<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: megaloblasto</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=megaloblasto</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 24 Oct 2026 12:26:38 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=megaloblasto" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Tell HN: I've been paying for a rural Tanzanian's education for 10 years"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is great. Thanks for sharing. I'm always happy to make a donation for education.<p>Weird HN type question. On your site you mention paying $5 for hosting the site but didn't mention that here. We're you able to figure out a free way to host?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:58:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50006621</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50006621</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50006621</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Ask HN: What is still hard to do?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Figuring out what problem to solve is still hard.<p>Also bringing a product to market (a non-software product).<p>Also having good taste and cooking great food come to mind, but they are not really research problems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 19 Sep 2026 18:14:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768864</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768864</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49768864</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In my understanding of the word intuition, it comes from a deep understanding of a concept that allows you to know why certain things happen with a "gut feeling", almost unconsciously. For example, I can intuit where my feet should move while jumping over river rocks, but I can't explain to you how to do it. I can only suggest that you spend a lot of time jumping on river rocks to develop the intuition.<p>I've spent a great deal of time studying llms and NN architectures in general. This allows me to intuit things about them and that intuitive understanding for my comes mainly from visualizations.<p>Are you able to visualize much about llms? I ask because if not, starting by learning to visualize high dimensional complex systems is what I would personally recommend.<p>Check out this video for a really nice visualization into NN architecture <a href="https://youtu.be/QgH9sr7G13Q?si=iTn1FiFsYCZCJKE_" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/QgH9sr7G13Q?si=iTn1FiFsYCZCJKE_</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:27:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538660</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538660</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49538660</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Visualizing large dimensional matrices is a way of starting to develop intuition about llms. If you can't visualize high dimensional spaces, and you haven't studied llms, you're not going to have any intuition about how they work.<p>Depending on your knowledge of math, I recommend starting with linear algebra, building an understanding of the equations and try to visualize more and more complex systems, then study llms to see how you can apply your linear algebra intuition to your understanding of llms.<p>VTK is a great toolkit for visualizing complex systems. 3 blue one brown on YouTube has other visuals that might help you.<p>It takes time but it's possible. Good luck.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:06:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426479</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426479</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49426479</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think provable conclusions and building an intuition are different things to be fair. In my opinion it is entirely possible to build intuition about seemingly impossible to understand topics like infinitesimal areas, infinite limits, function mappings, and high dimensional spaces. For example, 3D spaces are easy to intuit if you can visualize vectors in your head. Some people claim it is impossible to understand dimensions higher than 3 but that's obviously not true because you could assign a color to each vector to visualize the next dimension. You could then assign a width to visualize a 5th dimension, and an arrow shape to signify the next, and so on and so on. That's more of a creative act that can start to build at least a visual understanding in you head of these higher dimension spaces. That's a way to start to intuit about those things.<p>Now with llms we need way more that 6 dimensions so we can start thinking of assigning matrices to each 3d point for example. That allows us to increase the dimension from 3 to 3 + whatever the matrix dimension is.<p>We can visualize the matrices instead of having numbers as having colors for each entry, so they can be a sort of cube with each vowel being a different color.<p>Now you can start to visually intuit about how these massively high dimensional spaces can be formed of these colored matrices that can react to some input training data.<p>That's a start of an idea for intuiting things that might seem impossible to have an intuition about. I think visualization is a great way to start.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:25:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425389</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425389</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425389</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I disagree. It's absolutely possible to develop an intuition about extremely complex mathematical ideas, including llms or high dimensional systems. Learning to build an llm is a great way to start building that intuition.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 14:33:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49420388</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49420388</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49420388</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "All major LLMs are lib-left. Even Grok, half the time"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For what's its worth, any model that uses constitutional AI (like claude) does not use RLHF anymore</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:17:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071764</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071764</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071764</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Terence Tao: Mathematics in the Age of AI [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the thought process that I fail to see many people take (both here and other places). AI is changing many fields, ok what does that look like and how do we adapt? What can we do now that we couldn't before? What skills should I learn to adapt to this changing world? I think this is how we move forward. If you can get past the scary aspects of AI (not talking about datacenters or billionaires, that is a different subject) then you might be able to see how exciting this can be.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 26 Jul 2026 17:13:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060142</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060142</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49060142</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Zero roadkill as Amazon canopy bridges secure 15,000 crossings"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Whoa that's awesome. I didn't know California had one of those. Keeps animals, humans, and cars safe and looks beautiful too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2026 17:12:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049436</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>[flagged]</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:15:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48566442</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48566442</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48566442</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Morningstar values SpaceX at $780B, half its IPO target"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Personally I think the valuation is detached from the company itself. In theory Tesla's valuation is too high, but it doesn't seem to be coming down any time soon. Plus there seems to be ways to manipulate stock prices when you control such a highly valued company, to the extent that the stock price reflects actions taken in the stock market more than the underlying assets and balance sheets.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 18:47:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374465</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374465</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374465</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Harold and George Destroy the World"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I strongly disagree. Just because compression is common in pop music (and perhaps overused in some genres) doesn't mean new music isn't innovative and dynamic. When I listen to music say from 1920 to 1950, it is so often so incredibly lame (not always). It's basic ideas and chord progressions and simple melodies with lyrics that don't say much.<p>Music is a way for people to express themselves and relate about how they see the world. People didn't stop doing that recently. In fact, I'd say people have been emboldened to say even more and push what music really means.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:02:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387485</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387485</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387485</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Exercise has 'similar effect' to therapy, study on depression shows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It sounds like you're saying that low will power leads to depression.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 13:28:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47087800</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47087800</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47087800</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "'Calvin and Hobbes' at 40"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I hope this is a joke. Calvin's dad lying to him wasn't supposed to be idealized.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 15:04:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993294</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993294</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45993294</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Why hasn't there been a new major sports league?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Looks like they missed Major League Cricket (MLC) founded in 2023</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Nov 2025 14:50:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856983</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856983</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45856983</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "How OpenAI uses complex and circular deals to fuel its multibillion-dollar rise"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Everyone loves to compare AI with the dot com bubble. My question is, were there any policies put in place after the dot com bubble to mitigate a similar crash? Or did we learn nothing?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2025 15:16:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45772995</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45772995</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45772995</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "The Rapper 50 Cent, Adjusted for Inflation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>50 cent's intrinsic value doesn't decrease over time so to maintain that value, his name must go up.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Oct 2025 15:25:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45628093</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45628093</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45628093</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How is thinking that a company might be doing PR work in a hacker news tread a conspiracy theory?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:16:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45503335</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45503335</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45503335</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "When private practices merge with hospital systems, costs go up"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It takes the great minds at yale to figure these things out</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2025 23:29:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468980</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468980</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468980</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by megaloblasto in "Thoughts on Mechanical Keyboards and the ZSA Moonlander"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Keebio LM is really nice. I've had one for about 3 months now and it's been great <a href="https://keeb.io/products/iris-lm-keyboard" rel="nofollow">https://keeb.io/products/iris-lm-keyboard</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Sep 2025 04:44:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45421969</link><dc:creator>megaloblasto</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45421969</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45421969</guid></item></channel></rss>