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wamatt

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wamatt
·27일 전·discuss
Love love love SingleFile too. The FF extension works pretty well for a clean save.

That said, Kage looks promising if OP can combine SingleFile reproduction quality with the HTTPTrack spidering approach. SPA's are kinda tricky with archiving and do wonder how well Kage would handle that
wamatt
·28일 전·discuss
One thing I'd personally like to see a little more discussion of (at least within my social circles) is.. what exactly does "using AI" mean?

How does this connect to everyone's high level ideas/thoughts about "tech", "AI" and "morals and feels" etc. These lines can start to seem a little blurry, at least for me.

For example, would we say my partner is "using AI" (for all intents and purposes), if she's frequently using Google.com throughout the day, and then ends up picking and believing the AI generated answer overview at the top of the SERPs almost every time?

Or do we feel "uses AI", is more along the lines of the vampire kids running 1000 sub-agents on a mattress floor in SF?

I kind of find the whole spectrum really interesting because even basic phone use is now stuffed with AI, whether we choose to label it or not.
wamatt
·지난달·discuss
> In particular, the concept of the Roko's Basilisk is some rehash of the Pascal's Wager.

Oh boy couldn't agree more. The whole Basilisk drama really caused me to rethink the idea that a group of Rationalists were in practice, were in fact particularly rational. CF The Atheists vs someone that happens to be atheist. To their credit, they also acknowledged this somewhat and hence the CFAR crowd.

The word "rehash" also resonates. Like Google has a tendency to use PHD's to reinvent everything over and make up new words and terms for the same concepts.

Having spent a little too much time in the early 2010's at Bay Area LW meetups, the more fantastical LARP of fanfic, and religious mythology often felt a bit at odds. There was the aspect of a charismatic, autodidact leader obsessed with a certain J.K. Rowling IP and the kinky stuff..Don't get me wrong, I still have fond memories of this time overall :)

From my perspective, a core issue seemed to be no-one seemed to particularly motivated in defining what it meant to be rational, aside from some loose segmentation around instrumental vs epistemic rationality. (ie practice vs theory). And because of this it almost had a faith vibe to the scene. Like "trust me bro" this is "super high brow nerd stuff" and on your third helping of "The Sequences" all these formulas and shiny new words will all make sense what and it will be clear why we’re doing these meetups. (It totally wasn't anything to do with mental masturbation and high-iq crowd bonding and feeling good ;)

When I was into Christian apologetics (C.S. Lewis etc) as in my first year of CS & philosophy of science in college, there was a similar thing.. after a year of seeking out the scientific, and logical explanations for all the religious dogma I was indoctrinated into growing up. In the end, it pretty much reduced to "just have faith". This was after exhausting the "well you're not an expert on Christian theology, so you cant have a solid argument around the nature and existence of God because you need to study more" counter. This despite reading and studying the Bible at length.

For example, right now. Is it rational to be typing this up on HN, when I have other more important goals to do? OTOH reminiscing on the past and connecting with a single serving online friend OP, gives a bit of a dopamine hit. And maybe sharing resonates with others and increases happiness in the world? (or not if anyone still LW reads this and maybe feels a different type of way)

So that’s community right and good (in the sense it's aligning with goals)? But then its driven by emotions, so that kinda is not supposed to be rational. Is it rational to observe one's own mental states and take action? Turtles all the way down!
wamatt
·2개월 전·discuss
Thanks from where I'm looking Grok 4.3 and Claude 4.7 do a better job on the informal close friend/coworker vibe.

ChatGPT sounds fake / formal phrasing (for the specific close friend context) and has em-dashes and uses capitalization. Hence, ChatGPT does not, imo grok the assignment ;)
wamatt
·3개월 전·discuss
> Consumer purchase behavior is highly impulsive and irrational.

This is correct. It’s quite possible to both satisfy more customers and work within your constraints.

Eg $30 bucks lifetime would be nice. You could put it in small print below the main pricing to avoid decision fatigue and keep things streamlined for subs.

Often those early adopters appreciate and become advocates. Subs fatigue is a real thing
wamatt
·3개월 전·discuss
Oh boy.. this is a perfect Show HN to wake up to :)

With the wild pace of everything going on right now. I can’t be alone feeling it truly captures the hacker spirit. Echoes to early Lisp days, or maybe my high school side quest to learn Minix? Ie building from scratch and seeing what’s possible.

Sadly most of us will never have the staying power (well definitely not myself) and yet you gave us a little window into your passion.

Thank you for the inspiration. Especially the focus on compounding small wins and including us in your orbit. Long live Anos
wamatt
·4개월 전·discuss
Off the top of my head trading or realtime voice come to mind. Probably plenty other domains could benefit
wamatt
·4개월 전·discuss
>I can't be the only person who reads "reaching desktop performance" and wonders "you mean comparable to the M1, or to the M3 Ultra?"

You're not. IMHO it's a fairly obvious, narrow and uncontroversial observation (and hence why its the top comment). That said, I personally still enjoyed the back and forth as many others one could imagine. There can be value in the counterarguments from multiple other usernames, as this facilitates sharpening reasoning for the conclusion from readers. (even when the original premise stays in tact)

The lack of others agreeing could be the result of many reasons. IMHO, a not insignificant one could be the incentive structure skews heavily towards lurking as HN rightfully disincentives "me too" type replies and not everyone always has something interesting to add

2c not an epistemologist ymmv
wamatt
·5개월 전·discuss
Attention is squandered these days like free samples at a Costco run by raccoons. It's not hard to think hard. It's hard to have discipline.
wamatt
·5개월 전·discuss
Fair and share same concerns

The track record of the really big CEOs has been less than super good nervous sweating

Maybe I’m being naive, but there a few good ones (smaller and mid tier size) out there imo
wamatt
·5개월 전·discuss
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this too! Kudos and shout out to the author Erik Kennedy. One can definitely see the care and love. We hope to see more of this style the future

Kind of reminds me of worrydream (Brett Victor), better explained and neil.fun vibes (and many others I can’t recall right now)
wamatt
·5개월 전·discuss
Annnd I’m old enough to remember last weeks Superbowl ad controversy :)

It’s not like “OpenAI == AI”

One could possibly make the case that currently that is the public perception (outside the SV bubble). But is it really true?

Last time I checked Dario staked Anthropic’s future and reputation, on paid subscription.
wamatt
·6개월 전·discuss
That’s a reasonable take. The never part seems strong though.

If I may offer a slight consideration? “arbitrary code vs arbitrary signed code”.

What’s realistically stopping Apple from requiring all code and processes be signed? Including on device dev code with a trust chain going back to Apple and TPU / Secure Enclave enforcement
wamatt
·14년 전·discuss
I know what you mean. It's all about the underlying patterns and concepts and their relations to one another.