Hacker News: varjag

New comment by varjag in "Discovery Loop"

varjag — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:29:06 +0000

Discovery systems are making a comeback huh.

New comment by varjag in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"

varjag — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:24:31 +0000

The latter half of the 19th/early 20th century (between Franco-Prussian war and WW1) was comparatively peaceful, not unlike the 1990s-2000s. It was called belle epoque for a reason.

New comment by varjag in "Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences"

varjag — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:06:59 +0000

I remember meeting a Russian immigrant who thought Norwegian sour cream was synthetic because it wasn't watery as the one she had at home.

New comment by varjag in "Don't be a meat proxy"

varjag — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:41:48 +0000

Shitgularity is here, it's just unevenly smeared.

It is clear though that virtually all degradation we have is in human capital and social sphere against the background of staggering technical capability.

New comment by varjag in "The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder"

varjag — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:26:18 +0000

Is he white? The author mentions "exotic-looking".

Mathematics Without Mathematicians

varjag — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 07:47:26 +0000

Article URL: https://borretti.me/article/mathematics-without-mathematicians

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49142083

Points: 46

# Comments: 54

The Absent Narrator

varjag — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 15:43:00 +0000

Article URL: http://blog.funcall.org/ai/2026/07/31/absent-narrator/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135393

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by varjag in "Claude Opus 5"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:16:19 +0000

Speaking of inventing stuff, I'm not sure where you find me praising anything. It was statement of the fact, exactly as "a car is faster than a human".

New comment by varjag in "Claude Opus 5"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:04:45 +0000

There's likely about a billion cyclists and most of them stand no chance at winning Tour de France ever in their life. And it's funny how we moved from growing rice towards inventing the agriculture.

And look I don't know how to grow rice but I grew other staple foods before. I also wrote substantial texts and programmed computers for decades. Saying that farming is more intellectually challenging than writing or programming is plain ridiculous and counterproductive to whatever argument you were trying to make.

New comment by varjag in "Claude Opus 5"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:47:46 +0000

Have you ever received an email from trades folk, in the days before LLMs? I'm not saying it's a better writer than Hemingway but very likely better than most your classmates.

New comment by varjag in "Claude Opus 5"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:44:59 +0000

Imagine it's 2006, there's no LLM in sight and you're arguing on an Internet forum that growing rice is a better highlight of intelligence than computer programming or writing.

Also it absolutely is not education, as repeated failure to educate programmers without aptitude or drill essay-writing into general population has shown.

New comment by varjag in "Claude Opus 5"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:58:49 +0000

Soon it doesn't require even that one person

New comment by varjag in "Claude Opus 5"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:54:28 +0000

IDK the models definitely do write qualitatively better prose (and better code) than the majority of people. If your definition of "human intelligence" is baseline performance of 0.2% of humanity it's certainly something else.

New comment by varjag in "Claude Cookbook"

varjag — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 08:55:40 +0000

if everyone just…

New comment by varjag in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"

varjag — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:09:20 +0000

The users are trained on their exposure to behavior in Windows, MacOS and non-ancient Linux distros. Good luck changing the expectations of the world population. I believe the GIMP tried that for a few decades.

New comment by varjag in "Claude Cookbook"

varjag — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:03:48 +0000

Will they stop killing if the open models will also start killing?

New comment by varjag in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"

varjag — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 10:34:10 +0000

You can't really debounce it easily due to how the OS event queue work across processes and windows. One fix could be to not bing the focus to newly open windows (like you could in X11) but that's not what users want.

New comment by varjag in "Qwen 3.8"

varjag — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 19:27:21 +0000

There are numerous institutions that have agenda transcending individuals. Communist parties are very prominent among them.

New comment by varjag in "Codex Micro"

varjag — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 16:52:59 +0000

We're rapidly approaching the Jetsons one button workplace territory.

New comment by varjag in "Cyberpunk Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels"

varjag — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:42:22 +0000

No mention of Lone Wolf 2100.