Hacker News: Hauthorn

New comment by Hauthorn in "Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview"

Hauthorn — Wed, 07 May 2025 12:27:52 +0000

This is in fact not how a chess engine works. It has an evaluation function that assigns a numerical value (score) based on a number of factors (material advantage, king "safety", pawn structure etc).

These heuristics are certainly "good enough" that Stockfish is able to beat the strongest humans, but it's rarely possible for a chess engine to determine if a position results in mate.

I guess the question is whether we can write a good enough objective function that would encapsulate all the relevant attributes of "good code".

New comment by Hauthorn in "Vacheron Constantin breaks the world record for most complicated wristwatch"

Hauthorn — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 08:10:05 +0000

I think watchmakers have been pushing this for quite a while.

If you want more recent examples, see Richard Mille.

New comment by Hauthorn in "The case against conversational interfaces"

Hauthorn — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:19:30 +0000

I think you work in different domains.

Expecting a good outcome is different from expecting to get exactly what you intended.

Formal specifications are useful in some lines of work and for some projects, less so for others.

Wicked problems would be one example where formal specs are impossible by definition.

New comment by Hauthorn in "S1: The $6 R1 Competitor?"

Hauthorn — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 13:48:56 +0000

I believe this is a capability that the Switchblade 600 or STM KARGU already has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu

New comment by Hauthorn in "Facebook engineers: we have no idea where we keep all your personal data"

Hauthorn — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 14:17:31 +0000

Or maybe just implying that Meta isn't up for the task of complying with GDPR, and lack the necessary ability to comply with regulations.