Hacker News: jimmar

New comment by jimmar in "AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study"

jimmar — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:59:22 +0000

In my professional career, my employers give me a lot more assignments than exams.

New comment by jimmar in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

jimmar — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:00:29 +0000

I like the sentiment from Hitchens that we choose our regrets. Being an absent father was not something I was willing to regret. I know it has cost me some degree of earning potential and career progression. I wouldn't change anything.

New comment by jimmar in "Hop.earth – OpenStreetMap based car racing game"

jimmar — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 20:37:05 +0000

Nice! I flew by my childhood home a few times. My request would be to let it fly slower. I wanted to look around but passed by everything too quickly.

New comment by jimmar in "Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search"

jimmar — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 19:55:47 +0000

I searched for "ophthalmologist," got a list of results, and made an appointment. Only later did I discover that my search engine had shown me results for "optometrist" instead of the term I searched for. It was not helpful. The optometrist could not provide the care I needed and it was a waste of time and money. That experience added to my distrust of search results.

New comment by jimmar in "Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)"

jimmar — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:59:28 +0000

Nice work!

But...I added an image to see what options it gave me. There was no way to add alt text, which leads me to believe that accessibility was not a priority. Unless passing accessibility checks is a feature, this isn't something I could use.

New comment by jimmar in "Podman v6.0.0"

jimmar — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:11:14 +0000

Quadlets and rootless containers are two major reasons I'll be switching from Docker to Podman.

New comment by jimmar in "Project Glasswing: An Initial Update"

jimmar — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:53:52 +0000

People predict that in 50 years, no human will be driving a car, and people will be shocked that we let humans drive cars manually. Coding may be the same. So many vulnerabilities in code written by very competent programmers. Manually building large, complex systems without major bugs or security vulnerabilities seems to be a nearly impossible challenge.

New comment by jimmar in "Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare"

jimmar — Tue, 12 May 2026 19:40:45 +0000

Don't we all inherently know that government surveillance will constantly increase over time if we give in? In theory, we could achieve a "happy medium," but the same access used by a thoughtful law enforcement agency are the same tools that a fascist government would use to suppress dissent or other "wrong" thinking.

New comment by jimmar in "Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys"

jimmar — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:02:56 +0000

Seems analogous to employees of a missile manufacturer being upset that their missiles were used for their intended purpose.

New comment by jimmar in "NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist"

jimmar — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:47:05 +0000

I'm not disputing the designation.

Per the US Code [1]:

> The term "supply chain risk" means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system.

My reading of the situation is that the relevant parts of that statute would be the "distribution" or "operation" of their systems as to "deny" or "disrupt" the "operation of such system." I.e., the Pentagon is afraid that Anthropic won't let them use their stuff.

[1] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...

New comment by jimmar in "NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist"

jimmar — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:30:32 +0000

First of all, what "blacklist?" The article puts that in the title, but never explains anything about a blacklist.

> The National Security Agency is using Anthropic's most powerful model yet, Mythos Preview, despite top officials at the Department of Defense — which oversees the NSA — insisting the company is a "supply chain risk," two sources tell Axios.

I find the article confusing. My impression of the "supply chain risk" wasn't that Anthropic's products themselves were risky, but that the Department of Defense would be at risk if they could not use Anthropic's products. Like, of course the NSA wants to use it. They are fearful about not being able to use it.

New comment by jimmar in "Stop Flock"

jimmar — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:32:56 +0000

I followed the shooting at Brown University last year very closely. Brown's leadership was heavily criticized for having camera blind spots and not being able to track the shooter's exact movements through campus. I can understand why people with stewardship over the safety of their students/customers/constituents would make decisions to err on the side of tracking. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I understand it.

New comment by jimmar in "EFF is leaving X"

jimmar — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:32:16 +0000

So just talk to the people who you think already agree with you?

New comment by jimmar in "Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)"

jimmar — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 01:48:09 +0000

One of the first signs that a somebody has Alzheimer's is that they'll get lost. E.g., they've been attending church on Thursdays nights at the same chapel for 15 years, but suddenly they forgot how to get home after a recent service. Part of the reason for the findings in the current study is that people quit those professions when they feel themselves starting to struggle.

New comment by jimmar in "Go hard on agents, not on your filesystem"

jimmar — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 17:37:05 +0000

From the home page:

> Stop trusting blindly

> One-line installer scripts,

Here are the manual install instructions from the "Install / Build page:

> curl -L https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/jai.tar.gz | tar xzf -

> cd jai

> makepkg -i

So, trust their jai tool, but not _other_ installer scripts?

New comment by jimmar in "Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)"

jimmar — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:35:48 +0000

I've never regretted buying Legos for my kids. Yeah, the kits can be expensive, but they last forever. We've thrown out or donated lots of old toys, but the Legos will never be given away.

New comment by jimmar in "Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds"

jimmar — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 19:26:40 +0000

As a kid in the early 1980s, I spent a lot of time experimenting with computers by playing basic games and drawing with crude applications. And it was fun. I would have loved to have something like Google's Genie to play with. Even if it never evolved, the product in the demos looks good enough for people to get value from.

New comment by jimmar in "Prism"

jimmar — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:09:22 +0000

I've wasted hours of my life trying to get Latex to format my journal articles to different journals' specifications. That's tedious typesetting that wastes my time. I'm all for AI tools that help me produce my thoughts with as little friction as possible.

I'm not in favor of letting AI do my thinking for me. Time will tell where Prism sits.

New comment by jimmar in "Comma openpilot – Open source driver-assistance"

jimmar — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 02:58:11 +0000

Seeing things like, "

New driving model

" on their list of latest releases does not inspire a lot of confidence. Yes, the HTML tags are displayed on the page. Some basic quality assurance on the website would help me trust the quality assurance applied to their product offering.

https://comma.ai/openpilot

New comment by jimmar in "Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression"

jimmar — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 20:48:29 +0000

I took meds for depression a few years ago. I don't know that they did anything other than signal to myself that I wasn't ready to give up. They may have served as a kind of "dumbo's feather" that helped me get through a rough patch. Exercise might be similar. People who choose to exercise make the statement to themselves that they are worth doing something positive for. Some mental health problems resolve with time and without medication, and in those cases, exercise might be a great way to address them. But if you're struggling, call your doctor and make and appointment. Medication is sometimes the answer.