Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | themafia's commentslogin

> they're not demanding that people proactively implement a system to prevent it from happening, are they?

What do you think a "background check" is?


Definitely not murder prevention

That's absolutely what they are. That and other crimes. That's why they're mandatory, by law, in certain industries. That's _precisely_ why we started using them: to prevent the easily preventable.

I suppose this logic stands in the way of a corporation getting what it wants and so it's automatically offensive to the HN "job seeking" crowd; however, even a basic reading of the history shows it's completely true.


> but do not have even a theory about how the behavior emerges

We fully do. There is a significant quality difference between English language output and other languages which lends a huge hint as to what is actually happening behind the scenes.

> but how exactly does anthill behavior come from ant behavior?

You can't smell what ants can. If you did I'm sure it would be evident.


Two very big revelations here that I would love to know more about:

1. Can you reveal "what's actually happening behind the scenes" beyond the hint you gave? I can't figure it out.

2. Can you explain how an ants sense of smell leads to anthills?


> 2. Can you explain how an ants sense of smell leads to anthills?

Ant 0: doesn’t seem to be dangerous here. I’ll drop a scent.

Ant 1: oh cool, a safe place. And I didn’t die either. I’ll reinforce that.

Ant 142,857,098,277: cool anthill.


The dynamics of ant nest creation are way more complicated than that. The evolved biological parallel of a procedural generation algorithm. In addition, the completed structure has to be compatible with the various programmed behaviors of the workers.

I am very curious about this significant hint, could you point me to some material?

> There is a significant quality difference between English language output and other languages

?


They're saying LLMs do better when outputting English than other languages, an assertion I'm not really able to test but have heard elsewhere.

and this is somehow not related to the size and availability of corpora in English?

No, I'm quite sure that's why it's better.

OK but then that goes back to their other assertion that it gives a huge hint at what is going on behind the scenes, is that huge hint just "more data gives better results!" if so, that doesn't seem at all important since that is the absolutely central idea of an LLM. That is not behind the scenes at all, that is the introduction to the play as written by the author.

Not your fault obviously, but they have not yet described what that huge hint is, and I'm just at the edge of my seat with anticipation here.


> The comments it offered were on the par of the best comments I’ve received on a paper in my entire academic career.

Sort of the lowest hanging fruit imaginable. Just because it became "fundamental" to the process doesn't mean it gained any quality.


> Change happens.

The low level tool that has served to rescue more systems than I can count does not need to "change" simply because "it happens, bro."

> while we can mechanistically

You can rule it out with process as well. As in "don't change what isn't broken."

> If they can introduce an RCE to Notepad

Then they clearly feel they have no viable competition. This is table stakes. Getting it wrong should lose you most of your customer base overnight. Companies actually used to _work_ this way.


If I told you to stop using computers, and then you won't have computer problems, I don't think you would find that particularly helpful or charitable either, would you?

What you find a trusty "low-level" tool is a demo application for a basic WYSIWYG text editor. They modernized it so that it remains being perceived that way, instead of letting it be increasingly misclassified as a legacy product for the enthusiast, like you just did.


I thought "basic WYSIWYG text editor" was more WordPad's lane, no? May it rest...

That was my first thought... Notepad is a plain text editor. Why add formatted text options when there's no good reason for it?

Plus, judging by the image, it doesn't look like there's controls to interact with the plain text markdown. It seems more like it's a "you can use markdown _codes_ to trigger text formatting. Jira has exactly this, and it's horrible.


The newest thing I've seen:

"compostable - except in CA"


Why? The microbes don't get along with sourdough starter bacteria?

It's because CA has stricter regulations about what can be labeled compostable. Whatever had this label was never compostable to begin with, but called itself that on a technicality.

yeah we took one of those cups and buried in a compost heap for a few years. it was not degraded in the slightest.

> Usa still don't even have universal social security

It does though. There are several programs, some administered by the federal government, and some by the states. We don't have "single payer" but we absolutely have "universal social security."

> and medications are overpriced 10 time more.

If you use the sticker price. Sure. It looks that way. If you use the actual pharmacy receipts the story is far different.


> to a declining, unstable empire

It's funny that we've wrapped the clock all the way around and people don't see Europe as the declining and unstable empires anymore.

> less like stable infrastructure

It's perfectly stable. The news makes a lot of money generating interesting in overstating this problem. The supreme court is designed for national stability. It is doing it's job. It just doesn't act _instantly_, and if you're aiming for actual stability, you don't want it to.


> The supreme court is designed for national stability.

lol my ass. We have a corrupt Adminstration with a corrupt Supreme Court. The only thing it's doing is making people less safe to enrich the people at the top. This kind of response is embarrassing.


The AWS registrar is actually not bad.

The original title: "Jimi Hendrix's Analog Wizardy Explained."

> and the component was the Octavia guitar pedal, created for Hendrix by sound engineer Roger Mayer.

So, Roger was the engineer. And, Jimi was the artist.


Art and engineering are both constrained optimization problems - at their core, both involve transforming a loosely defined aesthetic desire into a repeatable methodology!

And if we can call ourselves software engineers, where our day-to-day (mostly) involves less calculus and more creative interpretation of loose ideas, in the context of a corpus of historical texts that we literally call "libraries" - are we not artists and art historians?

We're far closer to Jimi than Roger, in many ways. Pots and kettles :)


We should not call ourselves engineers - it's a massive insult to actual professional engineers.


Speak for yourself, some of us value and incorporate both science and methodology into our craft, and adhere to a system of ethics.

That's great, but it doesn't make you or any of us engineers.

Just because I drive my car with immense focus, make precision shifts, and hit the apex of all of my turns when getting onto and off of the freeway doesn't make me a race car driver.

Engineers don't just feel good vibes about science and mix it into their work. It is the core of their work.

Simply having a methodology absolutely is not sufficient for being an engineer.

And great, you have an arbitrary system of ethics, like everyone does I imagine. But no one holds you to these ethics.


Care to share your operational definition of the word "engineer"?

> Citizens don't want to pay for it.

Yes. We do. We're literally screaming for it.


Sorry, gotta go to companies pocketing the money while pretending they are building homeless shelters.

There’s a lot of money to be had in not building things.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: