Hacker News: b3kart

New comment by b3kart in "Claude Fable 5"

b3kart — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:20:25 +0000

Ah, yes, the Economist, a famously government-controlled media outlet.

New comment by b3kart in "Claude Fable 5"

b3kart — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:19:31 +0000

It shows the irony of trolling the UK's "authoritarianism" in a thread on a release of a model by a US company, given the US is arguably _more_ authoritarian. (Poland is more of a fun tidbit, as they are indeed tied in the Economist's index.)

New comment by b3kart in "Claude Fable 5"

b3kart — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:52:21 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon-class_submarine vibes

New comment by b3kart in "Claude Fable 5"

b3kart — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:47:24 +0000

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

Probably tongue-in-cheek, but UK 18th, US joint 34th with Poland

New comment by b3kart in "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"

b3kart — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:41:17 +0000

you know what they say about planting a tree. buy a domain name, set up a forward from gmail, and set a reminder to migrate 1 account per day to your new email address. 1 year later you’ll be in a much better position in case google decides to randomly ban you

New comment by b3kart in "Expertise in the age of AI"

b3kart — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:44:44 +0000

“education” is not the same as “job training”. there’s more to education than learning skills you can apply at your job. it’s learning how to think critically, study literature, problem solve, collaborate with others, etc. etc. skills that I believe all humans could benefit from, irrespective of their job. yes, trade schools are more immediately valuable in the strict capitalist sense, but I wish we lived in a world where everyone could spare a few years to grow as a person, not immediately start optimizing for salary. alas, could be wishful thinking

New comment by b3kart in "Expertise in the age of AI"

b3kart — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:55:10 +0000

so universities become trade schools? one concern is where does one get theoretical knowledge required for e.g. going to graduate school and then doing research to push the state of the art. that's one of the reasons universities emphasize theory: it's seen as the first step on the academic ladder, not as a trade school

New comment by b3kart in "How will OpenAI compete?"

b3kart — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:22:26 +0000

Don’t you think that’s because Google was objectively a head above everyone other search engine for a long time?

New comment by b3kart in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

b3kart — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:15:33 +0000

It’s funny that perfect capitalism (no payroll expenses) means nobody has money to actually buy any of the goods produced by AI.

Re cancer: I wonder how significant is the cost of reading the results vs. the logistics of actually running the test

New comment by b3kart in "AI Usage Policy"

b3kart — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 16:24:28 +0000

If this were so, we wouldn’t be seeing such reactions from open source maintainers. The reality is AI makes it cheap to create large PRs with little substance.

New comment by b3kart in "Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi"

b3kart — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:21:17 +0000

That's what I am saying: if you had a better search/rec engine than Google, good luck making it useful without Google's search index, acquired to a large extent thanks to their dominant market position. This doesn't sound like healthy competition. ChatGPT had to change the whole game to be able to compete.

New comment by b3kart in "AI Usage Policy"

b3kart — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:14:38 +0000

This doesn't work in the age of AI where producing crappy results is much cheaper than verifying them. While this is the case, metadata will be important to understand if you should even bother verifying the results.

New comment by b3kart in "Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi"

b3kart — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:12:08 +0000

I think you’re proving the monopoly argument yourself: if they only way to compete with Google is an innovation that generations of scientists have been working towards, it does paint a grim picture of competition in this space. Besides, are we ignoring Gemini?

New comment by b3kart in "Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi"

b3kart — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:05:25 +0000

…without having advertiser interests to cater to.

New comment by b3kart in "Waiting for dawn in search: Search index, Google rulings and impact on Kagi"

b3kart — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:03:52 +0000

> Meanwhile, users pay a premium to pretend they're not using Google

My searches can’t be tied to me by Google for their ad targeting: this is worth paying a premium for, and I am glad Kagi are providing this service.

You seem to have a very limited understanding of the value Kagi provides.

New comment by b3kart in "ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?"

b3kart — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:39:08 +0000

> you didn't like this product, you can just choose to not use it

This is an over-simplification. I might like the product, but not be aware of the various ways it violates my privacy. Having laws that make it more risky for companies to do nefarious things makes me more confident that if a product is available in the EU market it doesn't do obviously bad things.

New comment by b3kart in "The suck is why we're here"

b3kart — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:25:40 +0000

> Conversely, we ignored brilliant people simply because they couldn't articulate their complex ideas effectively.

If you can't articulate your complex idea to a human, what's the reason to believe an LLM would understand it better?

New comment by b3kart in "The suck is why we're here"

b3kart — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:11:21 +0000

Not necessarily: assuming I've been following Nik for a while, I have reasons to trust his summary more than an LLMs summary. I would understand Nik's biases, and understand why he would focus on one thing over another. Nik would have a reputational incentive to do a good job and not completely misrepresent the book. I would also value Nik's personal, subjective view on the material, having an understanding of his background, and, again, his biases. On the other hand, I would have no idea what an LLM would focus on when summarizing, I would have no reason to trust it (LLMs fail in unpredictable ways), and an LLMs "opinion" is some average over the internet's + annotator's opinions.

New comment by b3kart in "2025: The Year in LLMs"

b3kart — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 09:37:21 +0000

The problem is it’s imperfect in very unpredictable ways. Meaning you always need to keep it on a short leash for anything serious, which puts a limit on the productivity boost. And that’s fine, but does this match the level of investment and expectations?

New comment by b3kart in "Gifted children are special needs children"

b3kart — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 15:27:27 +0000

Better for whom?