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yakbarber

102 karma · joined May 8, 2025

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yakbarber··on Claudette: Make Claude stop talking like a BuzzFeed article
To fix Claude’s personality, first, invent the universe…
yakbarber··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
It never was. The US is under as much propaganda as NK they just refuse to recognise it from the inside, which is simply propaganda working.
yakbarber··on Is AI reasoning right for the wrong reasons?
I keep hearing we don’t know “how llm’s work”, in mean yes we know the algorithms but the WHY I suppose. I’m not sure if that’s really true, does the best researcher at OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini not know why it works? Would they say that?

Anyway these discussions always make me think we are too generous to humans. I know very few humans who are good at reasoning. It’s surprisingly hard to just think really hard through a problem. We mostly intuit, act, repeat. It’s a rare thing for someone to deeply reason.

The other problem I have with this is that we apply the word “reasoning” here because we haven’t really got another language for it, so we anthropomorphise the llm because that’s our reductive mental model and then complain that it’s not human enough.

yakbarber··on EEG shows brain can simultaneous encode two speech streams
If you miss it, maybe she does too. You can still do it even though she doesn’t need it
yakbarber··on Notes on DeepSeek
This is just human behaviour though. We're wired for "a lot of people who do X, also do Y". "this person does X, therefore they must do Y". Obviously, not all brown things are cows, but that's how it be, it's got nothing to do with ai.
yakbarber··on Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
we first need to agree the definition of consciousness, before we can start trying to attribute it to various animals and machines.
yakbarber··on CT scans of BYD car parts
yes

and it's not just the end product, it's the process. China has built almost entirely automated car factories. They're already 10+ years ahead of what's happening in the US/Europe.

yakbarber··on CT scans of BYD car parts
Totally agree, this protectionism killed the Australian car industry because eventually you just can’t compete.
yakbarber··on Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
That's aweful, only senators should be allowed to do that!
yakbarber··on DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
it's a solution looking for a problem and google are desperate to stay relevant there.

We just don't need to search as much. But I _do_ still want to search sometimes, it's still a valid use case, just not as important as it used to be.

But when a do search, I want simple, relevant, external search results so that I can go straight to those good sources. Google isn't satisfied with their returns on that though.

yakbarber··on Google changes its search box
the thing that bothers me is I don't usually want this mode. When I search, I am not looking for what google thinks, I am looking for what other sources think.
yakbarber··on Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
can you share that prompt?
yakbarber··on Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like
this seems disingenuous. even if your premise is true (which i don't think it is), it only really holds for the first few endpoints. most systems have many, and the models are very good at copying established patterns to the point that you wouldn't normally have to re-explain every detail for every endpoint. so you might be right for the first (you're not), but you're definitely wrong for the next 50.
yakbarber··on When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious?
let's say aliens land. we learn to talk to them. they're super smart - smarter than us. would we say they're conscious? why? because they're organic. I think that's the root of the criteria many folk are trying to express.

1. passes turing test

2. is organic

I'm not saying it's correct or even that I agree with it, but that's what it boils down to.

yakbarber··on Eka’s robotic claw feels like we're approaching a ChatGPT moment
In less than 10 years there’s going to be millions of bipedal robots everywhere, doing all sorts of chores for us. They’re going to need hands.
yakbarber··on Claude.ai and API unavailable [fixed]
no it's not, it's always work hours somewhere
yakbarber··on China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus
that's true in every country.
yakbarber··on Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
Book an appointment with a Psychiatrist, it’ll cost more than a months cc subscription for sure
yakbarber··on A Rave Review of Superpowers (For Claude Code)
Croes, is that you?
yakbarber··on $500 GPU outperforms Claude Sonnet on coding benchmarks
AI would have a least worded your comment better
yakbarber··on If you don't opt out by Apr 24 GitHub will train on your private repos
train on my private code? jokes on them
yakbarber··on A terminal weather app with ASCII animations driven by real-time weather data
is the ASCII animation native to the project or is it using some library?
yakbarber··on Claude Sonnet 4.6
Opus 4.6 is so much better at building complex systems than 4.5 it's ridiculous.
yakbarber··on I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
same things as the old, "what's heavier, a tonne of coal or a tonne of feathers". many, many people will say a ton a coal...
yakbarber··on House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs
you pay them, isn't that already enough to identify any non-fraudulent account is needed?
yakbarber··on There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout
there's a fair argument to make that a nation that drops a nuclear bomb on a city isn't "civilized"
yakbarber··on Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?
Reddit is significantly more popular/successful than HN even for tech.

HN is its own little world and that’s fine.

yakbarber··on Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed
it's easy to comprehend actually. they're putting everything on "having the best model". It doesn't look like they're going to win, but that's still their bet/
yakbarber··on Venezuela's Navy Begins Escorting Ships as U.S. Threatens Blockade
"America can never win a war with Venezuela"

No, but they'll win all the battles.

yakbarber··on Meta's new A.I. superstars are chafing against the rest of the company
it's in the eye of the beholder
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