<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: Out_of_Characte</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Out_of_Characte</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:40:28 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=Out_of_Characte" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The author doesn't go far enough into the problems with trying to convert information theory to SI Units.<p>SI units are attempting to fix standard measurements with perceived constants in nature. A meter(Distance) is the distance light travels in a vacuum, back and forth, within a certain amount of ossilations of a cesium atom(Time). This doesn't mean we tweak the meter to conform to observational results as we'd all be happier if light really was 300 000KM/s instead of ~299 792km/s.<p>Then there's the problem of not mixing different measurement units. SI was designed to conform all measurements to the same base 10 exponents (cm, m, km versus feet inches and yards) But the authors attempt to resolve this matter doesn't even conform to standardised SI units as we would expect them to.<p>What is a byte? Well, 8 bits, sometimes.
What is a kilobit? 1000 Bits
What is a kilobyte? 1000 Bytes, or 1024 Bytes.<p>Now we've already mixed units based on what a bit or a byte even is and the addition of the <i>8 multiplier in addition to the exponent of 1000 or 1024.<p>And if you think, hey, at least the bit is the least divisible unit of information, That's not even correct. If there </i>Should* be a reformalisation of information units, you would agree that the amount of "0"'s is the least divisible unit of information. A kilo of zero's, would be 1000. A 'byte' would be defined as containing up to 256 zero's. A Megazero would contain up to a million zero's.<p>It wouldn't make any intuitive sense for anyone to count 0's, which would automatically convert your information back to base 10, but it does prove that the most sensible unit of information is already what we've had before, that is, you're not mixing bytes (powers of 2) with SI-defined units of 1000</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:51:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877093</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877093</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877093</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Resizable structs in Zig"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> auto-magic-ing size reading to access members after it<p>From the article<p>>we now have everything we need to calculate the size, offset and alignment of every field, regardless of their positioning in the struct.
>init to allocate the memory
>get to get a pointer to a field
>resize to resize the arrays
>deinit to free the memory<p>You're now suggesting to do exactly what the article is about without being aware of it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Jul 2025 14:47:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44701716</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44701716</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44701716</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Resizable structs in Zig"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because arrays simply do not deal with fragmentation. Yes, you could probaly get decent performance on a modern system that has memory overcommit strategy where you could allocate sparse adress ranges where you would probaly never run out of pointers unless you actually write to your variable array.<p>But its just kind of mediocre and you're better off actually dealing with the stack if you can actually deal with certain fixed sizes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Jul 2025 01:00:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44698080</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44698080</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44698080</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Psilocybin treatment extends cellular lifespan, improves survival of aged mice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Dosing seems correct, they established that psilocin (the metabolite of psilocybin ) increases lifespan. The on hand mouse expert likely understood roughly how much psilocybin could be metabolised safely by the mouse.
The mice also had some head jerk indicating that they were under influence and they also established that the mice didn't lose more weight compared to the control group.<p>Some comparisons between animals and humans just aren't compatible with understanding dose and volume.  Some smaller animals eat their weight in food, I just wouldn't recommend basing your own dietary fiber intake on that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Jul 2025 23:41:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44677702</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44677702</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44677702</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>That’s just throwing more probabilities at the problem<p>Think about protein folding and enzymes. That's all solved with probabilities and likely outcomes for the structure and the effect it has. Any replicator would already need to prove the things it is allowed to create, adding the items that it is not allowed to create is probaly needed as a safety protocol anyway.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2025 11:21:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44633892</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44633892</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44633892</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I would also imagine that there could be a food and drug safety prover that would simulate billions of prompts to see if the replicator would ever have a safety violation that could result in horrible nerve agents from being constructed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2025 14:25:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625516</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625516</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625516</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Robot metabolism: Toward machines that can grow by consuming other machines"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The evolution of our species was based on the carbon lifecycle. Yet the machines we produce are not evolving in a similar manner at all, just the ability to redraw everything from scratch is a luxury that evolution cannot make use of.<p>To reiterate, The belief that evolving machines have to match the kind of evolution we're subjected to is illogical. Machines wouldn't be there without us and we wouldn't have what we have now without evolving our machines.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 20 Jul 2025 14:10:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625352</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625352</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625352</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Babies made using three people's DNA are born free of mitochondrial disease"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>In vivo would make no sense.<p>It would certainly be one of the more stranger ways to explain the birds and the bees</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 19 Jul 2025 14:38:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44615824</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44615824</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44615824</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Biological evolution is also impossible to measure on small timescales. that does not mean it does not exist, clearly it exists. It has an exponential effect on the future. I think we fully agree on this definition.<p>>as people and societies become wealthier and better educated (both correlated with intelligence), their reproduction rates drop precipitously.<p>There is also the unmistakeable influence of evolutionary psychology on people throughout human history, that seems to have accelerated. When people decide to have fewer kids, especially the more affluent ones, doesnt yet point to any biological influence. Other than the correlation between wealth, IQ and genetics. I dont think there are any risks of a reduction of intelligence through evolution. The world population reduction we're seeing might accelerate it instead.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 14:51:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44434458</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44434458</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44434458</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Its impossible to properly seperate biological evolution from current day enviromental pressure. There have been many natural and man-made disasters that have killed or otherwise economically robbed millions of people from a good future in their lifetime. Its difficult to say what the fitness function actually selected for.<p>If you could look back far enough and understood most of the enviromental pressures we faced, then we are all lottery winners of our tumultous history.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2025 14:49:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44424061</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44424061</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44424061</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Hyprland Premium"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I do like hyprland, Its what I have installed. I hope they can offer 5$. of value to people with their 'premium' experience, I just think its either way too little or way too much additional support for what their price suggests.<p>Things that are close to this value proposition:<p>Video streaming services<p>Email<p>Online game subscriptions<p>Data backups<p>VPN<p>Very few of these actually offer anything for 5$ a month and they do not offer 'customer support' or 'forum support' in the way you would probaly expect from people that offer that for your linux desktop. If anything, I expect the value proposition to be more like custom art pieces, where someone actually sits down with you for an hour, writes down what you want and programs up an entirely artisic desktop representation for whatever theme/idea you have. That would cost hundreds of dollars and would be a far better value proposition and the person in question could always be called upon for aftercare and newer projects.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Jun 2025 20:11:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44340413</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44340413</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44340413</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "'Gwada negative': French scientists find new blood type in woman"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'd guess there is a significant language barrier, for lack of better words, on the meaning of 'god' and 'virtue'(which might have been more descriptive, but I'm not willing to edit my comment for the clarity that it lacks out of respect for the other posters/readers)<p>Its true that many things co-evolved with us, like viruses and blood types(yes, we're somewhat on topic again) and even though we share many similar characteristics, like blood type, mayor, minor. Its also true that discovery of new things doesn't always invalidate the old way of thinking. Usuallyit just adds to what has already been existing. Like how multicellular life is a true breeding ground for single celled organism.<p>Similarly, the ABO+- blood type system was good enough to not kill patients, which is quite the improvement. Though only a fool would treat that system as gospel and align personalities with it. Now we're classifying the minor types and we're getting closer to rediscovering the uniqueness of everyones blood just as everyones beliefs,god or no god, is unique if you are willing to look.<p>I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god. I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are. I definitely wouldn't want our economy to become a paperclip maximiser but any perceived missteps should be dissected with a good blogpost on how we got here in the first place.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Jun 2025 16:07:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44338594</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44338594</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44338594</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "'Gwada negative': French scientists find new blood type in woman"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's where correlations of random events and placebo end and where discovery begins.<p>There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others. Even if the principle of what you/people believe goes against what you find scientifically relevent, or factual, or sensible. There still is something to be said about a group of people following a strange set of rules that could be demonstrably better than other sets of rules and beliefs. May it be enviromental, genetic, placebo or a tiny edge over what gives life meaning. We ended up with the gods we have today, not by coincidence, but because all the other ones failed their followers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Jun 2025 12:36:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44337112</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44337112</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44337112</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>They need something that can land on Mars and return with a crew
>A three stage rocket is something you’d use for one-way missions with smaller payloads<p>The only succesfull human spacecraft that landed on another body and taken off again used a three stage rocket to deliver a three stage lander,<p>The Command and Service Module(CSM) which brought the two stages into low lunar orbit
The Lunar Lander (LM) contained a descent stage and an ascent stage, the descent stage was used as a platform for the ascent stage.<p>To say that three stage rockets are just for one way missions is silly, especially considering that more stages enable larger payloads. We've yet to see whether SpaceX's two stage solution will actually be any good. I also do not expect a single stage to the surface of the moon and back to Low Lunar Orbit to be very usefull. Any mars mission will likely follow the exact apollo staging plan.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 15:11:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44319398</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44319398</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44319398</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What's really vexing to me is how spacex refuses to build a triple stage rocket. Their 'reusability' adds a significant amount of mass in terms of heatshield and in terms of fuel margins for landing. Using additional stages benefits them more than saturn V. They likely thought they could get away with two stages and have them both return to the launch site, one the short way, the other the long way around. But the exclusion of a multi stage reusable architecture means that their empty mass fraction becomes a linchpin in bringing <i>anything</i> into orbit.<p>No wonder there's a v2 and v3 with much, much larger fuel tanks and less payload.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 12:22:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44317967</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44317967</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44317967</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Honda conducts successful launch and landing of experimental reusable rocket"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>the poster above was very conservative in his metrics and throtteling requirements.<p>Modern pressure vessels can reach 5% empty mass, thats a factor of 20<p>Rockets have stages, a good approximate is to stage half your rocket to get rid of the most empty mass. This also means your first stage has to have double the thrust to lift itself and its stage. Now you're at a factor of 40 just to hover.<p>Now you actually have to take off, usually around 1.2 to 1.4 thrust to weight.<p>So a more realistic scenario means your rocket engine has to throttle down to exactly 2% power while the laval nozzle is optimised for takeoff thrust only.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2025 18:19:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302121</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302121</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44302121</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Worldwide power grid with glass insulated HVDC cables"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I like the article for brainstorming possible technological solutions. Though whats missed is the cost of maintaining and repairing seafloor cables. This is what makes or breaks your idea after its already built and broken in a couple days rather than its rated lifespan of decades.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Jun 2025 20:07:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44271789</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44271789</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44271789</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300k deaths – most of them children"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As conspiratorial as this sounds, alot of successfull non-profit organisations have a vested interest in becoming a critical part of their infrastructure so that funding cuts would be a humanitarian disaster in of itself which neccecitates the continuation of the organisation.<p>Foreign aid has always been a double edged sword when it comes to self-reliance and lasting change</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 31 May 2025 10:44:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44143362</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44143362</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44143362</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Satellites Spotting Depth"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This wouldn't detect overhead cables, which is the primary concern when using this to improve visual landing issues.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2025 17:48:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074893</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074893</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074893</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Out_of_Characte in "Dead Stars Don’t Radiate"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>archiving isn't just to circumvent a paywall. There's also the HN hug of death, possible geoblocks or an actual interest in archiving the article as it was written at the time these comments.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 17 May 2025 18:51:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44016208</link><dc:creator>Out_of_Characte</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44016208</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44016208</guid></item></channel></rss>