Hacker News: WilTimSon

New comment by WilTimSon in "Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes"

WilTimSon — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 07:16:21 +0000

Out of curiosity, what habits would you adopt? Flossing? Or is there something else doctors recommend? A cursory search seems to bring up rather regular dental hygiene.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers (2022)"

WilTimSon — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 05:56:52 +0000

I wonder if there is a name for the phenomenon where people do something that leads to negative consequences but they technically "did everything right". I have a friend who crosses the street without looking both ways and his argument is that if a car hits him "they're in the wrong", as if an accident doesn't occur that way.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Google's 'Reimagine' tool helped us add wrecks, disasters, and corpses to photos"

WilTimSon — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 18:44:07 +0000

Most discussions are online now and the content generated by AI will most definitely make its way into the "real world". The recent case of people getting food poisoning to an AI-generated mushroom foraging book is a prime example.[0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41269514

New comment by WilTimSon in "The bizarre siege behind Stockholm Syndrome"

WilTimSon — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 14:35:15 +0000

Great example of how not to name a show. I'd have at least a few other associations before clicking on it to see what it was actually about. Clark Kent? Clark and Gable?

Wouldn't something that describes who Olofsson is be a better title? Or am I just being picky for no reason?

New comment by WilTimSon in "10% of Cubans left Cuba between 2022 and 2023"

WilTimSon — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 10:02:43 +0000

> History and data from various European nations suggest that some immigrant groups aren't able to integrate with the host society after multiple generations, and remain ghettoized with low employment and high crime rates (vastly higher than the native population, for certain categories of crime).

Does it suggest that, though? It suggests that, in the specific conditions that were presented to those groups, they turned to crime. However, we can't pretend that the previous generations of immigrants had exclusively good experiences and quality of life, even in Europe. Obviously, some countries tried their best but in the past decades we had far less experience on proper integration (we as in the collective we, no country has worked out some perfect plan on it).

In fact, certain countries specifically created neighbourhoods (ghettos) for immigrant populations, all with positive intentions. Can't really blame the migrants for then becoming "ghettoized" in such a scenario. Granted, I know of other countries that specifically did not do that and still had struggles, which just goes to show how the whole thing is a minefield, where good intentions can clash with harsh reality.

New comment by WilTimSon in "The Mafia of Pharma Pricing"

WilTimSon — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 09:44:45 +0000

NYT is still good at coverage, I'd just argue that the optics of their coverage can be removed from their original, erm, style, at times. (I don't want to say "politics" but we all know I mean politics.)

Still, they do excellent work to this day, just with questionable detours.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Bone tissue reparation using coral and marine sponges"

WilTimSon — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 12:26:44 +0000

I highly doubt software that doctors use for patient notes and prescriptions would even have the option to enable autocorrect. If it does, that’s a giant oversight on the devs’ part.

New comment by WilTimSon in "NOFX to retire after final tour without ever having had a job"

WilTimSon — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 09:32:44 +0000

It's a reference to their music, although a very poorly thought out one. But I don't think the result is entirely fair, as Fat Mike is a record label owner. That's not what one may think when you say "a job", these people are all middle-aged and aren't working the cash register at a Walmart or something like that. A job is a job, but NOFX are far past some idealistic idea of "live off the music, skip college" and whatever else people thought of them.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Standard Ebooks' 1,000th title: Ulysses"

WilTimSon — Fri, 31 May 2024 18:46:27 +0000

I'll say this, with the caveat that I never did finish the book due to unrelated reasons, this is an excellent method.

One may think "It's fine, I'll simply read the text and then, if I have questions, absorb some scholarly articles on it." Trust me, you will enjoy it so much more when you understand Joyce's intent and clever writing as it happens. You simply can't take it all in post-factum, too much would be missed.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Music vs. Lyrics"

WilTimSon — Thu, 16 May 2024 15:19:32 +0000

That's a very good way of putting it. Songs evoke a very multifaceted sort of experience, I can't think of a better way to put it - they make both sides of the brain fire up. A good song causes me to rationally enjoy its lyricism and have strong feelings over its melody.

New comment by WilTimSon in "The most backdoor-looking bug I've ever seen (2021)"

WilTimSon — Fri, 10 May 2024 10:16:32 +0000

The article seems to make the claim he lives there but it's not really backed up by anything. I checked his Wikipedia and the last update is him studying at the University of Bonn, way back in 2007. Doesn't seem like it's possible to verify the claim of his residency.

New comment by WilTimSon in "The most backdoor-looking bug I've ever seen (2021)"

WilTimSon — Fri, 10 May 2024 09:12:23 +0000

Do you have a source for him living in Russia? He may be an honorary researcher, which is more likely, considering the two of them escapes Russia years ago with no intention to return.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation"

WilTimSon — Thu, 09 May 2024 09:03:00 +0000

I've been mulling this over since yesterday. The best way I can explain is that I genuinely taste different "notes" in coffee brewed in different ways and from different beans, whereas with most espresso machines the taste feels overpowered by one singular note, usually something nutty, close to peanuts. It's not disgusting or bad, but it' kind of like having a preference in tea or sauces. You could eat your meal with that one sauce you're offered, but you might have a different preference. And coffee is the sauce of my days, heh.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation"

WilTimSon — Wed, 08 May 2024 09:29:56 +0000

Well, you're lucky to not have spoiled your palate, in a way. I learned to love good coffee through my friends and I now only drink regular espressos from a machine if there's no other choice. And I'm not being snobby or anything, I fully understand why people drink it, I used to do it all the time. But my friends had to go and teach me about brewing methods and beans and yadda yadda.

Friend of mine had a similar issue where his parents were wine people and, ever since he could drink, taught him how to pick good wine. Except he realised he does not want to pay that much for alcohol so he now just sticks to beer.

New comment by WilTimSon in "New findings point to an Earth-like environment on ancient Mars"

WilTimSon — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:42:35 +0000

Current AI isn’t ready for that yet, though. What’s available to us couldn’t even be effectively used for research on Earth’s out-of-reach places, much less on Mars. In some years, however… That would be curious.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Inside the Super Nintendo cartridges"

WilTimSon — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:46:23 +0000

Well, we have to account for the fact that modern system simply don't require that much optimization and compression. Working with stricter limits meant that dev teams had to get creative and minimize file size, while nowadays a single game update can be around 20 GB.

New comment by WilTimSon in "An electric new era for Atlas"

WilTimSon — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 13:47:51 +0000

I found it creepy at first, then I saw a comment saying it looks like the lamp from the Pixar intro and now I can’t take it seriously. Beautiful movement, though. I hope one day they’ll be simple and powerful enough to replace people in high-risk jobs, where you could even just control one remotely and perform tasks that way.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Green's Dictionary of Slang"

WilTimSon — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 08:24:06 +0000

The top post on that subreddit is hilarious: "[Chinese] 報復性熬夜 (revenge bedtime procrastination) - a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late night hours"

They have some interesting variety there, too.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Lego price per part over the years"

WilTimSon — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 09:15:45 +0000

But that's a learned behaviour, and one learned specifically thanks to decades of marketing. Sure, LEGO is quality, but it's not some unbeatable gold standard. At some point it simply becomes one of those things where people ask for Coke instead of Pepsi, even if they can't tell them apart - brand loyalty trumping the desire to simply get the product.

New comment by WilTimSon in "Google I/O '24 Puzzles"

WilTimSon — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 12:03:05 +0000

For a quick, breezy puzzle that you should be able to do within the space of a coffee break, this feels like it moves way too slowly. Takes a bit for the ball to start rolling and the fancy zoom-in animation gets tedious fast.