<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: chris_va</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=chris_va</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 23:51:36 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=chris_va" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am kind of amazed how negative the comments are here, especially on HN.<p>Learning to hack something together in high school using the latest technology (vacuum tubes, radios, microprocessors, web/javascript) has been a common theme in the tech world for generations. With LLMs and online tutorials, this isn't even a difficult suggestion. Do people think learning new tech is somehow wasted effort?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 07:01:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416083</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416083</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416083</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I know extensive thought goes into filters in front of the camera and the lighting, but one can probably change the bayer filter transmission function to get them to match better (and maybe add one or two channels at the cost of shot noise).<p>I see this in industrial cameras, do you know if any filmmakers use non standard Bayer filters?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:32:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122931</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122931</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122931</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>GAO's task is a bit broader, no?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:46:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48850622</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48850622</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48850622</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah. I don't think the conclusion is necessarily wrong or that they shouldn't have investigated, but I also think the cost to the taxpayers might increase due to the underlying nuance. The report implies that the guidelines are correct, but doesn't really quantify the counterfactual.<p>Again, devil's advocate</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 16:00:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833638</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833638</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833638</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>To play devil's advocate, the counter argument is that it's always easy to advocate for more process, and cherry pick examples to support that conclusion.<p>The actual report basically says that the DOE already requires that they "should identify a need without having a particular solution already in mind", so it is really just an argument that people should follow the written guidelines, and add more process to make sure it happens. The examples in the report are pretty nuanced.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:15:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828636</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828636</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828636</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Only if there is a local glass processing facility + consumer (e.g. large brewery, etc) is it worthwhile.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 19:24:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212750</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212750</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212750</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Snowball Earth may hide a far stranger climate cycle than anyone expected"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's really the alkalinity (e.g. the Mg++ or Ca++), which silicate rocks often have (but technically not limited to silicates).<p>As an aside, we need to dissolve roughly one large mountain into the mix layer (top ~50m) of the ocean to have it fully take up atmospheric CO2. Without dissolving, the reaction is very slow (co2 in atmosphere => slightly lower pH rain => reaction with mostly passivated rock + erosion).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 00:48:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970176</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970176</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970176</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I wouldn't say liquid is "better". The neutrinos don't care from a cross section standpoint.<p>Uniformity of the light field is going to be different, but that is not my sub-domain.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:39:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936041</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936041</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47936041</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Deep under Antarctic ice, a long-predicted cosmic whisper breaks through"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The size of the detector can be very large, stable, and protected with an ice cap. <a href="https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/" rel="nofollow">https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/</a><p>There aren't a lot of places with multiple km of water without things like animal life or other confounders.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:40:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935298</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935298</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935298</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Can You Find the Comet?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not to disagree, but stacking a series of exposures with a sigma-clipped mean (or similar) should still get a nice image.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:58:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47934698</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47934698</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47934698</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "UK Biobank leak: Health details of 500k people offered for sale on Alibaba"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am not arguing either way, but I think you missed the point.<p>When you give O(20000) people you have a 1-0.9999^20000 (high) probability that that will leak anyway (either 1/20000 people not following the rules, or just the accident/attack surface area).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:31:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47890832</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47890832</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47890832</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "CATL's new LFP battery can charge from 10 to 98% in less than 7 minutes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The poor grid.<p>The US added basically 0% extra transmission capacity last year.<p>... Now your local charging station will require a nuclear plant to keep up with ~1MW per car.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:33:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47865084</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47865084</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47865084</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Fusion Power Plant Simulator"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For pulsed power, with an optimistic beta of 1, the magnetic field energy is going to be comparable to the heat energy. The house load here seems tied to a static superconducting coil, not a pulsed field.<p>And can in many cases be much higher than the heat energy (e.g. theta pinch).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:04:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852221</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852221</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852221</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Fusion Power Plant Simulator"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The recirculating power for the magnetics should be included (at least for pulsed), as the RTE there tends to drive the design.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:41:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851958</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851958</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851958</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Sauna effect on heart rate"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This would not pass peer review for a journal as written.<p>Maybe the conclusion is correct, or maybe not, but as written the methodology is under specified, statistics are not supported, and there too many confounders not addressed. One should not take anything from this without a better write up. Just misunderstanding what n= means is a huge flag.<p>Since the author is here, I have to ask: Why a blog post and not an actual paper? Why spray this onto the internet without validating the work? Or, conversely, why not caveat the work as exploratory data science?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:24:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835684</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835684</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835684</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "God Sleeps in the Minerals"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am sure there is a great list somewhere of places to see stuff like this (or I can ask an LLM), but I can vouch for<p>Mines Museum of Earth Science (Golden CO)
and
The Harvard Museum of Natural History (Mineralogy room, Cambridge MA)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:38:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47782472</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47782472</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47782472</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Artemis II safely splashes down"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Agreed.<p>Fun info: The NASA orbital codes include things like photon pressure... from sunlight reflected off of other planets in the solar system. At some point, I think they are just showing off :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:12:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726566</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726566</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47726566</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "1D Chess"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In chess they cannot move onto a spot that would put them in check. If they can make no legal moves, it's a stalemate.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:23:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723216</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723216</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47723216</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The actual language (I think):
<a href="https://legislature.maine.gov/legis/bills/getPDF.asp?paper=HP0207&item=2&snum=132" rel="nofollow">https://legislature.maine.gov/legis/bills/getPDF.asp?paper=H...</a><p>It explains the intent (to protect consumers/grid from price changes and fluctuation), and bans 20MW+ loads. They forgot to define load, so a behind-the-meter datacenter (zero net load on the grid) still would likely not get permitted even though it does not violate the intent of the law, which is a bit odd.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:50:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47709850</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47709850</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47709850</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by chris_va in "OpenAI says its new model GPT-2 is too dangerous to release (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think people today are more focused on how OpenAI released a model "too dangerous to release", not that they were right or wrong, as part of the general trend of criticizing OpenAI for not following any of its stated principles.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:42:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684865</link><dc:creator>chris_va</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684865</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47684865</guid></item></channel></rss>