Hacker News: DrSAR

New comment by DrSAR in "ChatGPT for Excel"

DrSAR — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:05:49 +0000

hrm, double-click and your browser does the rest.

For added benefit, full screen?

Until you need presenter notes or other niceties, this covers a large space of usage.

New comment by DrSAR in "Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’"

DrSAR — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:12:37 +0000

There were the so-called Subsequent Nuremberg Trials (12 of them). Among them were the trials of IG Farben (gas chamber supplies, Zyklon B) and Krupp (armament of the German military forces in preparation of an aggressive war)

I'm under no illusion that all the perpetrators of war crimes were held accountable but it's not a bad model.

New comment by DrSAR in "ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data"

DrSAR — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 18:59:06 +0000

No horse either but here is an attempt (ignoring criminal record as you say): Opening the border and letting her rip is clearly not sustainable in the medium term. So you try to make it (reasonably) hard to get in incl. turning people away at the border.

Once they are in (incl illegally so) you concede you have lost on this instance. Now you admit that forcefully removing immigrants carries too high a cost (literally + damage in the communities you remove the immigrants from + your humanitarian image). So you don't.

Somehow that balance seems really hard to get right and edge cases (criminal record) matter.

Community-driven peer review: platform to review, rate, access research freely

DrSAR — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 07:49:07 +0000

Article URL: https://test.scicommons.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46702424

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by DrSAR in "Calculus for Mathematicians, Computer Scientists, and Physicists [pdf]"

DrSAR — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 20:00:52 +0000

Not sure I agree with 'appearance [...] is much worse'.

Given the choice between a class room of first years who believe (in themselves and) an appearance of calculus knowledge or a room of scared undergrads that recoil from any calculus-inspired argument they 'have never learnt it properly', I'll take the former. I can work with that much more easily. Sure, some things might break - but what's the worst that can happen?

We'll sort out the rigour later while we patch the bruises of overextending some analogies.

New comment by DrSAR in "Over 80% of sunscreen performed below their labelled efficacy (2020)"

DrSAR — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 22:20:11 +0000

resulting in an unhealthy, pale appearance /s

New comment by DrSAR in "Over 80% of sunscreen performed below their labelled efficacy (2020)"

DrSAR — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 22:18:09 +0000

no. there might be some mild advantages (less environmental damage? also protection from excessive IR+VIS?) But in the published testdata listed above there are mineral sunscreens promising 50 SPF and not getting there either. Combined with the often more difficult application you might end up with even less protection. So buyer beware (or wear hats and shirts).

New comment by DrSAR in "Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry"

DrSAR — Sat, 03 May 2025 06:03:25 +0000

we discovered the same joke independently in Germany. loved it.

New comment by DrSAR in "Old Soviet Venus descent craft nearing Earth reentry"

DrSAR — Sat, 03 May 2025 06:01:19 +0000

We used to love riding in them at our university in the late 80s/90s. And when you proceed to ride over the top will the car flip upside down? We managed to scare at least one of our classmates into believe this could happen. The whole thing felt as exciting as a carnival ride in retrospect ...

New comment by DrSAR in "Play the Virtual Organ from Arp Schnitger"

DrSAR — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:11:55 +0000

very clever, thank you

New comment by DrSAR in "T * sin (t)' ≈ Ornamented Christmas Tree (2013)"

DrSAR — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 05:39:03 +0000

It is also not a pipe

New comment by DrSAR in "Fruits (2020)"

DrSAR — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:40:18 +0000

a decent stab at humour. I chuckled.

New comment by DrSAR in "Airfoil"

DrSAR — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 00:51:49 +0000

GO AROUND, WINDSHEAR AHEAD!

New comment by DrSAR in "In loving memory of square checkbox"

DrSAR — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 01:50:44 +0000

Until you encounter a switch that's part of a three-way switch arrangement where up can be on or off depending on the position of the other switch in the circuit.

New comment by DrSAR in "How I got an O-1 visa as a software engineer"

DrSAR — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 23:54:06 +0000

The 1951 UNHCR convention [1] would like to disagree that only an entitled line of thinking presupposes rights of refugees.

[1] https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-are/1951-refugee-co...

New comment by DrSAR in "Normal Operating Sounds"

DrSAR — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 06:15:56 +0000

"TERRAIN, TERRAIN! whoop whoop PULL UP!" -- the makers of the Terrain Avoidance and Warning System (TAWS) thought that this extra information was useful. Maybe the timing is different or maybe it's just cultural.

New comment by DrSAR in "When will Framework realistically ship the 16" laptop?"

DrSAR — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 04:43:23 +0000

I am quite impressed by their transparency. However, I need to decide on whether to replace my ailing laptop with their 13" model or whether I can limp along until the glorious 16" comes along.

How likely do you think is it they will be able to iron out all these listed items 1 through 10 until Jan or so next year?

When will Framework realistically ship the 16" laptop?

DrSAR — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 04:41:43 +0000

Article URL: https://gist.github.com/DrSAR/63bb2c9f8618da57d95b018c8873adaf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38273420

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by DrSAR in "Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions"

DrSAR — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:55:38 +0000

Well, that pair of Ethiopian immigrants might be doing OK [1]. Immigrants from Africa esp if they are blessed to come from places where English is taught and education levels are higher do particularly well (e.g. Nigeria) and appear to outperform people (incl whites) born in the US. I concede that this data might be wrong in all sorts of ways but wouldn't it be nice if it taught us ways to 'lift up all boats'?

[1] https://news.ku.edu/2020/06/18/study-shows-african-immigrant...

New comment by DrSAR in "Ban on Tenure for New Faculty Hires Passes Texas Senate"

DrSAR — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 21:00:47 +0000

I think your incorrect assumption is that tenured faculty are running and shaping the universities. Much has been written about the rise of different class in the academy: administrators. For a somewhat extreme position look here [1]. And even tenured faculty are subjected to the performance assessments that can seriously hinder their research agenda. As the saying goes: Tenure has never protected those who really needed it.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardvedder/2018/05/10/kill-a...