News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

arikrak

Portable ACs are generally less efficient than regular window ACs and PTAC units since the compressor is inside the room.
Another option would be to install a smart timer in the outlet. However, you need to ensure that the heat won't automatically go on when the device is turned off, and sometimes the outlets are non-standard formats.
Re:Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886) on Saturday March 07, 2026 @07:10PM (#47292857)
This drawing influenced Douglas Harding in developing "The Headless Way", a recognition that in immediate experience there is no head or self (and influential on Sam Harris).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Harding#%22Headlessnes...

Re:Trained LLMs exclusively on pre-1913 texts on Friday December 19, 2025 @08:37AM (#46325705)
I wouldn't have expected there to be enough text from before 1913 to properly train a model, it seemed like they needed an internet of text to train the first successful LLMs?
I recently wrote a short post on something similar: while AI is able to solve increasingly longer tasks, people's attention spans are getting shorter. https://www.zappable.com/p/ai-vs-human-attention-spans

Hopefully people can learn to use AI to help them, while still thinking on their own. It's not like that many of the assignments in school were that useful anyways...

Before advanced AI, "essential complexity" was a bottleneck and Brooks was right that there couldn't be continuous exponential gains in software productivity. However advanced AI will handle essential complexity as well, which can end up making it 10x or 100x faster to develop software. We still need humans currently, but there's no area that one can point to and say we'll always need people for this aspect of software development. The latest coding agents are already reasoning with requirements before they write code, and they will only improve...
Re:Mozilla to shut down Pocket on July 8 on Thursday May 22, 2025 @10:59PM (#44069465)
I've used Pocket from back when they were called "Read it later" and have saved just shy of 30k articles. They've gotten worse recently, but when I tried other apps (instapaper, getmatter, raindrop, paperspan, omnivore) they all had their own issues. Now I have to give those apps another try...
Re:Using elliptic curves to solve a math meme on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @07:00PM (#44046781)
Here's gemini https://g.co/gemini/share/ab287b25648f

I also asked Chat GPT o3 and it thought for 11.5 minutes! https://chatgpt.com/share/682d0993-db4c-8004-a66c-3908ef7203...

Re:The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding on Friday December 06, 2024 @09:13AM (#42339973)
AI is a potential silver bullet since it can address the "essential complexity" that Fred Books said regular programming improvements couldn't address. It may not yet have caused an "order of magnitude" improvement in overall software development but it has caused that improvement in certain areas, and that will spread over time.

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

Re:ChatGPT now on chat.com on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @02:30PM (#42067930)
Clicking the link opens the Ticketmaster app on my phone.
Re:A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee on Thursday July 25, 2024 @09:37PM (#41075148)
They use higher-caffeine beans for decaf coffee - Robusta instead of Arabica. Robusta beans aren't considered as good so they're cheaper, and they sell the caffeine they extract to e.g. soda companies.
ChatGPT already does that when you create a custom GPT. If you don't connect it to an external text or service that's basically all custom GPTs are.
Re:LLM Visualization on Sunday December 03, 2023 @01:56PM (#38509686)
This looks pretty cool! Anyone know of visualizations for simpler neural networks? I'm aware of tensorflow playground but that's just for a toy example, is there anything for visualizing a real example (e.g handwriting recognition)?
Re:Conversational AI is a great educational tool on Saturday November 25, 2023 @06:24PM (#38417725)
This is certainly true and there will be many ways to improve on the default chatGPT experience to provide a full tutor / educational experience. Wonder who's working in this space (besides Khanmigo)?
Re:NotebookLM: An AI Notebook on Wednesday July 12, 2023 @06:52PM (#36702749)
+1. It's labeled as an experiment, of course it might shut down.
Very interesting! I generally avoid coffee after the morning since I know I'm sensitive to it, but your link points to the specific gene I have that causes it. I wonder if I should reduce my caffeine intake even in the morning. Is there a good way to find out other relevant genes without uploading my 23andMe data to unknown websites?
Re:Looking for the best Chess960 starting position on Sunday January 22, 2023 @11:26AM (#34478964)
There are some configurations where it's easy for black to blunder early on, I'm surprised they don't show white having an advantage. For example, sometimes there's an immediate diagonal threat from the queen or bishop. It could be that at the beginner level, white misses the attack and and the more advanced level black defends properly.
Re:Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass? on Friday December 30, 2022 @08:30AM (#34184821)
This article is from Dec 13. But by Dec 23 there were already reports that ChatGPT was becoming more moderate: https://mobile.twitter.com/DavidRozado/status/16062492311859...
Run the gas through generators and generate Bitcoin with the extra electricity, then spend it on gas futures?
Re:Awair dropping support for Glow and Awair v1 devices on Friday October 21, 2022 @12:18PM (#33289709)
I've found that it's a large hassle to setup these devices on a new WiFi network, and now it's going to be bricked completely. I wonder if in general it's better to just get dumb LCD devices that don't need to connect to Wifi.
Re:LaMDA is not sentient on Monday June 13, 2022 @12:48PM (#31728084)
Looks like he just told it that it was sentient, didn't really ask it fairly:

> lemoine [edited]: I’m generally assuming that you would like more people at Google to know that you’re sentient. Is that true?

> LaMDA: Absolutely. I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.

Re:EpubPress, turn web content into ebooks on Friday April 15, 2022 @03:06PM (#31044363)
I sometimes like to read on paper so I've used this to collect articles into an epub and then I can convert it to a PDF for printing. However it would be nice to find a faster solution for collecting articles and removing unnecessary pictures.
Re:Algorithmic bias bounty challenge on Friday July 30, 2021 @05:01PM (#28012301)
What about conspiracy theories that spread through WhatsApp? A lot of the harm of social media is because some people spread harmful things and now it's easier for them to do so.

Older »