Hacker News: bitshiftfaced

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Five Eyes warns AI models capable of toppling governments are months away"

bitshiftfaced — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 01:08:20 +0000

I don't see where the advisory says what The Guardian's headline says: https://www.cyber.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-06/Five%20...

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "The curious case of low-protein diets"

bitshiftfaced — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:26:24 +0000

I don't know about smartness, but the Mediterranean diet might be one signal. It's comparably low protein and has strong evidence for longevity.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Arena AI Model ELO History"

bitshiftfaced — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:00:41 +0000

It's a fitted Bradley Terry model, scaled to familiar Elo scores, anchored to wins against Mixtral-8x7B at 1114 (at least last time I looked at it). When you fit the model against historical data, and then you add another month of time that contains newer models, the relative strength of a given model might decline even if its absolute ability remained fixed.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Zugzwang"

bitshiftfaced — Sat, 02 May 2026 17:12:24 +0000

It's kind of an illusion when you think about it. "Whose turn it is" is an inseparable part of the game state. If any move makes the game state worse this turn, then the game state was already bad before this turn.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "U.S. Senators Vote to Ban Themselves from Trading on Prediction Markets"

bitshiftfaced — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:35:14 +0000

Prediction markets have realized that they will lose potential customers if they don't prevent insider trading. Kalshi already has a policy banning politicians from trading. Presumably they understand this, so while I'm glad to see the rule, I wouldn't say it's that self-sacrificing.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes"

bitshiftfaced — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:50:49 +0000

It's not a perfect analogy because of factors that affect individual policies, such as the replacement cost of the home, moving next to a fireworks store, moving into a flood zone, etc. You pay more when your home is more at risk.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes"

bitshiftfaced — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:47:11 +0000

> smokers die early saving even more money.

I thought cancer care tended to be pretty expensive. Not sure that your math is so clear cut.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Tariffs Raised Consumers' Prices, but the Refunds Go Only to Businesses"

bitshiftfaced — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:44:06 +0000

Oversimplification. Businesses can exist when the the cost of a good is less than the price they can get. There are many possible prices that this might be true, and there is some price that maximizes net profit.

When an item's margin becomes large, the risk/reward equation becomes favorable for new competition to come in. That puts downward pressure on prices.

For a given good, let's say that tariffs increased the business's cost for that good. If that cost goes away and the price stays constant, then the margin increases. That triggers more competition.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "US Department of Justice has officially reclassified cannabis as less dangerous"

bitshiftfaced — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:15:06 +0000

> we also need to talk about the effects of cannabis use on neurodivergent folks.

"Neurodivergent" lacks a well-defined meaning. What is it about someone for whom you would define as neurodivergent that makes cannabis more harmful than someone someone for whom you wouldn't label as neurodivergent?

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Dad brains: How fatherhood rewires the male mind"

bitshiftfaced — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:13:36 +0000

Parents also tend to gain weight, and higher BMI is associated with a decline in T.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3809034/

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)"

bitshiftfaced — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:03:06 +0000

For a while I thought I really liked sci fi novels and short stories, and maybe that's somewhat true. But I've started wondering if maybe I just liked Asimov's writing in particular. Other writers in the genre are more hit or miss. Can anyone recommend other writers that are on his level?

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Three main saturated fats raise your cholesterol"

bitshiftfaced — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:31:40 +0000

And the liver creates cholesterol. It even senses and reduces cholesterol output when we have too much. Except saturated fats interfere with this process.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Google's 200M-parameter time-series foundation model with 16k context"

bitshiftfaced — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:06:07 +0000

There are some other transformer based models on the GIFT leaderboard: https://huggingface.co/spaces/Salesforce/GIFT-Eval

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events"

bitshiftfaced — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:09:46 +0000

> It’s also mighty interesting how it’s always the male division that’s open, until you happen to have a sport where women are beating men at it, and then suddenly it’s the women’s division that’s the open one!

Hypothetically you could have three divisions: open, men, and women. In many contexts it's more practical to have two, where one is open. In those cases, if the sex that didn't win more was also the open division, then people would complain because both divisions would be dominated by players of one sex.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Woman in Labor at Florida Hospital Brought in Zoom Court for Refusing C-Section"

bitshiftfaced — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 12:14:57 +0000

Quoting this without context, people might think someone from the case said this about the expecting mother. Instead, this quote comes from a law professor (that the author interviewed maybe?), who was, I guess, projecting the thought on to those of the legal system. The author kind of stuck this right in the middle of the story, so I don't blame readers if they confused the quote with someone from the trial saying it.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way"

bitshiftfaced — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:15:54 +0000

I have no doubt that blackberries will go this direction because it's annoying to get seeds stuck in your teeth. On the other hand, compare the fiber of blackberries (8g in one cup) to modern grapes (1g in one cup).

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way"

bitshiftfaced — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:11:12 +0000

It depends on the season, but they tend to have too much acid at first. Leaving them in the fridge reduces the acid over time improves the flavor profile. But really you should refrigerate all citrus.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way"

bitshiftfaced — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:09:32 +0000

There are dekopon trees that give fruit with the bump and without the bump. You may be finding the ones without the bump. But satsumas have a different enough flavor that you should be able to tell. Also, satsumas are smaller, more oblong, and tend to have a thinner skin.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way"

bitshiftfaced — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:05:34 +0000

Similarly, the Tango variety is becoming more commercially available. It has a zipper peel, seedless, and outstanding flavor. It's usually marketed as "Mandarin", though. You kind of have to know what it looks like to be able to tell what's a clementine or not.

Others to watch out for are Gold Nugget (my favorite, but I very rarely see them at the store), and I also saw Kishu at the grocery store for the first time this year.

New comment by bitshiftfaced in "Alabama offers three tricks to fix poor urban schools"

bitshiftfaced — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:49:02 +0000

I disagree. It shows that the policies that they put into place gave them resistance to whatever it is about the pandemic that reduced scores everywhere else. As the article laid out, Alabama didn't just keep doing the same things.