[electricduck]

You know, I've been reading Hacker News for god-knows-how-long, and it never occurred to me to look up what Y Combinator even was.

[fasterik]

You mean this isn't a website for lambda calculus enthusiasts?

[aatd86]

Wait... This is not lambda-the-ultimate?

Where am I?

[agumonkey]

not so loud, you're gonna hug it to death

[mrwnmonm]

Why combinator, Y?

[btown]

Why the lucky combinator

[inopinatus]

    y = ->(f) {
      ->(x) { x.(x) }.(
      ->(x) { f.(->(v) { x.(x).(v) }) } )
    }

[GravityLab]

This is very beautiful. TIL about Y combinators. Thanks for sharing. I looked it up with ChatGPT to learn more about what it is and then compared it with versions from different languages.

JavaScript:

    const Y = f => (x => f(v => x(x)(v)))
                   (x => f(v => x(x)(v)));

Lisp:

    (define (Y f)
     ((lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y))))
       (lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y))))))

Haskell:

    y :: (a -> a) -> a
    y f = f (y f)

OCaml:

    let z f = 
      let fn = ref (fun x -> x) in
      fn := (fun x -> f (!fn x));
      !fn;;

I think I still like the Ruby the most since it's easier to grok due to the Lisp having so many parens towards the end. The Haskell is beautiful to look at too.

[mrwnmonm]

What in the world is happening here?

[grotorea]

Maybe this has something to do with the local opinion on Haskell?

[PheonixPharts]

Funnily enough you can't actually implement the proper y-combinator in Haskell because the type system won't allow it. Which is a real shame because in most Lisps you can only implement the applicative order y-combinator due to a lack of lazy evaluation.

[hackyhacky]

What is "improper" about this implementation in Haskel?

  fix :: (a -> a) -> a
  fix f = let x = f x in x

[lambdas]

The y combinator is used to implement recursion in a language without recursion no?

That definition is dependent on recursion already being present.

[momothereal]

I feel like I used to see a lot more Launch HN, Y Combinator batches, etc. Or maybe I started tuning them out

[SL61]

I've been on here for a decade. Back in the day, HN really gave off a sense that most users were aspiring entrepreneurs, with a lot more discussion about YC, et al.

[seizethecheese]

They moved launches here: https://www.ycombinator.com/launches

[6510]

imho it should be a video page like ted talk

[dalbasal]

No... I'm pretty sure he isn't near as interested in yc anymore.

[joshxyz]

thats what i love about hn.

i sometimes think yc is just a front to secure payment for hn servers for many many years.

[colechristensen]

Isn’t it just like… a couple of servers? As in, entirely fundable by one person who could afford the time to moderate.

[tomwojcik]

2 machines https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041

[mcpeepants]

many, many, many years

[fragmede]

It's a rounding error in some of the budgets that startups deal with. It becomes closer to the situation with the Long Now, which is a clock to last 10,000 years. With LLMs, even the moderation becomes an fixture in the project that can endure. With Solar and a GPU and some Internet.

[KerrAvon]

Did someone invent working LLM-based moderation? Serious question; it'd be interesting.

[rytill]

I’ve found this API useful. It’s a classifier: https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/moderation

[selcuka]

It sounds like a trivial problem to solve with LLMs. To test it, feed a few comments to ChatGPT together with a T&C summary, and ask if the comment violates the terms.

It actually does a better job than the stock "this comment does not go against our community standards" response you get from the human moderators of any social network.

[somenameforme]

Yeah, there was finally a proven and actionable model developed at the end of 2024. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrQyMrmRBsk

[colechristensen]

Define "working"

Yes there are LLMs useful for such things and you could use them to make moderation decisions. YMMV with how "good" you want your moderation to be.

[nkingsy]

llm moderation, what could go wrong

[huevosabio]

I landed first on some random PG essay, then I found out about HN and kept reading it for a while and then found out what YC was. This was some years ago, but still quite out of order!

[MiguelX413]

What's a PG essay?

[DoingSomeThings]

Paul Graham wrote a series of essays that are considered classics for startup thinking

http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

This discussion from earlier this year gives some interesting context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34750727

[SunghoYahng]

That's my post lol

[downWidOutaFite]

Our Eternal September has arrived.

[spennant]

It’s been here for a while now. (but I’m old, so what do I know?…)

[TheRealSteel]

Same!