Hacker News: 2cynykyl

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Air Theremin – A browser theremin you play by waving at your webcam"

2cynykyl — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 01:27:50 +0000

Airemin, obviously.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Saying 'Google It' Makes You Sound Old"

2cynykyl — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 22:19:27 +0000

Yes, this is the term my youngins use too!

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta warn against overregulating open-weight models"

2cynykyl — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:58:15 +0000

This is the most insightful comment on this subject I've read yet. I hadn't put those pieces together.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Your ePub Is fine"

2cynykyl — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 02:23:09 +0000

I also learned this term pretty recently, loved it. Another fav tech term is automagically :-)

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism"

2cynykyl — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:10:19 +0000

Albertata!

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

2cynykyl — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 15:51:36 +0000

I thought mine was when claude found a very subtle but important bug in some open source LBM code I was using. It ground at it for hours and didn't give up until it found it. (Back when claude was cheap!). I recently had a my ACTUAL moment at a conference where the presenter was pitching his book about "One shotting scientific code". He has cooked up 60+ prompts that get you functioning simulations and put them into a book [0]. It floored me to realize I could have just ask claude to write me a whole new LBM solver instead of finding that bug! That raised the bar for me a lot.

[0] https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/97810037340...

New comment by 2cynykyl in "A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro"

2cynykyl — Sat, 09 May 2026 16:20:06 +0000

I had this exact problem and came to the same conclusion. But for the exam, give them code and ask what it does, or give broken code and ask where the error is. Waaay less marking. I only asked for 3 small functions written by hand and that was still 90% of the effort to mark. But the marks felt valid in the end, so the process seemed to work.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "An interactive map of Flock Cams"

2cynykyl — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:22:13 +0000

This is probably not a helpful comment because it's basically a daydreamers fantasy, but here goes...

Doesn't all the surveillance concern go away if we just remove license plates from cars? Our plates identify us nearly perfectly.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "CSS Grid Lanes"

2cynykyl — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 02:15:53 +0000

Funny, I think that looks gorgeous!

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access"

2cynykyl — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:21:08 +0000

"Capitalism tries to deliver the worst possible version for the highest possible price" This is brilliant. So much information packed into one sentence.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Flies keep landing on North Sea oil rigs"

2cynykyl — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 12:43:35 +0000

We should start with a sustainable colony _on_ earth as a proof of concept. :-)

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Ask HN: Why does every website ask me to accept cookies?"

2cynykyl — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 11:52:40 +0000

I think the question is "why do sites put up cookie banners when the only option is Accept?" Gdpr requires an option to opt out, so who are they try to appease here? I sometimes think they do it because people have come expect them.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Show HN: Fast Thermodynamic Calculations in Python"

2cynykyl — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 13:18:13 +0000

This looks really promising, thank you! I have been using chemicals for things like this but it is not good at multiple conditions so your approach will teally help me. Btw, there is no link to the repo on the docs psge, st least on my phone. I want to star your repo.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Backyard Coffee and Jazz in Kyoto"

2cynykyl — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:53:37 +0000

So true. I once saw a gardener removing weeds from a moss patch with tweezers. Very meticulous.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "YouTube's new anti-adblock measures"

2cynykyl — Sat, 21 Jun 2025 18:34:30 +0000

You'd get my vote! These boulevard signs are totally out of control. They are technically against bylaws in my town, but nobody enforces it. Two anecdotes about how insane these are:

1. I saw one last week advertising a halloween party, so it's been in the ground for over 6 months. It is on a sidewalk near the university and is passed by about 1000 people per day, and in 6+ months not ONE SINGLE PERSON said "Oh, I should talk this down".

2. I once saw a city employee get off their riding lawn mower to move one of these signs out of their way, cut the grass, then get off the mower again to put the sign back!

And echoing the GPs comment, what really gets me about these is that we all have our lives diminished so that one person or company can earn a little extra...maybe. Or in other words, 1000's of people are subjected to this and perhaps 1 person might bite?

I'll close with my favorite interpretation of advertising: Advertisers essentially steal your sense of self-satisfaction so they can sell it back to you.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Japan annual births fall to new record low"

2cynykyl — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 14:12:31 +0000

Easy solution: just don't change your name! Our boys have my last name and our girls (if we'd had any) would have had my wife's last name. We didn't have girls so I don't have data on how that would've worked but seems line a no-brainer to me.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Andreessen: When AI does everything, VC to be last job still done by humans"

2cynykyl — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 19:16:27 +0000

It's cute that everyone seems to think this about their own jobs.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?"

2cynykyl — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 19:13:29 +0000

Yes, about half is skimmed off the top by the university, called 'overhead'. This is used to fund everything, from research-essential things like paying for heat and maintaining buildings, to less obvious but still research-essential things like IP lawyers to deal with contracts and campus security. However, SOME of the overhead will end up supporting things that are 'contentious' like DEI enforcement or whatever.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "Please Commit More Blatant Academic Fraud (2021)"

2cynykyl — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 14:03:57 +0000

This is a very important comment. And to flip the perspective, name recognition in our given fields is not just a vanity metric for getting more funding. It is earned by publishing quality work. I can trust people I know who do things correctly.

New comment by 2cynykyl in "People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research"

2cynykyl — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:54:44 +0000

Im reading Sapiens at the moment and one statement really got my attention: human society is a marvel, but individually we are embarrassingly similar to Chimps. This mental model really helps put put so much behavior into context, like resource hogging and the hoarding instinct, despite obvious surplus of everything everywhere at all times.