You should check Austin TX where they tried to do the same thing, but only built one rail.... So yea you have to wait like over an hour just for arrival if the train is at the other end. For what should be a 15 min ride because literally only one train can go back and forth. The train drivers sometime stop the train to get food at in-n-out burger too, seriously.
Its one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, a testament to inefficient bureaucracy. I'm not sure anyone uses it.
Remember that Texas cities are having to actively fight with their own state and national level representatives, not to mention economic interests. It's not a "bureaucratic inefficiency" as much as it is active sabotage. That cities in Texas manage to get any public transit built is a miracle.
What I wrote is accurate. You are referring to a line that goes out of the city to elgin, a tiny town, that is the only part with two tracks. The part that serves the Austin area has only one line and is as I described. Hey what do I know I just lived next to it for 4 years, and drove to work even though I could walk to the train because of how terrible it is and would add 1-2hrs to my commmute.
I'm describing the red line which goes from downtown to Leander. (The one I linked to.) If you're describing some other line then sorry for the confusion, I didn't actually know there was another rail line. There are plans to build a green line to Elgin but AFAIK that's still under construction.
The red line is mostly single-track, but there are several specific segments of dual-track allowing trains to pass each other, which is why they're able to support multiple trains in both directions.
It's still a crappy schedule -- even during rush hour it's still no more than two trains an hour. Supposedly they intend to start running it every 15 minutes once they add some more dual-track segments.
>closed my SendGrid account ....continued to send me monthly invoices
I used to run IT for a medium company. The amount of times I saw this with various SaaS companies was troubling. We had hundreds of services some as small as a single manager that demanded X and company wide tools. It was frequently a several months long hassle to get them to stop billing us when we cut ties with them. I wish I kept personal records now it was a minority but definitely in the 15%'ish range.
Its really a high level bikeshed. Obviously we are all still using and experimenting with LLM's. However there is a huge gap of experiences and total usefulness depending on the exact task.
The majority of HN's still reach for LLM's pretty regularly even if they fail horribly frequently. Thats really the pit the tech is stuck in. Sometimes it oneshots your answer perfectly, or pair programs with you perfectly for one task, or notices a bug you didn't. Sometimes it wastes hours of your time for various subtle reasons. Sometimes it adamantly insists 2 + 2 = 55
Latest reasoning models don't claim 2 + 2 = 55, and it's hard to find them making an sort of obviously false claims, or not admitting to being mistaken if you point out that they are
I can’t go a full a full conversation without obviously false claims. They will insist you are correct and that your correction is completely correct despite that also being wrong.
Also that I specifically mentioned bikeshedding yet the reply bikesheds my simple example. While ignoring the big picture that LLM's still regularly generate blatantly and easily noticed false information as answers.
It was clearly a simplified example, like I said endless bikeshed.
Here is a real one. I was using the much lauded new Gemini 3? last week and wanted it to do something a slightly specific way for reasons. I told it specifically and added it to the instructions. DO NOT USE FUNCTION ABC.
It immediately used FUNCTION ABC. I asked it to read back its instructions to me. It confirmed what I put there. So I asked it again to change it to another function. It told me that FUNCTION ABC was not in the code, even though it was clearly right there in the code.
I did a bit more prodding and it adamantly insisted that the code it generated did not exist, again and again and again. Yes I tried reversing to USE FUNCTION XYZ. Still wanted to use ABC
>makes the bot follow orders with greater precision.
Gemini will ignore any directions to never reference or use youtube videos, no matter how many ways you tell it not to. It may remove it if you ask though.
Positive reinforcement works better that negative reinforcement. If you the read prompt guidance from the companies themselves in their developer documentation it often makes this point. It is more effective to tell them what to do rather than what not to do.
This matches my experience. You mostly want to not even mention negative things because if you write something like "don't duplicate existing functionality" you now have "duplicate" in the context...
What works for me is having a second agent or session to review the changes with the reversed constraint, i.e. "check if any of these changes duplicate existing functionality". Not ideal because now everything needs multiple steps or subagents, but I have a hunch that this is one of the deeper technical limitations of current LLM architecture.
Probably not related but it reminds me of a book I read where wizards had Additive and Subtractive magic but not always both. The author clearly eventually gave up on trying to come up with creative ways to always add something for solutions after the gimmick wore off and it never comes up again in the book.
Could you describe what this looks like in practice? Say I don't want it to use a certain concept or function. What would "positive reinforcement" look like to exclude something?
This doesn't really answer my question, which more about specific exclusions.
Both of the answers show the same problem: if you limit your prompts to positive reinforcement, you're only allowed to "include" regions of a "solution space", which can only constrain the LLM to those small regions. With negative reinforcement, you just cut out a bit of the solution space, leaving the rest available. If you don't already know the exact answer, then leaving the LLM free to use solutions that you may not even be aware of seems like it would always be better.
Specifically:
"use only native functions" for "don't use libxyz" isn't really different than "rewrite libxyz since you aren't allowed to use any alternative library". I think this may be a bad example since it massively constrains the llm, preventing it from using alternative library that you're not aware of.
"only use loops for iteration" for "done use recursion" is reasonable, but I think this falls into the category of "you already know the answer". For example, say you just wanted to avoid a single function for whatever reason (maybe it has a known bug or something), the only way to this "positively" would be to already know the function to use, "use function x"!
I have the most success when I provide good context, as in what I'm trying to achieve, in the most high level way possible, then guide things from there. In other words, avoid XY problems [1].
I've been saying this forever. Computer security is and always will be nothing more than theater for with some minimal effort to cover bases, like hiring an INFOSEC then ignoring them. No on in charge cares about security because the number of people in charge punished for these breaches is still ZERO.
Did you know the average bribe accepted for a politician is something like 5K (This was from a few years back so probably higher now). So yeah this is totally within bribe limits.
As a unrelated note it really is depressing to think about how easy it is to buy off politicians and how much money the bribers have vs an average person.
You comment is very interesting observation. Its made me reconsider some things about sentiment analysis. You are right its not really that HN is negative its that sentiment analysis doesn't really have any way I can think of offhand to measure meaningful discourse rather than GOOD/BAD/NEUTRAL
I've never done any sentiment analysis outside of hobby tinkering. Maybe there is some HN experts that will chime in on how to deal with it?
>The world would definitely be better without ads.
I don't have the proof but I'm guessing that this is provably wrong. Without advertising in some existance it would be nearly impossible to start a business which means everyone would be peasants farming for subsistence living. I think the problem is that the propose of ads has become divorced from product. The issue is poor regulation not the existence of ads.
Think about it, how as a small or competitive business owner would you get people to buy your soda vs coke/pepsi without advertising in some way? The issue is that coke/pepsi know they have a simple product so they blast ads not to sell their product but to adversarially drown out competitors before they can exist. Tons of advertising has counter agenda purposes like this rather than selling a product, its propaganda not advertisement. There are probably tons of unenforced laws already about this but IANAL.
Why would it be impossible to start a business? You would still be able to list your business in mediums where potential buyers willingly go and search for products and services. If anything, it would level the playing field, paying more for ads would not mean you getting your poorer services more visible buy paying more for ads.
The very concept of fair pricing is an advertisement. In nearly all of history the merchant would charge what they judged you could pay. but keep those noses up HN.....
HN seems allergic to discussing the reality of power dynamics IME.
Being in charge of Berkshire hathaway is a very powerful and respected, revered, envied, coveted, admired. Retired is just retired. As folksy as he presented I suspect Buffet very much enjoyed weilding that power which he could not likely ever get elsewhere.
Its one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, a testament to inefficient bureaucracy. I'm not sure anyone uses it.
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