Hacker News: jsharf

New comment by jsharf in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

jsharf — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:09:45 +0000

Related story, while applying a firmware update to my Kawai CA49 piano, I bricked it due to flashing the wrong file (The process was broken, and I got desperate and tried something stupid, which bricked the piano). Claude walked me through looking for signs of life, and since OTA from the phone app wasn't working for me, it downloaded the Kawai Android APK, decompiled the Java, figured out the hardcoded key used for encrypting the firmware update. Extracted the piano firmware update, decrypted it, and then wrote a flashing script to program the piano from my laptop via bluetooth. My piano was back to working within an hour.

New comment by jsharf in "Were RNNs all we needed? A GPU programming perspective"

jsharf — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 02:05:54 +0000

If you have independent copies of the network learning gradients, then you’re effectively making the batch size smaller— unless you’re doing an all collect and making them sync, in which case there’s a lot of overhead

When you take a batch and calculate gradients, you’re effectively calculating a direction the weights should move in, and then taking a step in that direction. You can do more steps at once by doing what you say, but they might not all be exactly in the right direction, so overall efficiency is hard to compare

I am not an expert, but if I understand correctly I think this is the answer.

New comment by jsharf in "Claude 4 System Card"

jsharf — Sun, 25 May 2025 15:55:49 +0000

I want to also mention that the previous model was 3.7. 3.7 to 4 is not an entire increment, it’s theoretically the same as 3 -> 3.3, which is actually modest compared to the capability jump I’ve observed. I do think Anthropic wants more frequent, continuous releases, and using a numeric version number rather than a software version number is their intent. Gradual releases give society more time to react.

New comment by jsharf in "Mass market non-fiction has bad incentives"

jsharf — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 20:32:12 +0000

He's not saying that all non fiction is bad, just that the incentives are misaligned, and to be fair at least in my experience, there are a lot of popular non-fiction books where each chapter is repetitive, and I feel the whole thing could have been written in 2-3 chapters, if publishing a 30-page nonfiction book wasn't taboo

New comment by jsharf in "Phased Array Microphone (2023)"

jsharf — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:48:25 +0000

Wow, you can refocus the direction after the audio is recorded!

This would be cool to mix with VR, so you could hear different conversations as you move around a virtual room

New comment by jsharf in "Alaska CEO: We found many loose bolts on our Max planes"

jsharf — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:30:00 +0000

I assume it’s easier to find an engineer who went to engineering school to learn how to build airplanes that are safe than it is to find an MBA who went to business school to learn how to build planes that are safe. (It’s not about the knowledge but about the root desire)

Similarly, I assume it’s harder to find an engineer who went into the field purely for money.

I do think on average engineers will prioritize safety (since they likely understand failure modes and production and long tail statistics better. We literally have to take engineering ethics classes), at the cost of doing a worse job at running the business. But when the business requires this level of safety, that IS doing a good job.

New comment by jsharf in "Boeing 737-900ER: Second model to be inspected after 737 MAX 9 blowout"

jsharf — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 16:06:49 +0000

I think planes can still fly with the rudder loose? If the bolt falls out and it loses control, wind will push it into the neutral position and then flying will still be possible with other control surfaces? But I guess if the pilots don't know and it happens suddenly at a critical moment or if the bolt causes the rudder to get jammed, then that would be really bad. But I assume it falling out would result in the rudder loosely returning to neutral...

New comment by jsharf in "My AI Timelines Have Sped Up (Again)"

jsharf — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:20:42 +0000

If we have intelligent AI that can automate programming, then making really good robots will not be a problem. While not trivial, actuators and power systems are not the reason why we don’t have robots that can do all manual labor for us. Software is the reason, and the same kind of software that’s learning to code (machine learning) can also be adapted to washing dishes, folding clothing, doing craft labor or previously human manufacturing jobs.

Accelerating programming and information jobs also means accelerating the creation of robots that can do these trade jobs

New comment by jsharf in "Now I can just print that video"

jsharf — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 14:46:48 +0000

Recommend passing the speech-to-text narration through a round of GPT4 API to correct for any transcription errors (use some prompt giving context that it's speech to text)

New comment by jsharf in "Improving deep sleep may prevent dementia, study finds"

jsharf — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 16:27:27 +0000

Suggests there's other variables involved, like time of day taken, other supplements taken simultaneously, metabolic processes, diet, and maybe even the placebo effect.

New comment by jsharf in "Show HN: PFAS.report – Measure the forever chemicals in your blood via Quest"

jsharf — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 20:04:11 +0000

Well, assuming they likely have some PFAS already in their system, you might just be giving them blood with the same concentration of PFAS that they already have.

New comment by jsharf in "Micromouse: The fastest maze-solving competition [video]"

jsharf — Fri, 26 May 2023 20:40:16 +0000

They need to be dimensioned and finished quite accurately. Most plywood has a slight bend to it. At the speeds and accelerations needed to be competitive, any imperfection would mean your car will fly off the track or hit a wall.

New comment by jsharf in "Clinical validation of a blood-pressure sensor for continuous health monitoring"

jsharf — Mon, 22 May 2023 16:30:23 +0000

Wait isn’t PPG for heart rate?

New comment by jsharf in "The Engineer’s Predicament"

jsharf — Thu, 11 May 2023 15:31:08 +0000

Do founders return the salary they pay themselves if their company doesn’t double in size?

The answer is no, so I don’t see why software engineers should be held to higher standards.

New comment by jsharf in "Amazon starts flagging frequently returned products that you maybe shouldn’t buy"

jsharf — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 15:41:00 +0000

When you change a product page, you lose all reviews, but you get a "New Product" link on the old page to link to the new one, giving you exposure.

Amazon can make the "New Product" show up for queries for the older one, but without the stellar reviews. This way modified products still get good exposure and no one will accidentally buy the old one. But there aren't reviews on the same page for a different product. The system can still be gamed similarly, but at least you can't get reviews for the wrong product on the same page.

New comment by jsharf in "AI for developers and Google Workspace"

jsharf — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 17:13:56 +0000

At the end of the day, you're still responsible for reading the email before you send it. I don't think it matters how the email was written. I think the final content matters more. There's many ways to prompt an AI, both carelessly and with extreme attention to detail.

For example, I typed this message. But I'm sure with careful massaging, I could get an AI to write the same thing, word-for-word. The laziness you're referring to probably happens even if the manager is typing the email out themselves.

New comment by jsharf in "Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location"

jsharf — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 18:00:52 +0000

I think for academic conferences, they typically choose a venue that changes every year. This could be used to aid in selecting a venue.

New comment by jsharf in "Talk-to-ChatGPT"

jsharf — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 21:55:53 +0000

Theoretically, one could compile whisper.cpp to run in the browser using emscripten, maybe made faster with webgl...

I think this would be quite a heavy page load time for a website, but if the model file gets cached, and the user has a decent CPU/GPU, it... could work?

New comment by jsharf in "Some insects I found inside dried Turkish figs from Trader Joe’s"

jsharf — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 14:46:01 +0000

Is it extra protein, if they lived only off the rice in the bag? Presumably all the protein inside of them came from rice that would have otherwise been there.

I guess it helps digest and synthesize some of the proteins for you.

Ask HN: What would you do if you were the first to create human-level AI?

jsharf — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 19:45:50 +0000

It's a fun thought experiment. Let's say you were the first person to create a human-level artificial intelligence, What would you do? What do you think is the smartest thing to do?

We've all read classic short stories like The Last Question[0]. And there's actually a chance that this will happen within our lifetimes.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33821655

Points: 1

# Comments: 0