Hacker News: MattPalmer1086

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11"

MattPalmer1086 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:56:27 +0000

Haha, yes. It does not account for releases which made UX dramatically worse (win 8) which were then reverted to some extent.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Why the search for particle dark matter is hopeless, part 1"

MattPalmer1086 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:00:55 +0000

A comprehensive look at why dark matter does not adequately explain galactic dynamics by a leading scientist in the field, Stacy McGaugh. Specifically, it addresses the criticism that DM should provide natural explanations for MONDian phenomonology.

Why the search for particle dark matter is hopeless, part 1

MattPalmer1086 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:00:55 +0000

Article URL: https://tritonstation.com/2026/10/26/why-the-search-for-particle-dark-matter-is-hopeless-part-1/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50249203

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "I don't understand quantum physics (2018)"

MattPalmer1086 — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 11:56:45 +0000

Newtonian is just plain determinism. One thing causes another, but does not imply things are fixed in any particular way.

Superdeterminism implies that things are fixed in advance in such a way that the things we "choose" to measure always looks as if there are no local hidden variables (e.g. Bell's inequality) even though there are.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:00:26 +0000

MOND has one constant parameter, a0. This is hardly a good example of a theory tweaking many parameters to fit the data.

Yes, it is empirically determined and provides no deeper insight into why it works.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:51:23 +0000

There are always exceptions that need additional explanation. The majority do spin exactly as the Tully Ficsher relation suggests. What specific examples are you thinking of?

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:47:57 +0000

Apparently they all have just the right amount arranged in the right way to give the same result in each case.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:44:30 +0000

TeVes (one relatistic formulation of MOND) predicts gravity propagation at different speeds than light. This is not a general result of MOND theories.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 21:40:12 +0000

If you read the rebuttal by Professor McGaugh, you can include those 3 as perfectly good examples of MOND too.

You do make a good point though - astronomy and astrophysics is hard. There are often many ways of interpreting the observations we have. They can be misleading and take careful interpretation, particularly when they seem unusual in some way.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:43:08 +0000

Yep, pretty much. They all have a flat rotation curve (which makes no sense unless gravity works differently or there is unseen mass), and that rotation correlates to the visible matter in the galaxy (the Tully Fischer relation).

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:31:30 +0000

Maybe it should - but it does not prove that the subject is a crank. Thomas Khun's theory of paradigms shows that science is not an entirely objective undertaking.

Having read Prof McGaugh's blog and some of his published papers for quite some time, I do not place him in the crank bucket. Make your own mind up I guess. My take is he is a legitimate scientist who holds views outside the mainstream.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:15:44 +0000

The fun question to ask is why almost all galaxies (no matter how they differ) spin as though a simple modification of gravity explains them. That dark matter is organising itself to produce the same outcome over many different circumstances!

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 18:56:41 +0000

He is a professional scientist with a blog - he has written a lot of papers as well [1]. It is worth taking his views seriously, even if you have reason to dispute them.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lM8J8noAAAAJ&hl=en

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 18:03:06 +0000

Professor McGaugh has commented many times on the sociology of science and how the dominant paradigm tends to be hostile or indifferent to alternate views. He is also quite frank about the limitations of MOND as well, although he is definitely in the MOND camp overall.

He is hardly a crank - but he is definitely not in the mainstream camp.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't"

MattPalmer1086 — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:21:58 +0000

Also see [1], a follow up post by Stacy McGaugh, a MOND proponent, who is quoted in the Quanta article. He does not agree with the evidence as presented in that article.

[1] https://tritonstation.com/2026/10/15/ghostly-galaxies-in-the...

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Flatpak – An Insecurity Nightmare (2023)"

MattPalmer1086 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 07:56:56 +0000

Actually, most operating systems were designed as multi-user systems where users cannot access each other's data. Trusted administrators installed software. This made sense in a world of expensive computers that needed to be shared.

In the modern world we do not share our computers with other users, and allow untrusted software to run on our machines from the internet. Without further sandboxing, it would execute as the user with access to everything for that user - which in practice means mostly everything.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "How employment is changing at Anthropic"

MattPalmer1086 — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 13:13:34 +0000

> If there is one thing i've seen in software engineering over many years is that sometimes software engineers prefer using flashy stuff even though it doesn't have that much benefits

We used to call this RDD - Resume Driven Development.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "What changes when your search index lives on S3?"

MattPalmer1086 — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 16:49:42 +0000

Well, it answers the technical questions of what changes when you stick your search indexes on slower and more expensive storage - but not why you would do that in the first place.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Vitalik Buterin backs crypto ‘bunker mode’ amid rapid AI math advances"

MattPalmer1086 — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:26:16 +0000

The point is they have less algebraic structure than things like elliptic curves. If you want "math resistant" properties, this is a good thing.

New comment by MattPalmer1086 in "Blindsight (Watts Novel)"

MattPalmer1086 — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 18:00:00 +0000

The "vampire" thing was a bit cheesy to be honest, despite being scientifically explained. But conceptually it was quite key to the story. There would probably have been another way to do this.

Despite that, still one of my all time favorite sci fi books. A fantastic exploration of intelligence, conscioussness and first contact.