Hacker News: jdonaldson

New comment by jdonaldson in "Small AI Models Gain Traction In places with unreliable networks"

jdonaldson — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 03:31:46 +0000

I think neuro-symbolic AI has a lot of potential here, since small models can handle a lot of conversational inputs, while relying on wired-in solvers for more complex symbolic math/computation needs. https://jjd.io/posts/swollm-bbh-leaderboard.html

New comment by jdonaldson in "Fusion Programming Language"

jdonaldson — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 03:41:19 +0000

I'd love to see a comparison to Haxe. https://haxe.org/

I wonder what performance and generated code size/quality look like.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Quivers: A year of linear algebra by drawing arrows"

jdonaldson — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:34:16 +0000

I like directed acyclic graphs and/or DAG because it's a succinct description and contract. Trying to change the name of it makes me quiver with uncertainty.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Linux 7.0 Broke PostgreSQL: The Preemption Regression Explained"

jdonaldson — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 18:11:12 +0000

That post comes uncomfortably close to how Opus writes this kind of prose. It's a good idea to acknowledge all stakeholders.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Different Language Models Learn Similar Number Representations"

jdonaldson — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:40:39 +0000

(Pardon the self promotion) Libraries like turnstyle are taking advantage of shared representation across models. Neurosymbolic programming : https://github.com/jdonaldson/turnstyle

New comment by jdonaldson in "Music for Programming"

jdonaldson — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:28:22 +0000

Sharing a spotify link for one of my favorite playlists : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jQQ19MndPFIVqsvDrvJyG?si=...

New comment by jdonaldson in "AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it"

jdonaldson — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:14:18 +0000

It's a different kind of fatigue, but it's something a felt I got stronger at over time. Beats waiting IMHO, but be sure to give yourself a chance to rest.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Why We Abandoned Matrix (2024)"

jdonaldson — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:59:41 +0000

People here always want to run the software themselves first, but then the next day they want to pay someone else to host it. If you're running into people throwing security flags, the silver lining is you're also a stone's throw away from offering a hosted option.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Texas Attorney General sues Tylenol makers over autism claims"

jdonaldson — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:53:57 +0000

Honestly, yeah, makes sense to me. If we value freedom at all we value the right to tell the government to stuff it with their legally binding nothingburger deals.

New comment by jdonaldson in "A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal"

jdonaldson — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 16:56:51 +0000

I'm quite sure that's what's already going on. LEO is big and empty and pretty boring, but it's also resilient to increasing trends of natural disaster, war, and civil unrest. Having a foothold there matters more and more every day.

New comment by jdonaldson in "America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy"

jdonaldson — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:16:47 +0000

I don't think this quote is in the book.

New comment by jdonaldson in "America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy"

jdonaldson — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:09:34 +0000

I thought that book was pretty dull, and had a terrible romance subplot. But I do have to say it pops in my head more and more often, just like Idiocracy. Someone should definitely do a movie so the illiterates know what they're missing at least.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Prefix sum: 20 GB/s (2.6x baseline)"

jdonaldson — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 20:04:40 +0000

While that sounds like a dealbreaker, I can't help think "yeah but if a decoding method took advantage of prefix in a similarly scalable way, one would reap the same benefits".

New comment by jdonaldson in "New lab-grown human embryo model produces blood cells"

jdonaldson — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 19:12:03 +0000

I'm an organ donor, and I have no problem giving my organs away after I'm quite positive I won't feel it. I think as long as there is no sensation, there is no pain, and certainly no formal concept of "self". But still, with matters of exploitation of our bodies, we should tread very very lightly.

New comment by jdonaldson in "SEC approves Texas Stock Exchange, first new US integrated exchange in decades"

jdonaldson — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:38:35 +0000

throw in discreate as well :)

New comment by jdonaldson in "SEC approves Texas Stock Exchange, first new US integrated exchange in decades"

jdonaldson — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:37:02 +0000

The issue isn't that there's a lot of change coming from inside the markets, it's that there's a lot of change coming from outside the market, and it's all interconnected.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Social anxiety isn't about being liked"

jdonaldson — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 16:43:34 +0000

I always chalked that up to being around people that were new to the country and hadn't yet wrapped their head around the latest fashionable American cynicism. Generally takes a few decades to kick in, but when it does it's usually worth the wait (see Kumail Ali Nanjiani).

New comment by jdonaldson in "Data Viz Color Palette Generator (For Charts and Dashboards)"

jdonaldson — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:33:12 +0000

I also recommend Color Brewer, which is integrated already in a lot of visualization tools, and has great options for display variants and accessibility options : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColorBrewer

New comment by jdonaldson in "His psychosis was a mystery–until doctors learned about ChatGPT's health advice"

jdonaldson — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 13:46:32 +0000

Humans make mistakes too. Case in point, the hallucination engine didn't tell the person to ingest bromide. It only mentioned that it had chemical similarities to salt. The human mistakenly adopted a bit of information that furthered his narrative. The humans touting and bigging it up are still the problem.

New comment by jdonaldson in "Journaling using Nix, Vim and coreutils"

jdonaldson — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 22:33:00 +0000

Nix always felt like an OS on the blockchain. It's fine if you value verifiability above everything, but becomes very burdensome if you find yourself tweaking your dev environment often. Still, I think it probably teaches good discipline.