Hacker News: verytrivial

New comment by verytrivial in "Using A.I. to decode communication of sperm whales"

verytrivial — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:15:45 +0000

It's always a gamble to attempt humour here. Try the veal.

New comment by verytrivial in "Using A.I. to decode communication of sperm whales"

verytrivial — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:28:28 +0000

People have been hallucinating meaning in whale song for decades. Why not automate it?

New comment by verytrivial in "Who Killed Paulina Borsook's Career?"

verytrivial — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 07:26:04 +0000

Strong smell of Ai generation on the cover there.

New comment by verytrivial in "Best LLM for every budget, updated daily"

verytrivial — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:15:54 +0000

Best comparison that has occurred to me is the cost a loaf of bread's ingredients might be slightly cheaper than a baked loaf, depending on how you source it. At home you get total control and know what's going in to it. Yet bake at home is still a niche, perhaps a hobby. So I say as someone who's spent hundreds of hours tinkering with local inference, go for it for anyone reading. But most people just want ... some slices of bread, you know?

New comment by verytrivial in "Best LLM for every budget, updated daily"

verytrivial — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:00:15 +0000

I find it interesting that with the given metric comparison, for coding at min 50 strength, every frontier model brand is from a distinct vendor: Ling, Qwen, Gemini, Muse, Grok, GPT, and Claude in increasing value.

New comment by verytrivial in "I don't like passkeys"

verytrivial — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:09:09 +0000

In a corp environment, it is the business's problem when a user's passkey devices fails. In a personal environment, it is the user's problem. Specialized knowledge and preventive processes in the corp environment aren't present in the personal context, and saying "pretty please" to Google or Apple when something goes wrong is usually a waste of time. I 100% agree with TFA -- "damage expectation" is probably higher with passkeys.

New comment by verytrivial in "Bonsai 2 27B: Near-Lossless Compression in a 9x Smaller Footprint"

verytrivial — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 08:03:28 +0000

There's a chap called Bijian Bowen who does very quick agentic coding challenges for new models (very soon after release!) mainly for toy games or websites. He just did one for this model and included a comparison with the base model Qwen 3.8 which shows the "near-lossless" claim should be taken with a grain of salt. It is an interesting model if you are GPU starved and want local, but you might have trouble finding things it is good at.

New comment by verytrivial in "Don't Just Say Hello"

verytrivial — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 21:03:32 +0000

I often think people are wanting to know if you're there or busy and are gauging your response time for an answer. According, if I'm busy I ignore hellos 100%, but if I'm not, it type "hi" and immediately close the tab/window and spend zero effort thinking about who they are or what they might want. Their question normally follows. If the pleasantries persist, I repeat this algorithm, but replace with "never better!" (insta-close! And continue previous train of thought)

New comment by verytrivial in "ElevenLabs Music v2.5"

verytrivial — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 21:34:52 +0000

If only ...

New comment by verytrivial in "Apple Watch Ultra 4"

verytrivial — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 21:30:57 +0000

Huh, this "Readiness" innovation seems really similar to the "HybridCharge" my Amazfit watch has had for a couple of years (but obviously at literally 10x the price, but you do whatever you want with your money, chaps...)

New comment by verytrivial in "On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem"

verytrivial — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:39:07 +0000

It's not massively different from a certain President's teleprompter operator making bets on speech content. A moral hazard a mile wide which I don't think OpenAI can so easily wave away as they are apparently trying here, especially since they've spent something like $15e6 to keep $1e6 out of academic researchers' hands, right?

New comment by verytrivial in "On the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem"

verytrivial — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 17:33:58 +0000

I like the 'cat > statement.tex' approach here. These guys dream macros.

New comment by verytrivial in "Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI"

verytrivial — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 22:30:42 +0000

The main indemnity that providers like GitHub Copilot provide is against being sued by the copyright holders whoes works were "transformed" to make the models. They generally don't offer that for the Chinese models, at least in my region. I can't see any reason other than back-room deals making it so: they're all using stolen works, and all could spit out memorized fragments. But if you're talking specifically about the fitness or otherwise of the actual software these models produce, that is generally handled with the use of sacrificial employees.

New comment by verytrivial in "Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board"

verytrivial — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 18:09:04 +0000

I think it's worth pointing out it is exactly OpenAI doing this defacement and unsanctioned and perhaps illegal system use. Every token generated was powered by OpenAI infrastructure and their failure to respond appropriately is entirely down the the humans running it. The news stories (not this write up) get all hand-wavey and anthropomorphic about it regarding the Agents' efforts, but it was and is OpenAI cranking the handle on this, for WEEKS.

"OH, we ALL of us need to be careful!" says OpenAI. No, you need to expect appropriate legals consequences for this sort of negligence -- you can't hide behind a GPU.

New comment by verytrivial in "Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city streets"

verytrivial — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:45:40 +0000

I'm a busybody. I have bought radar guns from eBay. I have lightly shamed the local authorities with data. There are now more physical speed controls (more signs, speed bumps, one way roads) in my local area. Perhaps my nagging helped. I like to think it did. Start chipping away at it. If not you, then who?

New comment by verytrivial in "Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?"

verytrivial — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:53:22 +0000

Maybe. There's also about five guys at my work who would have loved the opportunity to use an LLM to set up a "non-propfit-brownout-pipeline-orchestrator" to transition 99% of these account to either a newly billable account, or a "bye-bye.zip" export available to the admin account. Two weeks of effort, tops.

New comment by verytrivial in "US announces new sanctions on top ICC figures"

verytrivial — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:39:26 +0000

I know your question is rhetorical, but for the avoidance of doubt: https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu

New comment by verytrivial in "St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core"

verytrivial — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:25:09 +0000

This "dropping" activity is not defined well in the context. Was it e.g. a controlled but uncommanded insertion? Or did something or some three things slip, snap, or something else? Can the rods be retrieved using BAU procedures, or is reactor in an annoying state now?

The details divulged seems to have been driven by event reporting regulations, not any specific news gathering or investigation, right?

New comment by verytrivial in "St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core"

verytrivial — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:21:11 +0000

From the article: "This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. [...]"

New comment by verytrivial in "Grok Build is open source"

verytrivial — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 07:33:29 +0000

Well said.