Hacker News: kristov

New comment by kristov in "They’re made out of weights"

kristov — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 19:00:36 +0000

But what is the shape of the algorithm of the human brain? It has a complex physical structure. We know the folds on the surface are important, but why is that shape specifically important? The brain is made up of two hemispheres - why, what does that do? There are different "types" of brain inside the human skull. There are physical areas that perform specific tasks. There are different types of neurons. Then there chemicals that interact with the brain, changing how it function depending on things happening to the body. All that stuff and more is the "algorithm" of the human brain. It's not the same algorithm as an LLM.

New comment by kristov in "They’re made out of weights"

kristov — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:43:19 +0000

I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. An LLM is not a human brain, and does not try to emulate one. It should not be a surprise that an LLM does not behave like a human brain. So we can not infer things either way. The best we can say is that an LLM appears to exhibit very similar behavior to a human brain, under certain constraints. So maybe we can infer that the human brain has something in it that operates in a similar way to an LLM (like the human "unconscious", or "intuition" maybe). It seems obvious to me that a human brain and an LLM are not comparable things, for many reasons. So we can not make inferrences one way or the other.

New comment by kristov in "Using PostgreSQL as a Dead Letter Queue for Event-Driven Systems"

kristov — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:00:06 +0000

Why use shedlock and select-for-update-skip-locked? Shedlock stops things running in parallel (sort-of), but the other thing makes parallel processing possible.

New comment by kristov in "Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division"

kristov — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 13:19:21 +0000

Oh I agree with you. I don't live in the US, but in a country that has a very high progressive tax rate. I am taxed about 50% of my income currently. But I gladly pay it because I like to live in a safe country with strong government programs and a great healthcare system. It is also very difficult to fire an employee here. Companies generally have to pay people to leave, and this can be a year salary upwards. But I do sympathize with people in the US, even if the "average" lifestyle experience is higher, because a lot of people seem to be struggling there.

New comment by kristov in "Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division"

kristov — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 13:06:03 +0000

If your a billionaire and you invest in index funds, the risk of becoming homeless is really low, sure. The system works in such a way that the more money you have the easier it is to make more money. So if your stuck at the bottom, your really stuck.

And I believe there is a huge shift of wealth going on, to a very small number of insanely rich people. And that is a very big problem.

New comment by kristov in "Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division"

kristov — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:32:38 +0000

I agree with your sentiment, but the reason for the imbalance is risk. As an employee you don't have financial risk tied to the company, you get a regular paycheck. But if you are an investor you take a risk that the money you invest can one day just vanish with zero return. With Amazon obviously the risk of that is low. But for many new companies the risk is very high. Therefore the payoffs are also high, to attract people to take the risk. Where I sympathize with your view is that sometimes an investment risk is taken, and the payout far exceeds the risk by any reasonable and sane margin. So you get investors spreading their risk across many ventures, on the hope that the one successful one is so successful that it pays the losses of the failed ones. But yea, this system is not really working for the vast majority of people and that is a tragedy.

New comment by kristov in "NASA chief suggests SpaceX may be booted from moon mission"

kristov — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 23:30:02 +0000

If there is water ice there, as suspected, it is the most realistic path to a self sustaining space economy. If you can earn money in space, there is a reason for people to work in space, and you can extend the economy into space.

New comment by kristov in "We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own"

kristov — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 13:05:38 +0000

I think the conversation needs to change from "can't run software of our choice" to "can't participate in society without an apple or google account". I have been living with a de-googled android phone for a number of years, and it is getting harder and harder, while at the same time operating without certain "apps" is becoming more difficult.

For example, by bank (abn amro) still allows online banking on desktop via a physical auth device, but they are actively pushing for login only via their app. I called their support line for a lost card, and had to go through to second level support because I didn't have the app. If they get their way, eventually an apple or google account will be mandatory to have a bank account with them.

My kid goes to a school that outsourced all communication via an app. They have a web version, but it's barely usable. The app doesn't run without certain google libs installed. Again, to participate in school communication about my kid effectively requires an apple or google account.

I feel like the conversation we should be having is that we are sleepwalking into a world where to participate in society you must have an account with either apple or google. If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged.

New comment by kristov in "We need to rewild the internet"

kristov — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 16:50:40 +0000

That's fair from the discovery side. I was referring to the "supply side": how do we get more people creating content for the web, where they fully own that content? I used the web a fair amount before Google, and I don't recall having a problem finding content. Maybe my expectations were lower. Maybe my attention span was longer. I remember spending a lot of time in "indexes", browsing by topic. Now I use DDG exclusively. When I accidentally use Google I am increasing shocked by the low quality. I am also asking chatgpt to discover what to search for, which I find really effective. I feel like rewilding the internet will require users to try harder. Which I guess means encouraging users to understand why they should try harder.

New comment by kristov in "We need to rewild the internet"

kristov — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 21:30:36 +0000

The barrier to entry for running your own site (something dynamic, as opposed to static hosting) is essentially the same in 2024 as it was in 2004. Gotta get a domain (and keep it registered). Gotta have an SSL cert (letsencrypt makes it better). Raspberry pi can run a lot, but getting your consumer ISP to give you a static IP is still more money. Definitely more VPS options now though. But self hosting your still basically looking at the same experience as 20 years ago, with slightly better options. Ipv6 had this promise that everyone could have mutiple public ips just for themselves, but this hasn't really been realized to its potential for some reason. We never reached that point where average Joe can run their own web presence without relying on some provider or "walled garden" owning them. If your average Joe and you want to share your thoughts online, best option today is a walled garden. How could it be made better? Average Joe can't run mailman, and certainly can't run their own mailserver.

New comment by kristov in "Prostate cancer includes two different evotypes"

kristov — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 21:49:37 +0000

I think the Turing test is subjective, because the result depends on who was giving the test and for how long.

New comment by kristov in "I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train"

kristov — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:37:33 +0000

It's not just about seeing people. It's about having deep connections and shared experiences. Eg: one of his friends has a life crisis and just needs to talk to someone. Are they going to hop on a train and track this guy down, or will they go see one of their other friends? So he will miss out being the person someone turns to, and these are the defining moments for long lasting friendships. Again, probably fine for a while, but if it goes on too long those existing friendships could fade away and he could miss out.

New comment by kristov in "I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train"

kristov — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:18:00 +0000

Brave move, but I wonder how he keeps or makes new friendships and deeper relationships. Maybe this is fine for a while, but people need people (not just text in a chatroom), and I hope he has an exit strategy from this lifestyle, for this reason.

New comment by kristov in "LineageOS is currently installed on 1.5M Android devices"

kristov — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 07:56:03 +0000

The Droidian team had a really nice demo at fosdem this year. Maybe worth a look?

New comment by kristov in "LineageOS is currently installed on 1.5M Android devices"

kristov — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 07:53:50 +0000

Been happily running lineageos for a couple of years now. No microg and no play store. F-droid for the apps. Interestingly, meta make WhatsApp available via a direct apk download, which helps a lot because before that I was using a play store downloader (the family is on WhatsApp). I use a per-app password to access gmail over IMAP in Kmail. Battery life is amazing, and I think I had one crash in 2 years. Thanks a lot to the lineageos team for all hard work!

New comment by kristov in "Mark Zuckerberg’s new goal is creating artificial general intelligence"

kristov — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 22:09:33 +0000

That's a really great point. General Artificial Intelligence doesn't look like human intelligence. I guess that's the fear: we have never met another general intelligence before. We may as well be about to meet alien intelligence. One that is not constrained by a moral or social framework, and can copy itself at will.

New comment by kristov in "Generation Junk"

kristov — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 13:43:28 +0000

Assuming old stuff is more durable than new stuff: I wonder why older stuff was made to a higher standard? If people had less disposable income back then, why wasnt there an incentive to make low quality cheaper things?

One possible reason is that it's technically difficult to build something that is just strong enough. In the past they were unable predict the failure moment to an accurate degree, so they over engineered everything.

New comment by kristov in "New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics"

kristov — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 18:49:48 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by kristov in "New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics"

kristov — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 11:50:33 +0000

I wonder: does this theory explain any currently unexplained phenomenon? It may be testable, but that doesn't guarantee it to be correct. There could be another undescovered theory that also passes these tests. It feels weird to make up a theory, and then make up some tests to validate it, without mentioning the actual problem the theory is trying to resolve. It seems physicists just don't like there being two separate models, one for large things and one for small things, but it could be the universe is just like that, right?

New comment by kristov in "OSS Game Engines are increasing their stars on GitHub due to Unity's missteps"

kristov — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 10:36:02 +0000

I'd say a big part of it (aside from the valid "framework" comments) is that game engines abstract over a large and complex mess related to graphics card APIs on different platforms. That abstraction is of the type that basically forces game engines to be frameworks, as opposed to libraries. If you want your game engine to run games on Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS and the web, the game engine needs to "wrap" the game. Or at least this "wrapping" makes both game engine and the games simpler to write. But as mentioned, it means switching a game between game engines isn't really realistic - you write a unity game.