Hacker News: thesumofall

New comment by thesumofall in "Design is compromise"

thesumofall — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 17:37:38 +0000

No, a compromise can also be a win-win. It balances potentially extreme positions, it adds further perspectives, it forces all parties to consider what is most important to them. If the only alternative to a compromise is no agreement, it may actually be the only way to win

What will be left for us to work on?

thesumofall — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:07:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/icml-2026-annotated-slides/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48897272

Points: 9

# Comments: 3

New comment by thesumofall in "President pardons 9 for Clean Air violations for 'fixing their car'"

thesumofall — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 05:56:06 +0000

But isn’t that what the parent says? Fix the underlying laws instead of relying on a single person to randomly overrule the law

New comment by thesumofall in "How employment changes when firms adopt generative AI"

thesumofall — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:10:13 +0000

Skeptical of the study approach, but it is an entirely possible scenario if we don’t hit AGI. Many of the non-tech companies are only now starting to invest into AI. For many of them, AI might unlock new business approaches. Eg a company switches to real time pricing. Great, but suddenly you need people swapping price tags. Or you launch a project to replace paper price tags with electronic tags. Those need to be regularly maintained and charged, etc. Oops, our legacy ERP system can’t deal with that. Let’s upgrade that

New comment by thesumofall in "The Boeing 747 begins its final descent"

thesumofall — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:26:29 +0000

It’s such a beautiful plane. Despite having worked for Airbus, the 747 triggers emotions for me that the A380 simply doesn’t. It represents an era of aerospace engineering that will not come back (in many cases probably for the better - but still!)

New comment by thesumofall in "The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends"

thesumofall — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 17:16:16 +0000

Because it is really hard to reliably hire good people. Almost all typical signals & methods (CVs, experience based interviews, …) have very low reliability. An IQ test has the highest reliability according to studies but would be illegal in most jurisdictions. Plus, hiring managers frequently don’t know what they want or they believe they want something that they actually don’t

New comment by thesumofall in "UK set to announce social media ban for under-16s"

thesumofall — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:32:54 +0000

If there was any smart way of doing it, we should block it for everyone. Very little good has come of it. Also solves the age verification problem. It’s soooo difficult to not fall into the addiction trap, and I’m exhausted from keeping myself away from it.

New comment by thesumofall in "Claude Fable 5"

thesumofall — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:23:42 +0000

Historically, this has nothing to do with lying, but is all about the founding idea of the social security system that all parties (workers, employers, state) carry part of the burden. Employers were supposed to pay their fair share because they also benefitted from the system (a sick or injured employee is not a productive one). Or saying it differently: the employer pays an insurance premium to reduce the effects of sickness. That premium is tied to the „value“ of the employee as measured by their salary.

There is plenty to improve with the system but to call it „retarded“ considering how much good it has brought to the world seems quite wrong to me. I don’t want to work in the pre-Bismarck era

New comment by thesumofall in "Where is the AI jobs crisis?"

thesumofall — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:42:19 +0000

To me, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire fewer juniors because of AI. This assumes that the only thing AI can’t replicate is experience. This in itself already seems questionable, but most importantly what about creativity, relating to humans, common sense, etc.?

If you had to hire a concierge for a hotel, would you rather take a guest-oriented, quick-witted junior or an AI? If you could either take a Waymo or an 80-year old driver, what would you take?

I don’t believe hiring managers think that one-dimensionally. Roles are unique and in some roles experience is more important than in others. Plus, juniors already balance their lack of experience with lower salary expectations.

The much easier explanation for the anecdotes: companies are more cautious at the moment and if you only have a few positions to hand out, you rather take the proven hand than risking it on someone who hasn’t shown yet that they can do it

New comment by thesumofall in "Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing"

thesumofall — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:51:25 +0000

Plenty of comparisons here between salaries and token costs. All fair but very much assumes that salaries are rational. Why do we pay some engineers 10x as much for the same role just because they are in a different location? The WFH discussion surfaced some of that. If money is cheap, all sorts of funny things are happening. Is it worth to spend 1500 USD on AI? I don’t know. Is it worth paying engineers 300k USD instead of 30k? Honestly, I don’t know

New comment by thesumofall in "Hindenburg’s Smoking Room"

thesumofall — Mon, 18 May 2026 04:55:57 +0000

Not necessarily safer but safe enough. A modern 4 engine jet should still be safer than the 2 engine equivalent

New comment by thesumofall in "HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing"

thesumofall — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 19:16:56 +0000

He is the original author who faced the bug. I believe he just copied the response he received from Antrophic

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