Hacker News: jmilloy

New comment by jmilloy in "Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%"

jmilloy — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 18:12:28 +0000

Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.

New comment by jmilloy in "Sycophancy in GPT-4o"

jmilloy — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:03:19 +0000

This is a great link. I'm not very well versed on the llm ecosystem. I guess you can give the llm instructions on how to behave generally, but some instructions (like this one in the system prompt?) cannot be overridden. I kind of can't believe that there isn't a set of options to pick from... Skeptic, supportive friend, professional colleague, optimist, problem solver, good listener, etc. Being able to control the linked system prompt even just a little seems like a no brainer. I hate the question at the end, for example.

New comment by jmilloy in "Attacking My Landlord's Boiler"

jmilloy — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 15:53:37 +0000

I think that maintaining a stable temperature means warm walls/floors/furniture and potentially cooler air temperature, as opposed to a cold house with intermittently warm air. Most people can feel comfortable at a lower thermostat (air) temperature if the walls etc are warm due to maintaining a stable temperature. I don't have calculations or references, YMMV.

New comment by jmilloy in "Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic"

jmilloy — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 20:40:22 +0000

I hate cars. Not using my car wouldn't change any of the things I hate about cars or car infrastructure. It's not lying.

New comment by jmilloy in "Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)"

jmilloy — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:41:29 +0000

Doing it with a camera/computer requires identifying the objects that need to be drawn in "Piranesi Perspective". The mathematics of laying out the objects is quite simple, but rendering a raster image into a view such that the key objects have this perspective probably isn't possible. You would need to vectorize the image in a general way. I don't know the state of the art in that field, but it sure seems hard.

New comment by jmilloy in "How about trailing commas in SQL?"

jmilloy — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:20:04 +0000

I think the confusion may be whether you're talking about the queries or the engine. I think this change to the engine/parser would be backwards compatible because old queries will still work on the new engine. A change to the queries in a codebase to include trailing commas would not be backwards compatible because it won't work on older parsers. It seems clear to me that the change discussed here is the engine, hence it should properly be characterized as "backwards compatible".

New comment by jmilloy in "Watch the path of a raindrop from anywhere in the world"

jmilloy — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 23:09:08 +0000

I think borders based on watersheds make so much more sense than those on rivers, both of which are common.

New comment by jmilloy in "Nullboard: Kanban board in a single HTML file"

jmilloy — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 18:48:07 +0000

"Single HTML file" sets up an expectation to me that it is (1) browser based and (2) client-side only. In other words, you can just open the file and start going without setting up a server, setting up a database, installing anything, or even having internet access. The last is not technically required but I think it is implied. It does not imply anything about the length of the file or the presence of client-side scripting.

New comment by jmilloy in "Nearly half of Nvidia's revenue comes from four mystery whales each buying $3B+"

jmilloy — Sat, 31 Aug 2024 18:41:58 +0000

One indicator that I find reliable is simply if the comments exceed the up votes.

New comment by jmilloy in "Dungeons and Dragons taught me how to write alt text"

jmilloy — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 01:28:20 +0000

I think GP is a great comment with a poor example, because I agree that the resulting images in my mind are quite different, but they don't inherently have to be due to the order things are described in.

New comment by jmilloy in "The spy who flunked it: Kurt Gödel's forgotten part in the atom-bomb story"

jmilloy — Thu, 16 May 2024 18:04:27 +0000

OP understands that, the quote says that the "the infinitude of real numbers is next largest to that of natural numbers", which makes it sound like it is next largest as in second largest as in less large as in lower cardinality. So it seems backwards. Maybe the quote means "next largest" as in larger.

New comment by jmilloy in "Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation"

jmilloy — Tue, 07 May 2024 16:29:25 +0000

Everything you say makes sense, with the exception of your expectation not to pay extra for an unusual order (for that cafe). Consider if I asked for my salad to be roasted, and balked at a surcharge on the grounds that they also have roasted brussel sprouts! I don't think it's up to you to decide what orders fit into their flow and which cost extra. I'm glad you found the places that will make the coffee the you like.

New comment by jmilloy in "Yes, social media is a cause of the epidemic of teenage mental illness"

jmilloy — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 16:48:11 +0000

In general, I agree with you, and for the record, I'm in favor of general restrictions or limitations on social media for children. At the same, I want to add that I was not allowed to watch violent cartoons or play violent video games as a kid in the 90s. I felt left out on the playground when I didn't know how to play X-Men or Power Rangers or whatever. But in retrospect it was fine. I'm not sure the social isolation factor in particular is as dire as you claim.

New comment by jmilloy in "Anatomy of a credit card rewards program"

jmilloy — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 17:35:28 +0000

This is interesting. The study you cite and quote is about a transfer of money from "naive" credit card consumers to "sophisticated" credit card consumers, which correlates to "poor to rich", "less educated to more educated", etc. I'm even more interested in the transfer that occurs from both cash and non-reward-card consumers to specifically reward-card users.

New comment by jmilloy in "Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility"

jmilloy — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:55:31 +0000

Why do you think that? Everything I see suggests the opposite.

New comment by jmilloy in "A 45 year engineer clears up electric sauna ventilation"

jmilloy — Sat, 02 Mar 2024 17:51:23 +0000

No it's different for wood burning when inside the space because they act as an effective exhaust on their own.

http://localmile.org/proper-ventilation-for-electrically-hea...

New comment by jmilloy in "Institutions try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution"

jmilloy — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 17:21:00 +0000

I tend to think that this isn't inherent to institutions (or individuals), but rather that institutions that have this behavior tend to grow and last, whereas institutions that do not stay small and eventually disappear. A kind of survivorship bias.

New comment by jmilloy in "Reasons medieval people slept in cupboards"

jmilloy — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 14:39:03 +0000

In this case, it's not just sound vibrations but vibrations that you can feel in your house and bed! Truly difficult. Double or staggered stud walls really help.

New comment by jmilloy in "An RNG that runs in your brain"

jmilloy — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 14:30:45 +0000

I think it's much better because the teacher doesn't have to match guesses to students. For example, for each student the odds are 30/100, roughly one in three. And any duplicates can be matched by a single guess.

New comment by jmilloy in "Apple Maps wrongly lists restaurant permanently closed, costing owner thousands"

jmilloy — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 02:40:26 +0000

They could list the business because they want it in the map without listing the hours or that it's closed.