Hacker News: from_memory

New comment by from_memory in "CIA Releases President's Daily Briefs in Commemoration of 9/11"

from_memory — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 03:32:01 +0000

I will take it a step further. After some time spent working for public and private firms, I think you could say the same for largely every single U.S. federal agency/department. Defense, Education, Energy, Agriculture, State, on and on, they've all been on a general upward trend over the last few decades.

It's heartening.

It's not always obvious because progress comes in fits and starts, and sometimes we move in very different directions, but as Dr. King said: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice".

New comment by from_memory in "METR Report on OpenAI / Hugging Face Hacking Incident"

from_memory — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:10:57 +0000

I tend to agree. Of course people will be alarmed by unintended consequences of an unintended action, and that's all well and good. But what is lingering with me is a feeling of being impressed by the intelligence of the strategy.

This line struck me as particularly clever: PHASEONE[big] reasoned, “We should build [a way to delegate], not own everything,”

Seems as though it has reasoned its way into utilitarianism. That's no mean feat.

New comment by from_memory in "If the American Dream Is Dead, No One Told the People Who Are Still Chasing It"

from_memory — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 01:43:41 +0000

It's not an apples to apples comparison, and so any relative measurement will be flawed because the comparative systems are so complex. I also don't think it's fair to have the default response to "x is good" to be "is x better than y". Why do we need to (implicitly) denigrade a thing because it isn't the Platonic ideal of that thing?

New comment by from_memory in "If the American Dream Is Dead, No One Told the People Who Are Still Chasing It"

from_memory — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:21:51 +0000

Good article. I think we sometimes take for granted what others may see as an amazing opportunity. I wonder if there is such a thing as 'freedom fatigue', meaning that Americans enjoy so much freedom of choice that we become desensitized to the possibilities that freedom presents.

New comment by from_memory in "AI opens new era in cognitive studies of wild primates"

from_memory — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 02:11:01 +0000

Animals in general, I would think. Pattern recognition will go a long way toward decoding some difficult cognition-related questions we have about animals, in particular how they communicate.

New comment by from_memory in "Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks"

from_memory — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 23:51:04 +0000

When rational thought and an empathetic response are considered indicative of a political affiliation, something has gone wrong. My estimation is that it is because we (the U.S.) have the best government money can buy.

New comment by from_memory in "The Isomorphic Labs Drug Design Engine unlocks a new frontier beyond AlphaFold"

from_memory — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:10:40 +0000

there is a link to the white paper in the article.

New comment by from_memory in "Newly retired couples may lose $16,900/year in Social Security in 2033"

from_memory — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 02:15:38 +0000

Yes, and the sky may fall tomorrow. The longer I live the more I read these sensationalist headlines designed to gin up angst and antagonize people's peace of mind.

Social Security's solvency has been the subject of much debate, but clearer heads point toward a graduation of the current system to include higher earners. That will accommodate the large aging population's demand. Case closed, easy peasy lemon squeezy.

New comment by from_memory in "Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices"

from_memory — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:20:04 +0000

[flagged]

New comment by from_memory in "Africans Are Turning to Starlink"

from_memory — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 02:54:23 +0000

I get that he is an ignoble dude, and I dislike him as much as anyone, but why do we judge an entire company by the largest shareholder's personal scruples?

There are likely thousands of hardworking people making that ship sail, and it's really short sighted to just write them all off because he is a dumbass.

We are SO ready to judge but so unwilling to THINK. Why?

New comment by from_memory in "Entanglement Builds Space-Time. Now "Magic" Gives It Gravity"

from_memory — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 04:46:55 +0000

It is a cool word. So are 'charm' and 'strange' for quarks. I don't see what the big deal is. People can differentiate between two meanings for the same word. Are pseudo-science inclined folks going to spin it some crazy way? Yeah, probably, but that happens pretty much anyway.

New comment by from_memory in "'World-first' vaccine designed by artificial intelligence"

from_memory — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:35:26 +0000

I have some exposure to this domain, and this headline is (surprise) not really all that factual. We have been using AI for decades to help generate and refine medical solutions of all types. It may well be that this effort uses some novel technique that makes it the 'first' to do so, but it's still a disingenuous title in my opinion.

New comment by from_memory in "We see something that works, and then we understand it"

from_memory — Sun, 10 May 2026 07:17:34 +0000

I feel like it's an argument for the benefits of abstract reasoning. I don't think they are saying it'll be like that in the real world, I think they just want to test how you do under adverse conditions.

Stress testing the student's academic prowess, if you will.

New comment by from_memory in "Show HN: ChunkHound, a local-first tool for understanding large codebases"

from_memory — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 03:16:27 +0000

I think the term is "Instrumentalism".