Hacker News: dllthomas

New comment by dllthomas in "The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines"

dllthomas — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:45:51 +0000

I think I'd say that the batch file is not itself autonomous but the system as a whole is autonomous (if limited) but I'm not prepared to argue that's the correct definition.

New comment by dllthomas in "The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines"

dllthomas — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:46:07 +0000

If you learned that a piece of the brain where meaningful computation takes place was stateless, would that cause you to question whether the human mind was "highly autonomous"?

New comment by dllthomas in "The passive in English (2011)"

dllthomas — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:19:53 +0000

You can avoid specifying agency in the active with some sort of placeholder. Hopefully, maybe, that placeholder is going to be more noticable than the omission of agency in the passive... but it seems more useful to simply ask directly whether agency is clear.

"Missiles were shot at Gaza" is passive and avoids specifying agency. "Someone shot missiles at Gaza" is active and avoids specifying agency. "Missiles were fired at Gaza by Israel" is passive and specifies agency. Sometimes you don't even need a placeholder: "Missiles hit Gaza" is active and avoids agency.

New comment by dllthomas in "The compiler is your best friend"

dllthomas — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 20:06:25 +0000

Importantly, specifying reasoning can have communicative value while falling very far short of formal verification. Personally, I also try to include a cross reference to the things that could allow "this" to happen were they to change.

New comment by dllthomas in "It's Always TCP_NODELAY"

dllthomas — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:31:24 +0000

Wildly, the Polish word "nagle" (pronounced differently) means "suddenly" or "all at once", which is just astonishingly apropos for what I'm almost certain is pure coincidence.

New comment by dllthomas in "New mathematical framework reshapes debate over simulation hypothesis"

dllthomas — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 14:47:17 +0000

> so it's no surprise that we're not Boltzmann Brains

I think I agree you've excluded them from the definition, but I don't see why that has an impact on likelihood.

New comment by dllthomas in "Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer"

dllthomas — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:17:08 +0000

> IDEs don't make you dependent on constant Internet connectivity, charge a monthly subscription,

Sometimes they do! But not in general, yes.

New comment by dllthomas in "Announcing the Beta release of ty"

dllthomas — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 12:46:06 +0000

I think there are both of those.

New comment by dllthomas in "Garibaldi, history's sexiest revolutionary?"

dllthomas — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 20:13:28 +0000

My understanding is that you are correct that "rizz" comes from "charisma", and when used as an adjective it's pretty well used the same (although there may be shades of difference I'm simply missing), but notably "rizz" also gets used as a verb in a way that "charisma" does not.

New comment by dllthomas in "California Approves Redistricting Plan"

dllthomas — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 05:26:12 +0000

In this case, the measure itself is temporary. That's in the text of what we voted on. For it to not be temporary, we'll need to vote on it again.

Also, it only affects Federal congressional districts, not State Senate or State Assembly districts, so there's less feedback: the US Congress has little say over how CA draws its maps.

The effects on normalization are another question that you're right to be concerned about, but I can argue that either way. It's clear who started this mid-cycle redistricting, and it's obviously not actually a response to Joe Biden doing the last census wrong. Credible threat of retaliation may reduce the tendency to break further norms, when compared to the available alternative of not pushing back.

New comment by dllthomas in "PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program"

dllthomas — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 01:46:34 +0000

> Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM subjects?

Is that rhetorical? Have you looked, or just assumed their absence?

My cursory search seems to indicate that there are some, although I don't have bandwidth to investigate in any depth and I'm not sure just what criteria you'd want to use for qualification.

New comment by dllthomas in "Monads are too powerful: The expressiveness spectrum"

dllthomas — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 18:16:30 +0000

For some monads the "wrap" gets awfully metaphorical (for State it's a function that produces the value and updated state, for Const there is no value, etc) but I don't think that's actually a problem, just a thing to be aware of. There is certainly no expectation that you can actually get your hands on the thing.

A bigger issue is that you're missing a piece. If you can "wrap" values and "wrap" functions such that they operate on wrapped values, you (probably) have a functor. To be a monad you also need to have the ability to turn multiple layers of wrapping into one layer of wrapping. For lists, that's "flatten".

I said "probably" above because there are rules these pieces need to follow to behave well. They're pretty simple but I don't think we need to dig into them at this level of discussion.

New comment by dllthomas in "Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon among names in new Epstein documents"

dllthomas — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 21:52:21 +0000

> Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to accept campaign donations from foreign governments. How can they claim to put America first if they are beholden to a foreign nation?

My understanding is that that's already the law, and AIPAC claims to be funded by domestic donations. It's obviously possible someone is lying, but then the answer to your "how can they claim" question is straightforward: believing (or pretending to believe) those lies.

New comment by dllthomas in "Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact"

dllthomas — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 22:43:35 +0000

Typically named after things that corrupt, control, mislead the person trying to use them?

New comment by dllthomas in "Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact"

dllthomas — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 18:18:24 +0000

I mean, it was named for fictional spying orbs that could break people's minds based on the will of a powerful individual with access to the system. Maybe that's not them telling on themselves, but I am not surprised that some people wind up suspicious.

New comment by dllthomas in "Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad"

dllthomas — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:58:56 +0000

I think we have that question regardless.

New comment by dllthomas in "Alterego: Thought to Text"

dllthomas — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 17:54:01 +0000

Not ideal, between sound from the washing itself plus whatever else is going on in the house, and I'd rather not add noise that others have to deal with. That said, it's certainly in the mix as competing with other potential solutions.

New comment by dllthomas in "Alterego: Thought to Text"

dllthomas — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 17:52:53 +0000

Then, too. I cannot compete with Mrs Roberts.

New comment by dllthomas in "Alterego: Thought to Text"

dllthomas — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 23:55:44 +0000

Typing speed is very much a bottleneck when I'm washing dishes, at least.

New comment by dllthomas in "U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel"

dllthomas — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 05:28:14 +0000

I was joking, although it was a gesture at a real thing. I don't know how much they don't care about success, versus caring but being deeply confused about how to reach it, versus in some sense "caring" but prioritizing other things. But regardless, retaliation against bearers of bad news is a great way to horrifically mismanage an organization, and we seem to be seeing it repeatedly from this administration, and it is alarming.