Hacker Neue

Preferences
righthand parent
What is the cost (in tokens/$$$) of spending an hour restating questions to a chat bot vs typing `man rsync`?
danielbln
Telling the agent to execute "man rsync" and synthesize the answer from there is probably the cheapest and most efficient option.

Letting some detached LLM fumble around for an hour is never the right way to go, and inversely sifting through the man page of rsync or fmmpeg or (God forbid) jq to figure out some arcane syntax isn't exactly a great use of anyone's time either, all things considered.

righthand OP
Sifting through just means you don’t know how to use the man interface to search/grep (which from a discoverability perspective is fair). However I think reeling through an Llm (using an agent or not) for a task that probably could take <10mins at $0, demonstrates enthusiasts disregard for a good set of research and reading habits.

All of this is an attempt at circumventing RTFM because you’re privileged enough to afford it.

Just lay yourself down on the WALL-E floating bed and give up already.

wintermutestwin
The “fucking” manual is obtuse, overly verbose, and almost always lacking in super clear real world examples. That you claim it is a <10 min problem demonstrates experts disregard for the degree of arcane crap, a beginner needs to synthesize.

I am backing up and verifying critical data here. This is not a task that should be taken lightly. And as I learned, it is not a task that one can rely on an LLM for.

righthand OP
I disagree. The topic is rsync which is well documented. The path forward might not work in every situation but the manual has good examples too. This is probably true for what Llm users use it for 90% of the time. To hack together things that are well known and well documented into a result. Llms arguably only work because these tools ffmpeg, rsync, etc were already solving problems and widely used and documented. So burning energy to have a computer look up commands because you couldn’t spend 10 minutes reading yourself could be a waste of time and money. Where as having to spend time researching is likely only a waste of time only.
wintermutestwin
>rsync which is well documented

Here is the man page entry for the --delete flag:

--delete is used. This option is mutually exclusive with --delete-during, --delete-delay, and --delete-after.

Hilarious!

Reading and understanding the rsync command would take much more than 10 mins and I am not a total newb here.

2 More Comments →
pletnes
Lower than the cost of a meatbag-office with heating, cooling and coffee for the time spent reading the manual.
righthand OP
How is the cost of an office relative? Llms didn’t destroy offices. You can type `man rsync` without any of that.

This item has no comments currently.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Story Lists

j
Next story
k
Previous story
Shift+j
Last story
Shift+k
First story
o Enter
Go to story URL
c
Go to comments
u
Go to author

Navigation

Shift+t
Go to top stories
Shift+n
Go to new stories
Shift+b
Go to best stories
Shift+a
Go to Ask HN
Shift+s
Go to Show HN

Miscellaneous

?
Show this modal