> How's that different from a regular human dev doing the same thing?
Another of the shallow arguments thrown around, similar to "we don't check compiler output so..."
People learn and improve. LLMs don't learn, they follow instructions to a degree.
A human has to wrestle with it to work how you want, ergo humans are necessary already.
You can't fire the LLM and hire a competent one. The few available is all there is, they're all copies of the same thing.
You don't have a team. If you think 10 LLMs = a team of 10 people, then you don't know what a team is, how different skills and views make a big difference to outcomes.
LLMs can't innovate. They can't come to you with a great idea they came up with. They don't have ideas.
If none of these things are worth anything in your particular case, then that's ok. But let's not actually lose our minds and forget why people are intrinsically better than machines.
There are only a few arguments to support using LLMs, all of which are from people who a) want to spend less on salaries or b) sell you LLMs.
LLMS definitely improve but it's the model updates.
Teams are often hierarchical where the leaders define everything and people under them have less things to say about it. Not much different than an LLM team.
LLMs will do things no human developer will ever do. There are unspoken default assumptions a human will not violate that an LLM will.
I do a lot of LLM coding and I catch about one of these per week. But I still look at the code after the LLM writes and reviews it. So I'm going slower than most on here, so my default assumption would be theirs are doing this more often that once/week. Whether or not it matters depends upon your project.
My favorite one from the last month was the LLM designed monster hit points in a way that everyone is healed to full between combat. No, it was not intentional, HP were just stored in a way that the structure storing it completely disappeared outside actual combat.
There's an implicit assumption that humans will get things wrong, which is why we invented pull requests, code reviews, design sessions, unit tests (with separate reviews for those), etc.
The belief that AI can do all that without the gates is throwing away something useful where people get to understand how the system is changing. If you keep the gates but use AI to generate all the code you either slow AI down to the speed of humans or you end up with a massive backlog of stuff to review.
You can't hold an LLM accountable, that's a big one. Nevertheless I foresee some people trying to shift blame to the LLM if something breaks. "Claude told me..." and so on.
I haven't ever seen a human developer inventing requirements.
My first startup was building requirements management software for small businesses to solve that exact problem. Devs add things in all the time. It's usually referred to as 'gold plating' or scope creep.
There is literally not one aspect of the universe that is provably finite. Not in any direction, not at any scale, not in any way you can think to look at it.
Maybe I misunderstand you, but I don’t think I agree with that.
E.g. the observable universe is finite. Its observable age is finite. The number of known elementary particle types is finite. The number of particles within the observable universe is finite (according to the current understanding). Etc.
There are many examples.
Do we disagree on this, or am I perhaps misunderstanding your position here?
Key word is provably. We can assume the universe is finite because we don't have evidence against it, but no one knows if it's possible to prove or reject that for good.
Infinity is an abstraction. The universe cannot be "infinite" in the mathematical sense, as the mathematical infinity is an abstraction. The only meaningful question is "is mathematical infinity required to produce good models of the universe/physics?" and the answer so far is "no". We use infinity because it is convenient, but it is not really needed.
There is no reason to think that "infinity" will be essential to describing the universe any more than any other possible abstraction that we have not so far constructed.
> The universe cannot be "infinite" in the mathematical sense
Why not? An infinitely large universe goes against our intuitions, but our intuitions were formed by the experience of living on a finite planet and have no bearing on what's true on a galactic scale – just like they have no bearing on what's true at the quantum scale. There is no objective reason to assume that the universe isn't infinite.
I would say that there is nothing in intuition that goes against infinities, really. Quite the opposite, eg most ancient greek philosophy assumed matter could be divided indefinitely while retaining its properties. It was scientific and mathematical development that actually showed that finite/discrete models are enough to describe physics.
Moreover, even if finitism is not enough, as I said in mathematics infinity is specific concepts/abstractions, and there are even infinities with different cardinalities, not to mention the axiomatic system within which it is defined produces different properties of infinity. Which infinity is the universe of all these? I am not even sure if this question can be really meaningful, unless we get to a completely different description of the universe than the ones we have where such statements can actually make sense. The best we can get imo is to show that some accurate physical model requires infinity, and that seems already quite hard thing to show.
Observable universe is just the part of the universe from where light had time to hit the Earth already. It is growing pretty much at the speed of light, not because of physical changes to the space-time, but because the light from farther away finally arrived. So while it's definitely finite, I wouldn't say it disproves the claim that nothing about the universe is known to be finite.
Because of inflation, there is a distance at which the objects not already in our light cone are moving away faster than the speed of light. So the amount of stuff that we will be able to observe is limited.
besides the other points raised, even within the observable universe there are some assumed infinities as well as things that might be infinite, might not be.
e.g. time and space likely aren't quantized, you have an infinite amount of points in between any two arbitrary points in spacetime. don't mention planck scale black holes, it's a meme and even most phycisists who like to cite it haven't actually thought about it for more than 5 minutes.
I have the exact opposite experience. There nothing I can think of that is infinite in nature. Not only is it impossible to prove infinity empirically ("in the universe"; the only thing that actually matters) but there are exactly zero actual things with an infinite nature of any kind that I can think of. It's a useful imaginary construct that makes fancy math work, that's all.
For example, the special theory of relativity doesn't work if space-time has any "lowest scale" (i.e. if the distance between any two events can be expressed as n * min_dist, where n is an integer and min_dist is a constant that has the same value for all observers), it you can't infinitely sub-divide it, since then lengths couldn't contract the way that the Lorrentz transforms predicts. Lots of math in QM and QFT also requires space and time to be continuous for other reasons as well.
Also, none of our current laws put any kind of limit on the life span of the Universe as a whole, so space-time is also infinitely increasing, even if heat death or big crunch models are correct.
Of course, none of this is provable per se - it is fundamentally impossible to run an experiment in finite time that proves whether something is finite or infinite. It could be that SR and QFT are wrong in their continuous space assumptions, but only in ways that are too subtle to measure. Still, as it stands, we don't have any theory of how the world works which allows for a discrete space-time, even as an approximation - we need space-time to be continuous for our current theories to work at all.
Well, our physics is famously incomplete and even if it weren't: math needing infinity is in no way shape or form proof of anything but the nature of math which itself could be nothing but a highly particular construct.
I always find it interesting nobody seriously questions why something so extraordinarily basic as geometry pervades "the universe". I'd say it's much more likely we are mathy creatures and cannot do anything but perceive logical building blocks somewhat reminding me of a guy using a flashlight proclaiming the universe comprises various configurations of spherical lights.
I can imagine infinity just fine and I'm sure many useful things can be inferred from it, but that doesn't mean it exists. Lots of math is possible but does not exist in reality and that's fine, I'm just being honest about the very real boundaries here. I get the feeling many people confuse the map for the territory.
> there are exactly zero actual things with an infinite nature of any kind that I can think of
That's because your imagination is bounded by being a monkey that has spent its entire life in a finite environment — no offense. The universe, however, isn't bounded the limits of our imagination or intuition.
Yes, that's all very interesting (truly) but where does your actual lived experience come into play? That's the part I am talking about, the "in the universe" part, not the "could be" or "in imaginary parts of the possible universe" but the actual, experience-able universe. That's what separates math from physics and IMO math is the one that has to prove its worth not the other way around. I can construct endless internally consistent imaginary worlds with zero bearing on (any) reality.
And not one aspect that’s provably infinite, either, sl I don’t think your argument is interesting.
There are many things about the universe, though, that are finite to the best of our understanding. As in, any infinities that crop up in our models are properly understood to be cases where the models are wrong or incomplete.
On the other hand, every single observation anyone has ever made was a finite value of something.
Even when things are potentially infinite, there seems to be a conspiracy of the universe to make it finite. The size of space may be infinite, but due to a finite speed of light and the finite age of the universe we can only ever observe a finite slice. When attempting to zoom in to an infinite degree onto supposedly point-like particles, quantum mechanics makes everything fuzzy and finite again. Black holes appear to have infinite curvature at the center, but it's unobservable due to the event horizon.
This principle seems so natural that we even apply it in advance: In quantum field theory, there are infinities in the equations when done naively, which we deem so unnatural that we apply funny tricks which make mathematicians cringe, but they miraculously work out so well that we get theory and experiments to agree to an astonishing degree.
And yet the vast majority of physicists treat infinity in the equations as a sign of them being incomplete, and dismiss the possibility of the universe being infinite in any way
I would like to point out that there is also no proof of God not existing either
The parent comment is correct, if you can count the solutions, it is easy to find a solution. Assuming there is a solution, you set the first variable to either true or false and then count the solutions. If it is zero, you made the wrong choice and the first variable must be set to the opposite value. Repeat for the remaining variables until you have fixed all of them and found a solution. This takes n invocations of the counting algorithm and is probably what the parent comment means with O(n) even though this is not correct as it is O(n times whatever the counting algorithm runtime is) and not just O(n).
But the parent comment also missed my point. They have an algorithm for the counting problem which also provides a subexponential algorithm for the decision and search problem. But they could have refuted the exponential time hypothesis with a subexponential search or decisions algorithm which would not [easily] provide a subexponential counting algorithm.
Nice. On Octopus Agile in GB the price already tracks the mix (roughly 2.2x day-ahead wholesale), so the carbon-aware tariff exists in the wild.
What bounds the response is not willingness but plumbing: which import/export products the supplier lets you pair, and the export limit on a single-phase connection (about 3.7 kW). I reconstructed a 200 kWh home battery on the published half-hourly rates for June to August: the exact optimum moves 50 to 60 kWh a day, and the connection is a bigger lever than the software by a factor of two to three.
This is unrelated to the main thesis of the article, but worth pointing out as too many people equate the Cyrillic script with Russian language.
The Cyrillic script was invented in Bulgaria (during the First Bulgarian Empire), and was used to write Bulgarian language, creating a huge literary corpus, long before it began spreading to Kievan Rus. The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages.
And no, Bulgaria was never part of Russia nor the Soviet Union.
> The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages.
Also, Bulgaria used to own all the land in the world, but because Bulgarians are very kind people, they gave some of it to other nations so that they have a place to live too. Thank you, Bulgarians!
Church Slavonic is a South Slavic language and so is a cousin of East Slavic language like Russian or Ukrainian. Russian borrowed a lot from Old Church Slavonic but doesn't descend from it. It's like the influence of Latin or Norman French on English.
You're confusing a language (the way people speak) and a literary tradition (the way people write).
When ancestors of Russians borrowed Church Slavonic writing, they were already speaking another Slavic language, Old East Slavic. For the time being, they were writing in one language (Church Slavonic) and speaking another language (Old East Slavic). Later, they dropped Church Slavonic and started writing what they spoke.
Modern Russian language is a continuation of Old East Slavic, not of Old Church Slavonic.
To an extent, yes. I'd say the difference is government systems. A single organism, or something like the human body, has more evolved, more sophisticated government mechanisms. The body is mostly a cooperative civilisation of cells. Of course, there's still natural competition among them, in many shapes and forms. The cells are held together in a coherent, agile, resilient organism by governance systems strong enough to keep internal Darwinism from becoming civil war.
This is just one micro-instance of a much larger thing. Brain encodes structural similarity across modalities. Corollary: language is far from arbitrary labels for things.
No, language is still pretty close to arbitrary labels. The handful of tenuous common threads like the bouba-kiki effect don't change the overall picture that much. The simple fact that language varies as much as it does is sufficient to prove that it's only loosely bound to anything universal.
I think this is a misunderstanding of the arbitrariness of the sign. Arbitrary doesn't mean "random" or "uniformly sampled." The fact there are systematic tendencies among languages in how things are called doesn't negate the arbitrariness of the sign, they could have been called other things. We can also decide to refer to things by another name and we can use any arbitrary name we like! There is no limits on what names we can use (besides silly physiological constraints like having a word with 50 000 consonants). But, of course, there's much more to language than just labels!
For me, the interesting thing in this paper vis-à-vis language is that it shows how much innate structure in cognition must shape our language.
Arbitrariness of the sign is a principle that requires so many epicycles to present as "true" that it's more of a warning against overgeneralization than an insight with any significant predictive power in its own right.
Let's call the arbitrariness of the sign, blinga. Why do you think blinga requires "epicycles"? Blinga makes pretty modest claims: there is no requirement that the form of a sign matches that which it signifies in any way.
Is the US dollar losing its dominance? The answer is both A) yes and B) it doesn't matter.
Yes, US dollar is losing a bit of power and influence. This is likely to continue.
Making inferences about the US global dominance based on this fact is misguided. US global dominance is as strong as ever and, if anything, getting stronger. US has very successfully managed to move the game a level above currency, to direct governance via financial, legal, political and military means. It has made any meaningful competitors either entirely irrelevant (e.g. Russia), pretty well aligned (e.g. India) or pretty well contained (e.g. China) It's blue skies ahead.
USA is doing everything in its power to make Russia great again. It was in great position to make it irrelevant, but it has choosen to make itself Russia like and snatch defest out of the jaws of victory against Russia .
The exact point I'm making is that this is NOT the case! US has super strong financial control over most of the world in a way which is NOT connected to the strength of the US currency.
Ah, yes, the reputable Gartner. The rankers of all things, who around 2014 wanted to include our small one-employee IT consultancy that nobody-had-ever-heard-of as a global thought leader on the subject of "Agile", for the modest compensation of about £80,000.
Come to think of it, should have taken the deal and ran with it.
The banned story was hosted on a shady website and quickly flagged. The reason for that was (if I remember correctly) that the website was some kind of right wing outlet.
It would be difficult to find, outside of a full totalitarian regime, a country that doesn't exploit media, including news, advertising and pop culture, for manufacturing consent customized to monetize and motivate the populace to be compliant, profitable, useful consumers.
These are totally different things. In public relations the source is clearly identifiable. If the Kreml or White House gives a press conference, it's up to you whether to believe them or not. No problem with that, comrade!
How can this comment be the top one on the thread? The other side wasn't banned. It just wasn't upvoted. I would expect this comment on Reddit, not here.
HN doesn't ban stories friend.
Why don't you post a link?
Maybe Kaspersky is completely innocent, but the fact is they are based in a country which would have no problem in asking/coercing/outright forcing them to spy on other nations. That is a competitive disadvantage for a security company. If you think that's unfair then talk to Putin.
Not sure what new angle this Washington Post article brings that the current discussion wasn't flagged as a dupe. Maybe enough time has passed and de-duping is only done when both are on the front page?
Not only will the mods ban stories if they're offensive enough, but quite a lot of "social justice" stories get flagged into oblivion by the userbase. All sorts of things vanish from HN. Some of which is necessary.
It would be valuable to us newcomers to this issue if you could provide us with some links to these stories. Also I'd be interested in seeing that these got banned on HN.
"The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software ... That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations."
After a quick search I didn't find those stories (although I remember reading something about that, too, many months ago, and I also remember seeing Kaspersky blog posts deconstructing US-made malware like Stuxnet and whatnot), but I did find this interesting article, specifically these paragraphs are interesting:
> Officials tell CyberScoop they believe the FBI has engaged in deliberate media leaks and overblown classified congressional briefings to build the case around Kaspersky.
> The FBI has briefed private sector companies across several industries, urging them to cut ties with Kaspersky on security grounds
> Officials from the NSA, CIA and DIA have spent the last year privately criticizing what they perceive as the bureau’s escalatory strategy, which they say is often based on lackluster intelligence work.
> No evidence of a relationship between Kaspersky and the Kremlin has been made public, which has fueled a public debate about Washington’s tactics against the private company.
> “There is little doubt that the U.S. government’s handling of their Kaspersky claims will cause trouble for U.S. companies,” Jake Williams, a former NSA employee and founder of Rendition Infosec, told CyberScoop. “The data released so far against Kaspersky is weak and inconclusive and applies to many U.S. information security companies. Making claims without substance to back those claims will just lead to speculation that U.S. companies are involved in similar activities. Rebuking these claims is made difficult since the burden of ‘proof’ established by the U.S. is so low.”
The "two-sides" cargo cult is often a false equivocation: like teaching evolution and creationism. There are some obviously wrong opinions that aren't worth legimitizing. That is different than a reporter playing devil's advocate, finding adversarial opinions and asking tough questions. It is especially onerous when one "side" is one of these alt-right or mainstream rags that push talking points agenda instead of honest facts.
In any case, if you want to primarily protect against US government snooping, Kaspersky might be a better choice than a US anti-virus product. If you want to primarily protect against Russian government snooping, Kaspersky seems like a bad choice.
To me it seems perfectly reasonable to prohibit US government authorities from using Russian antivirus software that installs with highest privileges. I'm amazed they were allowed to do this in the first place.
>> This is retaliation for Kaspersky showing the middle finger to CIA backdoors, as was reported in multiple non-western news outlets over the past week.
Yes, comrade! They did the same to FSB backdoors, no?
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