Hacker News: sesteel

New comment by sesteel in "OpenAI Researchers Find That AI Is Unable to Solve Most Coding Problems"

sesteel — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 06:46:11 +0000

It has made me stop using Google and StackOverflow. I can look most things up quickly, not rubber duck with other people, and thus I am more efficient. It also it is good at spotting bugs in a function if the APIs are known and the APIs version is something it was trained on. If I need to understand what something is doing, it can help annotate the lines.

I use it to improve my code, but I still cannot get it to do anything that is moderately complex. The paper tracks with what I've experienced.

I do think it will continue to rapidly evolve, but it probably is more of a cognitive aid than a replacement. I try to only use it when I am tight on time. or need a crutch to help me keep going.

New comment by sesteel in "Undergraduate shows that searches within hash tables can be much faster"

sesteel — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 04:42:13 +0000

I cannot tell you the number of times I thought I invented something new and novel only to later find out it already existed. So, while it is true that you can sometimes find paths untraveled, many things related to first principles seem already heavily explored in CS.

New comment by sesteel in "Self-Documenting Code"

sesteel — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 04:09:42 +0000

Looking at this thread, it is a wonder that any PRs make it through review. I started calling these kinds of debates Holographic Problems.

- Spaces vs Tabs

- Self documenting code vs documented code

- Error Codes vs Exceptions

- Monolithic vs Microservices Architectures

- etc.

Context matters and your context should probably drive your decisions, not your personal ideology. In other words, be the real kind of agile; stay flexible and change what needs to be changed as newly found information dictates.

New comment by sesteel in "IBM's new SWE agents for developers"

sesteel — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 21:45:56 +0000

I've taken up a new career as an AI influencer.

New comment by sesteel in "Computer scientists invent an efficient new way to count"

sesteel — Fri, 17 May 2024 21:37:11 +0000

Maybe you'd know, but why would one choose to not sort favoring larger counts and drop the bottom half when full? It may be obvious to others, but I'd be curious.

New comment by sesteel in "The Universe as a Computer"

sesteel — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 13:08:59 +0000

I was taught the universe was a computer in 3 different college courses 25 years ago. Not exactly a revelation.

"According to the best physics, the universe: isnt programmable; doesn't evolve deterministically; isnt described by functions over integers; isn't electronic; doesnt transmit power through programmable operation; isn't abstract; doesnt have causal powers through mere arrangements of parts; .. and so on."

You can't say any of these things because electronic computers exist within the universe, but I get what your point is. That said, there are physicists beginning to assume the universe IS a computer and work forward from that assumption.

New comment by sesteel in "Ask HN: Any felons successfully found IT work post-release?"

sesteel — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 02:59:19 +0000

The problem exist for corporations as well. A teenage girl, who was a former classmate and friend of my daughter, was murdered at work because she turned down a man's advances. She made formal complaints, but the bureaucratic corporate processes made it difficult to protect her or sufficiently separate her from the harasser/murderer. Even if the state is an at-will state, corporate policies and mismanagement often handcuff those involved to rectify situations before they get out of hand.

New comment by sesteel in "80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-office plans"

sesteel — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 23:49:23 +0000

To look and feel important. I worked for a company that moved to a building simply because the CEO wanted the sign to be seen from a major highway. My 20min commute would become 1 hour or more. I left upon hearing that rationale.

New comment by sesteel in "Nvidia reveals new A.I. chip, says costs of running LLMs will drop significantly"

sesteel — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 05:32:35 +0000

The article talks about AMD announcing a chip supporting 192GB memory.

New comment by sesteel in "I would rather see my books get pirated than this"

sesteel — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 13:32:21 +0000

What Amazon is missing is buyers. Actual professional buyers who evaluate products and make determinations if products meet standards and deserves to be placed in front of customers.

New comment by sesteel in "A tech writer’s letter to software developers"

sesteel — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 13:37:27 +0000

I am confident that prompt engineering is not a long term solution for anybody. The cost of creation is moving towards free. Anybody with an idea will increasingly be able to make whatever they want. The best one could do is to try to invest or build something that still has value, but I think Altman is right. Capitalism will collapse in a world where creation is near free.

New comment by sesteel in "AI has poisoned its own well"

sesteel — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 17:51:31 +0000

Yep! The singularity concept people talk about relies on a feedback loop like you described. So, she isn't wrong, per se, but just telling a fragment of the story that exist today.

New comment by sesteel in "Show HN: Non.io, a Reddit-like platform Ive been working on for the last 4 years"

sesteel — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 20:20:01 +0000

Why not pin your business model as the top post for awhile until it catches on?

New comment by sesteel in "US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles"

sesteel — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 06:05:08 +0000

Why do you believe that? Having been in and worked around it, its success is a function of money and will. I would not call it competent, but that is a personal opinion having worked in competent effective organizations in the commercial sector.

New comment by sesteel in "58% of US adults have heard of ChatGPT; 14% have tried it"

sesteel — Fri, 26 May 2023 04:00:06 +0000

My exposure to the internet came via MTV in 1994. I got a call at the house one day and they offered to pay for our internet if I agreed to comment on music videos in an online chatroom. I got free CompuServe for a year and a t-shirt.

New comment by sesteel in "Fuck being productive"

sesteel — Thu, 11 May 2023 17:29:51 +0000

This deserves to be upvoted more. Trading your life for financial gain has diminishing returns. You'd think everybody's goal would to be free of servitude.

New comment by sesteel in "Researchers craft a fully edible battery"

sesteel — Tue, 09 May 2023 22:58:55 +0000

I did that with a potato back in the day.

New comment by sesteel in "Ask HN: What tech is under the radar with all attention on ChatGPT etc.?"

sesteel — Tue, 02 May 2023 20:16:48 +0000

I just started hearing about WASI. I think I've been living under a rock.

New comment by sesteel in "Congress gets 40 ChatGPT Plus licenses to start experimenting with generative AI"

sesteel — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 13:32:19 +0000

When I see statements like "garbage-generating machine", I immediately think that the person making such a statement may not be aware of the capabilities of GPT-4.

New comment by sesteel in "Developers should be force-fed state machines (2011)"

sesteel — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 14:03:46 +0000

Look up HSMs.