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Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

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11–20 of 162 posts

Re: Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

#11
post #2

Profit margin of authentication providers. They must be ridiculously high

I never really thought about this, as I work in sectors where authentication is usually selfhosted. Why is authentication out sourced so much? Is it the worry of data leaks and the administration effort that comes with it?

Re: Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

#13
post #12

- General lack of integrity at higher spheres (and where this can lead the world to) - The current situation where distribution matters way more than product quality - Lack of clear personal goals

Do you have any dreams? Things you always wanted to accomplish as a child, perhaps?

Re: Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

#14
post #6

Wealth concentration beyond a point which would have resulted in widespread revolution 150 years ago, but that is now being tolerated because we've grown accustomed to a level of comfort we don't want to risk losing.

If we've got a higher level of comfort, why does it matter?

Re: Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

#15

Unemployment and forced downshifting. From 200k programmer to McDonald's worker and call centre worker in just 4 years... Its brutal. Once you are out at 35+ for an even year or two - it's impossible to go back. AI takes jobs faster than creating new ones. ps. Just got laid off from the Temu call(chat) centre. AI IS taking our jobs. completely devastated

And you write code? How's your product sense? Got a resume?

Re: Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

#19
The state of "Scientific AI". I know LLMs are accelerating at doing computer work, and I've experienced the acceleration of using LLMs to do science, but it's more along the lines of debugging and stitching together pipelines of classical in silico tools. I see a ton of value here along that entire pathway for LLMs, it's basically digital process development: take each step, make it better, repeat, repeat, repeat. But the ceiling are the unit operations themselves, which sure LLMs can improve the code of those tools next. But if science was held back by simply people not doing the same things faster, maybe this will really push us forward, but I have a nagging feeling of "is this it?".

I think what I'm really looking for is a model like GPT Rosalind, which has been steeped in "science" post-training, but with more randomness. Like, I think I'm looking for a GPT Mullis--Rosalind Franklin was careful, deliberate, and serious; Kary Mullis ate a bunch of acid, drove on the PCH, and invented PCR. Like, we need to invent psychedelics for LLMs. Some way to let them relax their weights, explore new pathways, and come up with some absurd ideas by connecting random ass dots from the natural world. I want the model to say, "hmm, that's weird". This isn't just changing the temperature, we're missing something deeper.

I think frontier science has always come from serendipity: a bright thinker, listening to a presentation after having stared at some small experiment, but having trained for years on "biochemistry" so the foundation and loose guardrails are there.

I don't know, I'm feeling adrift. Does this resonate with anyone else?

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