Hacker News: thesumofall

New comment by thesumofall in "Claude Opus 4.7"

thesumofall — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:41:58 +0000

So many comments on Claude having gotten worse over the last weeks. Haven’t noticed it myself apart from one very stupid thing it did recently. Is there any proper data on this? I saw this one claim recently (can’t find the link) but I believe they didn’t run the same test twice but tested different things over time

New comment by thesumofall in "Understanding young news audiences at a time of rapid change"

thesumofall — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:52:58 +0000

And with that dismantle the fourth power which is nothing without an audience? Just let the powerful do whatever they want to do?

New comment by thesumofall in "Understanding young news audiences at a time of rapid change"

thesumofall — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:48:41 +0000

I don’t know. Is a random YT channel more trustworthy considering their reliance on sponsorships? And once they do interviews, they face the same issue

I also just don’t see interviews being a big audience draw (at least for text-based news). It seems there are so many other, bigger problems than the issue of access: lack of revenues, lack of interest in quality journalism, …

New comment by thesumofall in "Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI Is Reshaping Human Reasoning"

thesumofall — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:53:59 +0000

I fully agree that it’s close to impossible to not eventually fall into the trap of overrelying on them. However, it’s also true that I was able to do things with them that I would never have done otherwise for a lack of time or skill (all sorts of small personal apps, tools, and scripts for my hobbies). Maybe it’s a bit similar to only reading the comment section in a newspaper instead of the news? They will introduce you to new perspectives but if you stop reading the underlying news you’ll harm your own critical thinking? So it’s maybe a bit more grey than black & white?

New comment by thesumofall in "US- and Greek-owned tankers ablaze after Iran claims 'underwater drone' strike"

thesumofall — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:05:51 +0000

Is this how it really works? With demand outstripping supply, prices rise across the globe. Prices at gas stations go up as well. The only ones earning a „LOT“ of money are Big Oil shareholders?

New comment by thesumofall in "Sizing chaos"

thesumofall — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:12:15 +0000

Beyond all, I think cost is a major driver. A key difference in cheaply made clothing vs more expensively made clothing is the sophistication of the tailoring. However, the interesting side effect is that cheaply made clothing sort of fits everyone badly while more expensively made clothing either fits you really well or not at all. If(!) you care about well-tailored clothing you're either lucky that one of the brands fits your body or you need to go the custom-tailoring route. Custom tailoring wasn't anything special for a long time but we sacrificed it to our desire for cheaper clothing (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!)

New comment by thesumofall in "AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it"

thesumofall — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:32:41 +0000

I agree with the sentiment. I don‘t code a lot, but AI has sped up things in all fields for which I use AI (or at least the expectation of speed has grown). For me, it’s the context switching but also just the mental load of holding so many projects and ideas together in my head. It somewhat helps that the usable context of LLMs has grown over time so I tend to trust the „memory“ of the AI a bit more to keep track of things and somewhat try to offload stuff from my brain

New comment by thesumofall in "The Engineer to Executive Translation Layer"

thesumofall — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:51:55 +0000

I‘m a technical exec and most of the advice rings true. Somewhere the translation from technical goals to business goals has to happen. Good leads will help with that and good engineers will come prepared

New comment by thesumofall in "The Myth of the ThinkPad"

thesumofall — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 06:08:52 +0000

That might be true for today’s laptops, but back then laptops had a lot more empty space to compress. Combined with a tough but flexible shell, the thinkpad might indeed have saved him!

New comment by thesumofall in "Dude, where's my supersonic jet?"

thesumofall — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:12:00 +0000

I actually prefer a 10+ hrs business class flight over a 6-7 hrs flight. At least you can get a full night of sleep

New comment by thesumofall in "VW is bringing physical buttons back to the dashboard with the ID. Polo EV"

thesumofall — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:40:17 +0000

I suffered similarly but I think the latest software (>5.0) solved most of the issues and I don’t notice the software anymore at all (which I take as a positive - I.e., it just gets out of the way)

New comment by thesumofall in "VW is bringing physical buttons back to the dashboard with the ID. Polo EV"

thesumofall — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 17:37:37 +0000

From what I’ve read it will be real and is supposed to evoke the early VW Polos. I believe you will be able to switch between that and a more „modern“ look

New comment by thesumofall in "Japan joining growing global trend of declining democracy"

thesumofall — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 11:14:20 +0000

Because we all do. There is a limit to all of us how much we can process and how much we truly want to challenge rather than just accept. In personal life, at work, in politics, and even more so for the big questions of humanity. All of us accept a lot of things at face value and move on. Some put maybe more attention to politics, others have maybe better heuristics, and some select few are maybe smart enough that they can constructively challenge more than others

New comment by thesumofall in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"

thesumofall — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 08:12:47 +0000

No American, but the War Powers Resolution seems to allow for these kind of actions? That doesn’t make them any better but I was wondering the same thing

New comment by thesumofall in "Japan joining growing global trend of declining democracy"

thesumofall — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 07:32:10 +0000

> Most crucially, democracy relies on an educated electorate, but access to really excellent education is minimal globally. This exposes democracies to disinformation and populism

Not so sure about that. Some of today’s autocratic leaders are incredibly smart and educated people and still took the wrong turn. If education doesn’t work for these leaders why should it work for the electorate?

Hence, I’m leaning more towards your last point that it’s maybe more about values and morals? A common understanding of what is „good?“ You can certainly sharpen these through education but there seems to be more at play. Our world also seems to have moved beyond some of the simplistic moral frameworks of the past… Maybe the current times of turbulence are the precursor to the development of new moral frameworks?

New comment by thesumofall in "Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?"

thesumofall — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 08:09:59 +0000

My best reads this year:

Non-fiction:

- The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Fantasy:

- The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

Sci-fi:

- Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio

- A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr

- Ra by qntm

- Jean le Flambeur series by Hannu Rajaniemi

- Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (didn’t like the subsequent books of the series so much)

Other novels:

- Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard

New comment by thesumofall in "Data Bank – Nuforc – Latest UFO Sightings"

thesumofall — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 10:59:26 +0000

That wasn’t quite the point I was trying to make. Almost certainly we have not been visited in a shape or form that would resemble anything like the typical UFO sightings. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, we might have been visited in forms that are completely incomprehensible to us

New comment by thesumofall in "Data Bank – Nuforc – Latest UFO Sightings"

thesumofall — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 08:38:07 +0000

> No, they have not been here

I think it is difficult to make an argument in either direction. But almost certainly they’ve not been flying weirdly shaped disks

New comment by thesumofall in "Android introduces $2-4 install fee and 10–20% cut for US external content links"

thesumofall — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 08:06:05 +0000

Probably for the same reasons

New comment by thesumofall in "History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts"

thesumofall — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 07:02:42 +0000

While obvious, it’s still interesting that its morals and values seem to derive from the texts it has ingested. Does that mean modern LLMs cannot challenge us beyond mere facts? Or does it just mean that this small model is not smart enough to escape the bias of its training data? Would it not be amazing if LLMs could challenge us on our core beliefs?