stephc_int13

4 ms·

31.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
They probably have some kind of fallback system, but the visual-inertial odometry they are using for spatial positioning that is working pretty well when stationary (at home) tend to break badly on a train or plane.
32.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
His rhetoric is a bit obsessive and frankly biased against AI. That said, I think his voice is useful as a counter to the mainstream opinion. Given the amount of investments, approaching AI from the angle of economics seems correct. We all
33.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
I agree about the C stdlib being outdated and the worst part of C. This is why I don't use it. A new modern C standard library would be a very good thing. But I am ok writing my own, tailored for my own needs and style.
34.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
Linters are not exactly a new idea, and they can be pushed quite far. I am generally against the idea of language support for meta-programming, even using C macros or C++ templates. I do a lot of meta-programming/codegen with external
35.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
I know, and I don't see unused return values as an error, it should be a warning at best. And the compiler should be just a bit smarter to avoid the .{} thing when it is not strictly necessary.
36.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
Lindy effect is very strong in the programming languages world. Zig is a very interesting and well built language, but it is also niche, unstable and not offering radical improvements over C. C, as the foundation of all modern kernels and s
37.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
Encapsulating arguments inside .{} seems superfluous and noisy. I'm sure this can be rationalized in some way, to either simplify parsing or solve some rare ambiguity, but I just don't see it. I know this is a minor thing and can
38.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
It is not about sunlight or UV. And it is not "just genetics". The natural rest position of the human eye is to focus at the infinite. Focusing on closer objects like books or screens requires a constant effort (we don't feel
39.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
I am guessing that Bitcoin crashing would be bad new for ya.
40.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
It seems that the main issue with AI is often not what sci-fi or EA-adjacent prophets are trying to warn us about, but the insidious dangers of the failure modes. We are collectively not well calibrated to deal with systems that seems capab
41.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
Here is a prediction about Bitcoin: there will be a financial crash at some point in the future, maybe it will be the AI bubble, maybe because of oil, shortages, something entirely unforeseen or some combination of those things, but if ther
42.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
I see any kind automation as a good thing as long as it is reliable enough. We stopped copying books manually a long time ago, and the craft was lost, most of us can't do complex calculations manually etc. but it does not matter as lon
43.
by stephc_int13 4mo ago
There is not enough pushback against this. I don't think anyone is fully comfortable with it but it is considered "standard practice". It wasn't such a huge issue until recently because processing all of this was a burde
44.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
The reality is that many CEOs don't really know what they are doing. The disruption is not following their playbook. When faced with uncertainty we tend to look at past examples, the industrial revolution, the internet, electrification
45.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
C++ being more performant than C is not something that I've seen in any benchmarks or personal experience. In practice, some of the cases about specialization that was made possible with C++ constructs is also achieved by modern C comp
46.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
The takeoff looked almost normal but I noticed a slight drift from vertical, likely because one of the engines was dead or dying. Overall the V3 is supposed to be an upgrade but actual progress is more or less stalling compared V2.
47.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
The main issue with this reasoning is that the hardware substrate for AI and good old computing is the same. All governed by Moore's Law, what happened then seems extremely unlikely to happen again, the curve is a sigmoid and we'r
48.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
I agree with both the gist of the article and your comment. In the case of the well known FAANG and other similarly structured large software companies, everyone working there or having approached them know how bloated and inefficient they
49.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
The thing is that while EU is allied with the US, they are also competitors in many markets. Airbus is using Palantir services. The competition between Boeing and Airbus has often be brutal and dirty, and considered significant at the stat
50.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
I don't understand how Palantir managed to sell their services outside of the US, given their deep ties to CIA, political positions and involment with US goverments.
51.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
My intuition would be that the resistance would come from grumpy old guys like me who spent most of their lives perfecting their craft.
52.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
Every waves of automation are naturally creating resistance, as they tend to make the lives of a large number of people miserable during the transition. Nothing new here. What I find surprising with the anti-AI sentiment is that it seems to
53.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
I am pretty sure that at least some SpaceX engineers are reading HackerNews. But I don't think I ever seen any insiders comments here, even anonymously.
54.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
If you read the other articles by the same author on his blog, you'll see that he has some strong and weird opinions about C and UB. Complete BS in my opinion.
55.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
As a C programmer, I find this kind of bad faith article very irritating. Yes, the standard library is bad. This is by far the worst part of the C legacy. But it is not that hard to write your own. String functions like this are not difficu
56.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
Let's say it is an opinion. But Tesla has been promising full self-driving "next year" for quite a long time now, and it seems they are stuck at the "95% there" stage basically forever.
57.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
I have been impressed by some of his work, especially on the vulgarisation and simplification. Excellent communicator and engineer. But I am a bit more skeptical about his taste and vision. Leaving OpenAI to work for Elon Musk was a poor mo
58.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
This is more of the Bezos style, maybe inspired by the same idea. Appears less random and continual.
59.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
It is something that occured a few times in Roman history. A collective punishment, 10% of the soldiers killed by their peers, randomly choosen.
60.
by stephc_int13 5mo ago
I think that Zuckerberg is driven by numbers/analytics and the competition. He was lucky enough to be made a king in this world before he was fully adult, he is likely unaware of many of the realities we take for granted, and why woul

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