Hacker News: cortesoft

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

cortesoft — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:17:40 +0000

> When we ask for a fiction or novelty, the AI can give it to us because its processing is in part stochastic. Every decision can go multiple ways and will go different ways and produce a different trajectory every time. The trajectory can be random—and thus novel—or it can be based on the training data—and thus “good” because the training data is good, sourced from people or reality. Thus, the trajectory is either novel or good—based on randomness or based on data—but never both at the same time.

This doesn't seem true? You can be both random and based on training data.

New comment by cortesoft in "German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews"

cortesoft — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 02:51:24 +0000

That is exactly the point of the ruling, though... they are saying that AI summaries are NOT the same as search. If Google was just returning search results, and then users clicked on a website and read the content there, Google is not responsible for the content.

If instead Google gives you an answer right there on google.com, without going to another site, they ARE responsible for it.

That makes sense to me?

New comment by cortesoft in "Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:40:39 +0000

I get the idea of refusing on principle, but the older I get the more I have started to become pessimistic towards that stance.

I have seen time and time again that individual, principled stands like this do nothing to change anything and only hurt the individual. Unless you are part of an organized movement against something, opting out doesn't help.

New comment by cortesoft in "Claude Fable 5"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:13:36 +0000

The CLI when you select it says it has 2x the usage as opus. Not sure if that matches what you are seeing.

I do wonder if you switched models mid-session, you would have lost all your cache. Reloading the context into cache can really eat through your usage.

New comment by cortesoft in "Claude Fable 5"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:05:57 +0000

I have been using both codex and Claude in my day to day, trying to not get to attached to one. I want to be able to work with any provider in case one of them does something bad.

New comment by cortesoft in "Claude Fable 5"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:03:54 +0000

I am not sure where you get the idea that ANY country thinks we shouldn’t build AI.

New comment by cortesoft in "Claude Fable 5"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:03:04 +0000

Nuclear tests are extremely easy to detect worldwide, and enrichment activity is a major industrial process that is also fairly easy to track given the specialized equipment needed.

AI development doesn’t have any of these characteristics. It would be almost impossible to easily distinguish a datacenter that is working on AI development and a datacenter mining cryptocurrency.

It would not be nearly as easy to stop AI development as it is to stop nuclear arms development.

New comment by cortesoft in "Claude Fable 5"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:59:45 +0000

None of the money being spent by Anthropic was going to go towards healthcare or childcare.

New comment by cortesoft in "Doing something that’s never been done before (2025)"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 02:06:48 +0000

Just shuffle a deck of cards and write out the order on a piece of paper.

You will produce a completely unique page.

New comment by cortesoft in "Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]"

cortesoft — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:38:43 +0000

I am guessing they thought "My kids are depending on me to pay our mortgage and buy food"

New comment by cortesoft in "1k Data Breaches Later, the Disclosure Lag Is Worse"

cortesoft — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:46:53 +0000

So what is the alternative? I don't feel like there is a legislative fix, so what else can we do?

New comment by cortesoft in "1k Data Breaches Later, the Disclosure Lag Is Worse"

cortesoft — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 07:32:28 +0000

Is the alternative just accepting that my data is out there? Even if I never used any online service, there are databases out there with my information anyway.

Just figure anything online that you aren't securing yourself is compromised. Minimize the effect that has on your life. Identify theft is annoying, but it rarely has severe effects.

You will have to go out of your way to be truly anonymous online, and it might be impossible if you aren't tech savvy enough. Otherwise, just assume everything you do online is public and act accordingly.

New comment by cortesoft in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

cortesoft — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:26:32 +0000

I don't think the "is he physically capable or not" question is really relevant to the point the author is trying to make.

The point is that you only have so much time, and you will never do all the things you want to do, and learning to deal with that fact is an important thing you have to do.

New comment by cortesoft in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

cortesoft — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 20:17:15 +0000

Basketball players are almost a completely separate population from soccer players. The shortest basketball player would almost be too tall for soccer.

New comment by cortesoft in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

cortesoft — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 20:15:04 +0000

I get this argument, and it is probably partially right, but is soccer really competing for the same athletes as basketball and American football? Basketball players are mostly too tall for soccer (other than goalie), and a majority of football players are way bigger than great soccer players. Baseball and hockey might compete for the same athletes, but a huge percentage of baseball and hockey players also come from other countries.

New comment by cortesoft in ""Maybe later" was a feature"

cortesoft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:31:56 +0000

Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t.

I can remember plenty of times in my career there were some “nice to haves” that we didn’t get to, and not having them continued to waste our time over and over again as we kept putting it off.

Time saving work for our software lifecycle that we spent so much time working around. Some of those things we finally did get to, and then spent the next few months wondering why we hadn’t don’t it before.

New comment by cortesoft in "They’re made out of weights"

cortesoft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:35:04 +0000

Can't you say the same about the connectivity between the brain and your senses? Your eyes do 'preprocessing', but in the end the connection to your brain is just through electrical impulses in the end. All senses get translated to some sort of electrical signal, just like in an LLM with tokens.

New comment by cortesoft in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

cortesoft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 02:19:50 +0000

There is no regulation around education, as long as you don't claim to provide any accreditation or degree.

New comment by cortesoft in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

cortesoft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 02:18:02 +0000

> Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably.

Honestly, these are the most important things to learn. I spend a lot of time with my kids talking about ways to get your brain to do what you want.

New comment by cortesoft in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

cortesoft — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 02:16:43 +0000

They were already at a University. None of the students were required to be there. They all had the ability to just leave.