Viewing profile — alastairr

Presumably the frontier labs themselves can do their own distillation far better than the chinese labs can. Why can't they just beat them at their own game and release / host low c…

> Every business wants you to be addicted to their products It simply isn't true a) that businesses are all as unscrupulous as digital media platforms and b) that most products eve…

The one that does my head in is everything being a 'gate' where really it means a condition. RLHF seems to incentivise analogy-like terms to the more plain alternatives.

The point is that - unrestricted - digital media maximises for time and attention. Given that incentive, addictive behaviours are not only inevitable, but an ideal outcome financia…

It's really good, love it! My vote would be no countdown, but you could have a hidden timer and use that for ranking at the end, so that there's still and incentive to think fast. …

I love that idea, thanks :) I will add this to the list.

Hi HN, Cycle Archive is a free, browsable library of old cycling magazines and books from the 1860s–1940s. I started it as a way to explore cycling history myself, and all of the w…

100% I'm not sure when all this mission nonsense came in, but it's daft when you see it parroted around something as beige as SaaS. It's fine to want to make something good and mak…

I remember the controversies well :) but I guess even their extra gating is starting to creak by the sounds of it.

The surprising thing to me is that it's taken as long as it has for CRAN to have this problem. As others have said, this is happening everywhere.

Hi HN, Cycle Archive is a free, browsable library of old cycling magazines and books from the 1860s–1940s. I started it as a way to explore cycling history myself, and all of the w…

If it's real this is a terrible thing to have happen. However the moral of this story is nothing to do with AI and everything to do with boring stuff like access management.

"and honestly, ..." "heres the thing ..." [em dash every paragraph] Smells like default Claude voice. I like the ideas, but if someone can't be bothered to proof read their own art…

I know there are a lot of tools out there for searching ArXiv for relevance, but given the volumes on ArXiv now, relevance is rarely enough. Does anyone know or use any tools that …

Couldn't agree more. Worth pointing out that sites owned by Meta and Twitter in particular have become much more hostile to signed out users - often impossible to view a business' …

You are right that Taiwan doesn't. But it has consequences, Taipower is forced to undercharge against market prices, but is backstopped by the government. At the end of the day, it…

I'm no longer keeping it updated with new content, but I curated and made searchable about 40k feeds over the years https://blognerd.app/

Not sure I agree with you. For lower ability models, yes. Claude Opus 4.6 is incredibly capable, so it's odd to me it has this residual 'misspeak' behaviour.

I've noticed this more and more recently, especially with Opus 4.6. Not super frequently, but enough that it stands out given how capable 4.6 is. Has anyone else seen this? Any the…

sounds cool. I guess you built this? Is there any way to learn more about how it works before signing in? The homepage doesn't give much away :)

I'm looking for any products for learning new topics and that are designed for helping users retain new knowledge - eg. with spaced repetition or smart use of follow-up questions. …

While I agree with the general point Vitamin D is toxic (and ultimately fatal) at high doses, which is why the 'suggested' dosages of between 400IU and 1000IU are so conservative. …