate, and so they would quickly be filled, without moving the price.

somewhereoutthon Germany's days as an industrial superpower are coming to an end

> CDU/SPD could easily let them into government

But that is precisely what happened in 1933 - the conservatives thought they could control Hitler and his party, but of course it didn't turn out that way. Small wonder they won't be doing the same for AfD anytime soon.

somewhereoutthon EVs won over early adopters, but mainstream buyers aren't along for the ride yet

My point, my only point, is that it is NOT about ideology. There is NO ideology about climate change, anymore than there is ideology about lightning, it just is. I was making no proclamation, I was just asserting that if people are lucky enough to be able to buy EVs, they would do so not because of ideology, but because they are in a position to do the right thing for everyone (as far as we can tell).

Of course many people don't have the luxury of making decisions that would help everyone - though if they lived in a fairer society, where wealth more nearly went to those that toil to create it, then maybe they could (now that is ideology!).

somewhereoutthon The Apple Vision Pro is spectacular and sad

It is rather end-stage technoscene isn't it. Along with AI and crypto, all solutions looking for a problem (and causing many problems themselves).

somewhereoutthon A reasonable configuration language

This, but with Javascript. Perhaps the 'electromagnetic force fields' are less powerful, but the array and object literals are perfect for configuration.

somewhereoutthon How much bigger could Earth be before rockets wouldn't work?

For the record (and the GP is using the term somewhat out of bounds), there are definitions of fascism that are rather tighter than 'evil bad guy': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

somewhereoutthon Cork is displacing plastics and creating a billion-dollar industry

As a 'new resident' of Portugal, something I've come to appreciate is the understanding of the land that is part of Portuguese culture. I would imagine that such sympathy is a great opportunity, given how important sustainable farming (and sustainable everything else) is to our future.

Indeed it is a lovely country!

somewhereoutthon CaseyNeistat – the thing no one will say about Apple Vision Pro [video]

For me it was the link between everyone glued to their phones while wandering about in the real world, vs having a headset that does the gluing for you. I can sort of get it now, however pass through (the other way) has to be much better.

(as an aside, props to HN for the duplicate submission UX - you just get taken to the previously existing post)

somewhereoutthon Apple Vision Pro and ADHD

I can see how 'authoring from your lap' with a laptop actually on your lap (while on the sofa - like I am doing right now) might benefit from bigger/multi screens instead of the tiny portal the laptop gives you, but as soon as you want to do something more complex probably you'll reach for your mouse, and perhaps a paper and pen/pencil (if you think with your hands). Thus to the desk you go, where all your monitors are anyway.

somewhereoutthon Apple Vision Pro and ADHD

I don't really get the computer monitor replacement argument - if you are creating as opposed to consuming content (i.e. coding/designing/authoring), then you are going to need a rather better input medium than what a virtual keyboard/mouse will provide. And this better medium, whether keyboard, trackpad, mouse or something else, will be sitting on a desk - with your monitors! If you want more/bigger monitors, then go buy some with the $3499.

somewhereoutthon Apple Vision Pro and ADHD

But would it be fair to say that with the Magic Keyboard, your iPad has in fact become a laptop?

somewhereoutthon It begins: Ethiopia set to become first country to ban internal combustion cars

EVs are greener, both in the sense of reducing carbon emissions and in terms of reducing the pollution we suffer on a daily basis. Future generations will regard the ICE with the same horror as drinking unclean water. If you do not understand this, in spite of all the evidence presented to you, then I suspect you are suffering from motivated reasoning.

Only a fraction of the world's population will be able to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

somewhereoutthon Pkl, a Programming Language for Configuration

Putting constraints into the config file is nice from a self documenting point of view, but I suspect that

a) nobody will bother

b) that one time they do, the constraint will be wrong in some circumstance, and the constraint will get edited out anyway.

somewhereoutthon Germany explores 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

My understanding is that trade in goods within the Single Market has worked very well, but trade in services not so much - not least due to language barriers. This becomes an issue because service based businesses (which includes law, finance, and creative industries, as well as hairdressing) also benefit from economies of scale - witness the relative success of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, with an immediate market of ~350MM people.

somewhereoutthon Germany explores 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

Except that in the nascent EU single market, the native language is English. Of course you should be fluent in the language of the country in which you work/live, but increasingly this will be less important - assuming that the EU wants any chance of the economies of scale necessary to compete with US/China

somewhereoutthon Germany explores 4-day workweek amid labor shortage