Hacker News: bar94

New comment by bar94 in "Gemini Omni"

bar94 — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:23:15 +0000

Even weirder:

> Prompt: A skeuomorphism stop motion explainer about how the brain hippocampus works with a compelling voiceover. Don’t add seahorses. No voice cuts at the end. Don’t add text

Seahorses???

New comment by bar94 in "Google Street View in 2026"

bar94 — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:42:30 +0000

Pretty sure the license plate/street view level data is from the cars that drive around with a lidar thing strapped to the top, not satellite data

New comment by bar94 in "Solving a simple puzzle using SymPy"

bar94 — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 05:02:23 +0000

Not sure if everything is correct, seems a bit too easy -

Let y be the horizontal width of the bottom-left-most rectangle, and x be the horizontal width of each of the rectangles directly adjacent on the right to the first one, so that the rectangle marked at the top right as having a vertical width of 3 now has a horizontal width of x + y.

Then, the area of each rectangle is 3x + 3y, as all rectangles have the same area.

It follows that the vertical width of the bottom-left-most rectangle is (3x + 3y)/y, and that the vertical width of each of the two stacked rectangles is (3x + 3y)/x.

Note now that the stacked rectangles have the same horizontal width, and therefore must have the same vertical width. Thus, the vertical width of the bottom-left-most rectangle must be 2 times the vertical width of each of these stacked rectangles, so (3x + 3y)/y = 2*(3x + 3y)/x.

From this, we get 1/y = 2/x (noting that 3x + 3y cannot be be zero), so x = 2y.

This means that the vertical width of the bottom-left-most rectangle is then (3(2y) + 3y)/y = (6y + 3y)/y = 9y/y = 9.

Therefore, the entire left side width is 3 + 9, or 12 units. Since the overall shape is a square, the entire square's area must be 144 square units.

New comment by bar94 in "Dark Patterns in Personal Data Collection: Definition, Taxonomy and Lawfulness"

bar94 — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:47:52 +0000

Ironic how the first thing you're greeted with upon opening this link on mobile is a huge popup covering the entire page asking you to allow cookies, with no easy way to decline.

New comment by bar94 in "Alibaba to split into six separate groups"

bar94 — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 12:41:46 +0000

> The listing status of Alibaba’s shares in New York and Hong Kong won’t be affected, people familiar with the matter said. Alibaba’s Nasdaq-listed American depositary receipts climbed more than 6% in premarket trading on Tuesday in New York.

New comment by bar94 in "Banning TikTok"

bar94 — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 15:29:28 +0000

Wouldn't the middle ground be to have ISPs ban TikTok? The US doesn't need to create a firewall themselves, they can just rely on the fact that internet providers are in effect an oligopoly, and simply tell all 5 or so of them to prevent their users from accessing the website/service. This would, of course, be circumventable by a VPN, but that's a degree of rigor good enough for China, so it should be fine here.

New comment by bar94 in "Bifurcate the Problem Space"

bar94 — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 13:56:53 +0000

2^57 seconds is about 4.5 × 10^9 years, which is the age of the universe. They would only need that many stills because it would be possible to do a binary search on the footage, as each frame either has the bike in it or does not.

New comment by bar94 in "Maxima: A computer algebra system written in Common Lisp"

bar94 — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 18:00:03 +0000

How does Maxima compare to something like Xcas[1]?

[1]: https://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~parisse/giac.html

New comment by bar94 in "Science vs. Soyence"

bar94 — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 22:40:44 +0000

Nice to see an unusually level-headed take from Luke.

New comment by bar94 in "Pronunciation Guide for Unix"

bar94 — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 01:49:33 +0000

Same. It confused me when I heard people pronouncing it "et-see"; at least it wasn't "etcetera" though lol

New comment by bar94 in "Ask HN: Which games do you recommend to improve thinking and reasoning?"

bar94 — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 23:29:52 +0000

Tetris games (quick-paced modern Tetris clones/block stackers like TETR.IO) are good for improving pattern recognition and, at higher levels, memorization (as in openers, perfect clear setups, etc ).