Hacker News: TedHerman

New comment by TedHerman in "LLM Architecture Gallery"

TedHerman — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:07:58 +0000

For comparison: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/medievalmedicalrecipe...

New comment by TedHerman in "Executing programs inside transformers with exponentially faster inference"

TedHerman — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 11:32:44 +0000

This looks like a hack. Yes, being able to interpret webassembly is a general oracle. Still falls short of solving the real problem directly.

New comment by TedHerman in "Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston"

TedHerman — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:10:15 +0000

I foresee someone at Apple saying, someday, "Houston we have a problem".

New comment by TedHerman in "Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies"

TedHerman — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:19:00 +0000

Originally published in If magazine in September 1954: in this satirical tale (author is Robert Schekley), advanced robot soldiers fight a war against "Satan's forces," and after their victory, they are raptured upward to a metallic heaven by a divine presence. Key details of the story "The Battle": Plot: Humans rely on automatic armies, including robot interceptors, tanks, and H-bombs, to fight their battles. The Climax: After the battle, a divine force ("The Presence") walks among the shattered robots, repairing them and causing them to ascend into the sky, essentially granting them a form of robot heaven. Themes: It reflects Sheckley's common themes of technological satire, the absurdity of war, and the blurred lines between man and machine. This story is sometimes remembered in discussions about "Silicon Heaven" or robot apotheosis.

New comment by TedHerman in "OpenClaw is changing my life"

TedHerman — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 12:09:08 +0000

https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/7mlk4e/writing_vs_...

New comment by TedHerman in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"

TedHerman — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 14:44:43 +0000

Drill baby drill.

New comment by TedHerman in "Public Sans – A strong, neutral typeface"

TedHerman — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:08:27 +0000

Looking at yet another new sans typeface reminds me of looking through all the shades of white at a paint store. After a while, I just can't tell the differences or why they matter. Other people seem to have a talent for paint colors. Maybe same with fonts?

New comment by TedHerman in "Ask HN: Any example of successful vibe-coded product?"

TedHerman — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:14 +0000

bad vibes

New comment by TedHerman in "Should we be positioned for Feudalism?"

TedHerman — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 01:17:39 +0000

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/751443/technofeudal...

New comment by TedHerman in "The myth of the $140k poverty line"

TedHerman — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:48:16 +0000

only in the limit as N -> infinity

New comment by TedHerman in "'AI' Sucks the Joy Out of Programming"

TedHerman — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 20:51:47 +0000

What if there could be a way to eliminate all of {frustration,boredom,joy} from programming?

New comment by TedHerman in "Programming with Less Than Nothing"

TedHerman — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 11:44:46 +0000

Shout out to those hardcores using De Bruijn notation. And bonus points if you're using just S, K, and I. Points off if you're using Y or some other fancy combinators.

New comment by TedHerman in "Cloud Patient – a platform to centralize your medical visit history"

TedHerman — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 16:18:40 +0000

Medical practitioners are tied into their own EHR systems. The fundamental problem with maintaining your own patient vault is friction. I doubt my caregivers would have the time to learn/use an app to look through my vault, let alone contribute to my vault. They are too busy working with their EHR systems.

New comment by TedHerman in "The buyer-pull and seller-push theories of sales"

TedHerman — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 22:14:19 +0000

Two background resources useful to know: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-Driven_Innovation and Christensen's "Jobs to be Done" theory. 2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245472.Integrity_Selling... specifically, the taxonomy of customer types

New comment by TedHerman in "Attention is your scarcest resource (2020)"

TedHerman — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:27:20 +0000

Inattention is abundant.

New comment by TedHerman in "What makes Scott Alexander's writing so great?"

TedHerman — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 21:32:43 +0000

I lost interest in codex after reading https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/ because it was just too Straussian for me to follow. But he is a prodigious writer and I admire the energy to write so much.

New comment by TedHerman in "Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House"

TedHerman — Wed, 28 May 2025 19:35:17 +0000

"all publicity is good publicity"

Apparently false (from WH perspective).

New comment by TedHerman in "Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears"

TedHerman — Sun, 25 May 2025 14:39:49 +0000

The one science not rejected by the current US administration is Ballistics. The problem is that China can probably do it better than America. (I do realize that Nature does not have a specialty topic journal on ballistics and weapons.)

New comment by TedHerman in "Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears"

TedHerman — Sun, 25 May 2025 14:35:35 +0000

You might enjoy the book "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" (interview: In Conversation With Yanis Varoufakis - on YouTube).

New comment by TedHerman in "Getting Older Isn't What You Think"

TedHerman — Thu, 08 May 2025 10:36:47 +0000

The first computer I experienced was the Programma 101. Later, learned FORTRAN using punched cards to program, and then paper tape (still remember painful finger cuts). You kids and your fancy LLM-enriched toolset have it so easy. With respect to programming, getting older has been things getting so much better.