Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | BitwiseFool's commentslogin

Imperial China thought they were the Middle Kingdom, but that title belongs to New Zealand.


I'm told that was the reason, which is a shame because I would continue to buy the "mini" version if they kept making them. Sadly the only dimension Apple seems interested in reducing is the thickness.


>"It didn't help that the LLM was confidently incorrect."

Has anyone else ever dealt with a somewhat charismatic know-it-all who knows just enough to give authoritative answers? LLM output often reminds me of such people.


That’s a great question — and one that highlights a subtle misconception about how LLMs actually work.

At first glance, it’s easy to compare them to a charismatic “know-it-all” who sounds confident while being only half-right. After all, both can produce fluent, authoritative-sounding answers that sometimes miss the mark. But here’s where the comparison falls short — and where LLMs really shine:

(...ok ok, I can't go on.)


Most of the most charismatic, confident know-it-alls I have ever met have been in the tech industry. And not just the usual suspects (founders, managers, thought leaders, architects) but regular rank-and-file engineers. The whole industry is infested with know-it-alls. Hell, HN is infested with know-it-alls. So it's no surprise that one of the biggest products of the decade is an Automated Know-It-All machine.


Thereby self correcting perhaps.


I'd say the opposite, LLMs are a know-it-nothing machine to perfectly suit know-it-alls. Unlike a human, it isn't that hard to get the machine to say what you want, and then generate enough crap to 'defeat' any human challenger.


Perfect! You really got to the core of the matter! The only thing I noticed is that your use of the em-dash needs to not be bracketed with spaces on either end. LLMs—as recommended by most common style guides—stick to the integrated style that treats the em-dash as part of the surrounding words.


It bums me out that LLMs are ruining em dashes. I like em dashes and have used them for decades, but now I worry that when I do people will assume my writing is LLM output.

What's next—the interrobang‽


LLMs are not 'ruining' em dashes. It's just a convenient device to unmask people who make critical judgements based on ridiculous and flimsy evidence.

It is good they are being unmasked. You must avoid those people and warn your children about them. They are not safe to be around.


People always crawl out of the wood-work swearing blind they've always used em-dash, but the truth is that actual em-dash usage has exploded by a factor of thousands and is therefore, along with other markers, a strong indicator.

It's not proof, it is evidence.


"Ruining" in the sense that "I worry that when I [use em dashes] people will assume my writing is LLM output".

I'd feel the same if I was someone who naturally frequently used phrases like "you're absolutely right", or for a much more extreme analogy: if I was a Hindu living in Europe in the 1920s and then the Nazis came along and "ruined" the swastika for me.


I'm hoping it's not the semi-colon; I use that a lot.


This isn't funny or clever. Stop it.


You're absolutely right! It's totally unfair to tease LLM's like that—They're just trying to do the best with how they're programmed. We should treat them with the same respect we give each other so that we can create a better world for everyone


Difficult to see people anthropomorphize LLMs undeservedly, it's an extension of the childhood trauma inflicted by The Brave Little Toaster. Inanimate objects projected into personhood and subjected to a cruel and indifferent world.

Dangerous actually, the effect it had on children. Of course they loved it because it had a happy ending, but at what price?


Colloquially known as "bullshitters."[1]

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bulls...


If those people are wrong enough times, they are either removed from the organization or they scare anyone competent away from the organization, which then dies. LLMs seem to be getting a managerial pass (because the cost is subsidized by mountains of VC money and thus very low (for now)) so only the latter outcome is likely.


Yes, they have been around forever, they are known as bullshitters.

The bullshitter doesn't care whether what he says is correct or not, as long as it's convincing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit


There's even a name for such person: Manager


I'm pretty sure I'm that guy on some topics.


>"I'm pretty sure I'm that guy on some topics."

The use of 'pretty sure' disqualifies you. I appreciate your humility.


I don't know, man. I really don't know. I can't tell whether I'm really good at making inferences from tidbits of information, or really good at speaking confidently.


I think I'm good at making inferences from tidbits of information (or so I think) but I don't think I'm good at speaking confidently, other than speaking confidently that I don't know everything.


Sounds like every product manager I've ever had, lol (sorry PM's!)


>"But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards."

The Bitcoin crowd is adamant that no government can regulate Bitcoin. They are correct in the sense that Congress is unable to pass a law dictating what the Bitcoin protocol must do, and that as a decentralized network people are free to follow whichever fork of Bitcoin they choose.

However, they have not given much consideration to the fact that governments have full authority to regulate those that use Bitcoin. In other words, no government needs to change Bitcoin. All they need to do is dictate what the lawful use of Bitcoin looks like in their jurisdiction. There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities. In the context of this article, I doubt that a government would prohibit the sale of these games, but I agree with your assertion that the government is likely to start locking down cryptocurrencies in some way that impedes privacy.


> There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities.

This would likely drive capital and the fintech companies and financial institutions behind it to friendlier countries and more welcoming markets.


Plate tectonics created a serious rift in the Geology community, with both supporters and detractors citing serious faults.


Well that was anticline-matic.


Yes, it was ground-breaking (too easy)


Geology jokes are beneath me.


That's a strike against your character but I'll let it slip.


This is a pet peeve of mine, but I dislike when any corporation resorts to using "One" to brand something. It signals a lack of creativity; it is just so bland.


Agreed and out of monotony I'm glad they aren't recycling Pro, Air or Extreme for this financial product, although "AppleCare Extreme" does sound kinda cool in a "Snap into a Slim Jim" kind of way.


Just wait for AppleCare One+


They should have gone with 360 first.


Apple2π


I expected this to include AppleTV and cloud storage alongside device insurance, since that seems to be what One means for other brands.


That's their existing Apple One program: https://www.apple.com/apple-one/


Personal anecdote: As a child I played a lot of Sim City. In those games bridges must be perfectly straight and as a result I developed a mental model that curved bridges simply don't exist. When I first drove over a gently curved bridge in my late 20's I felt a serious disturbance to an irrelevant worldview that I never questioned.


I first got hold of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas early in the summer holidays during my school years, which meant I was able to play nearly-uninterrupted (save for pesky things like sleep and food) for several days straight.

When I finally surfaced, and Mum drove me into town for something or other, I felt visceral panic that she was driving on the "wrong" side of the road.


I wonder if you could simulate driving on the left by 1) flipping the entire screen left-to-right, 2) flipping the controls left-to-right, and 3) getting really good at reading mirrored writing.


On a somewhat related note: the Game Cube and Wii editions of Zelda: Twilight Princess are mirror images of each other. If you're playing on a Game Cube, Link is left-handed, but he's right-handed on a Wii.


If you know how to mirror a display in Windows 11 I can try it in my sim rig and see if it works. I actually thought about doing that the other day for some reason, I think it would work.


It would be a super hacky way to just test, but you can do that with OBS set to capture the game output and then displaying the OBS capture. There's probably multiple other ways, but that would be a quick and easy way to test if you already have OBS installed


This didn’t work out, I crashed my PC somehow trying it with RFactor2 and AC a few times. Sorry to everyone who was curious like me, but in going to continue trying in the future.


Or just buy a truck simulator on steam and experience it without hacks ಡ ͜ ʖ ಡ


Shame only the first installment of the series had an expansion pack set in London.


You must be in a left hand drive country?


Based on the use of "Mum", very probably.


Coming from the same area, I didn’t even think that it might look odd to folks in other parts of the world …


See I'm familiar with California and their "flying" interchanges which are often banked pretty substantially - having to walk along one once was an eye opener, they're really banked!


I like to believe that, by definition, the only person who speaks English properly is the King of England. Everyone else has an accent.


Fascinating. Do you have a link to that, or the name of that species?


I heard about it on the David Attenborough's Galapagos series:

https://iview.abc.net.au/show/david-attenborough-s-galapagos

Here is a YouTube playlist, I think it was episode 3, Evolution:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3iXsS5tZSZG4gcYrblBd...

Also see the wiki page mentioned in the sibling comment.



The JWST is a marvel of engineering. It is also a machine designed around the restrictions of what the most powerful rockets of the 1990's were capable of. Just imagine how capable future telescopes will be now that we have multiple super-heavy launch vehicles with cavernous payload fairings in development.


My fantasy is that at some point we’ll have a sufficiently powerful telescope to cause a galactic “Van Leeuwenhoek moment” where, just like that discoverer of microbes, we will suddenly see the galaxy swarming with spacecraft.


Assume for a moment that happens. Can you possibly imagine the chaos and turmoil that causes on Earth?


No? I genuinely think most of the world will have moved on and will be caring about something else within a day, the world will be about as chaotic and tumultuous as it was shortly after the discovery of microbes.


Microbes weren't discovered everywhere all at once though. I think if the entire planet found out (through modern media) people would go ballistic.


it's hard to commit to building JWST type of payload around a non-yet proven launcher. you'd want to wait until the "in development" becomes proven before planning to launch some decadal planned mission.


Ariane 5 seems pretty proven to me :D


yeah, nothing says proven like being retired


Yes, and too bad a twin or two weren't developed simultaneously, as the additional cost would be minimal - and now we have SpaceX rockets to launch them.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: