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ynniv

5,753 karma · joined February 24, 2007

hn@ynniv.com

yesterday: 3d mapping, XULRunner desktop web application, web performance, huge travel site, web app consulting, computer vision pipeline, financial single sign-on, web replay and performance

today: payments facilitation

tomorrow: ???

submissionscomments
ynniv··on Living in your programming environment [pdf]
For a second I thought it had been ported to wasm! This is still a browser based VNC
ynniv··on How to turn off Apple Intelligence
Everyone should be interested in Qubes OS.
ynniv··on How to turn off Apple Intelligence
Is the clipboard also a "data leak"?
ynniv··on How to turn off Apple Intelligence
"you may have concerns about privacy"

Way to FUD: these models are local unless you enable ChatGPT integration.

ynniv··on How to Run DeepSeek R1 671B Locally on a $2000 EPYC Server
Umm, two 3090's? Additional cards scale as long as you have enough PCIe channels.
ynniv··on Brood War Korean Translations
FWIW, I asked Claude to translate and compare its translation to this as well as Google Translate. I then pasted top threads from this page, and asked it to retranslate the original.

First:

  Hello, today I'll be teaching you about the 12 Inner Base build. I'll explain the types of 12 Inner Base builds, their advantages and disadvantages, and give you a detailed but simple breakdown of the build order.
  
  Against Protoss, this is a build you use when you want to start with a more economical opening. Against Terran, there are several builds you can do with a 12 Inner Base. I'll explain some of the most commonly used builds.
  
  The first is the Two Hatchery build that starts with 12 Inner Base. The order is:
  - 12 Inner Base
  - 11 Spawning Pool
  - 10 Gas
  This build utilizes early gas. It's commonly used when you want to quickly transition into Three Hatchery play with three gas bases.
  
  The second build is:
  - 12 Inner Base
  - 12 Pool
  - 12 Gas
  This gives you moderately fast tech tree progression and moderately fast Three Hatchery expansion. This build is commonly referred to as the 'Safe Three Hatch.' You can think of it as a build that gives you both fast Mutalisks and fast three base play.
>>> Then, post HN comments:

  Hello, today I'll teach you about the 12 Natural build [note: actually 앞마당/frontyard in Korean StarCraft terminology, seemingly transcribed as 안마당]. I'll explain the types of 12 Natural builds, their advantages and disadvantages, and give you a simple but detailed breakdown of the build order.
  
  Against Protoss [토스/Toss in Korean], this is a build you use when you want the most economic opening. Against Terran, there are several builds possible with a 12 Natural. I'll explain some of the most commonly used ones.
  
  The first is the Two-Hatchery build [투에처리, should be 투해처리] that starts with 12 Natural. The order is:
  - 12 supply: Natural expansion
  - 11 supply: Spawning Pool 
  - 10 supply: Gas
  This build utilizes early gas. It's commonly used when you want to quickly transition into a Three-Hatchery build with three gas bases.
  
  The second build timing is:
  - 12 supply: Natural
  - 12 supply: Pool
  - 12 supply: Gas
  This gives you a moderately fast tech tree and moderately fast Three-Hatchery expansion. This build is commonly known as the 'Safe Three-Hatch' [안 3에처리 in Korean], and you can think of it as a build that enables both fast Mutalisks and fast third base.
ynniv··on Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01
I'm not sure that this disproves my original point that self driving cars and flying cars don't belong in the same list because they are fundamentally different engineering problems.
ynniv··on Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01
Engineering is about focusing on what matters. There's no point in talking about flying cars: they will exist when portable fusion exists, so just talk about that.
ynniv··on Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01
It's long, so I'm skimming a little and... flying cars. If you don't know why we don't have flying cars, you're not a good engineer.

It really doesn't matter what prestigious lab you ran, as that apparently didn't impart the ability to think critically about engineering problems.

[Hint: Flying takes 10x the energy of driving, and the cost/weight/volume of 1 MJ hasn't changed in close to a hundred years. Flying cars require a 10x energy breakthrough.]

ynniv··on The Egg, an at Home Nuclear Reactor
This is honestly the real "hacker news". $250 for what was likely millions of dollars of visual design and global household name recognition
ynniv··on Doomsday Book (2006) [pdf]
The people have no will at the Fed
ynniv··on Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
These are 128GB each. Also, Nvidias inference speed is much higher than Apple's.

I do appreciate that my MBP can run models though!

ynniv··on Nvidia's Project Digits is a 'personal AI supercomputer'
I'm pretty frugal, but my first thought is to get two to run 405B models. Building out 128GB of VRAM isn't easy, and will likely cost twice this.
ynniv··on Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?
Either they would have actually "gone around" and executed the original approach (which would have been aborted when the gear didn't lock), or they had had mechanical problems and wouldn't have been able to make this 180º turn if they wanted to. There was ocean on three sides of them that would have provided a rough but survivable landing, as demonstrated a decade ago in New York.

At no point was this landing fine or by the book, and talking about ground obstructions is just a way to distract you.

ynniv··on Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?
According to the timeline I saw they were cleared before declaring an emergency. This means at the time of emergency the standard checklist required their gear had been locked and flaps set. Either they were not operating within regulation before they declared emergency, or they raised gear and retracted flaps below 900 AGL and decided to make an impossible turn instead of stabilizing their flight.

I don't know what happened in this event, but the concrete box is painfully uninteresting compared to basically anything that happened before it.

ynniv··on Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?
Cause of death was landing halfway down a runway at high speed with no gear. Why were they cleared to land if they hadn't set flaps and locked gear? There was ocean in front of them both before and after their turn: landing there would have been more survivable than landing fast and hard with no gear. They were below minimum turnback altitude, and wouldn't have been able to complete the planned turn without the same power that could have been used to stay aloft and sort out their problems.

Nothing about this crash was normal, and talking about a thing past the end of the runway is misdirection.

ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Lol, that's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty easy to push Claude around. I think that's okay because you're only fooling yourself, but it should really have a bit more of a spine.
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Glad you checked it out! I generally avoid ChatGPT at this point. Do you have a good example of incorrect responses? The easy ones tend to be trained away in the next model update
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
I think o1 and o3 are OpenAI stretching the usefulness of 4o. Anecdotally the latest Claude model is naturally better than 4o, and having it use inference tokens to think through or verify work results in similar o1/o3 gains. Are we sure we can't do even better than Claude 3.5 Sonnet/new without inference tricks? We're only a few generations into LLMs... I don't see why not.
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Yes, but that isn't their value, and they can use other tools to provide these answers reliably.
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Honestly, finding something that Claude confidently gives me the wrong answer to is harder than getting it to clearly explain its reasoning:

Me: Suzzie has three brothers. Each brother has two sisters. How many sisters does Suzzie have?

Claude: Let me solve this step by step:

  Let's first establish what we know:
    Suzzie has 3 brothers
    Each brother has 2 sisters
    Suzzie is one of these sisters (since she's a sister to all 3 brothers)

  Here's the key insight:
    If each brother has 2 sisters total
    And we know Suzzie is one of those sisters
    Then there must be one other sister (to make 2 sisters total for each brother)

  Therefore:
    Suzzie has 1 sister
    The answer is 1 sister.

  To verify:
    This makes sense because with Suzzie and 1 other sister, each of the 3 brothers would indeed have 2 sisters, satisfying all the conditions in the problem.*
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
It's certainly a common complaint, but I'm not sure that tokenizer tricks are insurmountable problems:

How many "r"s are in s r t r a w b e r r y s t r a w b e r r y?

Let me count the "r"s one by one: s (r[1]) t (r[2]) a w b e (r[3]) (r[4]) y s t (r[5]) a w b e (r[6]) (r[7]) y

There are 7 "r"s in "s r t r a w b e r r y s t r a w b e r r y".

ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
A healthcare professional could give you terrible advice, which is why we have legal incentives to reduce harm. Now that AI companies are worried about similar regulation, the best LLMs are very reluctant to give medical advice.
ynniv··on Does current AI represent a dead end?
I'm not convinced AI is as hamstrung as people seem to think. If you have a minute, I'd like to update my list of things they can't do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523273
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Me: How many squirrels are in my backyard?

Claude: I'm unable to see your backyard or count any squirrels there. I would need either a photo of your backyard or specific information from you about the squirrels you've observed to help answer this question.

Me: What kind of information do you need?

Claude: To help estimate the number of squirrels in your backyard, I'd find it helpful to know: The approximate size of your backyard Your general location/region, since different areas have different squirrel species and populations The type of habitat features present (trees, bird feeders, gardens, etc.) When and how often you typically see squirrels there This information would help me provide a more educated estimate based on typical squirrel population densities and behavior patterns.

Me: I'm in a piedmont region with a quarter acre backyard and a bird feeder

Claude: Based on your location in the Piedmont region and yard features, you likely have Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), which are common in that area. With a quarter acre backyard that has a bird feeder, which serves as a food source, you probably have a small resident population of 2-4 squirrels. Bird feeders are strong attractants for squirrels, and a quarter acre is enough space to be part of several squirrels' overlapping home ranges. You might see more squirrels visiting occasionally, especially during peak feeding times in early morning and late afternoon, but the resident population that considers your yard part of their core territory is likely in that 2-4 range.

Checks out

ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
This isn't true, and especially not true of Claude. Could you say this in a more testable way?
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
This is true of people as well. And yes, there is acceptable inaccuracy in legal, compliance, healthcare, safety, etc, it's just very low. There's even a saying for dealing with it: "get a second opinion".
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Which... checks notes... we don't have.

In 2012 the idea of self-driving cars was almost ridiculous, let alone dedicated infrastructure for them. We've had some research papers, and some initiatives have been proposed. I agree that my prediction wasn't "correct", but it was usefully close.

Claude:

Let me think about this step by step:

Let's examine what's impossible first:

The biggest possible volume we can have is 7 gallons (both buckets full) We can't directly measure 7 gallons since neither bucket has that capacity

However, since we have 2 and 5 gallon buckets, we can't measure 7 gallons in one step. We'll need to add multiple measurements. Let's solve it:

First, fill the 5-gallon bucket (5 gallons) Then fill the 2-gallon bucket (2 gallons) When both buckets are full, we have exactly 7 gallons

So the solution is quite straightforward: Simply fill both buckets completely, and you'll have 7 gallons total. Would you like me to explore any other possible methods or explain why this approach is the most efficient?

ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Did you provide the same reference material that a developer would use?
ynniv··on Ask HN: What can LLMs not do?
Hallucination is an interesting problem for both LLMs and people. This is why we like syntax and unit tests. I think there may be ways to work around it.
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