alphazard

5 ms·

1.
by alphazard 22d ago
> Democratization of access has its victims. Democracies require conserved stake to function. How individuals initially get that stake is a degree of freedom, but if the stake can be printed freely, the system is unstable. For working i
2.
by alphazard 23d ago
This framing of security as something that belongs in the harness is completely wrong, and I hope no one is relying on a correct harness to keep their agents isolated. VM, or even just a container will do. The agent should be able to run a
3.
by alphazard 26d ago
> Wouldn't the democratic way be to petition... This is also the democratic way, arguably more democratic, it's just probabilistic. Juries are supposed to be randomly sampled from the jurisdiction's population (a kind of
4.
by alphazard 26d ago
Not sure why your comment is being downvote. That is in fact the best explanation for what is going on here, and the outcome has little to do with the competence of the prosecutor, as is perhaps alluded to by the original comment. It'
5.
by alphazard 1mo ago
Humans have been inserting benign noise into their writing without affecting the signal for thousands of years. They called it "style". Apparently superfluous descriptions, unnecessary words, and paragraph footnotes are all fine
6.
by alphazard 1mo ago
I should have expected this level of discourse from 2026 HN. Here's another way of framing things that might encourage better discussion: Suppose in a few years, it was announced that an LLM did discover a cure for a cancer. What appr
7.
by alphazard 1mo ago
"Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research. I think it was popularized by an explainer video on Youtube, and now it's being memed. The people who think this way wan
8.
by alphazard 2mo ago
The answer, of course, is that the taste-making apparatus inside the typical tech company is now entirely imposters (non-technical, non-power-users), who continue to LARP as visionaries. The people who notice broken or degraded behavior (de
9.
by alphazard 3mo ago
I agree with everything you said. Most open source projects are limited by contributor labor. Generative AI does help with that problem, but it introduces a sea of vibe coded slop as a side effect. Truly a Genie/Jinn.
10.
by alphazard 3mo ago
> And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome. Whatever you want to call it, HN has followed a similar trend. It's rare to see the authors of small,
11.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Which specific externalities are you concerned about? Do they affect you directly?
12.
by alphazard 7mo ago
> If you don't see the problem with that, you're complicit, misinformed or brainwashed. The problem that I imagine you see with this, is that it doesn't conform to a particular, special, notion of fairness that you think t
13.
by alphazard 7mo ago
> Regardless, polymarket seems to be on balance corrupting, by monetizing and normalizing use of inside information, This is a common take on "inside information", but for most people this opinion is totally unaligned with thei
14.
by alphazard 7mo ago
This is exposing a problem that already existed, AI is just throwing gas on the fire. Most engineers, including the readership of this site, have terrible taste in software. What I mean by that is: after reading through a brief description
15.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Instead of understanding all of this, and when it does or does not apply, it's probably better to disclose vulnerabilities anonymously over Tor. It's not worth the hassle of being forced to hire a lawyer, just to be a white hat.
16.
by alphazard 7mo ago
> This assumes every individual is capable of succinctly communicating to the AI what they want. And the AI is capable of maintaining it as underlying platforms and libraries shift. I think there are people who want to use software to ac
17.
by alphazard 7mo ago
People already pay for journalism through substack. It's not micropayments, it's a commitment to the ongoing consumption of a high quality creator's work. I can't think of a single news outlet that isn't obviously
18.
by alphazard 7mo ago
There's an undertone of self-soothing "AI will leverage me, not replace me", which I don't agree with especially in the long run, at least in software. In the end it will be the users sculpting formal systems like playdo
19.
by alphazard 7mo ago
> I wonder whether the vaccine content matters at all in current vaccines. The target does matter, that is the basis for the whole technology, and the thing most predictive of efficacy. That's why the flu shots often don't work
20.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Yeah this is more likely than cancer, and is a potential side effect of anything that stimulates the immune system, including real antigen-carrying vaccines.
21.
by alphazard 7mo ago
This kind of "but for us it's different" thinking is a little amusing. I don't care about the implementation process or the RFCs or what-have-you. If there is a democratic committee of humans that decides what goes in, a
22.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Yes agree, we are definitely past peak Go. Suspiciously, after Rob Pike retired from the project, the amount of language and standard library changes skyrocketed. Many people now trying to get their thing into the language so they can add i
23.
by alphazard 7mo ago
What no one wants to hear is rust is destined for the same fate. If you want to see the future of rust, look at C++. Rust has a much better initial state, but the rules evolving the system (the governance model, the kinds of developers t
24.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Can someone, who knows computer graphics, explain why the old library had so many issues with flickering and black triangles or rectangles flashing on the app, and why the new library is expected to not have those same problems?
25.
by alphazard 7mo ago
> Voila: you've re-invented product management. This is a names vs. structure thing. For a moment, taboo the term product manager. What I'm suggesting is a low risk way to see if an engineer has an aptitude for aligning the ro
26.
by alphazard 7mo ago
> This sentiment is going exactly against the trend right now. It's not. Engineers are having more and more minutia and busy work taken off their plate, now done by AI. That allows them to be heads up more often, more of their cogni
27.
by alphazard 7mo ago
There are individuals who have good taste for products in certain domains. Their own preferences are an accurate approximation for those of the users. Those people might add value when they are given control of the product. That good taste
28.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Product management might be the worst meme in the industry. Hire people who have never used the product and don't think like or accurately represent our users, then let them allocate engineering resources and gate what ships. What cou
29.
by alphazard 7mo ago
The ability to reverse is very dependent on the transformation being well known, in this case it is deterministic and known with certainty. Any algorithm to reverse motion blur will depend on the translation and rotation of the camera in ph
30.
by alphazard 7mo ago
Naive self-interest is a characteristic of children. You didn't stumble upon some ancient wisdom of another culture, you just matured and established a family, which your instincts tell you to put before yourself. The West is individua

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