Hacker News: porphyra

New comment by porphyra in "Cursor is now a part of SpaceX"

porphyra — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:35:52 +0000

Hopefully they can unify the harnesses now. Weird how there's both grok build and cursor-agent at the same time.

New comment by porphyra in "Qwen 3.8 27B"

porphyra — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:02:42 +0000

> llama server where the model is, which context size to use, what to use for the K/V cache quant, that it should do MTP, tune some MTP parameters, and that's kinda it.

isn't that the hard part? You know the ballpark ideal values for these many parameters since you're a knowledgeable expert but the vast majority of people are just like "I want AI" and have no idea what all the jargon even means.

New comment by porphyra in "Grok 4.6"

porphyra — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 23:42:28 +0000

The alternative is Claude-style "safeguards" aka censorship, which:

1. doesn't eliminate the possibility of a jailbreak anyway

2. frequently has false positives, triggering on innocuous requests, which is just really annoying

Not saying that we can't (or shouldn't) do better than Grok, but I really don't know what the best solution is here...

New comment by porphyra in "Compression is prediction"

porphyra — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:11:54 +0000

How does that invalidate the "compression is prediction"? If the future data is different and you failed to generalize, then the failure to predict means you got worse at compressing and have to spend more bits storing the new information. Conversely, if the future data is the same as that you've seen previously, you could predict it very well, and compress better as a result.

New comment by porphyra in "Waymo in Dallas"

porphyra — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:14:17 +0000

Weather can be arbitrarily extreme, but:

1. My whole house AC only consumes 3 kW when the outside is really hot, like 36 degrees C, and I seriously doubt that car AC can consume 5 or 6 kW

2. With hotter weather, the density of air also decreases and air resistance is reduced. This partially offsets the need for extra cooling (of both the occupants and the battery), so range is only perhaps impacted by 5-10%.

New comment by porphyra in "Waymo in Dallas"

porphyra — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 23:11:04 +0000

Possible, but EVs tend to be more efficient in city driving than highway driving, thanks to regenerative braking and the fact that the dominant form of energy loss, air resistance, scales quadratically with speed.

New comment by porphyra in "Waymo in Dallas"

porphyra — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 21:57:38 +0000

The Waymo I-Pace is much less efficient than the regular roadgoing I-Pace. One X user posted a pic of the dashboard of a Waymo with 111,000 miles on the odometer, and it averaged 1.0 kWh per mile [1][2]. This is about 2.5x worse than the EPA rating of a normal Jaguar I-Pace. Probably the difference is because the Waymo has tons of compute and the sensors have a surprisingly large impact on aerodynamic efficiency. I was being generous to the Waymo in my original comment. If we compare the actual rating of the Cybercab at 165 Wh per mile, it would be 6x as efficient.

Also, whereas the stock Jaguar I-Pace was $70k, the Waymo one with all its sensors and compute have estimates ranging from $150k to $200k. In a comment made in late 2024, Waymo CEO Dmitri Dolgov mentions that the sensors and compute themselves cost $100k [3].

> The equipment on Waymo’s fifth-generation robot taxis — electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles — costs as much as $100,000, Dmitri Dolgov, Waymo’s co-chief executive, said on a podcast in February.

That is the same generation as the current I-Pace fleet that makes up the majority of Waymos.

[1] https://eletric-vehicles.com/waymo/waymos-retrofitted-robota...

[2] https://x.com/niccruzpatane/status/2073967445509882286?s=20

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/technology/waymo-expansio...

New comment by porphyra in "Waymo in Dallas"

porphyra — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 20:47:05 +0000

the metro areas where it gets rolled out are all blue regardless of state

New comment by porphyra in "Waymo in Dallas"

porphyra — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 20:23:43 +0000

Tesla Cybercab has about three or four times the efficiency and like a fifth of the price by having smaller, two person vehicles. Indeed, the vast majority of trips are taken by single people and it's ridiculous to have a giant machine for them. It would also be okay to have a handful of larger, Model Y-sized vehicles for the multi-person trips.

To actually answer your question: Part of the reason why the Waymo cars are so big is because they got a deal on buying all the Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, which checked several boxes:

* Electric vehicles and hybrids are preferable for self driving cars as they have robust electrical power for the sensors and compute

* Larger minivans or SUVs are preferable for both development work and early scaling up where you can't afford to have both smaller and larger vehicles

* The I-Pace wasn't selling well so they managed to snag the whole production batch

* Though Jaguar isn't exactly known for their great reliability and electrical systems, the I-Pace, manufactured by Magna Steyr, is actually decent

The first two reasons are why the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, the only hybrid minivan sold in the US, was so popular for early self driving car efforts (including with Waymo) in the 2010s.

That said, Waymo's Ojai is somewhat more space efficient than the older I-Pace. They also have the Ioniq 5 coming.

New comment by porphyra in "LLMs reward expertise"

porphyra — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:12:24 +0000

Yup I linked that in my other comment but copy-pasted here for everyone's convenience:

The counterexample of the Dinitz-Garg-Goemans conjecture was basically just "keep going" and finally "enough of partial results. now finish with a complete unconditional counterexample"

https://x.com/DmitryRybin1/status/2079904005652893709

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a60b2eb-0b64-83ee-9c76-7931ca1de0...

New comment by porphyra in "LLMs reward expertise"

porphyra — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:42:48 +0000

The counterexample of the Dinitz-Garg-Goemans conjecture was basically just "keep going" and finally "enough of partial results. now finish with a complete unconditional counterexample" lol

https://x.com/DmitryRybin1/status/2079904005652893709

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a60b2eb-0b64-83ee-9c76-7931ca1de0...

New comment by porphyra in "How Olinia Turns Mexico's EV Ambition into Reality"

porphyra — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:50:40 +0000

The article talks a lot about how China makes most of the electric cars and Mexico wants to "capture a piece of the action", but the Olinia has substantial amounts of its engineering and parts from China [1]. And instead of learning from a nice actual roadgoing car, they based it on a golf cart-like mini vehicle from a little-known Chinese motorcycle manufacturer.

[1] https://elceo.com/investigaciones-especiales/olinia-el-vincu...

Jacobian Conjecture for Baby

porphyra — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:25:12 +0000

Article URL: https://muchmirul.github.io/jacobian-conjecture/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49011210

Points: 101

# Comments: 22

New comment by porphyra in "Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge"

porphyra — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 23:07:14 +0000

Foreign media like the BBC were actually caught applying a yellow filter to footage of China [1] [2] so maybe they trained on that lol

[1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202102/1215710.shtml

[2] https://xcancel.com/thouse_opinions/status/13616465112479539...

New comment by porphyra in "Codex Micro"

porphyra — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:14:09 +0000

Thanks. I like low profile mechanical keyboards in theory but I guess I'll just stick to the Keychrons and Lofrees.

New comment by porphyra in "Codex Micro"

porphyra — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:09:48 +0000

Many ISPs block .cc domains. Especially when .co.cc was a free domain name thing and tons of malware would use it.

New comment by porphyra in "Codex Micro"

porphyra — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:05:00 +0000

Teenage Engineering makes a lot of products that are basically just a grid of buttons and knobs. It's an obvious comparison to make, even if you disagree on the style/soul etc. Like the OP-1 is also a rectangle of buttons, and even the style of the keycap itself can draw some comparisons (it is a rounded square with a circle in it and an abstract symbol on it): https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1

New comment by porphyra in "Codex Micro"

porphyra — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:58:18 +0000

You could probably easily get Codex (CLI) to vibe code Linux support tbh. It's probably just a regular USB HID device. The main problem is that right now it only works with the GUI Codex App which doesn't have official Linux support.

New comment by porphyra in "Codex Micro"

porphyra — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:56:45 +0000

What's wrong with it? I believe you but I'm just curious... since on paper it just uses Gateron low profile switches which seems reasonable.

New comment by porphyra in "SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth"

porphyra — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:12:53 +0000

Regarding the going "up and down", Starlink satellites orbit at about 500 km above the Earth's surface compared to the Earth's radius of 6400 km. For longer distances it will still be worthwhile. Right now, you're right that we are limited by satellite laser interconnect capacity though.