7 ms·
The "knowledge base" at the bottom is 100% slop. Why? Why inflict this on people?
by mk12 9mo ago
The "knowledge base" at the bottom is 100% slop. Why? Why inflict this on people?
- rob 9mo agoJust another AI generated website with 5000 calculators thrown together that looks like every other single one. From a brand new account with a post that looks like it was also written from ChatGPT. Somehow getting enough votes to show up on my homepage. Things are definitely changing around HN compared to when it first started.
- ivcatcher 9mo agoFair call — it did kind of explode from one calculator to 60+ I’m a real person (long-time lurker, finally posting), but I get why it looks sus. Things are changing fast, and I’m just happy to be part of the messy early wave. Thanks for the honesty.
- fancyswimtime 9mo agopeople are hurt because something which defined them as a person can now be done by a machine; don't let them dissuade you
- dangus 9mo agoI would add to this: skills mean nothing if you don’t use them. OP made a site with a bunch of calculators. Their critics didn’t make that!
- anonymous908213 9mo agoWe're busy building real software, not toys. I routinely write all kinds of calculators in my game development, in addition to having 100x more complex code to contend with. This task is as trivial as it gets in coding, considering computers were literally made to calculate and calculation functions are part of standard libraries. OP definitely didn't use Claude to implement math functions from scratch, they just did the basic copy-and-paste work of tying it to a web interface on a godawful JS framework stack which is already designed for children to make frontends with at the cost of extreme bloat and terrible performance. Meanwhile I actually did have to write my own math library, since I use fixed-point math in my game engine for cross-CPU determinism rather than getting to follow the easy path of floating-point math. It's cool that ChatGPT can stitch these toys together for people who aren't programmers, but 99% of software engineers aren't working on toys in the first place, so we're hardly threatened by this. I guess people who aren't software engineers don't realise that merely making a trivially basic website is not what software engineering is.
- ivcatcher 9mo agoYou're right that this is simple compared to what real engineers build. I have a lot of respect for people like you who write things like custom math libraries for cross-CPU determinism — that's way beyond my level. I'll keep learning and try to make this less of a toy over time. And hopefully I can bring what I've learned from years in investing into my next product to actually help people. Thanks for the perspective.
- drw85 9mo agoThis response makes it 100% clear to me that this is just a bot. The verbatim use of a completely random thing like 'custom math libraries for cross-CPU determinism', combined with the agreeable tone and em dash use are pretty much a dead giveaway. The internet has become so useless, everywhere is just marketing nonsense and bots.
- dangus 9mo agoIdk, your superiority complex about the whole issue does make it sound like you’re feeling threatened. You seem determined to prove that AI can’t really make any decent output. What’s even the point of writing out that first paragraph otherwise?
- anonymous908213 9mo ago> What’s even the point of writing out that first paragraph otherwise? I was correcting your misguided statement: > Their critics didn’t make that! by pointing out that we, among other things, build the libraries that you/Claude are copy-and-pasting from. When you make an assertion that is factually incorrect, and someone corrects you, that does not mean they are threatened.
- dangus 9mo agoDid you build a library? If you did, did you put yourself in a clean room and forget about every existing library you’ve ever seen? Have you made sure your code doesn’t repeat anything you’ve seen in a CS101 textbook? Is your hello world completely unique and non-identical to the one in the book? When you write a song do you avoid using any chord progression that has been used by someone else? LLMs are just doing a dumbed down version of human information processing. You can use one to make an app and tell it not to use any libraries. In fact, I’d argue that using an LLM negates the need for many libraries that mostly serve to save humans from repetitive hand-writing. You can even tell AI to build a new library which essentially defeats your entire argument here. Are you trying to imply that LLMs can’t work at an assembly language level? I’m pretty sure they can because they’ve read every CS textbook you have and then some. Will it be quality work? The answer to that question changes every day. But the fact remains that you are indeed acting threatened. You’re not “correcting” me at all, because I didn’t claim that AI-assisted developers are doing anything in some kind of “pure” way. My claim is that they’re seeing something they want to exist and they’re making it exist and putting it out there, while the vast majority of haters aren’t exactly out there contributing to much of anything in terms of “real software engineering.” Imitation is a form of flattery. When something “copies” you and makes it better/cheaper/more customized, that’s a net gain. If AI is just a fancy copy machine, that functionality alone is a net benefit.
- EinigeKreise 9mo agoPeople are hurt when people turn person-to-person communication into person-to-machine communication. It's dismissive of their use of genuine wall-clock time trying to engage with you.
- keybored 9mo agoA fair amount of AI hype traffic is likely to be astroturfed and automated. Just serving AI investors. Anyone who disagrees with the above are just hurt that their manual hyping has been replaced with machines.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- qaboutthat 9mo ago> Thanks for the honesty. It's impossible to tell if this is AI or not. Another version of Poe's law. The only thing to do is assume everything is AI, just like you must assume all posts have ulterior (generalluy profit-driven) motives, all posters have a conflict of interest, etc. Maybe the only thing to do is stop trying to understand posters' motivations, stop reading things charitably, stop responding, just look for things that are interesting (and be sure to check sources).
- brushfoot 9mo agoReader, keep in mind that OP being "a real person" has nothing to do with whether their content is appropriate for HN. Every spammer and scammer, even a bot, is ultimately controlled by a real person in some sense. That doesn't mean we want their content here.
- throwaway2027 9mo agoTwitter/X incentivizes you to get engagements because with a blue checkmark you get paid for it, so people shill aggressively, post idiotic comments on purpose trying to ragebait you. It's like LinkedIn in for entrepreneurs. Reddit or it's power hungry moderators (shadow)bans people often. The amount of popular websites that people can shill their trash is dwindling, so it gets worse here as a result I assume too.
- murukesh_s 9mo agoWhat are you implying?. He would have had to hire a good developer at least for a full month salary to build something like this. And if you are thinking enterprise, it would take 2-3 developers, 2 analysts, 2 testers, 1 lead and 1 manager 2-3 months to push something like this. (Otherwise why would lead banks spent billions and billions for IT development every year? What tangible difference you see in their website/services?) 5000 calculators may look excessive, but in this case it magnifies the AI capabilities in the future - both in terms of quality and quantity.
- yellow_lead 9mo ago> (Otherwise why would lead banks spent billions and billions for IT development every year? What tangible difference you see in their website/services?) Well, I don't think all those people are spending their time making simple calculators.
- maxaw 9mo agoSo true. I sometimes wonder how many ai bots there really are. I often see the telltale signs but often miss.
- ivcatcher 9mo agoYeah, you're right — that part is pretty rough. I wanted to help people actually understand compound interest (it's kind of life-changing once it clicks), but I got lazy and let AI do it without proper editing. Defeats the whole point. I'll figure out a better way. Thanks for calling it out.
- vdupras 9mo agoI think the words are "you're absolutely right".
- ivcatcher 9mo agoYou're absolutely right too.
- anon_anon12 9mo agolol, chances of the same person using that kind of phrase and an em dash is so marginally low
- bigDinosaur 9mo ago[flagged]
- dang 9mo agoPlease don't be hostile to newcomers. That's a way to destroy this place. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html