[dead]
The problem with “more harm than good” arguments is that the amount of harm relative to the amount of good is rarely specified. Is it 60/40 harm/good? Then shush, it ain't gettin' fixed in your lifetime. Is it 80/20…
Different site, different backend, different problems. GP was talking about wayback.archive.org, which threw a 429 error just now when I verified the URL.
Which archives? Wayback is different from Archive. Which is different from Archive-It. And the problem with Wayback was power poles being set on fire by homeless people, then SF power in general, then "upgrades," then…
If you use the site, support them. If you are a technical person, offer to help them. But maybe cash, or even the proxy of being able to say they have a large number of cash supporters, isn't really what's needed here?…
He doesn't do much better on the other example. Term-frequency saturation is the important part, and he ignores the 1972 paper by Karen Sparck Jones.
"One of the early victories for me was persuading a young boy of 14 or 15 years of age, named Aaron Swartz, to become the technical architect of the Creative Commons. It took a little persuading, but I told him that…
I don't like talking about this, but first hand knowledge is rarer by the day, and there are entire organizations profiting off this mythology. It's pissing me off. Aaron is not a data point to build stupid metaphors…
[flagged]
It can and does and may choose to do so unprompted. That was one of my "holy shit" moments. Previously I watched it spit out nonsense to get around edge cases and avoid tests and uttered many of the things I read in…
I can specifically and directly state that is false.
Ah, the classic HN "I keep Wikipedia's list of logical fallacies on my bookmark bar" retort. “No true Scotsman” would require me to redefine “senior developer” to exclude people who disagree with me. I didn’t. And…
Long bet: the NTSB will require all transportation software to be submitted for independent review, and that review process will be heavily automated by AI, within 5 years. Take it?
I've tried. It's like trying to teach squirrels how to Google. Really, you just have to figure out what works for you. You will be rewarded.
Very, very senior dev here who has never taken a shortcut in his life. Don't mean to sound like a prick but you're doing it wrong. You have to find your own path through this stuff. It works, promise. I was in your…
I'll worry when that stops happening. Probably means I'm getting in my own way or not thinking big enough.
Might I recommend HVAC or plumbing, it's honorable work and pays well. Trim trees if you've got the body for it. I don't recommend web work, the last ten years or the next ten. Wouldn't touch the stuff. I skipped the…
It's August 9, 2026 and if you're a software engineer who hasn't had multiple "holy shit, I can't believe it just did that" moments, it's time to consider a new trade.
If you repaired televisions in the 70s, most of the IBM 604 trigger circuit looks completely ordinary: a couple of triodes, plate resistors, grid bias, coupling capacitors, and voltages high enough that you kept one…
This represents a small part of what IT is worried about. Offer a beer and say the word "SharePoint" if you want the long version of where this could wind up. The issue isn't letting end-users add features. The issue is…
Evoking Gödel via GPT, with the requisite em-dash: "No sufficiently expressive formal governor can be simultaneously consistent, complete, and able to prove every relevant proposition—including all propositions about…
I just had GPT reverse engineer, from scratch, some ancient Corel Draw documents and turn them into perfect PDFs. None of the open source libraries helped. In fact, GPT didn't make any progress until I told it to ignore…
"The optic cortex is the biggest area of the brain by far. When everything is saturated in fluorescent light, as it is in small studios many times, the fluorescent light is going on and off at 60 times a second, or…
Archives have not taken a consistent stance on this. Preservation, removal, restricted access, de-indexing, and “right to be forgotten” sit on a spectrum. Good archival practice has to include judgment, context, and…
From http://bbslist.textfiles.com/ Perhaps Dude is among us. 206-246-6647 White Center, VA RaT City BBS (1993-1997) Dude Renegade "Primarily a demoscene board with a vast collection of Impulse Tracker music and ANSI…
[dead]
The problem with “more harm than good” arguments is that the amount of harm relative to the amount of good is rarely specified. Is it 60/40 harm/good? Then shush, it ain't gettin' fixed in your lifetime. Is it 80/20…
Different site, different backend, different problems. GP was talking about wayback.archive.org, which threw a 429 error just now when I verified the URL.
Which archives? Wayback is different from Archive. Which is different from Archive-It. And the problem with Wayback was power poles being set on fire by homeless people, then SF power in general, then "upgrades," then…
If you use the site, support them. If you are a technical person, offer to help them. But maybe cash, or even the proxy of being able to say they have a large number of cash supporters, isn't really what's needed here?…
He doesn't do much better on the other example. Term-frequency saturation is the important part, and he ignores the 1972 paper by Karen Sparck Jones.
"One of the early victories for me was persuading a young boy of 14 or 15 years of age, named Aaron Swartz, to become the technical architect of the Creative Commons. It took a little persuading, but I told him that…
I don't like talking about this, but first hand knowledge is rarer by the day, and there are entire organizations profiting off this mythology. It's pissing me off. Aaron is not a data point to build stupid metaphors…
[flagged]
It can and does and may choose to do so unprompted. That was one of my "holy shit" moments. Previously I watched it spit out nonsense to get around edge cases and avoid tests and uttered many of the things I read in…
I can specifically and directly state that is false.
Ah, the classic HN "I keep Wikipedia's list of logical fallacies on my bookmark bar" retort. “No true Scotsman” would require me to redefine “senior developer” to exclude people who disagree with me. I didn’t. And…
Long bet: the NTSB will require all transportation software to be submitted for independent review, and that review process will be heavily automated by AI, within 5 years. Take it?
I've tried. It's like trying to teach squirrels how to Google. Really, you just have to figure out what works for you. You will be rewarded.
Very, very senior dev here who has never taken a shortcut in his life. Don't mean to sound like a prick but you're doing it wrong. You have to find your own path through this stuff. It works, promise. I was in your…
I'll worry when that stops happening. Probably means I'm getting in my own way or not thinking big enough.
Might I recommend HVAC or plumbing, it's honorable work and pays well. Trim trees if you've got the body for it. I don't recommend web work, the last ten years or the next ten. Wouldn't touch the stuff. I skipped the…
It's August 9, 2026 and if you're a software engineer who hasn't had multiple "holy shit, I can't believe it just did that" moments, it's time to consider a new trade.
If you repaired televisions in the 70s, most of the IBM 604 trigger circuit looks completely ordinary: a couple of triodes, plate resistors, grid bias, coupling capacitors, and voltages high enough that you kept one…
This represents a small part of what IT is worried about. Offer a beer and say the word "SharePoint" if you want the long version of where this could wind up. The issue isn't letting end-users add features. The issue is…
Evoking Gödel via GPT, with the requisite em-dash: "No sufficiently expressive formal governor can be simultaneously consistent, complete, and able to prove every relevant proposition—including all propositions about…
I just had GPT reverse engineer, from scratch, some ancient Corel Draw documents and turn them into perfect PDFs. None of the open source libraries helped. In fact, GPT didn't make any progress until I told it to ignore…
"The optic cortex is the biggest area of the brain by far. When everything is saturated in fluorescent light, as it is in small studios many times, the fluorescent light is going on and off at 60 times a second, or…
Archives have not taken a consistent stance on this. Preservation, removal, restricted access, de-indexing, and “right to be forgotten” sit on a spectrum. Good archival practice has to include judgment, context, and…
From http://bbslist.textfiles.com/ Perhaps Dude is among us. 206-246-6647 White Center, VA RaT City BBS (1993-1997) Dude Renegade "Primarily a demoscene board with a vast collection of Impulse Tracker music and ANSI…