Hacker News: AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=AlexCoventryHacker News RSShttps://hnrss.org/hnrss v2.1.1Sun, 21 Jun 2026 09:18:15 +0000<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Zen and the Art of Machine Learning Research"]]>I just finished Everyday Zen by Charlotte "Joko" Beck, and it's very pragmatic and good, IMO, though you won't learn a lot of doctrine from it.

Zen is not a good Buddhist tradition to start with unless you have a skilled personal teacher, IMO. I would recommend starting with something like dhammatalks.org instead. (Click on the "For Beginners" header near the bottom of the page.)

]]>Fri, 19 Jun 2026 21:04:12 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48603223AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48603223https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48603223<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "U.S. science is in chaos"]]>Canada, Europe, China.

]]>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:37:52 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576522AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576522https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576522<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Not everyone is using AI for everything"]]>Ascension to AI plays a quasi-religious, soteriological role in the world of the book.

]]>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:27:14 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534193AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534193https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534193<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "AI coding at home without going broke"]]>Right now, we seem to be shambling toward a war which would hit globalized industrial processes very hard. Buying decent hardware now might wind up looking like good insurance against that.

]]>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:16:03 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534057AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534057https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48534057<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "No, everyone is not using AI for everything"]]>They might not have an answer in mind. They might just be exploring how you adapt to new tools and methods.

]]>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 19:31:34 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531676AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531676https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531676<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"]]>I have a nonlinear attention mechanism which seems to improve data efficiency, but it's slow. I'm trying to learn the python CuTe DSL to speed it up.

I'm also reading Principles and Practice of Deep Representation Learning, Or: A Mathematical Theory of Memory.

]]>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 19:19:53 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531523AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531523https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531523<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Policy on the AI Exponential"]]>> Often this is for good reasons: governments have grave powers, and it’s usually for the best that they aren’t used too hastily.

"Don't mention the (Iran) War!"

]]>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:05:43 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48484546AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48484546https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48484546<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Google will pay SpaceX $920M per month for compute"]]>Maybe they'll become an AI company again after they've abused their privileged access as hardware providers to reverse-engineer Google and Anthropic's weights and operations.

]]>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 18:20:22 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427511AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427511https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427511<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers"]]>Common sense and rationality go out the window in corrupt, unregulated environments with perverse incentives.

]]>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 18:15:44 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427474AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427474https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48427474<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes"]]>> nearly 30 students in CS 10 were caught cheating on take-home exams in spring 2026.

You'd have to be really lazy and disrespectful, to get caught cheating on a take-home exam...

]]>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:57:26 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406722AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406722https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48406722<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Expanding Project Glasswing"]]>I thought one of the advantages of Glasswing was that it could produce a PoC for you. Was it producing working PoC's?

]]>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:36:13 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375917AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375917https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375917<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"]]>The headwinds are way worse now, though. Oil is choked, war is brewing, and corruption is at an all-time high.

]]>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 04:10:21 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365940AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365940https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365940<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"]]>> an AI company that produces virtual fetish porn and makes money renting GPUs to Anthropic

Whatever Anthropic is paying is too much, since it means xAI will get to observe Anthropic's software, weights and operations in detail. It's probably contractually prohibited from doing so, but I doubt that would stop Musk, given what's at stake.

]]>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 04:02:33 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365882AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365882https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365882<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"]]>For what it's worth, I think anything selling energy or fertilizer which is not sourced from the Middle East is a pretty good bet right now. Depends on how the US/Iran conflict plays out, of course, but I'm not optimistic.

]]>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:37:42 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365702AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365702https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365702<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"]]>A: This has not happened yet. B: Are you actually optimistic that it won't?

That's a request for an opinion, not an emotion.

]]>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:28:29 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365638AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365638https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365638<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC"]]>Run coding agents in a docker container with limited permissions. FWIW, I run it with

  --cap-drop=ALL
  --pids-limit=4096
  --runtime=runsc

]]>Sun, 31 May 2026 19:47:26 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48349081AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48349081https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48349081<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Various LLM Smells"]]>I'd need to see some transcripts of his conversations with coding agents, to believe this.

]]>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:47:56 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317553AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317553https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317553<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "-​-dangerously-skip-reading-code"]]>He was establishing the context of The current blog post. Very unlikely that he was doing it for Google juice.

]]>Sun, 24 May 2026 01:28:15 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253436AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253436https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48253436<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Google Declaring War on the Web"]]>Isn't society #1 going to outcompeted #2?

]]>Thu, 21 May 2026 01:44:34 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216807AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216807https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216807<![CDATA[New comment by AlexCoventry in "Google Declaring War on the Web"]]>It's excellent for R&D.

]]>Thu, 21 May 2026 01:41:32 +0000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216778AlexCoventryhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216778https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216778