Hacker News: FrojoS

New comment by FrojoS in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:54:17 +0000

Maybe, but there is a trend towards more and longer education. More college graduates, more PhD grads, etc.

New comment by FrojoS in "Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:46:17 +0000

Given how many of these problems are self-inflicted, maybe we should focus more on trips to the moon and beyond, not less.

New comment by FrojoS in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:09:47 +0000

Sorry, I should have quoted properly in my reply. My first sentence ("Yes.") was in general agreement with you, the second sentence was specifically about

> Mathematica has been able to do many integrals for decades and yet we still make students learn all the tricks to integrate by hand

But maybe, integrating by hand is still as big as ever in other parts of academia. Or were you thinking about high school? I'm fairly sure, that symbolic solving of integrals is treated as less important in education these days, than it was before digital computers, but I could be wrong. Mathematica's symbolic solve sure is very useful, but numeric solutions are what really makes the art of finding integrals much less relevant.

New comment by FrojoS in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:06:43 +0000

> There is no history of any sort of long planning

Sure there is. Its the formal education system that produced the college grad.

New comment by FrojoS in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:29:35 +0000

That would be cheating. If the exam is 'gate keeping', I will say that it is a gate worth keeping.

To be clear, I am not against alternative forms of education. Degrees are optional. But if you want a degree, there have to be exams and cheating has to be prevented.

New comment by FrojoS in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:08:13 +0000

Yes. But to be fair to your specific point, symbolic solving of integrals used to be a huge skill in the engineering education. Nowadays, it is not a focus anymore, because numerical solutions are either sufficiently accurate or, more importantly, the only feasible approach anyway.

New comment by FrojoS in "The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:24:51 +0000

Every PhD program I'm aware of has a final hurdle known as the defence. You have to present your thesis while standing in front of a committee, and often the local community and public. They will asks questions and too many "I don't know" or false answers would make you fail. So, there is already a system in place that should stop Bob from graduating if he indeed learned much less than Alice. A similar argument can be made for conference publications. If Bob publishes his first year project at a conference but doesn't actually understand "his own work" it will show.

The difficulty of passing the defence vary's wildly between Universities, departments and committees. Some are very serious affairs with a decent chance of failure while others are more of a show event for friends and family. Mine was more of the latter, but I doubt I would have passed that day if I had spend the previous years prompting instead of doing the grunt work.

New comment by FrojoS in "Show HN: A game where you build a GPU"

FrojoS — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:04:11 +0000

Awesome! Small feedback: The test should maybe auto run. I solved the first level and was confused why I didn't proceed. The out was -1 (but goal was z) and it took me a while to see the 'run test' button.

Impact of screen size on cognitive training task performance: An HMD study

FrojoS — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 13:34:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167876021001835

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638941

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by FrojoS in "Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor"

FrojoS — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 13:32:01 +0000

Guys, this is a well known and under utilized effect of human psycho physiology. Visually focusing on a single point, small object, or just small visual field (aka tunnel vision) increases mental focus.

AFAIK it’s also one of the reasons we all get “glued” to smartphone screens.

In this paper, more than 20 deg visual field for a screen and subject performance went down: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01678...

Cheap drones are reshaping the war in the sky (scrolling infographic)

FrojoS — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:17:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/graphics/IRAN-CRISIS/DRONES/dwpkyamxqpm/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427635

Points: 42

# Comments: 4

Nvidia Kimodo: kinematic motion diffusion model trained on mocap data

FrojoS — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:43:29 +0000

Article URL: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/sil/projects/kimodo/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47425066

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by FrojoS in "$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor"

FrojoS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:47:45 +0000

Ok. Maybe you are right. I don't know.

New comment by FrojoS in "$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor"

FrojoS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:16:54 +0000

The good old "The Bomber always gets through" debate from 1932.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bomber_will_always_get_thr...

New comment by FrojoS in "$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor"

FrojoS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:53:27 +0000

> I think the propulsion system will be the easy part.

Really? I think rocket science is still not easy. Just look at how much nation states are spending on maintaining their liquid and/or solid fuel rocket programs. If they even have one, let alone both.

This book might give some insights into the why https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...

Quote: "All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water —with which it reacts explosively. It can be It has recently been shown that an argon fluoride, probably ArF2, does exist, but it is unstable except at cryogenic temperatures.

[...] kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminum, etc. —because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes."

Granted this is about a fuel that is AFAIK not used for MANPADs, but the joke about the running shoes could be made about most aspects of rocket propulsion.

New comment by FrojoS in "Apple's MacBook Neo makes repairs easier and cheaper than other MacBooks"

FrojoS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:45:19 +0000

Not saying you are wrong or the option shouldn't exist, but what specifically makes 8 GB too little but 12 GB sufficient? Planned obsolescence and software that is written with the idea that "8 GB is borderline in 2026" seems to be blame. But perhaps there are genuine limitations that 8GB RAM runs into. Certain AI models, rendering at certain resolutions maybe?

My 8GB M1 Air is my daily driver for over 5 years now and so far it has worked out well. Sometimes, I have to replace badly optimised software for good alternatives. I hope that by the time that MacOS becomes unusable, Asahi Linux is mature enough to replace the OS rather than the hardware. I'm still on Sequoia and from what I've heard going to Tahoe would be terrible for the usability of my Air. So, no idea how much longer I will be able to hold out and if Asahi is ready now. It looks ok on first glance.

Edit: On second glance it seems not ready at all https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/ "Video Decoder: WIP"

MacBook Neo Is the Most Repairable MacBook in 14 Years

FrojoS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:10:09 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-repairable-macbook-in-14-years

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387549

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

MacBook Neo emerges as company's most repairable laptop in more than a decade

FrojoS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:09:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/apple-macbook-neo-emerges-companys-most-repairable-laptop-more-than-decade-2026-03-13/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387544

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by FrojoS in "Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions"

FrojoS — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:22:41 +0000

Because it might require time consuming testing, iterations, documentation etc.

If everything the maintainer wants can (hypothetically) be one-shotted, then there is no need to accept PR's at all. Just allow forks in case of open source.

New comment by FrojoS in "The engine of Germany's wealth is blocking its future"

FrojoS — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:52:04 +0000

Söder merely repeated what Bavarians have been thinking and saying since when he still hadn't left Franken.

I realise my post was unnecessary inflammatory and I'm sorry for that. Enough Internet for today.