<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: bsenftner</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bsenftner</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:55:55 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=bsenftner" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Are there any more startups with real technical challenges?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is a gargantuan technical challenge right in your face and few to none see it: all this confusion surrounding AI is an example of the tech industry completely fumbling and failing at the communications surrounding AI technology. What to know the biggest technical hole in all of human civilization? How to convey understanding in others, how to gain understanding from those too inarticulate to explain themselves, and the biggest baddie of them all: how to educate human society such that the discussion of disagreements and controversial issues does not trigger conflict and ultimately war.<p>This may all sound like 'wishy washy soft knowledge' but I don't think it is, that is a false distinction to claim that any problems that originate with communications are a "soft problem" and not worthy of technical or scientific analysis. I say such problems are technically too complex for our smartest. Such problems require huge amounts of empathy and life experience to even begin any level of forward progress capable analysis.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:42:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109921</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109921</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109921</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Do dentists know what they're doing?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Dentists are quacks, I've never in my 60+ years of life had a dentist I'd trust.  I've looked, their industry is managed very poorly; if you want to maintain your teeth in the United States you need to do it yourself. Let them in your mouth, and they will ruin your health and your finances.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:09:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50102505</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50102505</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50102505</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm currently seeing a lot of developers and AI industry insiders that do not distinguished between the capabilities of their LLM Agent and the added capabilities of the agent harness. They think the capabilities of the agent harness are within the LLM, and in that confusion they are trying to get their agent to make them an agent harness with all these capabilities. But LLM agent harnesses are brand spanking new, how to make these harnesses are not in the training data of their agent, these developers are more or less vibe begging their agents to make them a harness, so it hallucinates the harness architecture. I am seeing a "agent harnesses" that are delusions, the these developers are not strong and experienced enough to realize they are literally doing the worst work they possibly could... And these idiots are the AI leads.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 12 Oct 2026 12:19:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055321</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055321</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50055321</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "LLMs Aren't Inevitable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>H.G Wells Time Machine has future society split into to: the childish consumer class and the driven engineering class, and the consumer class is the food of the engineering class. I could see this happening, with how cruel so many are, and trying to institutionalize that attitude.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:51:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032443</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032443</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032443</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "LLMs Aren't Inevitable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It helps if the author does not confuse what LLMs actually do with the general misunderstanding that "LLMs do work". They do not "do work" and have never "done work", and this misunderstanding is all over tech.<p>What do LLMs to? You know this: they are sentence completion engines, that through this process of sentence completion can be used to create software than then "does work". This indirection is critical, it is "how this works" and is the true power of LLMs that is STILL not being recognized. The power of LLMs is their communications capacity, their ability to complete sentences, which is so subtle the entire world of software engineers and artificial intelligence everybody has not identified that simple "variable expansion" as the true power of LLMs. LLMs do not do work, they enable the creation of software that then does work.<p>With a technology so subtle, want to know what is inevitable? A bifurcation of the population into those that believe in magic and those that understand it well enough to make magic nobody considered possible. Why did I say "magic"? Because people are giving up understanding, and that makes what we do magic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:46:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032408</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032408</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50032408</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is not "they are withholding information", it is more an issue of, and this is not just formal mathematics, not enough emphasis on communicating to be understood, and the education that we all receive not really including how to communicate our specializations to anyone but a peer or a boss.<p>These formal educations we receive are half baked. We cannot use them without other specialists, specialists we specialists ourselves probably cannot afford. We cannot discuss what we do with anyone but other specialists of our same color and stripe, the same star shape on our bellies. We're not being taught how to communicate, not really, not in general, not in a manner that enables us to function without some corporate apparatus extracting the maximum while always offering statistically less than the market average.<p>What I meant by knowledge not remaining difficult once understood is that there is a collective consciousness hurdle that we as a society can move on. Once how to express difficult ideas and controversial question and answer exchanges become better understood in general, and once how to handle situations that currently cannot even be discussed due to the emotions they stir become less emotional storms and become logical frameworks people can discuss in abstract, then we become a more functional society than we are now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:55:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012132</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012132</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012132</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am advocating for effective communications, it is not as if knowledge once understood remains difficult. To communicate and convey understanding is good, and to withhold understanding is tyranny.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:46:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50005185</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50005185</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50005185</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "“Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The future of "math" is not just solving, but communicating what was solved, and why that solving is important. "Math" as a discipline is only ever been half created, they abandoned explaining themselves like it was beneath them. Well, now in "Math 1.0 finally whole" they will be explaining what they did to the rest of us. If you can't explain you are not really there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:51:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50004245</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50004245</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50004245</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "DeepSeek Harness Desktop for macOS and Windows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AGI is when AI models no longer need any training at all, because they have comprehension, meaning human science finally developed artificial comprehension, which we have not yet. Calling what we have now AGI is sycophant talk.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:48:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932434</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932434</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932434</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "DeepSeek Harness Desktop for macOS and Windows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>drives me up the wall, this shifting definition of AGI; folks, when we no longer need to train AI models at all because we have finally developed artificial comprehension is AGI. This propaganda imposed definition is for fools and sycophants.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:46:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932424</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932424</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932424</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "DeepSeek Harness Desktop for macOS and Windows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Imagine the wild fire when maliciously crafted plugins start being created, as you know they already are...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2026 11:42:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932401</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932401</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932401</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Ask HN: What's a good title for a software engineer now?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've been using "Mad Computer Scientist" for 26 years now as my official title.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:00:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920536</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920536</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49920536</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Why Is Sam Altman a Free Man?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What laws and regulations? IP theft, of published media, to the scale of "all of it". If it were music and film and not text, the music & film industries would have nuked Silicon Valley by now. Which shows the relative power of popular media versus text publishing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:31:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907395</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907395</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907395</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "You are no longer invited to dinner"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Unless you were in elementary school during or before the early 1960s, you have no experience in what debate used to be and how it was part of the fabric of everyday culture.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:19:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899799</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899799</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899799</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "You are no longer invited to dinner"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Debate used to be prime time entertainment, and Sunday was not all sports, it was political news debating, without any name calling either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:18:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899773</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899773</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899773</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "You are no longer invited to dinner"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, you describe the ruined debate that was created during the late 70's early 80's and never recovered any of the positive aspects of the former debate skill set.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:16:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899742</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899742</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49899742</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I see this as a manifestation of the loss of teaching effective communication skills. This takes a moment to explain, so please slow down and consider this: before the cultural revolutions of the 1960's, general education included more emphasis on communications conflicts and resolutions of them. For example, every school had a debate team, and the various forms and rules of debate were common knowledge. Yes, this is true. Debate and watching people skilled at argumentative discussion used to be a popular form of entertainment. Then, during the cultural revolution of the 1960s, the best or the "stars of debate" all sided with the youth culture and not the establishment. That then triggered the removal of debate from educations, from entertainment, and from public life. Now, decades later we have the situation that groups of adults cannot form without conflicts and arguments that drive the community creation aspects away. We have created a culture that cannot communicate, because we have stopped teaching basic oral conflict negotiation of any form.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:05:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891780</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891780</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891780</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Does Reddit have an astroturfing problem? What the data suggests"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Owners of Reddit also own these companies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:03:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49878152</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49878152</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49878152</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "The internet discovers TLA+. Now what?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Took 10 minutes to find this: TLA+ is a formal specification language developed to design, model, document, and verify reactive systems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Sep 2026 11:09:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49865611</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49865611</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49865611</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by bsenftner in "Excel now supports multiple values in a single cell"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is really amazing, and it reminds me of an Excel modification I did 24 years ago for an animation studio. They had around 3,000 digital artists and then about 200 support staff, and around 8 different productions moving through the studio at the same time. Each production was at some different stage of completion. The studio's production management staff spent a huge amount of time negotiating what staff was assigned to what productions, and the reasonings were all hazy and non-fact based. So I wrote what people would now call a deep learning system that mined all the accounting and production tracking records the studio had, and created probability distributions and confidence intervals for every individual and every task, and every combination of people and their combined tasks, and that all composited together into a giant predictive engine of real time whatif scenarios for the entire studio in different configurations.<p>It was used for a series of feature films you all probably saw: the Chronicles of Narnia series, the Scooby Doo live action CG films, the Garfield films with the CG Garfield, and Life of PI.<p>People both loved and hated it. They loved the insights into the studio's capabilities, and they hated thinking through how the thing operated, and they hated the thought process of constructing a new whatif scenario, because they had to THINK.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Sep 2026 14:55:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49857185</link><dc:creator>bsenftner</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49857185</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49857185</guid></item></channel></rss>