Hacker News: pingou

New comment by pingou in "AlphaEvolve: Gemini-powered coding agent scaling impact across fields"

pingou — Thu, 07 May 2026 16:00:56 +0000

AI improving itself (or at least the architecture it runs on), the singularity is near as they say.

Do we have other examples of AI being used to improve the LLMs, apart for the creation of synthetic data and the testing of the models?

New comment by pingou in "Let's talk about LLMs"

pingou — Mon, 04 May 2026 21:15:54 +0000

I have indeed missed the arguments that are so powerful that they dismantles my thesis.

Would there even be a debate in the tech community if such unassailable arguments existed? The author is entirely entitled to his opinion, just as I am allowed to disagree with him (not sure why I am also downvoted). The good thing is, if I'm right, we will see it in less than 10 years.

New comment by pingou in "Let's talk about LLMs"

pingou — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:43:36 +0000

Not sure why you are downvoted but I agree. Additionally, perhaps LLMs are just like another higher programming language as the author said, and they still need someone to steer them.

I'm sure it was very difficult to program in machine code, but if now (or soon) anyone can just write software using a LLM without any sort of learning it changes everything. LLMs can plan and create something usable from simple instructions or ideas, and they will only get better.

I think LLMs will be (and already are) useful for many more things than programming anyway.

New comment by pingou in "The AI supply crunch is here"

pingou — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:34:52 +0000

https://archive.ph/yKBHA

The AI supply crunch is here

pingou — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:34:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/04/30/the-ai-supply-crunch-is-here

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971827

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

New comment by pingou in "Claude Code refuses requests or charges extra if your commits mention "OpenClaw""

pingou — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:46:17 +0000

This is assuming there will be no competition. But why wouldn't there be? Especially since you can use open source models, which are not too far from frontier models (from now).

New comment by pingou in "This 'miracle tree' can filter more than 98% of microplastics from tap water"

pingou — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:56:54 +0000

"One moringa seed can treat about 10 liters of water, the scientists found"

What does it mean? You have the discard the seed after 10 liters? If yes, sorry to be so negative but it seems completely useless.

Edit: a tree can produce up to 25 000 seeds per year, so perhaps it isn't that bad.

New comment by pingou in "Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?"

pingou — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:04:09 +0000

You can still buy Oligosol Lithium in Europe.

New comment by pingou in "Google to invest up to $40B in Anthropic in cash and compute"

pingou — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:18:06 +0000

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47894129

New comment by pingou in "AI run store in SF can't stop ordering candies and paying women less."

pingou — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:36:20 +0000

"So, what about that hourly wage discrepancy?" Well, I don't know, since it's in your title, it seems you asked the AI and their reply was that the male employee had more experience. Obviously that answer didn't satisfy you, did you at least verify that it was true, if yes, why not say it?

But I suppose people would click less if the title was "AI Store Manager Paying Employees less depending on their experience, Can't Stop Ordering Candles".

Could it be that the AI is biased and sexist? Absolutely, but it seems weird to make vague accusations without verifying anything.

New comment by pingou in "98% of all recent environmental claims can be categorized as "greenwashing""

pingou — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:48:18 +0000

I wouldn't qualify "These commitments appear to rely on offsetting carbon emissions rather than decarbonizing directly" as greenwashing, although it is indeed a bit misleading.

New comment by pingou in "How a subsea cable is repaired (2021)"

pingou — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:23:42 +0000

"In 1858, when the first submarine cable was installed, sending a message across the Atlantic took nearly 18 hours."

If anyone is curious as to why it took so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable

TLDR: "smearing" of the signal (capacitance), no underwater amplifiers, very faint signal at the end.

New comment by pingou in "IEA: Solar overtakes all energy sources in a major global first"

pingou — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:27:16 +0000

"Overall, renewables and nuclear together met nearly 60% of the growth in energy demand".

That's not enough. It's obvious this is going in the right direction but adoption is still too slow, considering how cheap renewables are now (and will be).

New comment by pingou in "Claude Opus wrote a Chrome exploit for $2,283"

pingou — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:07:28 +0000

I absolutely assume that project owners will use LLM tools to protect themselves, but it seems like it whoever spends more will find more security issues. And potentially a malicious actor could decide to spend more tokens on one specific part of the program, while the owner has to protect everything. I think with open source the idea is that there are more eyes looking at the potential problems, and more of those eyes are benevolent, but LLM change that as it's not about the number of people but whoever is ready to spend the most resources.

New comment by pingou in "Claude Opus wrote a Chrome exploit for $2,283"

pingou — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:03:42 +0000

Aren't we in agreement then? Taking your lock analogy again, people don't put locks on their bikes because they protect them completely, but because they slow down someone who wants to steal them. Given enough resources everything will be cracked, it doesn't mean that making it harder is useless. People cracking games in the 90's may not have had the source code but they had the machine code and knew what to look for and where.

New comment by pingou in "Claude Opus wrote a Chrome exploit for $2,283"

pingou — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 09:27:04 +0000

I know most people here hate that, but I think this makes a much stronger case for security by obscurity (not releasing the source code) in these changing times.

Of course security by obscurity by itself is by no mean sufficient.

New comment by pingou in "The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs"

pingou — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:39:53 +0000

What does it mean to be doing AI gigs? Because AI seems really different than drop shipping, online poker, crypto, and NFTs.

New comment by pingou in "Claude Opus 4.7"

pingou — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 06:38:13 +0000

Of course just having the hash of the file wouldn't work, they would have to do something more complicated, a kind of perceptual hash. It's not easy, but I think it is doable.

But then I suspect lots of parts in a closed source project are similar to open source code, so you can't just refuse to analyze any code that contains open source parts, and an attacker could put a few open source files into "fake" closed source code, and presumably the llm would not flag them because the ratio open/closed source code is good. But that would raise the costs for attackers.

New comment by pingou in "Claude Opus 4.7"

pingou — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:09:48 +0000

Or they could check if the source is open source and available on the internet, and if yes refuse to analyse it if the person who request the analysis isn't affiliated to the project.

That will still leave closed source software vulnerable, but I suspect it is somewhat rare for hackers to have the source of the thing they are targeting, when it is closed source.

New comment by pingou in "Study: EVs with V2H cut household electricity costs and need for home batteries"

pingou — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:18:31 +0000

But that would accelerate the vehicle's depreciation, which is costly. I suspect it would make more financial sense to have a home battery, they should have compared the prices of home batteries vs car batteries. And for the national grid effects, just charging your vehicle when electricity prices are the lowest would have mostly the same effect but would be a lot simpler.