Hacker News: admash

New comment by admash in "Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore"

admash — Mon, 25 May 2026 16:42:29 +0000

That’s disingenous. Microsoft themselves considered Linux a serious threat as early as 1998, as described in their own confidential memoranda. (AKA the Halloween Documents released by ESR.)

New comment by admash in "Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism"

admash — Wed, 20 May 2026 06:47:31 +0000

FWIW, you can also put the paper in the freezer and it will become visible again, though usually not as strong as it was originally.

New comment by admash in "Egg Intake and the Incidence of Alzheimer's Disease in Adventist Health Study-2"

admash — Wed, 06 May 2026 20:22:24 +0000

Your assertion, such as it is, is poorly formed. This research did not, as you imply, test 200 potential associations and report the one that was the “winner”. A single /a priori/ hypothesis was formulated and then tested using the data, in accordance with standard statistical methodology. The logical extension of your statement is that no association could ever be found since anything found is just a green-jelly bean association. When multiple tests of hypotheses are performed, accepted statistical practice is to the make the criterion for significance more stringent precisely to avoid the green-jellybean effect you are implying has occurred here.

Similarly illogical is pointing out the size of the questionnaire - as though the number of questions a person is asked has any impact whether eggs have an effect on Alzheimer’s disease incidence.

New comment by admash in "Reliable 25 Gigabit Ethernet via Thunderbolt"

admash — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 16:54:45 +0000

Any idea why that would be the case?

New comment by admash in "Grok turns off image generator for most after outcry over sexualised AI imagery"

admash — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 09:59:35 +0000

The difference being that sexuality is typically considered an innate desire, whilst the desire to commit violence is not. Plus, we as a species have a biological imperative to protect our offspring, but apparently an immense capacity to ignore violence committed against others.

New comment by admash in "Grok turns off image generator for most after outcry over sexualised AI imagery"

admash — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 09:53:39 +0000

The difference being that sexuality is typically considered an innate desire, whilst the desire to commit violence is not.

Plus, we as a species have a biological imperative to protect our offspring, but apparently an immense capacity to ignore violence committed against others.

New comment by admash in "Grok turns off image generator for most after outcry over sexualised AI imagery"

admash — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 09:51:29 +0000

Because it creates an appetite for that type of content which is expected to grow to include real images with real harm.

New comment by admash in "Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)"

admash — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:08:38 +0000

Of course they do, if enforced. The number of eight year-olds working in factories is substantially lower than it used to be due to regulations. *in modern democracies

New comment by admash in "UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16"

admash — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 04:33:27 +0000

The alternative is to refuse to delegate the formation and development of the character of our children and culture to automated systems and regulatory policies. Engage with your children on topics that matter. Discuss the pros and cons of various viewpoints and political platforms with your friends and neighbors, colleagues and fellow bus-riders. We, ourselves, are the psychosocial immune system for society, and if we construct an environment in which we can not be exposed harmful concepts, then we will never learn how to respond and combat it when we inevitably are exposed to it.

This is not to say that we should not actively work to prevent criminal acts, but that trying to establish a world in which such acts are impossible will cripple society in ways which will leave us vulnerable to much larger and more systemic abuses. Benjamin Franklin’s statement rings as true as ever, if in a rather updated context: “ They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

New comment by admash in "Discontinuation of ARM Notebook with Snapdragon X Elite SoC"

admash — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 06:19:58 +0000

LG Gram laptops have excellent battery life. E.g. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lightweight-with-power-and-20-...

I have an LG Gram 15 from 2021 and it gets 15+ hours under light usage in Linux.

New comment by admash in "Mullvad VPN present And Then? (Chat Control is back on the menu)"

admash — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 06:52:32 +0000

Except that it is not materially false. Only in a perfect society will your “system that flags illicit content” not become a system that flags whatever some authoritarian regime considers threatening, and subverting public logging/auditing is similarly trivial to a motivated authoritarian. All your hypothetical solutions rely on humans, who are notoriously susceptible to being influenced by either money or being beaten with pipes, and on corporations, who are notoriously susceptible to being influenced by things that influence their stock price.

The Pleyel’s corollary to Murphy’s law is that all compromises to individuals’ rights made for the sake of security will eventually be used to further deprive them of those rights.

(I especially liked the line “You can require cops to build multiple sufficient points of independently corroborated evidence before arresting people.”)

New comment by admash in "Passive Microwave Repeaters"

admash — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 08:07:26 +0000

One scenario would be if it scanned it once in 8 days and once in 4 days, due to, say, an elliptical orbit or something. Thus, twice in 12 days, but not once every 6 days.

Alternately, complex orbital tracks may result in irregular accumulation of multiple scans, with double scanning only finally being achieved after 12 days.

New comment by admash in "Vitamin C Boosts Epidermal Growth via DNA Demethylation"

admash — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 16:39:54 +0000

If you are asserting that Linus Pauling was the only two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, my doubt in the accuracy of your conclusions has only increased, given that Marie Curie, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger have all won two Nobel Prizes.

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-scientists-won-nobel-prizes.ht...

New comment by admash in "Interferometer Device Sees Text from a Mile Away"

admash — Wed, 14 May 2025 14:03:50 +0000

Presumably this could be used for color imaging by using lasers of different wavelengths?

New comment by admash in "[dead]"

admash — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 07:42:03 +0000

Sure, except:

A) some are being fired because they did what their bosses asked them to (legally) in the previously administration.

B) some of them are being fired because refusing to do illegal things is considered "disloyal" by the current administration.

New comment by admash in "Mapping the Ionosphere with Phones"

admash — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 14:24:22 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic_positionin...

New comment by admash in "FDA proposes ending use of oral phenylephrine as OTC nasal decongestant"

admash — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 09:29:17 +0000

Of course it can. You take drug A for 5 days to get rid of symptom X. The symptom X does not go away. It is ineffective! You stop taking drug A and immediately experience brutal migraines that go away when you start taking drug A again. Ergo, you have become dependent on drug A for normal functioning, even though it is ineffective at ridding you of symptom X.

New comment by admash in "The ancient art of roasting agave"

admash — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 12:47:47 +0000

The “cut up” feeling that can occur after eating kiwi or pineapple is more likely to be caused by the natural proteases present in the raw fruit (actinidain and bromelain, respectively) as the “cut up” feeling generally does not occur in cooked or canned fruit due to denaturing of the protein proteases. Raphides, which are sharp, insoluble calcium oxalate crystals, are generally not destroyed by boiling (as stated in your link) as so would still be present in the cooked fruit, suggesting that they are unlikely to be responsible for the “cut up” sensation.

New comment by admash in "Why don't grocery stores stock pawpaw fruit?"

admash — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 08:21:18 +0000

The pawpaw referred to here is a small deciduous tree native to the eastern United States and Canada, producing a large, yellowish-green to brown fruit.

The papaya, whilst also sometimes being called a pawpaw, has been available commercially for some time in the US, and is not what is being referred to here.

New comment by admash in "Starship will attempt a launch this Friday"

admash — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 09:10:58 +0000

That was such a delightful fact that I had to source it. Tragically, it is not true.

Gee, K. L., Mathews, L. T., Anderson, M. C., & Hart, G. W. (2022). Saturn-V sound levels: A letter to the Redditor. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152(2), 1068-1073.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220831190741id_/https://asa.sc...

"While this peak level represents acoustic amplitudes that would propagate nonlinearly to rapidly form shocks and result in perception of jet “crackle” (e.g., see Gee et al., 2016), will it melt concrete or set grass or one’s hair on fire? It will definitely not."