Hacker News: rob74

New comment by rob74 in "When Genius Fails: The Intellectual Arrogance of the AI Labs"

rob74 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:52:57 +0000

I mean, in the meantime, the US president is weighing in on technical design decisions of aircraft carriers, and he has neither a PhD nor a Nobel Prize, so...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/trump-aircra...

New comment by rob74 in "Every Fucking Website (2020)"

rob74 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:25:17 +0000

(2019) *

* according to the copyright notice, although, going by the mention of Covid, it could also be 2020?

New comment by rob74 in "GLM-5.3: Frontier coding with emergent cyber capabilities"

rob74 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:52:38 +0000

I'm not that up to date with the latest AI developments, but I noticed that this article seems to use "Cyber Capabilities" as a shorthand for the model's ability at cybersecurity tasks? Is that now an established expression, same as "crypto" now refers to cryptocurrencies rather that cryptography? Because "cybernetics" actually means something different (yeah, old man yelling at clouds, I know)...

New comment by rob74 in "2026 Eclipse Webcams"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:40:44 +0000

Even more specifically, it will start off over Greenland, continue over western Iceland and then finish with the sunset in northeastern Spain and the Balearic Islands.

New comment by rob74 in "Newfoundland has a hard bread shortage, but why do they eat it?"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:12:18 +0000

The article gives an interesting overview of the history of hard bread, but doesn't mention how Newfoundlanders eat it today. In a fish soup? With tea? Pure? Or all of the above?

New comment by rob74 in "DARPA heavy lift challenge ends with winner at a 3.84:1 payload to weight ratio"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:41:21 +0000

"Close, but only half the cigar"

New comment by rob74 in "The lifesaving secret hidden inside a horseshoe crab's blue blood"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:35:20 +0000

Well, only 83% non-destructive. According to the video (but omitted from the transcript for some reason) "one in every six crabs dies in the process".

New comment by rob74 in "DARPA heavy lift challenge ends with winner at a 3.84:1 payload to weight ratio"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:33:22 +0000

Winning $ 1.25 million is great - but I wonder how they feel about not getting the full $ 2.5 million prize because they missed the 4:1 target by 4% ?

New comment by rob74 in "Grok Bot"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:07:13 +0000

> I've used less tokens in the last 5 years prior to this month than I have this month.

So using a bot is almost like having an employee, but instead of a fixed salary, or even an hourly rate, they will just invoice you for whatever they think is necessary to do the tasks you give them? And agents can be very creative when coming up with ways to spend tokens...

New comment by rob74 in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:28:39 +0000

> People who prefer not to enter the recognition zone will have alternative routes available and images of anyone not on the authorised database will be deleted immediately and permanently.

So, massive invasion of privacy, but will only catch stupid criminals (and unsuspecting people who happen to have a strong resemblance with a criminal in the database?).

New comment by rob74 in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:25:44 +0000

"Wrong opinions" as in death threats and similar light-hearted stuff?

New comment by rob74 in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

rob74 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 06:24:03 +0000

Juvenile science fiction?! He wrote 1984 in 1948 and died two years later at age 46. So I would say that was his most mature work...

New comment by rob74 in "Faster floating point math with Rust's new API"

rob74 — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:03:05 +0000

Real numbers include rational numbers (numbers which can be represented as a fraction of two integers) and irrational numbers (numbers that can't be represented as a fraction - the most famous one is probably π). Since irrational numbers have an infinite number of decimal places, they obviously can't be stored as a floating point value and also can't be written down exactly, no matter how many decimal places you use. "Arbitrary precision" constants might get you closer, but yes, you will never be able to store a "true" irrational number in a computer.

New comment by rob74 in "Faster floating point math with Rust's new API"

rob74 — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:30:06 +0000

I'm not an expert on floating point math, but the "Does adding a small number do nothing?" example caught my eye, because the numbers used are constants, which are arbitrary precision in some languages (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57511935/what-is-the-pur...). For instance, Go answers the question with false (but still prints out "1e+16" when you try to print 1e16 + 1): https://go.dev/play/p/mSAktWpCRJA

New comment by rob74 in "50k Boat Names"

rob74 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:38:16 +0000

...although the French spell it with an extra "r". And they had more ships that were named Entreprenant(e) (Enterprising) than Entreprise...

New comment by rob74 in "The Future Is for Everyone – The Path to a Positive AI Future"

rob74 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:06:59 +0000

My overarching thought after reading as much as I could stand of this is: "Wow, sure sounds like Zuck really drank his own Kool-Aid - or if he didn't, at least he wants us all to believe that he did!". The question is not whether "superintelligence" will be accomplished, the question is only how fast. I mean, LLMs are nice, but the jury's still out on whether they alone will be enough for "superintelligence"...

> I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity's relevance would rush to build that future.

Because they can make a sh*tload of money by doing it (or at least they hope they can)?

New comment by rob74 in "50k Boat Names"

rob74 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:12:32 +0000

Sure, but if you click on the boat called "Freedom", it shows you the data of one specific boat, not "there are X boats with this name". So I still think it's inconsistent...

New comment by rob74 in "50k Boat Names"

rob74 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:59:59 +0000

I can't help but think this article could have used some more polishing. The stats say that there are 101 boats named "Freedom", but if you enter "Freedom" in the search, it shows 48 boats with names including "Freedom", of which however only one is called just "Freedom". That doesn't really add up?!

Also, clicking "Movie/TV" yields a paltry 22 boats, which I think is far too few. E.g. the boat called "USS Enterprise" isn't included. Ok, it could be named after the 1958 aircraft carrier, but I would say the odds are far greater that it was named after the Starfleet ships. Then again, I can understand why "Starlight Express" is included under "Music", but why also all other boats with names containing the word "Starlight"?!

New comment by rob74 in "50k Boat Names"

rob74 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:43:43 +0000

Probably because the article only uses data from the US, so it would be a bit strange if it included the name of a British AUV. Or are you wondering why no one in the US liked that story enough to name their own boat Boaty McBoatface? There is a Boaty Boat, so that's something...

New comment by rob74 in "Nearest Pint"

rob74 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 11:01:13 +0000

> UK Pub Density by Parliamentary Constituency

Technically, this is only the pub density in Great Britain - the UK is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", and Northern Ireland is not covered, so...