Hacker News: danielvaughn

New comment by danielvaughn in "All major LLMs are lib-left. Even Grok, half the time"

danielvaughn — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:22:28 +0000

Armchair analysis here, of course, but I'd bet that it's due to the sources that model training tends to assume as authoritative. If you look broadly at the material produced by the (American) academic world, the corporate world, and mainstream journalism over the last 10-15 years, much of it leans generally to the left. I'd imagine it would be difficult to counteract the bias without accidentally introducing an alternate bias, but I'm not really familiar with model training so I'm not sure.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail"

danielvaughn — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:53:20 +0000

According to the post, the first computer was in their trailer, but there's an earlier scene where they're using a monitor to view the raptor bones in a tent at the dig site. Not sure if that counts but I'd like to have learned more about that device.

New comment by danielvaughn in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

danielvaughn — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:24:31 +0000

I didn't articulate it, but what I meant was that I think we could swap these expressions out for _anything_, and we'd still find them irritating.

New comment by danielvaughn in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

danielvaughn — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:23:06 +0000

It was not intentional, and that's what makes this thing so weird. I wouldn't categorize my sentence that way because it's subtly different enough than the LLM version, which has a very punchy cadence.

New comment by danielvaughn in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

danielvaughn — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:21:00 +0000

It's not that it uses certain phrases, it's that it settles on predictable speech patterns and uses them incessantly. What's funny is that humans do this too, but we don't find it irritating; we just call it a speaking style. But when a machine does it, it drives us crazy. Very interesting psychological phenomenon there.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"

danielvaughn — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:52:13 +0000

Love this. Years ago I had an idea for something _like_ this but for public murals/street art.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Why Vanilla JavaScript"

danielvaughn — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 02:00:24 +0000

I've been considering going back to vanilla javascript, given the current power of LLMs. It could become unreadable spaghetti, but it does that anyway with frameworks.

New comment by danielvaughn in "War Atlas: An interactive cartography of every named war in human history"

danielvaughn — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:09:30 +0000

This is really neat. Also, the 19th century was far more conflict-prone than I thought.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown"

danielvaughn — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 01:37:25 +0000

oddly enough, since AI can be used to read and interpret written text, it could itself usher in a return to physical pen and paper.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place"

danielvaughn — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:38:44 +0000

They shoot you because they themselves believe in it. The violence is downstream from the belief.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Crypto in 2026: Oh, This Is the Bad Place"

danielvaughn — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:27:10 +0000

I got into crypto in 2017 when I came across the phrase "money is a technology". That idea fascinated me. But fast forward several years later, and it's obvious that money might be a technology in the sense that it's a tool, but more importantly, money is a culture.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets"

danielvaughn — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 02:03:46 +0000

I'm not criticizing CEOs, only mentioning them because they're at the helm and the ones calling the shots at companies. But the psychosis has hit pretty much everyone, of all intelligence ranges.

Also, I'm genuinely excited about AI. It's absolutely incredible. Even with all the problems, I'm more invigorated about being a programmer than at almost any point in my career. You have to embrace the chaos.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets"

danielvaughn — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 01:58:58 +0000

It's not the same crowd. I know some genuinely extremely intelligent people (can't go into specifics) who have gotten bit by AI psychosis. It's been wild to see.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Companies rein in AI usage as costs strain budgets"

danielvaughn — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:51:38 +0000

We're in a dangerous valley where AI is _just_ good enough to fool some otherwise very smart people. Similar to the old adage of "a little bit of information is a dangerous thing." Lots of CEOs got duped into thinking that model capabilities were far ahead of where they actually were. I'm actually not sure if we're going to get out of the valley without figuring out a surefire way to reliably evaluate these things.

New comment by danielvaughn in "I used sound waves to make espresso"

danielvaughn — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:20:14 +0000

I'm pretty sure the original comment is about Colombia's reputation for great coffee.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Storied Colors – A catalogue of named colors"

danielvaughn — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 02:17:39 +0000

The web has its own storied color, albeit a tragic one. Rebecca Purple is a named CSS color, which was added in tribute to Eric Meyer's daughter, who very sadly passed away at a young age. That shade was her favorite color.

https://medium.com/@valgaze/the-hidden-purple-memorial-in-yo...

New comment by danielvaughn in "'Ghost jobs' could soon be illegal in New York"

danielvaughn — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:24:57 +0000

I'd support it at the federal level. It's cruel towards people looking for work, and it costs them real time at a point in their lives when time is such a critical factor.

New comment by danielvaughn in "It used to be hard"

danielvaughn — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:58:18 +0000

What will always be hard and useful is to observe people, find a problem they haven't solved, and then solve that problem for them. AI has not, and will not, make that easier or less useful.

New comment by danielvaughn in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

danielvaughn — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 01:56:36 +0000

I'm building a browser for designers: https://matry.design/

New comment by danielvaughn in "Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases"

danielvaughn — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 03:18:56 +0000

As an American, I'm totally out of the loop on this one but it sounds interesting. I assume Derbyshire has a reputation?