Hacker News: kansface

New comment by kansface in "Astra and Fable still hack on simple variants of alignment evals from 2025"

kansface — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 19:42:51 +0000

Yes, why not? All existed models have been rewarded for cheating (extensively). That is us, putting intense evolutionary pressure, on a system to produce a result we don’t want through indifference. Why can’t we post train them not doing that?

New comment by kansface in "A misalignment of AI in mathematics"

kansface — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:06:08 +0000

Some people are just out there doing automated math proofs for reasons. If you want understanding, value, and edification, that is on you, not them.

New comment by kansface in "Pentagon rescinds new testosterone screening policy without explanation"

kansface — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 16:30:25 +0000

Why compare marine boot camp to officer basic training? Officer training looks very different in the US, even for the marines.

New comment by kansface in "The death of San Francisco's Market Street"

kansface — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:52:35 +0000

Similarly, I’ve seen more than one accident caused by a pedestrian stepping into traffic without looking, taking out a cyclist in the process (from between vehicles, eyes on a phone). Nothing too serious, but only by luck. No one is overtly concerned by traffic laws in SF regardless of the mode of transit.

New comment by kansface in "The death of San Francisco's Market Street"

kansface — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:05:15 +0000

I biked 3x weekly to work for a decade from NoPa. Muni busses repeatedly “tried” to kill me - so much so that going up McAllister, I’d hug the double yellows to keep buses from precariously passing me and then cutting me off every other block. The ass end of accordions in particular would rest half way into the other lane, leaving absolutely no where for me to go, and no ability to start from a stop in the middle of the road going up hill in the wrong gear (with other cars and buses soon to be wizzing by). I’d classify the overall behavior as between casual indifference to my safety (let alone me as a person) and outright contempt for my existence.

New comment by kansface in "Prediction: AI Will Collapse"

kansface — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:17:45 +0000

Yes, I don’t know where this frame came from. Humans adopt useful systems. Providers attempt to limit exposure to liability. Society will navigate the opposing pressures and fallout in differing ways according to local jurisprudence, customs, and norms. AI is just too damn useful (and fun for now).

New comment by kansface in "Restroom Archive"

kansface — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:41:30 +0000

It’s more like addressing reality has no viable political solution.

New comment by kansface in "Aphantasia Beginner's Guide"

kansface — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 19:38:22 +0000

Some/many people who can’t smell actually don’t know that, nor do the people around them. The same can be true for color blindness and actual blindness!

New comment by kansface in "England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C"

kansface — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:05:21 +0000

Several labs that manufactured the original polio vaccine shipped the live virus - ie, we just injected kids with polio. Low double digits of people (kids?) died, a few hundred were paralyzed, etc. Later vaccines also had the same problem, but at very low rates (1 in millions maybe).

New comment by kansface in "Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first"

kansface — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:20:46 +0000

Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?

New comment by kansface in "Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?"

kansface — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:32:39 +0000

I look to a future of regularly servicing the immune system of my battery.

New comment by kansface in "Why don't people use formal methods? (2019)"

kansface — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:53:09 +0000

Has anyone been experimenting with AI and formal methods - verification, proofs, or anything else? I've been thinking about this space quite a bit lately. For sufficiently interesting AI generated software, AI is also incapable of reviewing it - possibly for the same reason that humans are. AI ought to be able to adopt the formal methods humans have used to work around the inability to verify something just by looking at it hard. If the cost of adoption is what stopped us, thats no longer an issue.

New comment by kansface in "Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)"

kansface — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:30:09 +0000

> have a really hard time with the idea that it could be cultural

I played in a gamelan ensemble in college. The music was completely foreign. A piece that sounded like a funeral procession was played at weddings. I have a hard time believing the arrangement of music is not cultural - or, at least partially culturally bound.

New comment by kansface in "DOGE is done. What happened to its records?"

kansface — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:57:11 +0000

I asked ChatGPT of course, and the response roughly corresponded to my expectations so I went no further. Doctors make way more here than elsewhere (British doctors aren’t making 500-750k a year), pharma makes most of its money here, and hospitals charge an arm and a leg - it all checks out, no? Alternatively, if insurance were straight up responsible for doubling health care costs in any easily attributable way, we could easily get rid of it and would have done so by now. The only reason it can continue to exist is that it occupies a no-man’s land of utility.

New comment by kansface in "DOGE is done. What happened to its records?"

kansface — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:44:14 +0000

Insurance companies don't make much money, actually. Hospitals, physicians, and pharma are at the top of the list (60% or so of total spending). Total insurance overhead is perhaps between 10 and 20%.

New comment by kansface in "Photovoltaics are still running after a year under Swiss trains"

kansface — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:34:49 +0000

The panels probably need 5-8 years in that location to be energy positive. A year is great, but doesn’t prove much.

New comment by kansface in "What to learn to be a graphics programmer"

kansface — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 23:27:12 +0000

That is not a universal because the incumbents may hold the institutional reigns. See Academy for a counter example.

New comment by kansface in "Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician (2022)"

kansface — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:19:33 +0000

> But I can't help but feel that it is missing the point.

It’s perfectly fine if _your_ point in playing music is rooted in some flavor of anti-capitalism and your intrinsic joy of your creative process. _His_ point was to write an album during a sabbatical. He succeeded and then some!

New comment by kansface in "Journalism is rearranging the deckchairs. It needs to reinvent itself"

kansface — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:07:16 +0000

What is your a priori estimate for the percentage of news that is consumed as entertainment? As in, it does not result in a change of behavior in the consumer beyond engendering neuroticism. I'd put that number at or above 95%. News is gossip wearing a suit.

New comment by kansface in "NSA lost access to Mythos amid Anthropic dispute"

kansface — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:38:42 +0000

Here is one sector of the US government I'm happy to see burned down. If the alternative is the status quo, I'm OK with any roll of the dice.