Hacker News: Pamar

New comment by Pamar in "EsoLang-Bench: Evaluating Genuine Reasoning in LLMs via Esoteric Languages"

Pamar — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 02:26:30 +0000

I had similar experiences with an unpopular but not "esoteric" language (Progress ABL) and so did some other developers in my team.

Gramsci's Nightmare: AI, Platform Power and the Automation of Cultural Hegemony

Pamar — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:49:09 +0000

Article URL: https://ethanzuckerman.com/2025/12/05/gramscis-nightmare-ai-platform-power-and-the-automation-of-cultural-hegemony/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439411

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by Pamar in "AI still doesn't work well, businesses are faking it, and a reckoning is coming"

Pamar — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 06:53:54 +0000

Well... the actual problem is, imho, that it looks like the LLMs seem to have reached (or are close to reaching) a plateau. You might be right about the "three months ago it could not produce a working implementation of a DBMS... but what if in 3 months (or 3 years) it stays stuck at the 20K slower threshold?

New comment by Pamar in "Meta acquires Moltbook"

Pamar — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 10:02:28 +0000

So basically like Excel since the 80s?

Maternal Paradox

Pamar — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 06:41:59 +0000

Article URL: https://aeon.co/essays/how-scientific-motherhood-polices-and-subjugates-women

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971679

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

AI "cheating", anti-intellectualism and the carceral

Pamar — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 11:39:00 +0000

Article URL: https://overland.org.au/2025/10/ai-cheating-anti-intellectualism-and-the-carceral/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46574771

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Why are there 60 Seconds in a Minute, 60 Minutes in an Hour, and 24 Hours Days?

Pamar — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 07:40:23 +0000

Article URL: https://monochrome-watches.com/why-60-seconds-in-a-minute-why-60-minutes-in-an-hour-by-24-hours-in-a-day-and-other-calendar-oddities/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46538381

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by Pamar in "All my Deutschlandtickets gone: Fraud at an industrial scale [video]"

Pamar — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:15:57 +0000

Not sure I understand your point about

Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway.

I live in Rostock. So if I want to go to Berlin or Hamburg (you know, where stuff like actual airports are) I am crossing "regional borders" even if it is a 200-250 km trip to each city

New comment by Pamar in "Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line"

Pamar — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 21:37:39 +0000

About non-replaceable batteries: from what I understand, if a battery can be replaced by any random device owner you must design it with a robust cell to avoid risk of it being punctured, breaking, being crushed.

And therefore you have more shell, less actual battery and therefore it lasts less.

This does not mean that I believe this was done exclusively for altruistic reasons. More like: this will result in a slightly better experience for the user... and more revenue for Apple. So let's do it.

Has extreme poverty plunged since the 1980s? New analysis suggests not

Pamar — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 06:35:56 +0000

Article URL: https://theconversation.com/has-extreme-poverty-really-plunged-since-the-1980s-new-analysis-suggests-not-261144

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45808000

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by Pamar in "We're in the wrong moment"

Pamar — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 04:38:21 +0000

I think that what erased "programmer vs computer illiterate" dichotomy was BASIC in the 80s.

I've met lots of "digital natives" and they seem to use technology as a black box and click/touch stuff at random until it sorta works but they do not very good at creating at mental model of why something is behaving in a way which is not what was expected and verify their own hypothesis (i.e. "debugging").

New comment by Pamar in "Microcomputers – The Second Wave: Toward a Mass Market"

Pamar — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 10:20:00 +0000

I am from that era, so I might add something that perhaps is not obvious at all nowadays.

The microcomputer explosion gave birth to an large number of actual paper magazines and at least 50% of their content were... actual source listing you had to manually retype. Basic was already fragmented in a billion different flavors and dialects (especially if your program had any kind of graphics) so the more ambitious user could also try their hand at translating a listing from - say - TSR-80 to Apple Basic.

In any case you were directly exposed to the actual source code, and tweaking or experimenting with it felt very natural.

Fra Mauro's Map of the World (dated 26 August 1460)

Pamar — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:48:38 +0000

Article URL: https://engineeringhistoricalmemory.com/challenge.php

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45427043

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by Pamar in "Scientists say X has lost its professional edge and Bluesky is taking its place"

Pamar — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 17:26:35 +0000

What about Cara, Vero and MeWe?

This are just the last three Social Media I subscribed in the past and range from Stagnant to Pretty Much Dead.

I suppose that the problem is that if you already have 1000+ followers on, say, Twitter or IG you try posting the same stuff in parallel on both... after 1 month of doubled effort you notice that your followers on the new platform is an order of magnitude smaller... you want to stop double posting because it is too time consuming. Guess which one you will opt out of?

New comment by Pamar in "The key to getting MVC correct is understanding what models are"

Pamar — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 08:08:57 +0000

What about "microservice", then?

New comment by Pamar in "An LLM is a lossy encyclopedia"

Pamar — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:18:31 +0000

I definitely agree with that, at least this is how I use chatGPT in 99% of the cases.

Zetrix Introduces DeepSeek-Based NurAI Shariah-Compliant AI Chatbot in Malaysia

Pamar — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 12:49:29 +0000

Article URL: https://technave.com/gadget/Zetrix-introduces-DeepSeek-based-NurAI-Shariah-compliant-AI-Chatbot-in-Malaysia-43709.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44863560

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by Pamar in "Problem solving using Markov chains (2007) [pdf]"

Pamar — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:54:00 +0000

Sorry, I should have been more specific maybe: I do know about Montecarlo, and yeah, the circle stuff is a more or less canonical example - but I wanted to know more about the Markov Chains, because, again, I only know these in terms of sequence generators and I have some problems imagining how this could "solve problems" unless your problem is "generate words that sorta sound like a specific language but it is just mostly gibberish".

New comment by Pamar in "Problem solving often a matter of cooking up an appropriate Markov chain (2007)"

Pamar — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 15:23:49 +0000

I am on the move so I cannot check the video (but I did skim the pdf). Is there any chance to see an example of this technique? Just a toy/trivial example would be great, TIA!

New comment by Pamar in "Study mode"

Pamar — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 09:04:05 +0000

Time to trot out a recent experience with ChatGPT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167998

TBH I haven't tried to learn anything from it, but for now I still prefer to use it as a brainstorming "partner" to discuss something I already have some robust mental model about. This is, in part, because when I try to use it to answer simple "factual" questions as in the example above, I usually end up discovering that the answer is low-quality if not completely wrong.