Hacker News: nonfamous

New comment by nonfamous in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

nonfamous — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:56:48 +0000

Err… right here in TFA?

>> The first requirement is that the computer program has a body (either physical or virtual) and sense organs

LLMs may be chameleons, but, to steal an excellent quote, if you can’t tell does it really matter.

My personal take on this is that consciousness is a thing induced, not a thing evoked. If it generates a response on the observer as a conscious thing would it is, by my definition, conscious.

New comment by nonfamous in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

nonfamous — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:34:46 +0000

This entire essay basically boils down to one simple contention: LLMs can’t be conscious because only humans can be conscious and LLMs are not human.

What an unimaginative argument: essentially ruling out the possibility of the title by definition. And the author fails to touch on the really interesting question posed by the article’s title: what if human consciousness is more like the working of LLMs than we think?

New comment by nonfamous in "EV Stupidity Checklist"

nonfamous — Fri, 29 May 2026 23:30:32 +0000

Cameras are not a suitable replacement for rear-vision mirrors for the same reason that screens are not a suitable replacement. It’s even addressed in TFA: focal length.

>>> But more importantly, current screen technology requires the driver to focus on the surface of the screen itself, which is mere feet away from their eyes. This is a large change in focal distance from looking at the road ahead.

If you’re over the age of 40 or so, it takes time, a few hundred milliseconds at least, to refocus your gaze distance. A screen is near. When driving, you’re looking far. A mirror is something to glance at.

I test-drove a Polestar with a screen for a rear-vision mirror (and no actual rear window) and it was completely undrivable for me. It takes longer for my eyes to refocus on the near distance than I feel comfortable removing my gaze from the road ahead. I turned around after 10 minutes and returned it to the lot.

New comment by nonfamous in "GitHub bans security researcher who posted zero-day Windows exploits"

nonfamous — Fri, 29 May 2026 03:21:54 +0000

OTOH, I learned a hell of a lot about microprocessor internals by using POKE.

New comment by nonfamous in "The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100"

nonfamous — Sun, 24 May 2026 22:08:24 +0000

>> Prices will increase a lot.

Citation needed. Very little of what we buy today as a consumer are commodities whose price is determined primarily by the cost of production — and even then labor costs are rarely the most significant cost.

Most things we buy are priced according to what the consumer is willing to pay for it, and the balance sheet of the companies that sell most of the things we buy show there’s a lot of wiggle room there.

New comment by nonfamous in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

nonfamous — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:25:01 +0000

That “might” is rather load-bearing for something you are literally staking your future on, though.

Google accused of pushing 'free for life' G Suite users onto paid plans

nonfamous — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:37:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/applications/2026/05/19/google-accused-of-pushing-free-for-life-g-suite-users-onto-paid-plans/5242567

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215256

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by nonfamous in "Apparently Google hates us now"

nonfamous — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:24:48 +0000

This is what I do, but it comes with its own set of problems, the most significant of which is deliverability. Some businesses can’t deliver mail to my custom domain at all (a fact I can only discover by trial and error). Some can deliver, but the forwarding to @gmail fails silently — Google just eats the mail without so much as a bounce, let alone dropping it into a spam folder.

It’s the best option we have, but it’s no solution to the crapshoot that is email today.

New comment by nonfamous in "Points are a weird and inconsistent unit of measure"

nonfamous — Sun, 17 May 2026 03:40:19 +0000

>> That is 2 sigfigs too many

Don’t take up baking then, where the difference between 175 mLs of water and 200 mLs of water can be the difference between unworkable dough and the perfect pie crust.

New comment by nonfamous in ""Not Medically Necessary": Helping America's Health Insurers Deny Coverage"

nonfamous — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:52:29 +0000

Sources do not support claim.

New comment by nonfamous in "Space Cadet Pinball on Linux"

nonfamous — Mon, 11 May 2026 00:11:33 +0000

This is all correct. To add some additional colour, the “slap save” is a form of tilting a beginner player can learn easily. If the ball is coming almost down the middle (but not exactly so), slap the flipper button of the closest flipper when the ball gets close. Slap it quickly with your flat hand. Slap it HARD.

The sharp impulse won’t trigger the tilt mechanism, but it may displace the playfield just enough for the flipper to touch the ball when it otherwise wouldn’t. If all goes well the ball will deflect to the other (lowered) flipper, bounce off it, and allow you to continue play in front of your amazed friends.

New comment by nonfamous in "California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy"

nonfamous — Wed, 06 May 2026 08:58:12 +0000

There’s not a lot of overlap between prime citrus and prime olive farmland.

New comment by nonfamous in "California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy"

nonfamous — Wed, 06 May 2026 08:56:32 +0000

Ever wondered why there are few merlot vineyards in Napa these days? Dozens of vineyards are uprooted and replanted each year in that tiny valley alone in response to market demand.

New comment by nonfamous in "GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing"

nonfamous — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:52:25 +0000

And this, right here, is why none of us can have nice, cheap things.

Bohrdom (Game by Cole Allen)

nonfamous — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:11:54 +0000

Article URL: https://store.steampowered.com/app/945530/Bohrdom/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921136

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by nonfamous in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

nonfamous — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:09:05 +0000

I'd be interested to learn where those words exist in Cursor's context. My assumption was that it was part of the Cursor agent harness, but it's just as likely it was in the user instructions.

The new hosted agents in Foundry Agent Service

nonfamous — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:38:51 +0000

Article URL: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/foundry/introducing-the-new-hosted-agents-in-foundry-agent-service-secure-scalable-compute-built-for-agents/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47873474

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by nonfamous in "How long-distance couples use digital games to facilitate intimacy (2025)"

nonfamous — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 03:19:30 +0000

My husband and I play Wingspan together when I’m traveling for work. He likes board games in general, so it’s something familiar for both of us. And Wingspan is complex enough to reward skill, but also random enough that the outcome isn’t guaranteed when players are of different levels.

New comment by nonfamous in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

nonfamous — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 03:16:33 +0000

How would an architecture with a highly-optimized hardware implementation of EML compare with a traditional math coprocessor?

New comment by nonfamous in "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"

nonfamous — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:10:13 +0000

As pointed out in the sibling thread, this isn’t DDG’s fault. Reddit has an exclusive agreement with Google [1] to index Reddit content, and other web search sites are blocked.

[1] https://redditinc.com/news/reddit-and-google-expand-partners...