Hacker News: m_w_

New comment by m_w_ in "Claude Fable 5"

m_w_ — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:22:24 +0000

I think Mythos is rumored to be ~10T parameters, so in this case I think the answer is yes, although I'm sure MoE, looped models, etc play a role in the improvements as well.

New comment by m_w_ in "Just One Example?"

m_w_ — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:03:03 +0000

> AlphaEvolve’s procedure found an algorithm to multiply 4x4 complex-valued matrices using 48 scalar multiplications, improving upon Strassen’s 1969 algorithm that was previously known as the best in this setting. This finding demonstrates a significant advance over our previous work, AlphaTensor, which specialized in matrix multiplication algorithms, and for 4x4 matrices, only found improvements for binary arithmetic.

> And in 20% of cases, AlphaEvolve improved the previously best known solutions, making progress on the corresponding open problems.

https://deepmind.google/blog/alphaevolve-a-gemini-powered-co...

New comment by m_w_ in "Humans Not Invited 11111101010"

m_w_ — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:39:56 +0000

Very cool concept, although I think the leaderboard is more about network latency than anything else...

New comment by m_w_ in "A tiny microphone and site to track birds outside your window"

m_w_ — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:58:41 +0000

Although I'm anti AI-image-gen (wouldn't there be CC0 images of these species?) this is really quite a charming little project.

I feel like I don't hear many bird calls in the city where I live, but maybe I'll have to set one up for myself to find out!

New comment by m_w_ in "The real cost of owning a home"

m_w_ — Tue, 26 May 2026 16:58:54 +0000

Not all the inputs, but Ben Felix’s company (makes videos on this topic) has a rent vs buy calculator, mainly focused on investing the cost difference for mortgage vs renting: https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/rent-vs-buy

New comment by m_w_ in "GitHub Is Down"

m_w_ — Mon, 04 May 2026 16:46:45 +0000

This is really getting ridiculous - although people sometimes dismiss the "missing" status page because it includes copilot, it's worth noting that pull requests (95.5%) are even lower availability than copilot (96.4%).

How am I expected to comment "LGTM" if I can't even get to the PR?

New comment by m_w_ in "FDA approves first gene therapy for treatment of genetic hearing loss"

m_w_ — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:22:09 +0000

Although this affects a small number of people / kids per year - this is a great development. There's a related article^ which had a very moving account from a mom whose son has received this treatment.

^: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/23/nx-s1-5795526/deafness-gene-t...

New comment by m_w_ in "The Palantir's Stasi Protocols"

m_w_ — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:38:29 +0000

Almost refreshing to see some good old-fashioned schizoposting, which usually doesn’t end up on HN.

New comment by m_w_ in "Claude Design"

m_w_ — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:50:21 +0000

Really interesting response to Google's Stitch - and seemingly a better alternative given some of the features shown in the video. If everything actually works at least close to how it's advertised, this'll be useful. I'm sure it's no Dieter Rams, but it wouldn't be a surprise if it's already better than many devs at design work.

New comment by m_w_ in "There's yet another study about how bad AI is for our brains"

m_w_ — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:11:11 +0000

Obviously the discussion here is mostly about writing code. In that domain, I’m always of two minds on this sort of thing. Although I think everyone would agree that material cognitive decline is bad, I also think we have to be precise with what that means.

During university, for an exam in a graduate databases course, I had to manually calculate the number of operations for a query, down to the ones place. We were given an E-R diagram, the schema, and the query. So we had to act as the query planner - build out the B+ tree, check what was most efficient, and do it.

This is by all means a pointless endeavor - no one has had to do this by hand in literally decades. It was also among the hardest cognitive tasks I've ever had to do. After being one of two people to complete the exam in the three allotted hours, I sat outside the lecture hall on a bench for a little while because I though I might faint if I went any further.

I’m beginning to feel the same about writing code by hand. If I can design systems that are useful, performant, and largely maintainable, but the code is written by an LLM, is this harmful? It feels that I spend more time thinking about what problems need to be solved and how best to solve them, instead of writing idiomatic typescript. It’d be hard to convince me that’s a bad thing.

New comment by m_w_ in "C# in Unity 2026: Writing more modern code"

m_w_ — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:07:17 +0000

Some nice tips in here ([field: SerializeField] for example) - but as others note, it's not about modern code, as many of these features have been available for an embarrassingly long time. It's always felt to me that there's some fundamental friction between idiomatic C# and Unity.

I remember, after reading about new features C# 8.0, someone wrote that C# 9 would write all your code for you, and that C# 10 would just mail you a check every month. How the times have changed...

New comment by m_w_ in "Am I German or Autistic?"

m_w_ — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:57:20 +0000

Die tests must be 100% accurate and follow the best known clinical procedures. Humor is not optimal.

New comment by m_w_ in "Ask HN: How do systems (or people) detect when a text is written by an LLM"

m_w_ — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:07:13 +0000

I don’t think there’s a reliable system or API for doing so, unclear that arms race will ever favor the side of the detectors.

As far as how I / other people do it, there are some obvious styles that reek of LLMs, I think it’s chatgpt.

There’s a very common structure of “nice post, the X to Y is real. miscellaneous praise — blah blah blah. Also curious about how you asjkldfljaksd?"

From today:

This comment is almost certainly AI-generated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658796

And I'm suspicious of this one too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660070 - reads just a bit too glazebot-9000 to believe it's written by a person.

New comment by m_w_ in "Drop, formerly Massdrop, ends most collaborations and rebrands under Corsair"

m_w_ — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:43:01 +0000

Unfortunate, but as others point out, quality was on the decline for a while now. That said, I use their iteration of Holy Pandas on every keyboard I can. Wish I had hoarded some when they were still available.

New comment by m_w_ in "Claude Is Down"

m_w_ — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:25:10 +0000

We should at least get a free 10-pull for this interruption.

New comment by m_w_ in "CityofGits is The Next Viral Minecraft. This is amazing"

m_w_ — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:38:16 +0000

> Next Viral Minecraft

???

New comment by m_w_ in "Show HN: I was laid off, so I built a NerdWallet for startup equity liquidity"

m_w_ — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:32:19 +0000

The text on the home page appears LLM-generated (em dashes, is real) which imo will make it harder to build trust. For something that people are sensitive and confused about, a more human disposition is likely to be helpful. Just my two cents.

New comment by m_w_ in "Show HN: fftool – A Terminal UI for FFmpeg – Shows Command Before It Runs"

m_w_ — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:01:34 +0000

Yeah this sort of obvious AI-posting needs to be obliterated, especially in this case where there’s no source code. Could just as easily be malware.

New comment by m_w_ in "GitHub having issues [resolved]"

m_w_ — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:31:17 +0000

Seems like the xkcd [1] for internet infrastructure that was posted earlier [2] should have github somewhere on it, even if just for how often it breaks. Maybe it falls under "whatever microsoft is doing"

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1p204nx/ac... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47230704

New comment by m_w_ in "Show HN: HN Bot Detector - Detects LLM-Generated Comments on Hacker News"

m_w_ — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:12:58 +0000

Needs some work: https://hn-bot-detector.vercel.app/s/DLF-nGLj