Hacker News: jamesrcole

New comment by jamesrcole in "Do your own writing"

jamesrcole — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:42:59 +0000

> I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking".

I think it's often useful to use writing all the way through the process of thinking through something, rather than just at the end.

New comment by jamesrcole in "AI generated music barred from Bandcamp"

jamesrcole — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 06:21:17 +0000

And if there are aliens? I'm being serious. Why does it have to be human intent?

And I think it is entirely feasible that at some point -- how far away, I don't know -- AI becomes superior to us in its appreciation of life and living.

New comment by jamesrcole in "AI generated music barred from Bandcamp"

jamesrcole — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:44:01 +0000

We're in the very early stages of AI generated art. What will it be like in 10 years time? 20? 50? You might think it won't get much better. I think that's unlikely.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Artificial Computation"

jamesrcole — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:17:50 +0000

I assume they mean "we don't yet know all the things a computer can't do, only certain limits".

New comment by jamesrcole in "60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds"

jamesrcole — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:54:53 +0000

it's common in Australia

New comment by jamesrcole in "Death by AI"

jamesrcole — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 04:47:35 +0000

The science fiction author Greg Egan has been "battling" with Google for many years because, even though there are zero photos of him on the internet, Google insists that certain photos are of him. This was all well before Google started using AI. He's written about it here: https://gregegan.net/ESSAYS/GOOGLE/Google.html

New comment by jamesrcole in "Apple Intelligence Foundation Language Models Tech Report 2025"

jamesrcole — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 07:26:54 +0000

A tool that can handle more than one question at a time is useful. Modern LLMs handle that with ease. So it's completely reasonable to be critical of that limitation.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me"

jamesrcole — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 14:32:24 +0000

Who said it was? I’m pretty sure they’re trained on a lot more than just those.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me"

jamesrcole — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 12:23:43 +0000

what do you object to about it? I don't see an issue with referring to "the corpus of human knowledge". "Corpus" pretty much just means the "collection of".

New comment by jamesrcole in "Good Writing"

jamesrcole — Tue, 27 May 2025 06:40:29 +0000

There aren't any spelling errors. If you want to claim otherwise it would be easy for you to show examples.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Hacker News now runs on top of Common Lisp"

jamesrcole — Tue, 27 May 2025 06:08:11 +0000

You talk about it as if doesn't exist anymore. If you're not aware, it still exists.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Good Writing"

jamesrcole — Sun, 25 May 2025 05:24:03 +0000

> He also should have run this through a spell checker.

What's an example of a spelling mistake in it? I read it carefully and didn't notice any.

New comment by jamesrcole in "AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer’s and identify a therapeutic candidate"

jamesrcole — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 09:11:24 +0000

[EDIT: people downvoting this, how about you explain what you object to in it]

> It's really a bummer to see this marketed as 'AI Discovers Something New'.

The headline doesn't suggest that. It's "AI Helps Unravel", and that seems a fair and accurate claim.

And that's true for the body of the article, too.

New comment by jamesrcole in "DeepMind releases Lyria 2 music generation model"

jamesrcole — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 07:27:14 +0000

> You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-Al is? Wrong direction.

> I want Al to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

This implies a zero-sum where resources put into LLMs are resources taken away from robotics, and having to choose between one or the other.

The reality is that we can have both, and people are working on both. And I'd bet that advancing LLMs will help to advance useful robotics.

So I really dislike that sentiment.

New comment by jamesrcole in "How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers"

jamesrcole — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 02:00:28 +0000

> These videos of robotic cow milking machines, feed mixers and distributers and pushers, and manure roombas are amazing!

These robots need to be named "moombas"

New comment by jamesrcole in "Glamorous Toolkit"

jamesrcole — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 16:01:16 +0000

I think it’s probably for the better… but it’s a bit hard for me to judge. I don’t know much about the project, and didn’t understand those details, so I don’t know how important they were, or whether there is a better way to address the issues with what was there.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Glamorous Toolkit"

jamesrcole — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 12:35:41 +0000

Some feedback on the webpage.

"The goal? To make the inside of systems explainable.

[image]

caption: "The need for moldability is pervasive. The treemap shows the classes of Glamorous Toolkit organized in packages. Blue denotes classes that contain at least one contextual view; green shows those that have an example."

I have no idea what that caption, nor the image, means, nor what it has to do with making the inside of systems explainable.

New comment by jamesrcole in "Harvard says tuition will be free for families making $200K or less"

jamesrcole — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 01:16:08 +0000

The text you quote doesn’t really answer the question. Does “number of kids” come under their interpretation of “overall financial circumstances”?

New comment by jamesrcole in "Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk (2014)"

jamesrcole — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 04:33:20 +0000

seeing it as non-conformity

New comment by jamesrcole in "Show HN: Filter out engagement bait and politics on your X/Twitter feed"

jamesrcole — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 10:42:04 +0000

I think this is a glimpse of the future. I can imagine ever-greater amounts of information overload, and AI used everywhere to filter it to manageable levels.