<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: MoltenMan</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MoltenMan</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2026 23:36:48 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=MoltenMan" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Connections in Math: the two kinds of random"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep. I'm already not a huge fan of reading AI writing, and adding an obviously false disclaimer at the top is ridiculous.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 04:17:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48800585</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48800585</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48800585</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "The short leash AI coding method for beating Fable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Calling LLMs 'next token predictors' is completely reductive and disingenuous; it's true that technically that is what they're doing, but so are you! What people generally mean by this though is that they're just 'predicting the next token of their training [i.e. the internet]'. If you were talking about the raw models, this would actually be true; but the models are post trained, so even this description isn't true at all anymore! Saying they aren't 'intelligent' is both not useful and (imo) wrong. Who cares if it matches your definition of 'intelligent'; it still gets impressive stuff done, much more impressive stuff than you seem to be implying.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:17:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769099</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769099</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769099</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Why I Stopped Arguing with People"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And is Claude the one that got frustrated arguing with people? If not, why is Claude the one writing this?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:02:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747997</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747997</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747997</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The problem is that this is an incredibly niche / small issue (i.e. <<1% of users, let alone prompts, need this clarification), and if you add a section for every single small thing like this, you end up with a massively bloated prompt. Notice that every single user of Claude is paying for this paragraph now! This single paragraph is going to legitimately cost anthropic at least 4, maybe 5 digits.<p>At some point you just have to accept that llm's, like people, make mistakes, and that's ok!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2026 22:24:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47828185</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47828185</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47828185</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "More Americans are breaking into the upper middle class"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The subtitle specifically says 'the lower rungs of middle class have shrunk'? This seems a little ridiculous to just say. As trendy as it is to hate on modern day life and talk about how awful it is, in material terms it's pretty clearly better than it's ever been.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:46:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663381</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663381</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47663381</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Memo: A language that remembers only the last 12 lines of code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But being 'conscious' of something is being aware of it; your 'subconscious' is the part of your brain 'below' your awareness (although it is true that it's also below your consciousness! So perhaps both would work)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:07:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624003</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624003</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47624003</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>...no? It's the same as when you say you'd 'die for somebody'. I don't want to die, but if I had to die to save my family I would. That's not being suicidal. Similarly, if space is important enough to you to take this risk (which realistically is a pretty low risk!) I wouldn't call that suicidal either. I take the risk of death driving in my car every day; that's the nature of life.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:52:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590192</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590192</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590192</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Willingness to look stupid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While I don't necessarily disagree with this, I also wonder how much his 'data' about Nobel Prize winners and Institute of Princeton grads actually holds up vs how much of it is just very expected regression to the mean. He talks about Shannon; at some point Shannon was always going to have his last great idea. Given that the idea that made him famous was his greatest, you wouldn't expect many other ideas like that just from normal variation.<p>Essentially, if you take scientific ideas, including Nobel Prize ideas, and put them all on a bell curve of how difficult it is to find them, you wouldn't expect the same person to have multiple ideas all the way on the right, even if they are very above average.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:18:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367125</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367125</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367125</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Modeling cycles of grift with evolutionary game theory"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think this makes sense as part of the existing 'skeptic cost'</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:49:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186135</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186135</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47186135</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Banned in California"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ok, but if you are investing capital in some sort of production line or industrialization you are not going to want to do that in an area where you might just lose your entire investment instantly; instead, you're just going to invest it in Texas or China. Of course with more extreme examples like yours you do have to put some cost on the existing companies to get it fixed, but it would be something with a smaller cost like having to dispose of the mercury properly (whereas in this article's examples they just flat out ban these things, which you can't do to existing factories).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:27:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47169996</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47169996</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47169996</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As somebody who is entirely for restrictions on internet / social media, I think you're missing the bigger picture here. First, you assume that parents have the technical knowhow to restrict their kids from specific sites. My parents used a lot of different tools when I was a kid, but between figuring out passwords, putting my fingerprint onto my mom's phone, and spoofing mac addresses, I always found a way around the restrictions so I could stay up later.<p>But let's assume the majority of parents can actually do this. The problem with social media is not an individual one! We've fallen into a Nash Equilibrium, a game theory trap where we all defect and use our phones. If you don't have a phone or social media nowadays you will have much more trouble socializing than those who do, even though everyone would be better off if nobody used phones. As a teenager, you don't want to be the only one without a phone or social media. And so I truly do think the only solution is with higher level coordination.<p>Now, it's possible that the government isn't the right organization to enforce this coordination. Unfortunately, we don't really have any other forms of community that work for this. People already get mad at HOA's for making them trim their lawn; imagine an HOA for blocking social media! I do think the idea of a community doing this would be great though, assuming (obviously) that it was easy to move on and out of, as well as local. This would also help adults!<p>So to be honest, I don't think parents have the individual power to fix this, even with their kids.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 23:25:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130533</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130533</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130533</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Faster Than Dijkstra?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most of this is very true, except for the one caveat I'll point out that a <i>space</i> complexity O(P(n)) for some function P implies at least a O(cubedroot(P(n))) <i>time</i> complexity, but many algorithms don't have high space complexity. If you have a constant space complexity this doesn't factor in to time complexity at all. Some examples would be exponentiation by squaring, miller-rabin primality testing, pollard-rho factorization, etc.<p>Of course if you include the log(n) bits required just to store n, then sure you can factor in the log of the cubed root of n in the time complexity, but that's just log(n) / 3, so the cubed root doesn't matter here either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Feb 2026 02:00:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47010725</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47010725</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47010725</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "What's up with all those equals signs anyway?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This seems like the most likely reason to me!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 11:11:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46869452</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46869452</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46869452</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Founding is a snowball"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think this post reads as AI at all. It has none of the tell-tale signs either (em dashes, common constructions like 'not just ____ but ____, bullet points, headers, etc.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:54:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851108</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851108</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851108</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Right, so the solution is to silently upload their encryption keys to Microsoft's servers without telling them? If users don't understand encryption, they certainly don't understand they've just handed their keys to a third party subject to government data requests.<p>What exactly are you hoping Windows does here? Anyone who knows anything about Bitlocker knows Microsoft has the keys (that's where you get the key when you need it, which I have needed it many times because I dual boot!) Microsoft could put a big screen on install saying 'we have your encryption keys!' — would this change literally anything? They would need to also explain what that means and what bitlocker is. And then after all of that, the only people who are going to decide 'actually I want to set up FDE myself' are going to be the technical people who already knew all of this already! This is just a non-issue.<p>> This is such transparent fear-mongering. How often does this actually happen versus how often are cloud providers breached or served with legal requests? You're solving a hypothetical edge case by creating an actual security vulnerability.<p>This is not fear mongering at all! The nice thing about Bitlocker is that you don't need to put in your key 99% of the time (and in fact 99% of Windows users — who are not technical! — don't even know they have Bitlocker). But occasionally you do need to put it in. Once or twice I've booted to the bitlocker screen and I actually don't even know why. Maybe my TPM got wiped somehow? Maybe my computer shut down in a really weird way? But it happens enough that it's clearly necessary! That big Crowdstrike screwup a year ago; one of the ways to fix it required having your Bitlocker key!<p>> Encryption by default and cloud key escrow are separate decisions. You can have one without the other. The fact that Microsoft chose both doesn't make the second one necessary, it makes it convenient for Microsoft.<p>Again, this is <i>not</i> true for a product like Windows where 99% of users are not technical. Remember, Bitlocker does not require your key on startup the vast majority the time! However, there is a chance that you will need the key at some point or you will be locked out of you data permanently. Where should Microsoft give the user the key? Should they say on install 'hey, write this down and don't lose it!' Any solution relying on the user is obviously a recipe for disaster. But again, let me remind you that encryption by default is important because you don't want any old random laptop thief to get access to your chrome account! So yes, I think Microsoft made the best and only choice here.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 24 Jan 2026 23:11:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748693</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748693</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748693</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> And because of Bitlocker, their encryption is worth nothing in the end.<p>No, it's worth exactly what it's meant for: in case your laptop gets stolen!<p>> flawed default<p>Look, in terms of flaws I would argue 'the government can for legal reasons request the key to decrypt my laptop' is pretty low down there. Again, we're dealing with the general populace here; if it's a choice between them getting locked out of their computer completely vs the government being able to decrypt their laptop this is clearly the better option. Those who actually care about privacy will setup FDE themselves, and everyone else gets safety in case their laptop gets stolen.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 24 Jan 2026 06:44:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741589</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741589</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741589</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just to be clear: bitlocker is NOT encrypting with your login password! I could be a little fuzzy on the details but I believe how it works is that your TPM (Trusted Platform Module) is able to decrypt your laptop, but will only do so if there is a fully signed and trusted boot chain, so if somebody gains access to your laptop and attempts to boot into anything other than Windows, it will ask for the bitlocker key because the TPM won't play ball.<p>The important bit here is that ~*nobody* who is using Windows cares about encryption or even knows what it is! This is all on by default, which is a good thing, but also means that yes, of course Microsoft has to store the keys, because otherwise a regular user will happen to mess around with their bios one day and accidentally lock themselves permanently out of their computer.<p>If you want regular FDE without giving Microsoft the key you can go ahead and do it fairly easily! But realistically if the people in these cases were using Linux or something instead the police wouldn't have needed an encryption key because they would never have encrypted their laptop in the first place.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 24 Jan 2026 03:29:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740787</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740787</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740787</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Microsoft gave FBI set of BitLocker encryption keys to unlock suspects' laptops"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think most people don't understand that 99% of people don't know what data encryption is and definitely don't care about it. If it weren't for Bitlocker, their laptops wouldn't be encrypted at all! And of course if your software (Windows) encrypts by default but you don't want to bother the average user with the details (because they don't know anything about this or care about it) you will need to store the key in case they need it.<p>To everyone saying 'time to use Linux!'; recognize that if these people were using Linux, their laptops wouldn't be encrypted at all!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 24 Jan 2026 03:19:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740743</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740743</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46740743</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree with a lot of what you've said, but I completely disagree that LLM's are no longer sycophantic. GPT-5 is definitely still very sycophantic, 'You're absolutely right!' still happens, etc. It's true it happens far less in a pure coding context (Claude Code / Codex) but I suspect only because of the system prompts, and those tools are by far in the minority of LLM usage.<p>I think it's enlightening to open up ChatGPT on the web with no custom instructions and just send a regular request and see the way it responds.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:21:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46640866</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46640866</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46640866</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MoltenMan in "Every country should set 16 as the minimum age for social media accounts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Whenever this comes up people point out, 'Come on, let parents decide for their kids!' -- I sympathize with this argument, but let me explain why I don't believe that actually fixes the real problem. For reference, I'm gen-Z, COVID hit while I was in highschool, and I have seen and to this day see Tiktok / Reels / Shorts used every day by my friends (and to some extent me).<p>I may not be having kids for a while yet, but if I had teenagers today I would absolutely move somewhere where it is not legal for kids to have social media accounts. The underlying problem is that this isn't an individual problem, it's a social one! If a teenager's friends all have social media, he is going to be left out! It is going to severely hurt his life. Even if he never watches short-form video (the main component of social media I think is detrimental), his friends will! When I was in highschool sometimes my friends and I would get together and we would be bored, have no clue what to do. Instead of messing around doing random things, a couple of them would just open up Instagram reels and bam, afternoon wasted. If the half the group isn't trying to do something, you aren't going to do anything. Contrast this with before I was a teenager and before phones, I vividly remember me and my friends just exploring and doing random things. It's just a different experience and I think social media needs to be banned for everyone for it to be effective.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 14 Jan 2026 23:49:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625765</link><dc:creator>MoltenMan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625765</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625765</guid></item></channel></rss>