Hacker News: keiferski

New comment by keiferski in "As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing"

keiferski — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:46:07 +0000

I think we are talking past each other. I was referring to ideas as in philosophy, intellectual history, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_history

https://www.amazon.com/1001-Ideas-That-Changed-Think/dp/1476...

The notion that a philosopher would hoard his ideas because he wants to get money from them is pretty much antithetical to the field.

You seem to be referring to ideas as in, ideas about how AI systems should be designed.

Different scenarios, for sure.

New comment by keiferski in "As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing"

keiferski — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:12:43 +0000

Can’t say I agree. The most influential ideas in history were not conceived of by people looking for money and recognition. Nor were they “radically original.”

New comment by keiferski in "As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing"

keiferski — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:43:39 +0000

Ideas, once they go into the world, aren’t really yours anymore.

Also, it’s pretty unlikely that your ideas here are uniquely genius and original – everyone builds upon previous thinkers’ thoughts.

Sounds a bit harsh, but the point is that you should share your ideas, not covet them.

New comment by keiferski in "As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing"

keiferski — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:21:07 +0000

The concept of an almanac seems relevant again: a yearly printed book with verified, accurate information. No manipulation at a later date, no AI hallucinations, etc.

The most famous one was probably Benjamin Franklin’s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack

Paper encyclopedias might make a comeback for the same reason.

New comment by keiferski in "Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago"

keiferski — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:00:17 +0000

I don’t agree at all. A train ride is not that different from what you’re suggesting a self-driving car will be… and I certainly wouldn’t want to spend 4 hours a day sitting in a vehicle. Even if it was my own first class seat, or even an entire train car.

New comment by keiferski in "Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's"

keiferski — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:35:41 +0000

In America, ordering a taxi before rideshare apps was unreliable at best, if you were outside of central parts of major cities.

More than one time I got stuck somewhere and had to walk 4 hours home.

New comment by keiferski in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

keiferski — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:04:24 +0000

So many false assumptions about me and my background, and so much false nostalgia. I am Polish-American, I speak Polish, my girlfriend is Polish, so yeah, my opinion is just as valid as yours.

I don't have "millennial coworkers" nor do I attend a tech hub.

Especially absurd when the ongoing war with Russia. It wouldn't surprise me if Polish opinions of Russia were 99% negative.

2014 was 12 years ago. Poland is an entirely different place now. Perhaps you should update your opinion sometime. No one said it was a warzone dystopia, just that it was a darker time compared to today.

The "nostalgia" for those times is basically just nostalgia for the past; American "I miss X" views of the same time period are basically the same, meaning it has more to do with global culture and technological development than some specific thing about the USSR. And of course anyone with the slightest bit of political opinions doesn't miss that era.

New comment by keiferski in "Ask HN: Is Ask HN Shrinking?"

keiferski — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 13:42:04 +0000

I think the majority of Ask HN questions have always been looking for the opinions of the community, not just pieces of information.

Ask HN: Is Ask HN Shrinking?

keiferski — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:59:22 +0000

I only see 7 posts in the Ask HN section. The other day, there were only 10. Is this due to a cap on Ask submissions, or something else?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49221476

Points: 20

# Comments: 16

New comment by keiferski in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

keiferski — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:46:24 +0000

I've lived in Poland for the last decade. I'd say 95% of the population looks back on the USSR era with negative views. Poland probably has the best situation it's been in for hundreds of years.

The opinions of 20 year olds that weren't alive during the USSR era do not count.

New comment by keiferski in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

keiferski — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:41:50 +0000

Yes, they were, and probably still are better than prisons in Russia.

New comment by keiferski in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

keiferski — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:39:05 +0000

These kinds of articles are only popular in places that had no direct experience of life in the USSR. No one in Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, etc. looks back on the time with fondness.

New comment by keiferski in "What is a product?"

keiferski — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:27:12 +0000

I think it ultimately just comes down to laziness. People are increasingly loathe to make multi-year plans and stick to them, for various reasons.

Building something like a YouTube competitor is theoretically doable by a small team. It’s vastly more possible with AI tools than it was a decade ago.

But the “muscle” of doing difficult things has atrophied for many people, in large part because the AI tools themselves reduce your ability to actually do the work. If day after day, you just prompt an AI to make things for you, do research for you, etc. then you gradually stop working that muscle yourself.

It makes me think that the ideal usage of AI tools might be a deliberately limited one: do everything on your own, but check in with the AI once a week for review.

New comment by keiferski in "TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In"

keiferski — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:29:16 +0000

The other day I pasted two links into ChatGPT, both different brands of the same appliance. One was $50, the other $200. I asked to compare the differences.

It ended up recommending and linking me to an entirely different one, that I hadn't linked to at all.

Don't know if it was just sloppy LLM "thinking," or a genuine ad.

New comment by keiferski in "I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel"

keiferski — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:12:51 +0000

The idea that longevity = meaningful is a value judgement derived from culture. In nature, many significant things happen in extremely small amounts of time.

New comment by keiferski in "I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel"

keiferski — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 04:00:48 +0000

And this is true of everyone else, whether lawyers or writers or researchers: increasingly, you are the bottleneck to be optimized away. As long as human workers cannot be removed from the loop, the AI tools are complements, but as soon as they can be, there’s no reason to keep them, and trillions of reasons to substitute AI for them. (And once human workers are no longer irreplaceable, where does their power or relevance come from?)

There are so many false assumptions and leaps of logic here, I don’t know where to start.

The idea of a more user security-conscious LLM is a good idea. I don’t know why it needs to be wrapped in novel-lengths of LOTR quotes and Sci-fi speculation.

That said, it’s very interesting to juxtapose this post with others by writers that are interested not in “maximizing product output” but in actually expressing themselves.

This post is like the ultimate expression of the idea that the only valuable thing writing has to offer is information, and not personal experience, poetry, advice, humor, etc. - which I suppose is fitting for someone that has written anonymously for over a decade.

It’s a shame that he didn’t reach the opposite conclusion, like some other writers have – the way to respond to LLMs is to be more human, not less.

New comment by keiferski in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

keiferski — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:54:56 +0000

>considering everyone is using MS software one way or another.

I don't think I've used a MS product in at least a decade. At least that I was aware of.

Edit: did some research and I have used LinkedIn. Other than that, nothing.

New comment by keiferski in "Why etymologies matter: How tracing words can illuminate history (2024)"

keiferski — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:14:56 +0000

I really love etymology, because I like to imagine words having "lives", and then tracking those lives over the centuries. It's fascinating to think that a word might have begun in China thousands of years ago, migrated to India, then the Islamic World, then Europe, and are now everyday things in English.

New comment by keiferski in "Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc"

keiferski — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:10:50 +0000

It is strange to me that people are re-discovering this today, in 2026. Microsoft has always been half-baked, even in the 80s and 90s. Heck, my parents basically raised me (20+ years ago) by running a business fixing problems with Microsoft products for their clients.

New comment by keiferski in "LLMs reward expertise"

keiferski — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:44:30 +0000

This is why the chat interface is ultimately not the best option for non-expert users, because they require the user to bring knowledge with them. You can call this the “query” method: you have to know what to ask to get the answer you want.

A real world example might be: I can find any movie DVD you want from our warehouse, but you need to tell me the name of it. Don’t know the name? Tough luck.

Contrast this with a “browse” interface: the options available are presented to you, and you can pick from them. Relevant contextual information is already on-site. The DVD store has shelves of potential movies you can rent, and you don’t need to know their names ahead of time.

The interfaces of future AI will be more browse oriented, with a query viewer available in the settings for advanced users.