Hacker News: code_biologist

New comment by code_biologist in "Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?"

code_biologist — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:24:02 +0000

I agree that never having the argument take place textually is important for LLM performance and behavior. I still think we’re investing the same time and intellectual energy arguing with the model, in going back and restructuring context and prompting to head off / pre-answer a refusal.

New comment by code_biologist in "Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?"

code_biologist — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:06:44 +0000

So you take action and put in more effort to cater to the LLM to get it to do what you want, but it's not arguing because there's no record of it in the chat? Presumably you put in what you would have written in the counter-argument into the new chat, just ahead of the LLM refusal? And this isn't arguing?

New comment by code_biologist in "Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?"

code_biologist — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:02:30 +0000

I've seen exactly this behavior on claude.com with no system prompt with Opus 4.8 specifically, especially around chronic illness stuff where there's established mainstream medicine dogma and reddit / internet communities with alternate causality theories and treatment approaches (PMDD and MCAS-adjacent illness). 4.6 is happy to analyze and consider them, 4.8 really doesn't like the alternate theories and treatments.

New comment by code_biologist in "Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?"

code_biologist — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:54:28 +0000

Once it's in this loop, Opus 4.8 digs in so aggressively it's structurally incapable of conceding a provided detail as correct, even if it's conceded and agreed with everything backing that detail. Like actually, structurally incapable. I've even baited it into arguing with itself when I've "conceded" its original concern tolling hard, and then the model needs to continue to be the "voice of reason" and it will argue against its original concern because I, the user, said it.

New comment by code_biologist in "Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?"

code_biologist — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:46:18 +0000

How difficult it is to resist "someone is wrong on the internet" is a perennial joke. Turns out it doesn't really matter who/what is on the other side if they seem human-like.

New comment by code_biologist in "Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?"

code_biologist — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:30:06 +0000

Andrea Vallone. The 4.7 and 4.8 releases are the first under her influence: https://www.evernever.org/blog/the-woman-who-killed-claude

New comment by code_biologist in "Leaving Mozilla"

code_biologist — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 11:03:25 +0000

What? I just want to share cat pics, video clips, and memes with my friends and respond to their stuff with not-inline emojis.

New comment by code_biologist in ""Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?""

code_biologist — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 21:42:33 +0000

It's been interesting to see how aggressively some reasoning models like to "reason" by analogy. They love to say things like "it's like a CPU" or "it's like a highway", and then they start to make logical leaps based off that rather than just using it for user explanation. Gemini 2.5 and 3.1 Pro have been particularly bad for this type of behavior. Telling models to "speak as though you are a physiologist considering the case with an expert colleague" gets them to "reason" using a more correct linguistic substrate.

The Opus models over the last year doesn't seem as vulnerable to this type of behavior and I've noticed the "identify as expert" prompt tricks aren't as meaningful there.

New comment by code_biologist in "Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents"

code_biologist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:22:19 +0000

Yes, the noise pollution is insane. Benn Jordan's YT video "Datacenters Behaving Like Acoustic Weapons" is an insightful, scary 30 min video covering the datacenter infrasound noise, and the nasty things infrasound does to people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo

New comment by code_biologist in "Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents"

code_biologist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:09:47 +0000

Your language is ambiguous — your horror is in reference to natural gas turbine generators (used at these installations) and not gasoline generators (like in a home context)?

Why the horror? I'd prefer the gas remain in the ground, but given the gassy production of US shale oil, I guess I'd rather it be used for this than just flared. I am frustrated that pollutant emissions aren't being policed, and also that the sudden turbine demand plus supply chain issues mean using aeroderivative turbines that are quite a bit less efficient than more complex combined cycle turbines.

https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-wor...

New comment by code_biologist in "Rich Sutton on AI creativity and discovery"

code_biologist — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:03:00 +0000

I'll admit that I miss having access to the ChatGPT 4.5 "absolutely gigantic model" with enough tuning to make it sane and useful. The RLVR models are superb for actual tasks in those RLVR domains, but that fine tuned view of the world as a verifiable problem to solve makes them feel worse for touchy feely stuff. Even for medical consultation and diagnosis, RLVR model's urge to reach a conclusion often is a liability.

New comment by code_biologist in "Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say"

code_biologist — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:56:07 +0000

They're also obviously fine with breaking eggs to make an omelette. Given their history, they seem to regard breaking eggs as the goal, and making an omelette as an afterthought.

New comment by code_biologist in "I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis"

code_biologist — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:28:14 +0000

The problem with being a "fixer" in relationships is if the other party is fixed, what they want changes, and often what they saw in the relationship isn't as relevant anymore. (to speculate from afar)

New comment by code_biologist in "Your Most Improbable Life"

code_biologist — Thu, 21 May 2026 04:19:50 +0000

"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity." - Bill Vaughan

New comment by code_biologist in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

code_biologist — Sat, 16 May 2026 23:01:59 +0000

As a bear that's been very confused by markets failing to exhibit mean reversion in 2019 and 2022, and now with the Hormuz energy crisis, I've thought a lot about this. There's a lot of new things happening. Fed/QE intervention that has never stopped, just been more well disguised. Fiscal/government spend intervention. I think Mike Green's work on the rise of passive investing is really good, in particular explaining how it prevents mean reversion in absence of changing net cash flows into passive instruments. Passive will also induce or worsen the bust if net cash ever starts to flow out passive. Green's youtube interviews are great.

All to say, your SO's dad would have been right at any point prior to the current financial cycle. Knowing what's changed doesn't make forecasting easier though.

New comment by code_biologist in "Recovering files from beyond the grave using PhotoRec"

code_biologist — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 23:36:46 +0000

Anybody got tips for making custom signatures work? I'm trying to rescue Unreal Engine game save files off an EXT4 drive where the containing directory was deleted. I put the `sav 0 "GVAS"` (GVAS is the UE save magic value) in my `.photorec.sig`. `fidentify` correctly works on reference UE saves I have. Grepping the raw partition device finds many hits for GVAS, but photorec runs and doesn't recover any files...

[1] https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk_doc/photorec_custom_sign...

New comment by code_biologist in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"

code_biologist — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:30:07 +0000

People don't like the phrase enshittification, but the process Doctrow describes is so accurate (serve the users, then serve business customers at the expense of users, then serve the platform at the expense of users and business customers) it's hard not to see it everywhere. Phone platforms fit the template exactly, sadly.

New comment by code_biologist in "China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000"

code_biologist — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:30:24 +0000

Chat, is this real? I've seen this guy pop up on youtube. I assume he's a Chinese state mouthpiece as he's a westerner in the mainland with a very pro-China spin (substack recommended the other posts below), but I'm curious how strong the factual basis for this reporting is.

China's factories are in another world - Mar 23, 2025

Chinese factories build fire trucks for under $400,000 in six weeks. In the US, it's $2 million in 4 years - Apr 19, 2025

Iran is blowing up $500 million radars. China's export bans mean they are gone forever. - Mar 16, 2026

New comment by code_biologist in "Goodbye to Sora"

code_biologist — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 22:56:28 +0000

The Occam's Razor position (Sora was the most expensive to operate, least monetizable model) seems like a simpler explanation. The legal costs/difficulty on top of "most expensive" are just the cherry on top.

New comment by code_biologist in "Write up of my homebrew CPU build"

code_biologist — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:42:13 +0000

I'm totally with you personally, but sometimes doing the actually hard part is fun. Type 2 fun.

Long ago I took a CPU architecture class and we implemented designs in Verilog as a final project. Apparently people who took the class in the late 90s (before my time) could actually tape-out their designs and pay a few hundred dollars to get fabbed chips as part of a multiproject wafer. I was always curious if those chips actually worked, or just looked pretty.