I’ve begun to notice that a lot of endlessly repeated statements about AI by the vendors of hosted AI inference and their sympathizers are strongly contradicting reality, and yet, they keep making these statements. A short list of the ones I’ve seen recently (there may be others as well):
Visit jacquesmattheij.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Jan 2010 – Mar 2024
Tech Industry & Business 50Career & Management 37Life, Learning & Writing 30Society, Policy & Culture 27Web & Frontend 18Software Engineering 15
I grew up in Amsterdam, which is a pretty rough town by Dutch Standards. As a kid there are all kinds of temptations and peer-pressure to join in in bad stuff is something that is hard to escape. But somehow that never was a big factor for me, computers and electronics kept me fascinated for long enough that none of…
So, it has finally happened. I just turned 50 and I can’t say it was something I was looking forward to. First the good news: today seems to be a day like any other so if you’re younger than I am, from the far side of the great divide, I’m happy to inform you that there is nothing that feels abruptly different. The…
Two weeks ago to the day I asked for your help in finding a lawyer for a HN’er that was about to be arraigned in front of a Delhi judge.
The machine is now capable of running un-attended for hours on end, which is a huge milestone. No more jamming or other nastiness that causes me to interrupt a run. Many little things contributed to this, I’ve looked at all the mechanics and figured out all the little things that went wrong one by one and have come up…
In the past, the various professions were organized as guilds. If you wanted to become a cabinet maker you’d enter into an apprenticeship arrangement with a ‘master’ cabinetmaker and you’d be taught the tricks of the trade over a several year period. As your final examination you would be required to make a…
The 14th of August, 2003 was an interesting day in many ways. I’d just taken the family down to Toronto to spend a day there and pick up our newly minted passports at the Dutch embassy. We had some fun in the city seeing the sights, visited Niagara Falls and were on the way back on a sunny August thursday afternoon…
Windmills have always fascinated me and for a long time I was dreaming of one day building my own. Where I live there are still machines from the 1600’s that are just as magnificent today as when they were first built. When you see one standing in a field rotating and converting passing air into usable energy they…
For many years in the beginning of my career I’d been more than happy to work for free or even at a loss as long as the work was interesting. I was so totally in love with computer programming and the feeling I got from making something work and then seeing that creation be used by other people that I completely lost…
I’m pretty sure that the hardest choice in my life to date has been the one between my two loves: music on the hand and computer programming on the other. The programming won out, I figured it would be a much more lucrative field to pursue a career in, besides it was a much better match for my talents. From the age of…
A couple of months ago I received a present, a small book titled ‘Why we sleep’ by Matthew walker. It is an interesting book that takes you through the physiological and psychological effects of sleeping and the damage done by lack of sleep. I don’t necessarily subscribe to each and every bit in the book, there are…
I was born on a rainy morning, the 20th of March 1965, 3:15 am on the outskirts of a big European city. There wasn’t much to do for me other than to drink my milk so I’m kind of surprised that I don’t remember the man with the contract that I signed within a few hours of being born. Stupid me. I really shouldn’t have…
This post has been re-written several times, so please forgive me if it does not come across as coherent as I would like to. The main reason for the re-write was this post by Martin Wedge . Originally I planned to scrap the whole thing but maybe having a different perspective will help, I’ve deleted those parts that…
Paul Simon has a song called ‘One Trick Pony’ with a bit in it that goes like this:
There are lots of bad things that you can insert into your system through various ways that all seem to be represented in physical form as white powder. Heroin, Cocaine, various other chemicals that people will consume in order to alter their state of consciousness. I hate drugs, with a passion. I’ve seen up close in…
Here is a small sample of stuff that pops up with some regularity, if you want me to add entries please mail me jacques@mattheij.com, if you ask a question that is hard to answer it may take a while before I can post it . Please note that I’m not affiliated with HN in any way other than being a user, the majority of…