Hacker News: bigfudge

New comment by bigfudge in "Midjourney Medical"

bigfudge — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:49:57 +0000

But now your argument also depends on no opportunity costs for doing unneeded mri, or infinite medical resources.

As I said … we really don’t known how much harm billionaires are suffering (sob) and there are much simpler explanations for their longevity.

New comment by bigfudge in "Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good"

bigfudge — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:37:55 +0000

As someone who was self taught as a programmer and has a reasonable high level understanding of some CS concepts but not lots of experience applying them, and no good mentor, I’ve found working with an LLM really englightening. Asking Claude to think about “good ways to structure this” or asking how similar problems get solved in industry or high profile projects has really helped me design better solutions and avoid painfully reinventing wheels (recent eg was for a plugin type architecture).

I think a lot of academics and researchers who code but aren’t software engineers or CS majors are going to benefit, provided they take the time to prove what the model does and are curious about whether it’s doing something sensible!

Relative to a 1% coder hand rolling something then yes it’s AI slop etc. but it’s prob still raising the bar generally.

New comment by bigfudge in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

bigfudge — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:31:15 +0000

A good harness and engineering is important no matter which model you use. But Sovereignty of hosting is also important because without it all pii is being leaked.

New comment by bigfudge in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

bigfudge — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:08:34 +0000

The EU economy has absorbed covid and the Russian war in that time. It’s pretty unsurprising that things are flat.

The main thing Europe lacks is economies of scale in investment in tech, and a common language. Big data tech wasn’t a priority until we realised it was going to be weaponised against us by an ally. I think we’ll do fine. Most of AWS and Azure is expensive superstitious cover your ass bullshit anyway. It could all be regulated away with proper data residency laws, which I hope are coming soon.

New comment by bigfudge in "Midjourney Medical"

bigfudge — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:04:33 +0000

First, many regular people are “stupid” in the sense that they do get anxious about things that ar slow probability and are not anxious about things that are high probability.

If you are a billionaire you also have a doctor with the time and expertise to properly evaluate the evidence in a Bayesian framework, and you have time to talk to them and understand and implications. That isn’t scalable.

Also, it’s quite likely that billionaires are having lots of unnecessary procedures and that harm is being caused. The mri scans are not the reason they live longer!

New comment by bigfudge in "Midjourney Medical"

bigfudge — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:00:31 +0000

I mostly agree with you by one small wrinkle is that the evaluation of screening is normally against a criteria of cost effectiveness as well as safety. So for some conditions, if cost effectiveness was the barrier to rollout it might still be worth it if you are rich?

New comment by bigfudge in "Midjourney Medical"

bigfudge — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:48:32 +0000

This kind of thinking (that it’s an obvious lie, perpetrated by a cabal) is the sort of superstitious bullshit that is going to jet us all killed. Look up Bayes theorem. As yourself how good a test would have to be if the base rate is low. Wonder what the probability of harm might be if the next advised test was invasive and the patients was anxious because a lump had been detected.

New comment by bigfudge in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

bigfudge — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:07:55 +0000

Europe is currently hosed because we made the mistake of trying to develop economies complementary to the US and china.

That was a big strategic mistake. In the US case it was borne of the mistaken belief that we shared values and were partners.

But don’t mistake the situation for lack of innovation of capability. Europe is currently adapting, but I think the success of Ukraine is one reason to be optimistic that current adversity might actually leave us better off in the long run.

Corrupt countries with broken legal systems tend not to fare that well in the longer run.

New comment by bigfudge in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

bigfudge — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:01:27 +0000

Support bots and question answering with access to sensitive pii?

New comment by bigfudge in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

bigfudge — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:56:50 +0000

But if a teenager says he’s going to spend 50k going to university to study engineering you might support then.

I agree there is likely some hubris in this sort of announcement, but investing in European expertise and industrial base in this area is important.

New comment by bigfudge in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

bigfudge — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:52:03 +0000

The culture shift that has generated this is the same one that causes the other story on HN this morning about xAIs gas generators being a national security issue. Ie one towards corruption graft and the public ill.

I don’t want Europe to model itself on the US, whatever the economic gain. Hopefully we are large enough to find a third way between China and the US.

The end is not nigh

bigfudge — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:50:48 +0000

Article URL: https://ckarchive.com/b/0vuwh9h96eg98i7mggrmzhv7orr2eunhx8g7n

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500059

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by bigfudge in "Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't"

bigfudge — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:20:02 +0000

https://xkcd.com/1319/

I think there will be a lot of this going on for the first few years, till everyone remembers this:

https://xkcd.com/1205/

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:32:23 +0000

Probably true. But that’s not the position we are in now. Apple is much better aligned with users interests than any one else, at least for short/medium term.

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 06:30:58 +0000

You’re shifting the goalposts somewhat, but the thing this misses is that the cookie banners are the least important aspect of EU data regulation. The principle of consent and of minimising data held has actually made a substantial different in European firms, mostly for the better.

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:11:34 +0000

It's shallow because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a real tradeoff. I share a lot of your cynicism about US tech companies, but I think you need to be realistic about the state of the market and how the incentives align.

Apples incentives are not, currently, as strongly misaligned with their user interests as many other tech firms (meta, google, random startups, etc). Going slowly might not be a bad idea for most people here.

That said, I hadn't seen the demo you mention. If they do do that (bank passwords etc) they are stupider than I thought they would be.

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:07:32 +0000

For me, it's real regulations about what data can reasonably be hoovered, what it's used for, for how long. And a culture where the majority don't blindly click yes to all messages like that because the only alternative is not to use the shiny new thing they have been sold. I don't think it could ever appear in the US, which is why it's a good thing apple won't be forced to open up there. But if the EU does insist, they should be careful what they wish for and plan for the negative consequences of a free for all.

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:17:15 +0000

I do too, but in this case the choice isn't between apple and the EU. It's between apple and the your non-technical friends foolishly trust, without much understanding of the implications for them or society as a whole.

Ultimately I think it's important for the EU to regulate companies like apple to ensure competition. But in this instance, it doesn't seem like we have all the other pieces in place that would be necessary for a sensible rollout of that.

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:14:35 +0000

Yes, there's a lot of cargo culting in web development.

Many US based companies also do this for US visitors, which is absolutely not required by the GDPR and related regulations, because they don't apply there.

The law states:

> Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies.

Strictly necessary:

> These cookies are essential for you to browse the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Cookies that allow web shops to hold your items in your cart while you are shopping online are an example of strictly necessary cookies. These cookies will generally be first-party session cookies.

https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

You don't need consent for MOST reasonable uses of cookies. If compliance theatre wasn't such an industry the web would be a lot tidier and we could stop blaming the EU for implementing important privacy and data controls.

New comment by bigfudge in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

bigfudge — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:04:17 +0000

Nothing in the law requires the pop up. It definitely doesn’t require the obnoxious bullshit that most companies put up (aka the dark pattern to get you to agree to every unreasonable part of their terms just to read the page).

The alternative would be to just stop invasive tracking and add the cookie when it’s actually needed.