Hacker News: benjaminl

New comment by benjaminl in "ARC-AGI-3"

benjaminl — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:56:07 +0000

This issue here is that people have different definitions of AGI. From the description. Getting 100% on this benchmark would be more than AGI and would qualify for ASI (Algorithmic Super Intelligence) not just AGI.

New comment by benjaminl in "10% of Firefox crashes are caused by bitflips"

benjaminl — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:44:40 +0000

In just about every way. CPU caches are made from SRAM and live on the CPU itself. Main system RAM is made from DRAM and live on separate chips even if they are soldered into the same physical package (system in package or SiP). The RAM still isn't on the SoC.

New comment by benjaminl in "TPSV, an Alternative to TSV (and CSV)"

benjaminl — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 23:04:39 +0000

The spec says that the first row specifies the number of columns.

New comment by benjaminl in ""No way to prevent this" say users of only language where this regularly happens"

benjaminl — Wed, 22 May 2024 07:37:30 +0000

The story is satire. But the satire is illustrating true problems and attitudes.

New comment by benjaminl in "Pytudes"

benjaminl — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 03:22:42 +0000

Kinda hard to answer as that depends on your definition of new. But most likely yes, https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/commits/main

New comment by benjaminl in "Tailscale vs. Narrowlink"

benjaminl — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 19:36:23 +0000

They should move to using QUIC which is the protocol backing HTTP/3. QUIC incorporates TLS1.3 and has an extension for UDP style unreliable datagrams (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9221/). It would be the perfect way to bring SSL/TSL/HTTPS VPNs onto a modern performant protocol while keeping the simplicity in of the https based VPN. It would still have the advantage of looking like https traffic, while have the performance characteristics of UDP based VPN protocol.

New comment by benjaminl in "GPT-4 can't reason"

benjaminl — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 16:43:31 +0000

GPT-4 gave me a concise correct answer without disclaimers.

This may be due to using many custom instructions like the following in ChatGPT settings:

- No need to provide disclaimers about your knowledge cutoff

- No need to mention you are an AI language model

- Only discuss safety when it is not obvious and very important

- You should act as an expert in the relevant fields

New comment by benjaminl in "The "specialness spiral" leads us to not use some ordinary objects (2021)"

benjaminl — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 07:45:45 +0000

I also buy the most expensive Apple phone and not put it in a case. My experience is quite different from your, perhaps unintentional straw man. Let’s take this assertion by assertion.

> I put my (slippery) iPhones in cases because if I don’t they stop working. Your phone might not care that its screen is cracked

I would be hugely bothered by a cracked screen or an otherwise non-operative screen. But Apple’s Pro level phones feature steel cases. This makes the phone very robust. I have yet to crack or otherwise damage my phone.

> have to pay several hundreds to put it back the way it was vs spending 20$ or less on a case and screen protector

Always get AppleCare Plus. It serves as my screen protector. If I ever did crack my screen service fee to fix a broken screen is $29.

> which takes 10 minutes vs having to pay 100x as much and wait a few days to get my phone back to swap displays

As per above the price difference between a case and AppleCare is minimal close to 0x as much.

And it doesn’t take days to have your screen replaced. Apple stores will do it in minutes within the space of a single service appointment.

iPhones are truly works of art and should be enjoyed without cheap plastic cases. Just make sure you have AppleCare Plus.

New comment by benjaminl in "Norway: Landlines will no longer be supported"

benjaminl — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:46:35 +0000

Analog telephones have terrible bandwidth. Just 300–3,300 Hz. This it technically called the voiceband, but it cuts off a good portion of female speech.

Also, all phone lines these days, wether POTS or VOIP are digitally trunked and switched.

New comment by benjaminl in "Court overturns state ruling on San Francisco’s infamous 469 Stevenson project"

benjaminl — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 21:42:23 +0000

Normally that is the case, but California has been very active passing significant housing reform legislation in the past couple of years. Just this last legislative session over 20 housing bills were passed: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2022/10/calif...

The problem is that city counsels and judges are skirting laws by violating clear legislative intent.

New comment by benjaminl in "We built voice modulation to mask gender in technical interviews (2016)"

benjaminl — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 02:11:57 +0000

Yeah, pitch is only one of the components of speech pattern differences between genders. Others include resonance, intonation, rhythm and more.

Ask a trans person and they will tell you that changing your perceived speech gender is much more than just the pitch.

New comment by benjaminl in "Sex Redefined (2015)"

benjaminl — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 14:37:46 +0000

The problem is that a certain segment of society is passing laws insisting that everyone neatly fit into 2 distinct buckets. Also, insisting that the bucket you were categorized in at birth is immutable. They are using the phrase “biological sex”, where as this paper shows, that concept is both ill defined and messy.

New comment by benjaminl in "Scientists have finally found the potential “cure” for baldness"

benjaminl — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 15:33:27 +0000

The linked article appears to be entirely copied from the University of California press release. https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2022/07/25/chemical-controllin..., which is a much better source of information.

Also, here is a link to the actual paper published in Biophysical Journal.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2022.05.035

New comment by benjaminl in "Fuchsia Workstation"

benjaminl — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 05:38:29 +0000

Since the build page doesn’t provide much context, Fushsia has 3 different configurations bringup, core and workstation.

The workstation configuration is described as:

> workstation is a basis for a general purpose development environment, good for working on UI, media and many other high-level features. This is also the best environment for enthusiasts to play with and explore.

From https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/build/fx#key-pro...

New comment by benjaminl in "How SpaceX lands Starship (sort of)"

benjaminl — Fri, 14 May 2021 02:07:59 +0000

The YouTube show How to Make Everything. Did this. They started the tech tree from the very beginning by making simple hand stone tools and then building up tool by tool to more sophisticated technologies.

If all you have is a hand. Even getting the wood to make a handle for your axe is hard.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLXfVEsLI-qRC_MAQZcVxpjtF...

New comment by benjaminl in "SSH and User-Mode IP WireGuard"

benjaminl — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 23:18:30 +0000

With the coming ubiquity of QUIC, its seems natural to have a QUIC based analog to OpenVPN using packet based QUIC instead of OpenVPN’s UDP/TLS.

It also seems rather obvious to extend WireGuard to run over QUIC in addition to UDP. But the movement on that front has been very limited.

New comment by benjaminl in "A request for Pinboard old-timers"

benjaminl — Sat, 20 Feb 2021 02:02:44 +0000

If Pinboard is being maintained, this is great news. I had thought it was abandoned and I have been looking for alternatives.

My biggest pain point is the lack of maintained iOS clients.

New comment by benjaminl in "Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?"

benjaminl — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 06:48:05 +0000

Don’t forget the 10.25% sales tax. This puts the combined marginal tax rate at 59.85%. (24 + 9.3 + 7.65 + 7.65 + 1 + 10.25)

New comment by benjaminl in "Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project"

benjaminl — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 22:35:22 +0000

Windows on ARM supports 64bit ARM apps.

What you were possibly remembering was that Windows on ARM when it was first introduced only supported emulating x86 apps. Although x64 emulation is currently in preview.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/apps-on...

New comment by benjaminl in "Peak Oil Is Suddenly Upon Us"

benjaminl — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 18:54:38 +0000

That US oil self sufficiency means that it will get out of the Middle East is a key part of Peter Zeihan’s Disunited Nations. His premise is that the US will disengage from the world no matter who won the election and that will have far reaching ramifications for the world.

A major reason of the ability for the US to do this is energy self sufficiency.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062913689/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm...