byearthithatius (u/byearthithatius)

byearthithatius commented on Breaking Git with a carriage return and cloning RCE dgl.cx/2025/07/git-clone-... · Posted by u/dgl

Spivak · 2 months ago

This would also break custom commands. Which if you don't know about it, is a pretty cool feature.

Drop a git-something executable in your path and you can execute it as git something.

byearthithatius · 2 months ago

Why is this helpful? Just add the executable itself to path and execute it with "something" instead of "git something". Why are we making git an intermediary ? I am kind of stupid and this is genuine.

byearthithatius commented on Show HN: Goboscript, text-based programming language, compiles to Scratch github.com/aspizu/goboscr... · Posted by u/aspizu

AlexanderDhoore · 3 months ago

I love teaching Scratch to kids. Some years ago, I used to do "CoderDojo", which is like a hobby club where kids can learn programming. Some kids go to soccer, others to art academy — and these kids learn programming. Super cool to teach.

However, most kids get stuck after they master Scratch. Especially kids around the age of 8–10. They learn Scratch. It's awesome. They make some advanced games and really get the hang of it.

Then they ask to do something more — some “real programming.” And that's where the hurdles start to pop up. First problem: my kids don't speak English, so most documentation and tutorials are out of reach. Second problem: suddenly they need to learn everything about computers — source files, graphics, networking... This is too big a hurdle for them to take. Third problem: text-based programming. Most of them literally can't type on a keyboard properly. Text is also much less fun than visual programming.

What I've always wondered — and this project reminds me of it — is: can we make the transition smoother? Stay within the Scratch ecosystem, which they know, but start introducing extra concepts step by step, without the big jump.

GoboScript introduces "text-based programming" as a first step, while staying within the Scratch world. I would have liked it more if we could teach the kids a real-world programming language, like Python or JavaScript — because then they’re moving toward "real programming" step by step.

The next step would be: introduce other computer concepts like file systems or networking.

I would love to build this myself. Alas, no time. Maybe one day.

byearthithatius · 3 months ago

I loved learning and then mentoring at CoderDojos. Incredible meetups where they really let kids learn in their own way with guidance of more experienced coders. Very fun and I never had a bad experience. The ones I went to were at University of Minnesota.

byearthithatius commented on Launch HN: Exa (YC S21) – The web as a database · Posted by u/willbryk

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

I was so excited for this, but sadly it doesn't work at all, not even UI feedback for the error:(

The UI showed literally no change. So I checked and the console shows:

``` Try: 14 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Try: 15 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Try: 16 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Try: 17 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Try: 18 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Try: 19 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Try: 20 Not Found 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 Gave up after 10 seconds. 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 filteredSuggestions Array(3) [ {…}, {…}, {…} ] 681-7df1b139fa2dc9f0.js:14:3379 ```

Also your table doesn't fit in the viewport so I can't see the results.

Firefox Ubuntu.

byearthithatius commented on Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs felixrieseberg.github.io/... · Posted by u/felixrieseberg

lolinder · 4 months ago

It's not quite that bad! The last version of Office released with Clippy was in May 2003! So you would have been born, if only just.

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

Yeah I was a tiny little two year old:) Definitely wasn't coding yet hahaha

byearthithatius commented on Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview developers.googleblog.com... · Posted by u/meetpateltech

martinsnow · 4 months ago

Bwoah it's almost as if react and tailwind is the bees knees ind frontend atm

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

Sadly. Tailwind is so oof in my opinion. Lets import megabytes just so we don't have to write 5 whole CSS classes. I mean just copy paste the code.

Don't get me stared on how ugly the HTML becomes when most tags have 20 f*cking classes which could have been two.

byearthithatius commented on Show HN: Clippy – 90s UI for local LLMs felixrieseberg.github.io/... · Posted by u/felixrieseberg

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

Fun fact: the newest generation (such as myself, a 23 year old programmer) were actually not even alive when Clippy existed. I only know of it from an Office reference. One day I will have something like that -- maybe MSN or internet explorer?

byearthithatius commented on Evolving OpenAI's Structure openai.com/index/evolving... · Posted by u/rohitpaulk

ballooney · 4 months ago

Hopelessly over-idealistic premise. Sama and pg have never been anything other than opportunistic muck. This will be my last ever comment on HN.

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

I feel this so hard, I think this may be my last time using the site as well. They don't care about advancement, they only care about money.

byearthithatius commented on Evolving OpenAI's Structure openai.com/index/evolving... · Posted by u/rohitpaulk

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

[removed]

byearthithatius commented on Mercury: Commercial-scale diffusion language model inceptionlabs.ai/introduc... · Posted by u/HyprMusic

nullc · 4 months ago

Consider the entropy of the distribution of token X in these examples:

"Four X"

and

"Four X and seven years ago".

In the first case X could be pretty much anything, but in the second case we both know the only likely completion.

So it seems like there would be a huge advantage in not having to run autogressively. But in practice it's less significant then you might imagine because the AR model can internally model the probability of X conditioned on the stuff it hasn't output yet, and in fact because without reinforcement the training causes it converge on the target probability of the whole output, the AR model must do some form of lookahead internally.

(That said RLHF seems to break this product of the probabilities property pretty badly, so maybe it will be the case that diffusion will suffer less intelligence loss ::shrugs::).

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

Both are conditional distributions on the context of which they were requested so like you said in the second paragraph, the difference is not significant. I see what you mean though and maybe there are use cases then where Diffusion is preferable. To me it seems the context conditional and internal model is sufficient where this problem doesn't really occur.

byearthithatius commented on Mercury: Commercial-scale diffusion language model inceptionlabs.ai/introduc... · Posted by u/HyprMusic

jonplackett · 4 months ago

Ok. My go to puzzle is this:

You have 2 minutes to cool down a cup of coffee to the lowest temp you can

You have two options:

1. Add cold milk immediately, then let it sit for 2 mins.

2. Let it sit for 2 mins, then add the cold milk.

Which one cools the coffee to the lowest temperature and why?

And Mercury gets this right - while as of right now ChatGPT 4o get it wrong.

So that’s pretty impressive.

byearthithatius · 4 months ago

Token-based Gemini is 4 seconds of thinking:

Okay, let's break this down using the principle of heat transfer (specifically Newton's Law of Cooling):

    Heat loss is faster when the temperature difference is greater. A very hot object loses heat to cool surroundings much faster than a warm object.

    Option 1: Add milk immediately.

        You instantly lower the coffee's temperature by mixing it with cold milk.

        Now, this warmer (not hot) mixture sits for 2 minutes. Because the temperature difference between the mixture and the room is smaller, it cools down more slowly over those 2 minutes.

    Option 2: Let it sit for 2 mins, then add milk.

        The very hot coffee sits for 2 minutes. Because the temperature difference between the hot coffee and the room is large, it loses heat more quickly during these 2 minutes.

        After 2 minutes of rapid cooling, you then add the cold milk, lowering the temperature further.

Conclusion:

To get the coffee to the lowest temperature, you should choose Option 2: Let it sit for 2 mins, then add the cold milk.