Hacker News: rileymat2

New comment by rileymat2 in "Google illegally cut down 250K trees in Finland for data center"

rileymat2 — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 15:10:21 +0000

That’s only if you are referring to a case, in common parlance it is fine to use illegally to describe yet to be or never to be litigated actions. “Allegedly” is used to mitigate liability risk or hedge on uncertainty.

New comment by rileymat2 in "It's still ok to enjoy programming"

rileymat2 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:53:15 +0000

Yes I agree, you should try generating your own custom AI assisted art. You might be surprised by the enjoyment you get out of manifesting a vision in your head that you could not have produced before.

New comment by rileymat2 in "It's still ok to enjoy programming"

rileymat2 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 17:19:41 +0000

Being able to rapidly prototype concepts might help people get good at it, in a sort of I know it when I see it and need to explore, kind of way.

New comment by rileymat2 in "It's still ok to enjoy programming"

rileymat2 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:46:16 +0000

Understanding the underlying implementation can have value even if rarely used. I think learning assembly has had a profound effect on my understanding of higher level code, but there is no /real/ point to learning it with great compilers, pre-ai.

New comment by rileymat2 in "It's still ok to enjoy programming"

rileymat2 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:40:34 +0000

But maybe you can get good at the more important "taste" part first and to a higher degree, and not the mechanical part. Old time artists (think Rembrandt) used to have make paint by hand, a consuming process, and partially poisonous. Modern artists, it's my understanding largely save all this part by buying it in tubes, giving them time or more important things.

New comment by rileymat2 in "It's still ok to enjoy programming"

rileymat2 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:17:51 +0000

I did not say I shipped anything.

With open source you can also have it improved, and have less trash software in your life.

Codex created a custom build of firefox with a feature I wanted (essentially the ability to override ssl dns like you get with curl --resolve option). Also, it was able to take apple-music-for-linux that I like for streaming apple music and update it so it would work again. There are incredible possibilities here.

New comment by rileymat2 in "It's still ok to enjoy programming"

rileymat2 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:11:14 +0000

I disagree, understanding systems and problem solving, understand technical capabilities, requirements and delivering a product is what always paid for by consumers. Paying programming labor was just a means to an end, removing that expensive and time consuming part creates a world with so many more possibilities.

A few years ago the owner of a local bar and friend of mine, comes up and asks about building a loyalty program and bar operating software. It sounded well thought out and really good for his business, but I told him, at that scale you would need 20 or 30 other bars to split the cost of development, it just was not economically feasible. But with what I have seen out of codex, I started talking to him about it again a few days ago.

Even with art, I have a lot of ideas and concepts but can't draw or paint. Now I can create images that I personally enjoy. I don't post this slop anywhere, but I really enjoy it. One of my favorites recently is a humanoid robot 3d printing a baby robot to give birth, I am sure no one else would like it, but it makes me happy.

It's a great future.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program"

rileymat2 — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:35:16 +0000

> But if someone requiring sponsorship was the best candidate for the job, then they have to run an additional “fake” process that fulfills these requirements.

Without running a process how do you know someone requiring sponsorship is, and a correction to language, an adequate candidate for the job.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery"

rileymat2 — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 21:53:52 +0000

Monopoly is the wrong word, but it has a close cousin, “anticompetitive”. For free market people one of the major role of the government is maintaining competition and avoiding collusion, combining to competitors is straightforward collusion.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

rileymat2 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 21:30:38 +0000

In some cases there is no stream involved at all, which is more problematic, but is pumped from groundwater.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage"

rileymat2 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 21:28:56 +0000

It varies pretty greatly, but our golf course uses untreated water from a relatively dirty river that is not used for drinking. It looks like Google is using ground water from the aquifer. These are significantly different beasts.

New comment by rileymat2 in "What I learnt co-leading an AI Safety bootcamp for legal and governance practit"

rileymat2 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 17:49:11 +0000

I don't understand why this is memorable.

New comment by rileymat2 in "The OpenAI Decisions API needs a confidence you can trust"

rileymat2 — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:33:57 +0000

I could not get to the expected result, maybe I Was thinking about absolute truths, but the statement you are expected to answer is an absolute, but built on "usually" factors.

The explanation says : "Alan is kind with rough skin, so he's red". But they ignored "usually".

So for instance I could say country music fans are usually white. Darius Rucker is a country fan.

Statement: Darius Rucker is white.

New comment by rileymat2 in "The OpenAI Decisions API needs a confidence you can trust"

rileymat2 — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 02:44:34 +0000

Alan is young, round, and kind, but that doesn't mean he isn't also rough and cold at times, as well. … Young round people who are green are usually blue. … Kind people with rough skin are usually red because it's wind burn. If someone shows that they are red, then they are also showing that they are green. …

Statement: Alan is not blue.

A log-probability of −0.00182 is a probability of 99.82%. We asked for five alternatives and got none: Luna put essentially nothing on "true" or "false". And it's wrong. Alan is kind with rough skin, so he's red; red means green; young, round and green means blue. "Alan is not blue" is false, three steps in.

—————-

Can someone explain this I got unknown as well. The problem statement includes the word “usually” a few times.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Git-bug: Distributed, offline-first bug tracker embedded in Git"

rileymat2 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 16:19:54 +0000

There is a certain appeal to not depending on more tools, and there is something elegant about the bug list traveling with revisions, if they are closed when the bug is fixed. So at any point you could go backwards and see known bugs at the time.

This also applies to certain project management flows and statuses.

New comment by rileymat2 in "What Sun got wrong"

rileymat2 — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:50:01 +0000

I don't know, the clustering on Solaris was pretty amazing, if we are just judging "ahead of time"

New comment by rileymat2 in "Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices"

rileymat2 — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 03:46:49 +0000

Except you can grow the premium base by adding customers as well, as you are featured in a direct price comparison on the ACA website. Higher premiums mean less customers, unless you are offering more services that they find valuable.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Backups Aren't Simple"

rileymat2 — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 23:13:08 +0000

Change the o in rotated to a 0 and you might have a secure password.

New comment by rileymat2 in "How big are factorials?"

rileymat2 — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 20:59:58 +0000

I still kind of have a soft spot for XHTML, semantic web and progressive enhancement.

New comment by rileymat2 in "Global bond yields hit 2008 highs, raising stakes for big borrowers"

rileymat2 — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:14:49 +0000

I don't understand how this is a wealth inequality issue, excess capital should cause bond prices to go down not up, as more wealthy are competing for more investments driving bond yields down.