Hacker News: 512

New comment by 512 in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"

512 — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:16:00 +0000

VZLA is the abbreviation Venezuelans use

New comment by 512 in "Oliver Sacks Put Himself into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?"

512 — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 04:22:17 +0000

Maybe a better source, linked in the article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/15/oliver-sacks-p...

New comment by 512 in "How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator"

512 — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:31:56 +0000

The smart kids might be happy to work on model interpretability research at Anthropic. But 90% of AI companies are ChatGPT wrappers which don't sound particularly fun.

New comment by 512 in "A recent chess controversy"

512 — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 15:39:45 +0000

Hikaru is also notable for quickly accusing players baselessly

New comment by 512 in "DSM Disorders Disappear in Statistical Clustering of Psychiatric Symptoms (2024)"

512 — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:13:59 +0000

How does one find a good psychiatrist/psychologist? My experiences have ranged from "very bad" to "OK at best" and I think finding someone a bit more invested into figuring things out might help a lot.

New comment by 512 in "DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC"

512 — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 23:30:56 +0000

Are you an ICPC World Finals medalist? Because winning an IOI bronze medal is _way_ easier than even qualifying for the ICPC WF, and less than 10% of the teams at the WF get medals.

I'd go as far as saying that gold at the IOI is probably easier than getting an ICPC medal. (One is individual and the other is in teams, but my point stands).

New comment by 512 in "DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC"

512 — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 23:22:03 +0000

The ICPC has plenty of elite competitive programmers. It's an activity that "peaks" in importance around college, and not many keep training a lot after participating.

Every year there are multiple "Legendary Grandmasters" in the competition. That's >3000 Elo in Codeforces. I'd estimate it takes a similar level of skill/effort as becoming a Chess Grandmaster.

And even those that aren't at that level are very competent at it. The average ICPC participant is likely "smarter" than the average MIT/Harvard CS student for some reasonable measure of "smarter".

New comment by 512 in "How to become a pure mathematician or statistician (2008)"

512 — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 20:06:37 +0000

[deleted]

New comment by 512 in "ICPC 2025 World Finals Results"

512 — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:43:46 +0000

The "Diamond Sponsors" of the event are Huawei and OpenAI. I found the welcome note from OpenAI [1] quite curious:

"[...] Eventually, AI will be able to solve even the hardest contest problems that we’ve seen yet. It will work alongside us and help drive the discovery of new knowledge. What you take from this week - the sense of being stuck, the thrill of progress, and the practice of building together - will remain critical as you shape your community and the future you build. [...]"

By Chief Scientist of OpenAI, Jakub Pachocki. Who happens to be an incredibly accomplished Competitive Programmer (2nd in ICPC World Finals, Winner of Code Jam, 2nd in Hacker Cup).

[1] https://icpc.global/community/history/brochures/world-finals...

New comment by 512 in "Show HN: Tiny logic and number games I built for my kids"

512 — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 17:52:06 +0000

This reminds me of the Optiver internship selection process.

New comment by 512 in "Bill Atkinson's psychedelic user interface"

512 — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:59:22 +0000

> I know they will before that

I'm curious in what demographic/location context you're in to say that. As a teen I wasn't aware of anyone in my social circles experimenting with drugs and would estimate usage to be <10% and from very particular kinds of people.

New comment by 512 in "California bans legacy admissions at private universities"

512 — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 21:32:22 +0000

It's not clear what your point is exactly. It's still possible that Asians, despite being overrepresented, receive some sort of penalty in admissions.

New comment by 512 in "A brain injury removed my ability to perceive time"

512 — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 04:04:55 +0000

I feel I have a slightly "time-warped" memory. I often can't tell whether something was two months or over a year ago, for instance.

I believe this to be caused by depression, as I've seen many similar reports online. Life assumes a sort of "flow" state, as you don't care enough to pay attention to things. It affects my memory in general as well.