cobbal

6 ms·

1.
by cobbal 8d ago
This is definitely true in an information theory sense: having more knowledge is always better than less knowledge. However, it may not be true in math as a social human endeavor, and having answers without interesting paths to get there ma
2.
by cobbal 19d ago
It does sound totally ridiculous. Sadly it may not be. Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956688 "LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent". You can ar
3.
by cobbal 20d ago
Lost me at the first assumption. People can argue about how useful AI is, but it's obviously not essential because we somehow managed to write code without it a few years ago. I would even say the code was better back then. The two tas
4.
by cobbal 2mo ago
AI is a technology for removing nines from uptime, and adding them to Sturgeon's law.
5.
by cobbal 2mo ago
ACM agrees I think: https://dl.acm.org/openaccess > Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will be made open access.
6.
by cobbal 2mo ago
Determinism isn't the main hurdle. It would be a moderate effort to engineer a deterministic claude that would be no more useful than the current one. The key characteristic of a compiler is that it takes a source language with a well-
7.
by cobbal 2mo ago
You may have been thinking of this one instead https://what-if.xkcd.com/141/ . Maybe we should put Randall on the supervillain watchlist.
8.
by cobbal 2mo ago
This is a case of lethal trifecta. This particular one can be fixed by either not giving the AI private data, or by removing the exfiltration opportunity. Why does the comment-summary bot need access to your private video ids? Why does it n
9.
by cobbal 3mo ago
Sadly, I suspect this will be the best piece of marketing they could ever hope for. "It's so advanced the government made us add extra security* to stop hackers!" *(ask it in a more stern voice)
10.
by cobbal 4mo ago
Here's the threat model I (a luddite) use to evaluate these. The claude code harness can be mostly trusted, the model cannot be trusted because it is exposed to untrusted data from the internet, and there is no separation of data/
11.
by cobbal 4mo ago
That's funny. It told me that blocking "npm run build" was the wrong answer. Maybe it doesn't really under The threat model.
12.
by cobbal 4mo ago
If co-authorship implies holding rights, then what gives the "primary author" who just prompted for the code the right to add their own name?
13.
by cobbal 4mo ago
It makes up for that by also multiplying the productivity and happiness of the people who have to review your code by 0.5 too.
14.
by cobbal 4mo ago
I think that's selling the theorems a little short. A math system with arithmetic is equal to, or more powerful than, a computer. For an example, even classical logic comes with the law of excluded middle that can say (internally) if a
15.
by cobbal 5mo ago
Null doesn't. `union(Int?, String?)` will only have 1 type of null, unlike a proper discriminated union.
16.
by cobbal 5mo ago
Take your pick :) https://www.templatemaker.nl/en/
17.
by cobbal 6mo ago
Can you set your clock forward or does this also require phoning home to a central server to install an app on your computer?
18.
by cobbal 6mo ago
Here's a version from 2014 in the same style if you're curious: https://web.archive.org/web/20140702092610/https://news.ycom...
19.
by cobbal 7mo ago
They're not doing so here, but shipping a wasm-compiled binary with npm that uses node's WASI API is a really easy way to ship a cross-platform CLI utility. Just needs ~20 lines of JS wrapping it to set up the args and file system
20.
by cobbal 7mo ago
We guarantee 5 nines of uptime, and 1 nine of not killing people
21.
by cobbal 7mo ago
It's just a regional thing. Neither is correct or wrong. You may as well yell at a french person that the word is "cheese", not "formage". From the very article you linked: > In English, the noun mathematics take
22.
by cobbal 7mo ago
This is cutting off the "Access to private data" leg of the lethal trifecta. One of the few ways to actually make an agent secure.
23.
by cobbal 8mo ago
Ohhhh... So that's why it's called Y combinator.
24.
by cobbal 8mo ago
That's essentially correct. Extraction is a term in roqc. A rocq program contains both a computational part, and proofs about that computation, all mixed together in the type system. Extraction is the automated process of discarding th
25.
by cobbal 8mo ago
Wolfram alpha thinks it's prime: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=factor+0xcb80ebbd975f00...
26.
by cobbal 9mo ago
Is early termination the only supported side effect? Its name suggests a more general capability, but I didn't see more examples in my (cursory) look at the readme
27.
by cobbal 9mo ago
Not saying if the title is good or bad, but just to provide context: there's a tradition of these style of apple-language explainers / cheat sheets titled in this pattern. First I'm aware of is https://fuckingblock
28.
by cobbal 9mo ago
If they don't agree to be turned into a cyborg, are they really using enough AI?
29.
by cobbal 9mo ago
Makes sense. I think this is a variant of the "parse, don't validate" motto, but is more "parse, don't parse-serialize-parse" in the implementation.
30.
by cobbal 9mo ago
The mental health version of "AI is here to stay, like it or not you have to use it" that some people keep trying to tell me in software.

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