Hacker News: timmb

New comment by timmb in "Show HN: I trained a 125M model to autocomplete piano on-device"

timmb — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:30:15 +0000

Reminds me of Francois Pachet’s Continuator (all the way back in 2003, using hierarchical markov models)

https://www.francoispachet.fr/continuator/

New comment by timmb in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"

timmb — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:38:59 +0000

This is exactly why something more advanced than copyright is needed to protect human creative endeavour against AI appropriation. Copyright is demonstrated here not to be up to the job but it doesn’t mean there isn’t regulation needed to give human creators rights and a reward for their contribution

New comment by timmb in "GitHub Compromised"

timmb — Wed, 20 May 2026 05:55:52 +0000

They’ve been developing git and GitHub for over a decade. It really isn’t surprising they have made thousands of internally available repos. They probably have hundreds just for running automated tests alone.

New comment by timmb in "Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions"

timmb — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:39:42 +0000

Because writing is a process suited to some minds more than others. And if your bar to receiving an idea is that it came from a competent writer then you’ll be limited to ideas that reflect a certain way of thinking (and one many mistakenly conflate with intelligence).

Conversation is a different process that may be suited to other types of thinking. And so on.

It’s true that LLMs can enable unoriginal and shallow thinking to be expressed with a false veneer of original thought. But it does not follow that all LLM-written text is the result of laziness nor that it is without value.

I’m just suggesting, come with an open mind rather than judging the whole thing based on a gut reaction to style. That reliance on a gut stylistic reaction is itself lazy and has led many an intellectual community into echo chambers of groupthink.

New comment by timmb in "Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions"

timmb — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:26:24 +0000

I don't understand why so many of these comments HN is getting are so fixated on writing style. I appreciate that stylistic traits associated with AI-written text are often indicative of contentless slop. But lots of people also write like that. To moan about writing style without even considering the value of the content just sounds cranky to me.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading the experiment, and the starting premise, and the embracing of a fairly mundane outcome. Reminds me of running various generative systems and looking for emergent states.

Shame there's no rss feed to follow along.

When you can't escape an interface, it institutionalises you

timmb — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:12:19 +0000

Article URL: https://timmb.com/when-you-cant-escape-an-interface/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47194319

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The Perils of Gainful Employment

timmb — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 15:09:17 +0000

Article URL: https://artcode.substack.com/p/on-the-perils-of-gainful-employment

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790840

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by timmb in "Robots move Shanghai city block [video]"

timmb — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:45:57 +0000

In Romania in the 80s, a number of churches were moved to make space for new building projects. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/dec/14/bucharest-mov...

New comment by timmb in "Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work"

timmb — Fri, 30 May 2025 17:28:50 +0000

How did we end up with bitcoin before this?

New comment by timmb in "Tuta Launches Post Quantum Cryptography for Email (2024)"

timmb — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 09:35:29 +0000

Post quantum - as in designed to resist quantum computer based attacks under which rsa would quickly crumble. Why do you associate this with snake oil?

New comment by timmb in "'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised"

timmb — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:04:08 +0000

The parking lots mentioned are municipal not private.

It's hard to make art with AI, but it's not impossible

timmb — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 11:30:20 +0000

Article URL: https://timmb.com/its-hard-to-make-art-with-ai-but-its-not-impossible/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42050662

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Fable is winding down

timmb — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 16:57:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.fable.app/blog/fable-is-winding-down

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41850573

Points: 38

# Comments: 76

New comment by timmb in "Breakthrough a step toward revealing hidden structure of prime numbers"

timmb — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 11:43:57 +0000

Something inspiring about this: "In dedicated Friday afternoon thinking sessions, he returned to the problem again and again over the past decade, to no avail."

New comment by timmb in "[dead]"

timmb — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 22:31:02 +0000

Title seems a little clickbaity. It's on-device scanning, which is off by default, and seems primarily designed to help you get content warnings on incoming content.

What does Interactive Art have to teach us about AI?

timmb — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 21:21:29 +0000

Article URL: https://artcode.substack.com/p/what-does-interactive-art-have-to-teach-about-ai

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40663250

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by timmb in "Sorry, wrong number"

timmb — Sun, 19 May 2024 22:42:30 +0000

The UK’s road numbering system feels like it was designed for the convenience of the people in Whitehall filing their maps rather than those using the roads. Giving adjacent roads very similar numbers is the maximally confusing thing to do. For my brain at least - I have to choose between the M73, M74 or M77 and I often get it wrong. It would be easier if they’d reversed all the numbers to put the zone at the end - I feel M37, M47 and M77 would be easier to remember between.

Tougher rules for sellers of internet-enabled devices in the UK

timmb — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 10:21:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68917837

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40196565

Points: 43

# Comments: 68

New comment by timmb in "British intelligence able to read and flag private Snapchat messages"

timmb — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:38:06 +0000

Because they would have obviously known it was their friend making a joke.

New comment by timmb in "OpenAI – Application for US trademark “GPT” has failed"

timmb — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 13:29:50 +0000

I love how terrible the name is from a branding perspective. It actually makes it feel more legit like a new tech rather than yet another wannabe assistant. And from what I can see, few have heard of Gemini, Bard, Cortana, Copilot, or Jeeves compared to ChatGPT, which has something of the charm of R2D2 or C3PO.