Hacker News: DrFalkyn

New comment by DrFalkyn in "New research reveals the strongest solar event ever detected, in 12350 BC"

DrFalkyn — Mon, 19 May 2025 16:18:52 +0000

Most other primate species, indeed most other mammalian species, polygyny is the norm

New comment by DrFalkyn in "The Awful German Language (1880)"

DrFalkyn — Fri, 16 May 2025 08:42:33 +0000

It’s one word, like watchmaker or bookkeeper are in English.

New comment by DrFalkyn in "I don't like NumPy"

DrFalkyn — Thu, 15 May 2025 23:32:33 +0000

reshape

New comment by DrFalkyn in "I don't like NumPy"

DrFalkyn — Thu, 15 May 2025 20:03:40 +0000

Yeah one of other beauties of numpy is you can pass data to/from native shared libraries compiled from C code with little overhead. This was more klidgy in Matlab last I checked

New comment by DrFalkyn in "I don't like NumPy"

DrFalkyn — Thu, 15 May 2025 18:54:19 +0000

Back when our lab transitioned from Matlab to Python I used numpy/scipy quite a bit. I remember heavily leaning on numpy.reshape to get things to work correctly. In some cases I did resort to looping.

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US"

DrFalkyn — Sat, 10 May 2025 08:31:07 +0000

In academia you are forced to go where the jobs are, or else you leave the field. Yes I have known people married with kids who move overseas

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Europe launches program to lure scientists away from the US"

DrFalkyn — Sat, 10 May 2025 08:22:15 +0000

I thought it was the exact opposite. European universities were a lot harder to get a faculty appointment. And they tended to favor local candidates , Which is why you see a lot of US universities have foreign professors, but not as many European universities that do

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Why Archers Didn't Volley Fire"

DrFalkyn — Mon, 05 May 2025 11:47:21 +0000

In the medieval era in Europe few were generally professional, in the sense that it was their full time job even in peacetime. Like you said the Kings retinue would be one of the few exceptions. Since the collapse of the (Western) Roman Empire there just wasn’t the concentration of resources in Europe for maintaining standing armies. Most were effectively a reserve force, somewhat akin to the. National Guard in the US hat could be “called up” in the event of a war.

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated"

DrFalkyn — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 22:24:36 +0000

Then how did BART get built ?

New comment by DrFalkyn in "What If We Could Rebuild Kafka from Scratch?"

DrFalkyn — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 14:59:38 +0000

What happens if the Kafka node fails ?

New comment by DrFalkyn in "I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil (2015)"

DrFalkyn — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 11:05:06 +0000

You can sell the barrel after you are done

New comment by DrFalkyn in "We Have Made No Progress Toward AGI"

DrFalkyn — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:21:37 +0000

It’s AGI when it can improve itself with no more than a little human interaction

New comment by DrFalkyn in "I won't be vibe coding anymore: a noob's perspective"

DrFalkyn — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:01:15 +0000

Maybe for translating a natural language query into a regular expression that can be ingested by grep.

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet"

DrFalkyn — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 15:19:44 +0000

Unless there’s enough oxygen, it shouldn’t be a problem

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Astronomers Detect a Possible Signature of Life on a Distant Planet"

DrFalkyn — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:09:56 +0000

But how many of those stars would have been suitable for life ?

A huge star that’s going to burn out quickly isn’t conducive to complex organisms

Also in a huge star there’s less material to form planets in the first place

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court"

DrFalkyn — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 04:04:52 +0000

Is there some law that you can only use a single messaging app ?

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court"

DrFalkyn — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 17:08:38 +0000

How about Google Wave ?

https://support.google.com/answer/1083134?hl=en

New comment by DrFalkyn in "Math 13 – An Introduction to Abstract Mathematics [pdf]"

DrFalkyn — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 05:50:36 +0000

This is becoming more common. Students are entering high snchool already having taken geometry in the 8th grade. When I graduated in the late 90s, we had calc 3 (we called it multivariable calc) and linear algebra, partially because a bit under half the class would run out of math by their senior year. They also were starting to offer differental equations and complex analysis. This was a magnet program. When I went back for my 20th reunion, I was told only maybe 5-10% didn’t already have geometry.

New comment by DrFalkyn in "NoProp: Training neural networks without back-propagation or forward-propagation"

DrFalkyn — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 05:27:13 +0000

If we could ever figure out what wet brains actually do (continuous feedback, ? enzyme release ? ) this might be possible

New comment by DrFalkyn in "But what if I want a faster horse?"

DrFalkyn — Sat, 12 Apr 2025 14:14:27 +0000

The Plaza Accord was 1985. And it wasn’t just between the US and Japan. iIf included France, Germany and the UK.

The Japanese economy continued to grow until the mid 1990s. I think the real culprit was low birth rate in the prior 20 years did not train the next generation of productive workers. China, South Korea most of Europe face similar issues