Hacker News: Qem

New comment by Qem in "All elementary functions from a single binary operator"

Qem — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:26:24 +0000

> Show me a way to physically compute exp or ln that is less gates than add.

IIRC a resistor in series to a capacitor does the trick, for exp.

New comment by Qem in "An 'Intimacy Crisis' Is Driving the Dating Divide"

Qem — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 01:30:45 +0000

I wonder how much of this is due to the likes of Instagram, where everybody presents a throughout curated, filtered version of themselves, setting unrealistic expectations as a baseline everywhere.

New comment by Qem in "The disturbing white paper Red Hat is trying to erase from the internet"

Qem — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:27:11 +0000

You're mistaking it for Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School[1], double tapped with tomahawks in the opening salvo of the war. That was another school, hit later. There was multiple schools attacked.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack

New comment by Qem in "The disturbing white paper Red Hat is trying to erase from the internet"

Qem — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 18:13:33 +0000

Specially AI Hallucination bombs, that hit a park named "Police Park", because it thinks it's killing policemen[1], or a children school with Shahed in the name[2], because it thinks It has something to do with drones.

[1] https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2029575052535173364

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/6/elementary-school-in...

New comment by Qem in "The disturbing white paper Red Hat is trying to erase from the internet"

Qem — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:56:14 +0000

> With that in mind, it seems Red Hat, owned by IBM, is desperately trying to scrub a certain white paper from the internet. Titled “Compress the kill cycle with Red Hat Device Edge”, the 2024 white paper details how Red Hat’s products and technologies can make it easier and faster to, well, kill people.

It appears IBM learned no lessons after WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

That book will need a sequel soon.

New comment by Qem in "Emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal now endangered"

Qem — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:33:00 +0000

I get a bit of this looming feeling every time there is discussion about the Awk programming language, because it reminds me we already got the closest thing to a penguin in the nothern hemisphere extinct by the XIX century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk

Hope this time around we do a better job of avoiding complete doom for these species.

New comment by Qem in "What does ⍋⍋ even mean? (2023)"

Qem — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 22:29:11 +0000

Appears like the twin pines cooperativism symbol.

New comment by Qem in "Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature.What can be done?"

Qem — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:01:10 +0000

In the current publish or perish system institutions benefit from inflated citation counts.

New comment by Qem in "Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature.What can be done?"

Qem — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:58:40 +0000

Soon I think people will learn to work around it backwards, retrospectively writing the non-existent papers. This way you get a brand new paper in your CV with a citation count already above zero.

New comment by Qem in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

Qem — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:03:47 +0000

I suspect one tool governments across the world will resort to when they get desperate about sub-replacement fertility is changing mandatory conscription from males to the childless. Quite strong incentive, not be sent to the meatgrinder.

New comment by Qem in "German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad"

Qem — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:54:52 +0000

Wouldn't make more sense instead of make conscription mandatory only for men, to make it mandatory for all childless people then?

New comment by Qem in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

Qem — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 19:35:20 +0000

It's on NYT site now.

Ubuntu Mate Leader Stepping Down, Seeking New Contributors

Qem — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:19:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-MATE-Needs-Leader

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47612883

Points: 16

# Comments: 1

New comment by Qem in "'The Secret Agent': Exploring a Vibrant, yet Violent Brazil (2025)"

Qem — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:12:51 +0000

The second option. The military dictatorship had an official censorship bureau in place. Proposed news articles had to be run through it before publishing. When some story was barred, it was usual for journal staff to fill its empty slot with something else, like poems, short stories, tall tales, et cetera, that obviously felt out of place. This way people were made aware something that should be there did not make it.

E-waste from rich nations floods local markets in Nigeria

Qem — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:51:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/3/27/truly-junk-e-waste-from-rich-nations-floods-local-markets-in-nigeria

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548088

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Predictably, a victim of AI is Wikipedia

Qem — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:22:03 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/2036156236140294255

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47493947

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

New comment by Qem in "Hormuz Minesweeper – Are you tired of winning?"

Qem — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 13:18:02 +0000

Another school was attacked[1] because it had "Shahed" in the name, like the drones. This is the First Slop War: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/6/elementary-school-in...

New comment by Qem in "Hormuz Minesweeper – Are you tired of winning?"

Qem — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 13:08:49 +0000

Prop up the friendly apartheid regime.

New comment by Qem in "Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence"

Qem — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:39:56 +0000

Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/30/carbon-footpri...

New comment by Qem in "Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence"

Qem — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:37:14 +0000

Of course we shouldn't expect a couple of years of shutdown to significantly reverse 200 years of man-made atmospheric CO2 accumulation, but surely it would help stop the problem to get worse if the widespread WFH effort were sustained after the pandemic.