Hacker News: alikim

New comment by alikim in "My Experience as a Rice Farmer"

alikim — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:16:26 +0000

Personally I love a lot about software engineering (iterative problem solving, sorting through complexities, the predictability you mention or at least how things are logical and often deterministic, etc) but I also love being outside and moving my body. After years of sitting behind a computer all day I do day dream about work that fulfills me in other ways. I'm sure if I took a different job and spent all day in the field I would miss software in a similar vein; time is finite and the number of possible ways you can spend it is not.

New comment by alikim in "In a genre where spoilers are devastating, how do we talk about puzzle games?"

alikim — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:03:11 +0000

I really really love both Outer Wilds and the DLC and think the reddit community, when asked, does a great job of providing advice or tips for specific situations without revealing too much.

A prudent planetary limit for geologic carbon storage

alikim — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 21:47:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09423-y

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45132602

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The secret life of baby octopuses

alikim — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 00:12:45 +0000

Article URL: https://phys.org/visualstories/2021-09-secret-life-baby-octopuses.amp

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28649181

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by alikim in "U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests"

alikim — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 23:40:45 +0000

> It is unfortunate though, that this strategy is only seemingly applied to white people.

It is much more than unfortunate.

New comment by alikim in "Did Early Humans Invent Hot Pot in Geothermal Pools?"

alikim — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 12:15:50 +0000

And the relevant article in PNAS: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/09/14/2004532117

Did Early Humans Invent Hot Pot in Geothermal Pools?

alikim — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 12:14:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mystery-microbe-hominin-cooking-tanzania

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650004

Points: 30

# Comments: 28

New comment by alikim in "Giant Pacific Octopus"

alikim — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 17:17:58 +0000

Such a great book! I thought the whole section on why we age was compelling. The idea that nature can select for mutations which may be beneficial earlier on but have harmful effects after a given time period was new to me.

New comment by alikim in "Facebook Campus"

alikim — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 18:17:10 +0000

https://xkcd.com/2357/

New comment by alikim in "Relax your coding self with the soothing JavaScript simulation of rain"

alikim — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:12:22 +0000

Yeah, the effects seem to be decently delayed for me as well.

New comment by alikim in "What's it like to be an Octopus? (2017)"

alikim — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 16:57:03 +0000

I strongly recommend both of these books. The Soul of an Octopus is more anecdotal and Other Minds is more academic; in sum they offer not just a fascinating picture of octopuses, but a larger discussion on consciousness and foreign intelligence.

Six Reasons the Blanket Octopus Is My Favorite Cephalopod

alikim — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 20:12:47 +0000

Article URL: https://jellybiologist.com/2019/06/24/six-reasons-the-blanket-octopus-is-my-favorite-cephalopod/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22350314

Points: 15

# Comments: 3

New comment by alikim in "Antarctica is teeming with microbes"

alikim — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 14:48:48 +0000

Here is the link to the interactive project spoken about in this interview: https://lifeundertheice.org

New comment by alikim in "Botanical illustration is becoming endangered"

alikim — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 17:09:35 +0000

The article mentions that illustration is a lot better than photography but doesn't mention any specifics. Does anyone have insight as to why this is?

New comment by alikim in "Zeroing in on Decarbonization"

alikim — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 14:39:58 +0000

Here is the referenced article if anyone is interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kj3ny5wk93bxj44/Sepulveda%20et%20a...

New comment by alikim in "Ants Are Practically Immune to Traffic Jams"

alikim — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 14:05:20 +0000

I feel like a significant portion of human traffic jams are caused by bottlenecks but as far as I can tell this was not addressed in the study. Would be interested to see how much more efficient ants are in the case where the width of the path is variable.

New comment by alikim in "California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving"

alikim — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 18:40:18 +0000

Depending on where the epicenter is, it may take 1-2 minutes for the S waves (which are the slower, damaging ones) to travel to the major population center. Up to 30s of warning for an earthquake early warning system is enough for people to take cover and for cities to shut off things like water/gas lines. That being said my system is definitely not ready for that, and twitter can be seen as one source of information used to augment other early detection systems.

New comment by alikim in "Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?"

alikim — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 18:25:51 +0000

https://www.indigoag.com

New comment by alikim in "California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving"

alikim — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 15:27:49 +0000

I wrote a script that monitors twitter for earthquake related tweets and notifies me when a certain threshold is hit. It pretty reliably notifies me 20-30s post-quake. Main problem is that very few tweets actually have location data associated with them. I try to grab the location string users can specify in their bio and infer the location based on the most common occurrence in a body of tweets- works decently well although its usually a broader region.

New comment by alikim in "California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving"

alikim — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 15:17:01 +0000

I've actually done this and get notifications usually 30 seconds post quake just like xkcd suggested.