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adonovan commented on How many chess games are possible?   win-vector.com/2026/01/27... · Posted by u/jmount
jonas_kgomo · 12 days ago
I watched a movie a few days ago and they basically said there are more states in the game of chess than atoms in the universe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfMQ7hzyFW4
adonovan · 12 days ago
Sure, but in combinatorics the number of atoms in the universe (say 1e80) is not a large number. For example, the factorial of 59 is larger. If you own 30 pairs of shoes, there are factorial(60) ways to arrange the individual shoes in a sequence.
adonovan commented on AI is a horse (2024)   kconner.com/2024/08/02/ai... · Posted by u/zdw
GuB-42 · 16 days ago
> Why does HN love analogies?

Because HN is like a child and analogies are like images

adonovan · 16 days ago
I see what you did there.
adonovan commented on enclose.horse   enclose.horse/... · Posted by u/DavidSJ
adonovan · a month ago
I think you should change the cherries to a battery and call the game Correct Horse Battery Stable.
adonovan commented on Go away Python   lorentz.app/blog-item.htm... · Posted by u/baalimago
adonovan · a month ago
> The one big problem: gopls. We need the first line of the script to be without spaces...

Specifically the problem here is automated reformatting. Gopls typically does this on save as you are editing, but it is good practice for your CI system to enforce the invariant that all merged *.go files are canonically formatted. This ensures that the user who makes a change formats it (and is blamed for that line), instead of the hapless next person to touch some other spot in that file. It also reduces merge conflicts.

But there's a second big (bigger) problem with this approach: you can't use a go.mod file in a one-off script, and that means you can't specify versions of your dependencies, which undermines the appeal to compatibility that motivated your post:

> The primary benefit of go-scripting is [...] and compatibility guarantees. While most languages aims to be backwards compatible, go has this a core feature. The "go-scripts" you write will not stop working as long as you use go version 1.*, which is perfect for a corporate environment.

> In addition to this, the compatibility guarantees makes it much easier to share "scripts". As long as the receiving end has the latest version of go, the script will run on any OS for tens of years in the future.

adonovan commented on The future of software development is software developers   codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/cdrnsf
theshrike79 · a month ago
Also 5: "But LLMs produce a bunch of code I need to read and review".

Yes, but so do your coworkers? Do you complain about every PR you need to read? Are they all compressed diamonds of pure genious, not a single missed character or unoptimised function? Not a bad or suboptimal decision in sight?

If so, shoot me a mail, I want to work where you're working =)

adonovan · a month ago
My coworkers learn, and an important part of my job is teaching them. LLM-based tools don't.
adonovan commented on Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%   electrek.co/2025/12/29/te... · Posted by u/coloneltcb
1121redblackgo · a month ago
At what point is it fair to call the list something other than ‘predictions’
adonovan · a month ago
Predicting is easy. Predicting correctly less so.
adonovan commented on An ounce of silver is now worth more than a barrel of oil   wsj.com/finance/commoditi... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
adamwong246 · a month ago
All petroleum was created from ancient forests before the evolution of microorganisms that could decompose fiber, so the plant material was simply buried and gradually became petroleum. Above ground, evolution produced organisms which could break down fiber. My point being, that not only is petroleum very useful, it is exceptionally rare on a geological timeline (at least on this planet ). It's like a cosmic trust fund, and like most trust fund recipents, we utterly squandered it. We took all this free energy, burned it to power ai slop, and poisoned ourselves in the process. We should have been using that oil to push humans out of the gravity well to Titan where petroleum is abundant. But no, we wanted big cars, cheap electricity and single use utensils.

Edit: I was mistaken, confusing coal and petroleum. While petroleum comes from microscopic ocean life, coal forms from the remains of terrestrial plants.

adonovan · a month ago
This (amazing) hypothesis has been challenged by new evidence; see for example https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4780611/.
adonovan commented on Satellites reveal heat leaking from largest US cryptocurrency mining center   space.com/space-explorati... · Posted by u/troglo-byte
hephaes7us · 2 months ago
There absolutely is, but of course it's nonzero cost to capture.
adonovan · 2 months ago
Also, the temperature is not high enough (compared to the steam coming out of a gas/oil/nuclear plant) to obtain much work from the waste heat.
adonovan commented on US destroying its reputation as a scientific leader – European science diplomat   sciencebusiness.net/news/... · Posted by u/xqcgrek2
klodolph · 2 months ago
I hope it’s like what happened to countries like England, France, and Spain. You see your empire collapse but the country itself remains intact.

England “gave up” scientific and technological leadership during the 20th century. (That’s a tongue-in-cheek take on it, don’t read too much into it.)

adonovan · 2 months ago
> England “gave up” scientific and technological leadership during the 20th century. (That’s a tongue-in-cheek take on it, don’t read too much into it.)

Was forced to give up, due to the economic devastation of WWII, might be more accurate (though of course there were other factors too).

adonovan commented on Elevated errors across many models   status.claude.com/inciden... · Posted by u/pablo24602
irishcoffee · 2 months ago
I’m imagining a steampunk dystopia in 50 years: “all world production stopped, LLM hosting went down. The market is in free-fall. Sam, are you there?”

Man that cracks me up.

adonovan · 2 months ago
“A lone coder, trained in the direct manipulation of symbols—an elegant weapon from a more civilized age—-is now all that stands between humanity and darkness.” etc

u/adonovan

KarmaCake day941July 10, 2015View Original