Hacker News: beezle

New comment by beezle in "ArXiv declares independence from Cornell"

beezle — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:32:21 +0000

I go back to xxx.lanl.gov days - that is, the beginning. Back then it was all physics, some math and a little quantitative finance (not bitcoin). And the quality was pretty good because it was a preprint archive. In fact, a headline from 2000:

APS and BNL Host XXX e-Print Archive Mirror Feb. 1, 2000

The APS is establishing, in cooperation with Brookhaven National Laboratory, the first electronic mirror in the United States for the Los Alamos e-Print Archive.

Today, from the landing page, it describes itself as "arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of [long list]. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.

Well, that's a large part of the problem. A lot of the stuff there now will never see a journal (even of dubious quality) and there is limited filtering of what new submissions will be stored. GIGO.

Best thing ArXiv could do is go back to their roots - limit the fields and return to preprint only. Spin off the comp sci stuff for sure to someone else along with all its headaches.

fixed: url

New comment by beezle in "The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books"

beezle — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:39:20 +0000

A lot of comments very dismissive of anything "print on demand". As an author of a niche book in both hard/soft, I chose Lightning Source/Ingram because they produce quality books. At that time (2012) I could have gone the "easy" route and used Amazon but even then there were complaints about quality. I've received quite a few compliments about the physical quality of my book, primarily the paper back edition which I believe was 60lb cream paper stock.

Note that authors who take the easy way and use Amazon KDP w/ extended distribution appear on sites like BN, Books A Million, etc via the Ingram distribution but the physical copy will still be printed by Amazon and be inferior.

Some clues you can look for in general are - Amazon in the past two years has basically stopped stocking non-KDP POD books so they will almost always say avaialbe in X weeks (or if "Prime" 3-5 days). Amazon books are almost always a page count divisible by four and IIRC 828 pages is a limit on many trims.

So if you buy off of Amazon, check first to see that the Amazon listing looks like too.

It is really unfortunate that Amazon (and a few places in India) ruin it for everyone.

New comment by beezle in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"

beezle — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 17:15:11 +0000

Please keep in mind two things with the NFP report:

1/ the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 122,000

2/ the report is based upon a survey of establishments. There is no obligation to respond and many do not and ability/desire to respond may be impacted by company health as well.

New comment by beezle in "In 2025, Meta paid an effective federal tax rate of 3.5%"

beezle — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:55:20 +0000

This is incorrect as anyone who has looked at a financial statement or taken a first level accounting class will know - Revenue is the top line, the gross income and lastly net income, the two reflecting the removal of various costs/expenses as per GAAP.

New comment by beezle in "Famous Signatures Through History"

beezle — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 15:30:22 +0000

I date myself.. back when I was but a young whippersnapper the NY Post published a series of copies of Nixon's signatures from when he entered office until his resignation. The change was enormous.

Dutch defence secretary claims F-35 software could be jailbroken

beezle — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:10:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/dutch-defence-secretary-boldly-claims-f-35-software-could-be-jailbroken/ar-AA1WqpnW

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47036000

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Parents opt kids out of school laptops ask for pen paper

beezle — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:08:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/parents-opt-kids-school-laptops-ask-pen-paper-rcna257158

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47035971

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

New comment by beezle in "Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?"

beezle — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 02:06:34 +0000

Please do not conflate the broad "theoretical physics" with the very specific "beyond the standard model" physics questions. There are many other areas of physics with countless unsolved problems/mysteries.

New comment by beezle in "Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?"

beezle — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 02:02:52 +0000

I never liked that the physics community shifted from 'high energy' particle physics (the topic of the article) to referring to this branch as just 'particle physics' which I think leaves the impression that anything to do with 'particles' is now a dead end.

Nuclear physics (ie, low/medium energy physics) covers diverse topics, many with real world application - yet travels with a lot of the same particles (ie, quarks, gluons). Because it is so diverse, it is not dead/dying in the way HEP is today.

New comment by beezle in "There's a hidden Android setting that spots fake cell towers"

beezle — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 23:17:41 +0000

Wouldn't setting your phone to NR/LTE only in the ##4636## service menu prevent this as well (though without a pop up)?

New comment by beezle in "Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15"

beezle — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:35:37 +0000

Regualar US parking spots are 18-20 feet deep (depending angle) and 9 feet wide. A F-150 supercrew w/ standard 6.5 foot bed is 20.25 feet which is about as long an f-150 you can buy. The shortest is about 17.5 feet.

New comment by beezle in "Microsoft May Have Created the Slowest Windows in 25 Years with Windows 11"

beezle — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:40:43 +0000

I was actually OK with Win 8, I just only used it in traditional desktop mode

New comment by beezle in "Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15"

beezle — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:24:01 +0000

I don't know if it is some much 'compensating' as it is a "look at my toy" showing off type of thing which isn't really directed at women. When I drive around metro areas it is pretty clear that the large majority of trucks are "house" trucks - they are never used for truck things. They are washed, waxed with nice shiny black tires.

Don't get me wrong - if you got the dough, by all means drive what you want. But most truck owners could get by with something else just as well.

New comment by beezle in "Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15"

beezle — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:18:48 +0000

The f-150 is a bit smaller than its big brothers the f-250 and f-350 dually!

New comment by beezle in "Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15"

beezle — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 17:15:21 +0000

Don't know why you are down voted. People just assume that you have a place to store a trailer (and truck and motorcycle).

As to your choice of the Ford,as a rural late model (2018) F-150 owner, I'd encourage you to consider something else. A used Tundra V8 or one of the GMC/Chevy's. My mechanic is thumbs down on the Rams longer term.

I've had nothing but stupidity with this F-150 and all I do is personal plowing and a few loads of gravel or dirt each year. Granted, my steep dirt road can be very rough in mud season. But I've now spent about 8K in non-maintenance repairs.

I say this as a past owner of multiple mustangs and rangers - I'm done with Ford.

New comment by beezle in "Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy"

beezle — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 16:04:04 +0000

I only scanned to article but did not see mention of the pre-trial condition of the subjects. Were they very new to resistance training? Or had they been doing it on a regular basis for a number of years? Because when you start out, doing just about anything is going to increase muscle mass

New comment by beezle in "What an unprocessed photo looks like"

beezle — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 03:59:40 +0000

As a mostly amateur photographer, it doesn't bother me if people ask that question. While I understand the point that the camera itself may be making some 'editing' type decision on the data first, a) in theory each camera maker has attempted to calibrate the output to some standard, b) public would expect two photos taken at same time with same model camera should look identical. That differs greatly from what often can happen in "post production" editing - you'll never find two that are identical.

New comment by beezle in "Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access"

beezle — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 02:28:57 +0000

At the end of the day, I expect a journal that I pay for to be better than arXiv and that means quality control. Few people have the time to self-vet everything they read to the extent that it should be in absence of other eyes

New comment by beezle in "We gave 5 LLMs $100K to trade stocks for 8 months"

beezle — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 16:57:32 +0000

What were the risk adjusted returns? Without knowing that, this is all kind of meaningless. Being high beta in a rising market doesn't equate to anything brilliant.

New comment by beezle in "AI CEO – Replace your boss before they replace you"

beezle — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 22:39:23 +0000

The free version of Gemini says it could not replace the CEO of JP Morgan Chase but that it would make an excellent Chief Risk Officer or Chief Strategist. That would still save a ton of money!