I am kind of amazed how negative the comments are here, especially on HN.

Learning to hack something together in high school using the latest technology (vacuum tubes, radios, microprocessors, web/javascript) has been a common theme in the tech world for generations. With LLMs and online tutorials, this isn't even a difficult suggestion. Do people think learning new tech is somehow wasted effort?

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raincole 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If he has said "to learn the math and programming skills needed to understand how to build LLMs" it'd have been much more positively received.

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kalms an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Completely agreed. The point is the knowledge, the learning and the journey. If a kid has a passion for building or toying with LLMs, then of course, by all means, please start tearing them apart or even build and train your own model. You'll learn a ton, even if you won't necessarily end up using it here and now. The learning experience will compound and of course that will be useful.

The above is, after all, the whole genesis of the word 'hacker'. We should celebrate that.

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embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I am kind of amazed how negative the comments are here, especially on HN.

I can't recall or point out exactly when, but there is a stark before/after moment where the opinions of anything pg went from "Interesting and maybe true in some ways" to what we see today, lots of knee-jerk reactions and hardly any comments about the actual content.

Hazarding a guess, I think the moment Altman became the CEO and later during COVID, the sentiment seemed to have been shifting towards what we see today. But this is all based on hazy memory, rather than looking at the data. I'm sure there is a blog post waiting to be written about analyzing the sentiment of comments to PGs articles on HN, and you'll see a shift somewhere.

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trentor 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because at some point in life everyone gets tired of fairytales. He started mending the anecdotes to his content which always rubs people the wrong way.

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embedding-shape an hour ago | parent [-]

So, this comment of yours obviously isn't in the "knee-jerk reaction" category of comments, I suppose? What exactly from the linked tweet(s) are fairytales here? There is hardly any text at all, so strikes me as a comment about previous pg content, but then this would be one of those comments I talk about? Very confusing.

	▲	trentor an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Your hand waving doesn't make it knee-jerk. It's just what happened to his writing since COVID. He goes for more of a shock and awe style and not everybody likes it. He's been writing for over 20 years now, hasn't he? His style has clearly changed, and an changing style attracts a different audience so it's no surprise his original readers might not connect with his newer work...

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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latexr 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> I can't recall or point out exactly when, but there is a stark before/after moment where the opinions of anything pg went from "Interesting and maybe true in some ways" to what we see today, lots of knee-jerk reactions and hardly any comments about the actual content.

Hard disagree. This submission is still being highly upvoted, while another recent post[1] on the harms caused by Graham’s fellows[2], with a fairly tame comment section, has been flagged. That is a constant on HN. It’s not a fluke, it’s as predictable as the sunrise and getting more pronounced.

I’m sure we’re both biased in our perceptions. Mine is that HN in general (certainly more than any other website) used to worship[3] everything he wrote, together with others like Musk, until things started to really go to shit and many eyes have been opened to the effects of the unfettered greed of rich tech guys out of touch with reality.[4]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411762

[2]: A better English word is escaping me.

[3]: That word I choose hyperbolically but deliberately. It definitely was not “interesting and maybe true in some ways”, it was much more hardcore than that.

[4]: That is not “knee-jerk” but a slow realisation still ongoing.

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embedding-shape 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Mine is that HN in general (certainly more than any other website) used to worship[3] everything he wrote [...] It definitely was not “interesting and maybe true in some ways”, it was much more hardcore than that.

I guess it depends on what submission you look at, previous comment of mine solely based on memory. Now I went to https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com/paulg, clicked "More" a bunch of times, and seems my memory was more or less correct, none of the submissions I clicked on are "pg worship" (hyperbolic or not). Just one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19418701

Maybe you need to enable "Show Dead" or something? Pgs articles on HN definitely never was free of any critique in the HN comments, just like any article. Although I do agree with you that it used to be different than it is today, and same with Musk too, and Altman, and probably more individuals, where they were lauded before but now pretty much just mentioning them poisons the conversation.

	▲	latexr 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Just one example That post has barely any points and comments. It’s not a good indicator of general sentiment, it’s just an indicator of people who were on HN at that time. > Maybe you need to enable "Show Dead" or something? I have it enabled. > Pgs articles on HN definitely never was free of any critique in the HN comments, just like any article. Of course. I very explicitly wrote “in general (certainly more than any other website)”. That does not mean “always”, or “never”. HN is not a hive mind, there’s never going to be 100% agreement. The general trend is what’s being discussed, and we both agree that in general the sentiment on Graham used to be higher. We’re just disagreeing (though through conversation we may be able to find ourselves agreeing) on where exactly it is now and how to interpret it.

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mcmoor 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Now I'm curious, do people actually tried to hack vacuum tubes or other big servers that's barely 1MB RAM? It seems like another thing that needs big investment to work properly, unlike those other techs where results can be shown even with little materials.

	▲	JuniperMesos an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, there are retrocomputing hobbyists who mess around with sometimes-physically-large computers that were important many decades ago. I don't know if anyone is hacking on vacuum tubes of the kind that you could in principle build a computer with - there's a reason they became obsolete for digital computation almost as soon as the transistor was invented. On the other hand, I personally think it would be neat to try to build a CRT in a garage, which is of course a type of vacuum tube. I don't think this would be an easy garage project, but it does seem like might be tractable for someone who understand physical manufacturing and electronics well, has access to glassblowing equipment, etc.

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keybored an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Do people think learning new tech is somehow wasted effort?

No. But funnily enough that is a promise by some of the AI cretins and their boosters. Oh yeah best case scenario you learn how to build LLMs for us. We’ll employ you. And then ultimately that just becomes training data for the LLMs to do it themselves.

But why are people cynical? they ask.

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globular-toast 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> With LLMs and online tutorials, this isn't even a difficult suggestion.

Don't many of the commercial ones prevent you from using them to build LLMs?

I would say the reason for the negativity is not because it's a bad idea for a project, or that doing projects in general is a bad idea (it's not!), it's because it's a very specific thing that is not for everyone. The best thing about computing is the low barriers to entry. You can basically work on anything that takes your fancy. So those who are interested in ML will be drawn to learn about LLMs. They don't need anyone to tell them to do it. Telling everyone to do it reminds me of the "just learn to code" stuff of a decade ago. No, please don't, please find something you enjoy.