Hacker News: bandushrew

New comment by bandushrew in "GPT-5: "How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry?""

bandushrew — Sun, 10 Aug 2025 08:55:31 +0000

The problem is that the response of an llm has nothing to do with the facts of the context and everything to do with its vibe, the locations in the hyper sphere of the llms knowledge that are triggered.

New comment by bandushrew in "The value isn't in the code (2022)"

bandushrew — Wed, 21 May 2025 08:17:31 +0000

I would love to see your Celtic knotwork generators, are they online?

New comment by bandushrew in "Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed"

bandushrew — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 18:55:24 +0000

The why explains itself. Cells that do not divide and reproduce disappear.

New comment by bandushrew in "Texas banned abortion, then sepsis rates soared"

bandushrew — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 03:57:27 +0000

We can accept that you are a person, the fetus is a person and the mother is a person.

Which of those should be coerced to give up a piece of their liver to save your life? Morally speaking…

New comment by bandushrew in "Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools"

bandushrew — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 02:12:38 +0000

Producing 200 lines of usable code an hour is genuinely impressive.

My experiments have been nowhere near that successful.

I would love, love, love to see a transcript of how that process worked over an hour, if that was something you were willing to share.

New comment by bandushrew in "Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet"

bandushrew — Wed, 29 May 2024 01:40:58 +0000

Except that you cant, in a practical sense.

I can sell crypto to anyone, anywhere.

That cannot be used to purchase anything, anywhere.

Its only useful for a very narrow subset.

New comment by bandushrew in "Peter Thiel backs 'Olympics on steroids' event that allows athletes to dope"

bandushrew — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 21:54:42 +0000

When you put it like that, honestly, it sounds pretty epic....

New comment by bandushrew in "Illinois to become first US state to abolish cash bail"

bandushrew — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 22:27:33 +0000

Thats pretty much the argument in favour of it.

The argument against it is that it makes life harder for everyone except those who have spare cash hanging around.

Coincidentally, those who have spare cash hanging around may not value it as highly as their freedom, so they maybe are still likely to ditch and run?

Which means that bail is really only a good motivator for that sweet spot of accused criminal who both has enough cash available to be able to put it up, and has so little cash available that getting their bail back quickly is hugely important to them. Except that they dont get it back quickly anyway, it can take quite a long time...so ehh...

New comment by bandushrew in "Pesticide safety limit for salmon farms watered down after industry lobbying"

bandushrew — Sun, 03 Sep 2023 23:40:49 +0000

The counterpoint is that this isn't a step that is being taken because we are desperately trying to feed all of humanity. Its a step thats being taken because these providers want to increase their profit margins.

The question is whether thats a good enough reason to take whatever risks are being taken here.

New comment by bandushrew in "Today's North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature (4.8 Sigma)"

bandushrew — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 23:37:27 +0000

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-of-natu....

"The true heavyweights for reconstructing ancient seawater temperatures are the microorganisms. Foraminifera, single-celled organisms roughly the size of the period ending this sentence, occur nearly everywhere in the oceans and have an exquisite fossil record."

New comment by bandushrew in "OPEC+ announces surprise oil output cuts"

bandushrew — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 20:28:07 +0000

Which is why we should start now, surely?

The best time to start was 20 years ago, the next best time is to start today.

New comment by bandushrew in "Over 50% of CEOs say they’re considering cutting jobs over the next 6 months"

bandushrew — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 23:40:11 +0000

Your comment doesn't exist to give me an account model of reality.

It primarily exists to give me a believable model that promotes your beliefs.

That kind of statement is literally true for everything.

New comment by bandushrew in "Head of election worker management company arrested for theft of personal data"

bandushrew — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 23:09:28 +0000

1.8 million poll workers sounds like a huge number, how many poll workers were there in the US last election?

New comment by bandushrew in "Ask HN: Does anyone else think SQL needs help?"

bandushrew — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 23:34:44 +0000

You can use stored procs and/or views to hide the details of queries if you want.

the specifics of an inner join vs outer join vs left join etc are crucial though. It makes sense to be able to specify them.

New comment by bandushrew in "Hawaii shuts down its last coal-fired power plant in bid to fight climate change"

bandushrew — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 03:37:09 +0000

Sure, but the cost of really good planning that never messes up sequencing is likely to add a lot more than 4% to your utility bill.

How much more are you really willing to pay for completely flawless sequencing?

New comment by bandushrew in "Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data"

bandushrew — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 02:19:37 +0000

That matches what we were being told 18 months ago though.

As I understood it, the problem was with the number of people being infected, because of the lack of any existing immunity.

Ie, most of the population has some degree of immunity to the flu, so it kills people in much lower numbers each year. COVID was going to…and did…infect large numbers all at once which would wreak havoc on the health systems of countries and cause the death rate of all caused to skyrocket.

New comment by bandushrew in "The erosion of the Mac experience"

bandushrew — Sat, 20 Aug 2022 04:32:54 +0000

Let me use a single device but via different hardware depending on context.

Give me a phone I can plug into 2 monitors and a keyboard and interact with as a desktop, or slot into the back of a laptop case for portable computing, or put into my pocket.

New comment by bandushrew in "We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it"

bandushrew — Sun, 01 May 2022 08:31:33 +0000

Over 60 according to something, but I’m not.

Hypothesis: the older a person is, the more likely they are to understand that HHHHHHHHH is a statistically likely outcome from true randomness.

New comment by bandushrew in "The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown"

bandushrew — Fri, 15 Apr 2022 22:34:13 +0000

You have lived in a world in which the government can confine you to your house your entire life.

Why is it only recently you have noticed?

New comment by bandushrew in "Notes on Nationalism (1945)"

bandushrew — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 21:39:22 +0000

I find it interesting that your language implies it is the responsibility of the west to persuade Russia to back off?

Surely the responsibility for the actions of Russia rest on the Russian leadership?

Russia has decided to invade Ukraine. Russia needs to decide to stop doing that.

Where does it become the responsibility of the west?