frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Beyond Recall and the Illusion of Competence

https://var0.xyz/posts/beyond-recall-and-the-illusion-of-competence.html
15•tuxie_•1h ago

Comments

zingar•41m ago
I think I do agree with the central point but a point of order is that if you tell AI to fix the bug and then tell it to fix the next error you might still be building an important skill: learning how to make the AI get good results.
chrisjj•35m ago
> And the consequences become particularly serious when something happens that the machine can't solve

Sadly the bot-gulled will always say "But the next model will be good enough to do that!".

jebarker•26m ago
I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of developers the author describes. I use AI daily for limited code writing and lots of debugging. I agree with the author that things go off the rails when you stop truly reviewing its output and just click accept to get the thrill of productivity. I don’t think using AI for debugging means you have to do that though, it’s still a choice. As an AI-human team I have had the experience many times now of debugging an issue in a complex system that I simply don’t think I could have done alone or in a reasonable amount of time. I don’t think this is a reflection of my low abilities - it’s because the AI brings to the table skills that I’ll never have like reading through and correlating huge amounts of logs across many runs of the same system on different compute nodes in a cluster. Once it finds a needle in the haystack I can still take the time to understand and reason about what it found though.
_bobm•16m ago
In your closing thoughts, you don't mention what is this staying firmly in control? how do you stay firmly in control while reaping the benefit of the model while being more productive?

because if you start a curriculum over what the model wrote then, one can argue, you are better off writing it yourself in the first place.

dunlin•6m ago
The hardest part is knowing what you forgot. You can't check for gaps you don't know exist.

RAG Is Simpler Than You Think

https://www.lighthousenewsletter.com/p/rag-is-simpler-than-you-think
132•j0selit0•3h ago•54 comments

Oldinsurancemaps.net is now a Charter Project

https://openstreetmap.us/news/2026/08/oim-charter-project/
74•altilunium•3h ago•11 comments

Z.ai confirms Ox Alpha is a new GLM-series model and will release its weights

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-26/china-s-z-ai-made-ox-alpha-stealth-model-that-...
139•garo-pro•1h ago•49 comments

Value Classes Still Need Compiler Sympathy

https://johan-sjolen.github.io/post/compiler-sympathy/compiler-sympathy/
40•lichtenberger•3h ago•15 comments

Show HN: Buslens – where can I get to by bus? (UK)

https://rupertlinacre.com/buslens/
52•RobinL•4h ago•34 comments

Proliferate (YC S25) Is Hiring

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/proliferate/jobs/OgpCKYJ-founding-product-engineer
1•pablo24602•3m ago

Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-m6-and-m5-ultra-for-a-big-leap-in-perform...
1189•interpol_p•23h ago•1155 comments

Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=656058JxTM0
132•zoenolan•4d ago•38 comments

FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-authorizes-first-wearable-device-continuo...
435•sunnynagra•16h ago•205 comments

Queryable Executables

https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/24/actually-queryable-executables
226•rguiscard•11h ago•62 comments

OpenAI Jalapeño: Better than Nvidia Blackwell

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/openai-jalapeno-better-than-nvidia
514•bmulholland•21h ago•326 comments

New Mac Studio with M5 Max and M5 Ultra

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-new-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/
779•interpol_p•23h ago•522 comments

Harvest (IBM 7950): Supercomputer for cryptanalysis at the NSA in the Cold War

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cold-war-codebreaker-nsa-ibm
50•jnord•6h ago•12 comments

Beyond Recall and the Illusion of Competence

https://var0.xyz/posts/beyond-recall-and-the-illusion-of-competence.html
16•tuxie_•1h ago•5 comments

XCancel and Nitter are receiving C&D letters from XCorp

37•mobilio•2h ago•9 comments

Black hole singularity is a surface not a point

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.21590
263•raattgift•19h ago•191 comments

Maiao: Gerrit-style code review workflow for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, others

https://github.com/runetes/maiao
95•zdw•13h ago•55 comments

New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-unveils-a-more-powerful-mac-mini-featuring-the-all-n...
505•runako•22h ago•321 comments

U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/u-s-govt-moves-to-suppress-pushback-on-da...
75•rbanffy•1h ago•62 comments

When str.lower() is a security vulnerability in Python

https://sethmlarson.dev/when-str-lower-is-a-security-vulnerability
140•rbanffy•15h ago•61 comments

Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1442
1003•Banditoz•18h ago•839 comments

Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown

https://www.imkylelambert.com/articles/building-a-backyard-office-the-build-and-cost-breakdown
369•surprisetalk•21h ago•222 comments

Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/bomb-fishing-coral-reefs
330•speckx•21h ago•174 comments

Tooltips need a delay, and then they need to skip it

https://blog.master.dev/tooltips-need-a-delay-and-then-they-need-to-skip-it/
191•ibobev•19h ago•60 comments

Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month

https://nil.wallyjones.com/run-openbsd-on-digitalocean-for-4month/
176•speckx•18h ago•83 comments

Don't Wordle

https://dontwordle.com/
357•Hbruz0•1d ago•127 comments

C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality

https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/android-c2pa.html
165•Retr0id•16h ago•107 comments

Agentic Context Management: Memory and Cost as Architecture Problems

https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21503
61•gdad•9h ago•23 comments

How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer

https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/how-credit-card-rewards-became-multibillion-dollar-...
198•conbrian•1d ago•346 comments

Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/26/debian-polls-its-developers-on-whether-to-burn-t...
15•lproven•1h ago•8 comments