Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Rise of Whatever

eev.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 537 posts

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#461

Post by adastra22 »

nottorp wrote: post #350
adastra22 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality, it will save you some typing if you already know what to do. This goes too far in the other direction. LLMs can do far more than merely saving you typing. I have successfully used coding agents to implement code which at the outset I had no business writing as it was far outside my domain expertise. By the end I'd gained enough understanding to be able to review the output and guide the LLM towards a co…

I'd love it if everyone who posts statements like this would also include a link to their professional experience. Or at least state a number of years they've been developers. I'm sure I can do what you describe as well. I've actually used LLMs to get myself current on some stuff I knew (old) basics for and they were useful indeed as you say. I'm also sure it wouldn't help your interns to grow to your level.

Why? LLMs are fantastic tutors, if used right. It's how you use it, not the background knowledge you bring to it.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#462

Post by lelanthran »

lmm wrote: post #264
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #118

I disagree with many of the points on LLMs (but broadly agree with 80% of the post). But regardless of agreeing or not, it was a pleasure to read this because it's beautifully written, the arguments are solid, it makes you think, and the website has a personality, which is rare nowadays. I clicked halfheartedly, started to read halfheartedly, and got sucked into a read that threw me back into the good old days of the…

Eevee writes well but this is not one of her better posts IMO. Too many micro-digs at people who are white or straight, too much of the Twitter/Bluesky tone where you drop a snark bomb on the heckin' evil du jour and then just move on. If anything I'd say this has a lot less personality than older posts I remember.

> Too many micro-digs at people who are white or straight, too much of the Twitter/Bluesky tone where you drop a snark bomb on the heckin' evil du jour and then just move on.

I'd really like to know why tubgirl spam raids are bad but unicorn weiners are not; I don't really see much difference between the two, TBH.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#463

Post by Lu2025 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #123
JW_00000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandma did not have a microwave oven because she didn't see the point of it.

I'm in my 40s and don't have a microwave oven because I don't see the point of it... when I lived in a rented apartment, I got gifted one because how could I not have one? I tried it for a few days and just didn't find it useful. When I bought my own apartment and renovated the kitchen, I didn't bother to install one.

The best tasting (and also quickest) corn on the cob is done in microwave. Cook the entire unpeeled ear for 5 minutes on high, cut the butt end about 1 inch in and pull out corn out of the husk. Butter, salt, enjoy!

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#465

Post by darksome »

Bitcoin was an experiment, in retrospect it's obvious that it has major design flaws which prevent it from being "an electronic cash system" (privacy, scalability, fungibility). It technically can be fixed, but it won't ever be because of the mentioned "graph goes up" lunatics.

Monero is what Bitcoin should have been.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#466

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

eesmith wrote: post #454
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slide rule are good for only a couple of digits of precision. That's why shopkeepers used abacuses not slide rules. Shopkeepers did integer math, not decimal. They had no need for a slide rule, an abacus is faster at integer math, a slide rule is used for dealing with real numbers.

Yes ... Isn't that my point? I meant it as an example of how neither "basic mental maths and ... sanity checks" nor is a calculator with a 0.5% error rate are appropriate.

I mean that it's not a difference of accuracy, it's a difference of domain. A calculator & a slide rule have the same domain, an abacus and Mayan Quipu have the same domain. The calculator & abacus are faster than the slide rule & Quipu. Similarly a typewriter has the same accuracy as handwriting a document (worse if a pencil is used since typewriter's can't easily correct mistakes), but typing took over book writing because it was faster, not because it was more accurate.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#467

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #171
tehnub wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pair programming with coworkers over the years, many seem to have trouble with the keyboard, to the point where pressing right parenthesis is a significant burden and they don’t use right or down arrow to get out of the span but actually move their hand to their mouse and click out.

I've said it in another comment (might be here or Reddit, I don't even know anymore) and it feels like basic skills are just overlooked or taken for granted these days - computer use, mouse / keyboard / typing skills, reading comprehension, writing ability, communication skills, etc. I'm nowhere near a hiring position but if I was I'd add assessing that to the application procedure. It feels like this is part of a se…

> read a whole paragraph of text without a computer generated voice + RSVP [0] + Subway Surfers gameplay in the background

Quite literally laughed out loud at this. I still cannot believe this is a thing people actually do; I thought it was a joke "genre" at first.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#468

Post by thedevilslawyer »

analog31 wrote: post #359
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LLM isn't like calculator or microwave oven or other technology before. (Like OP's article) But it really is. I would not buy a calculator that hallucinated wrong answers part of the time. Or a microwave oven that told you it grilled the chicken but it didn't and you have to die from Salmonella poisoning.

Just an odd aside that occurred to me: Would you buy a calculator that hallucinates wrong answers part of the time, but gets enough correct answers and "partial credit" to earn you a certificate for being competent in math?

Yes, people would buy it and work around the wrong answers, if getting a non-hallucinating calculator was off the table.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#469

Post by lr0 »

saubeidl wrote: post #155

This entire article is a critique of capitalism and how it's ruined everything. I'm not sure the author is aware of that, however.

That's exactly what I was going to say. It's a long piece of how anything is always going great just before capitalism gets involved.

Re: The Rise of Whatever

#470

Post by arbitrary_name »

sfn42 wrote: post #402
zwnow wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are entitled to live wherever they want. Capitalists destroying rural regions with false promises (prosperous jobs) is a thing since the industrialization. Should all people move to overrun big cities? Small once established markets are getting destroyed by big discounters or stuff like Amazon. Also adapting is and never was a thing for most people. I dont know where you got that from but this isn't the wild w…

There's plenty of rural areas with plenty of opportunities. Cities are not the only option. If I lived in a dead mining town I'd move elsewhere. You can blame corporations or whatever you want, doesn't matter whose fault it is. Complaining and blaming doesn't solve anything. Finding solutions does. Stop complaining, start finding solutions. I grew up in a beautiful rural place. I'd like to live there, but what I like…

And that is extremely difficult at a large scale. Especially when you reduce safety nets and heighten the consequences of failure. A lack of healthcare, poor rural hospitals, extortionate tuition at colleges, high housing costs; these all make it extremely difficult to adapt.

Sure, you can smugly say that the hard-working will survive. But i don't want to imagine what the USA will be like millions of unemployed and under-provisioned Americans. Poverty and the process of falling off the socio economic ladder is ugly for everyone, unless you're wealthy enough to afford to insulate yourself from the consequences.

The fact that this nuance appears to be lost on you makes me suspicious of your motives for posting your opinion.

Post reply on HN