Hacker News: codekilla

New comment by codekilla in "My Gripes with Prolog"

codekilla — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:45:11 +0000

Thanks for the reference. Have you ever worked with Maude? Curious what the advantages of one over the other might be. Maude seem like it might be more focused on being a meta logic, and I'm guessing it is probably easier to write programs in Prolog.

New comment by codekilla in "GEPA: Reflective prompt evolution can outperform reinforcement learning"

codekilla — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:48:09 +0000

I guess Turing couldn’t see the trillions of base pairs of DNA, complex methylation states, dendritic spines of the neurons, etc., just for starters.

New comment by codekilla in "On DeepSeek and export controls"

codekilla — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 17:58:31 +0000

The author seems to be of the opinion that the creators of DeepSeek will either be unable to, or will not see the value of optimizing the 'second stage' RL component of the 'new' (post pre-training RL) way of training frontier foundation models. Every competent programmer in China is now looking for low level ptx optimizations for EVERY SINGLE STAGE of the pipeline. They will now, likely not publish any of it.

New comment by codekilla in "Star neuroscientist may have manipulated data to support a major stroke trial"

codekilla — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 18:21:08 +0000

I don’t disagree with any of these points, it’s just I’ve been involved in open science circles, where these things are always mentioned, and I just don’t see any material progress (maybe I’m not looking that closely though). I think the reason for the lack of progress is mainly funding—so until someone gets serious about funding (billionaires or taxpayers), it just seems like the same merry go around. It’s very expensive to replicate biomedical studies—but it’s the only thing that works. Maybe the tide is turning though and simply incentivizing/protecting grad students to become whistleblowers will do more good, but I fear this case was more the exception than the rule.

New comment by codekilla in "Star neuroscientist may have manipulated data to support a major stroke trial"

codekilla — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:47:31 +0000

> To expect a national-level organization to essentially take over the duties of peer-review journals is a very big ask

Fair, but what is the alternative that would actually work? What is the budget of all of the journals compared to the NSF+NIH? Is medical research that is true, and certainly actionable worth as much as an F whatever fighter jet? People will have to decide.

New comment by codekilla in "Star neuroscientist may have manipulated data to support a major stroke trial"

codekilla — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 16:22:59 +0000

Sure, and that's on the private funders to ensure they are getting what they pay for. Google pays for plenty of research--since they are the payee, it's their responsibility to ensure it's accuracy to whatever degree satisfies them. Institutions like the FDA are supposed to regulate private research when it comes to market (.i.e pharmaceuticals and the like). Whether or not the FDA and related agencies are effective is a different, but just as important question. Taxpayers desperately need a formal, funded system to verify the science they are paying for--particularly for biomedical research where the incentives for fraud are so high.

New comment by codekilla in "Star neuroscientist may have manipulated data to support a major stroke trial"

codekilla — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 15:00:14 +0000

Peer (or any type of institutional) review needs to be implemented at the national level--same as the funding for the original research. Why would you pay for research and not check that it is correct? Congress needs to fund a new science agency that explicitly does this. I have suggested before that part of graduate training should be replicating select studies that are published (a national review board could select those that seem the most high impact). State-funded schools could take this on, and students would probably learn at least as much doing this as they do in their other studies.

New comment by codekilla in "The deep link equating math proofs and computer programs"

codekilla — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 17:23:00 +0000

For dependent types, I would look at Idris [1]. Adding Univalence in a satisfying way is I think still somewhat of a research question (I could be wrong, and if anyone has any additional insight would be interested to hear), i.e. see this thread about Univalence in Coq [2]. There are some implementations in Cubical Type Theory, but I am not sure what the state of the art is there [3]

[1]https://www.idris-lang.org [2]https://homotopytypetheory.org/2012/01/22/univalence-versus-... [3]https://redprl.org

New comment by codekilla in "The deep link equating math proofs and computer programs"

codekilla — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 17:14:49 +0000

Bob Harper wrote a really good blog entry that expounds on this as Computational Trinitarianism [1].

Michael Shulman also wrote about the extension to Homotopical Trinitarianism [2]

For a good summary with links there is [3]

[1] Computational Trinitarinism, https://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/the-holy-tr...

[2] Homotopical Trinitarinism, http://home.sandiego.edu/~shulman/papers/trinity.pdf]

[3] nCatLab, https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/computational+trilogy

New comment by codekilla in "Chapel 1.32"

codekilla — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 22:24:42 +0000

Thanks, yes, I was thinking along the lines of HPC type applications in industry.

New comment by codekilla in "Chapel 1.32"

codekilla — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 19:44:13 +0000

Thanks, this is helpful. It seems like (based on your reply) there are people successfully using Regent for scientific computing (I'm assuming); do you think the language is a viable choice for industry, or are there particular milestones you're looking reach?

New comment by codekilla in "Chapel 1.32"

codekilla — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 18:44:16 +0000

How would you characterize/contrast Regent vs. Chapel? What do you see are the main drawbacks/benefits of each?

New comment by codekilla in "Terrible real estate agent photographs"

codekilla — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 13:27:57 +0000

Bought current house without agent (very desirable part of Los Angeles). Selling now without agent. If you buy with an agent you put yourself at a disadvantage because the selling agent will need to split the commission (typically 2.5% a piece or so). When you make an offer on a home without a buying agent, suddenly your offer looks a lot more attractive to the selling agent, who is the only point of contact the seller has into what is happening with their property in terms of offers. People wonder how we got our house so cheap—bank on the real estate agents being greedy. They are the worst, period. I have not met a single one who will not double end a deal in 10 years in the LA market. Not sure how the current sale will go, but I will not work with an agent, I’ve dealt with too many to make that mistake.

New comment by codekilla in "First portable quantum computers on sale in Japan?"

codekilla — Thu, 18 May 2023 20:23:12 +0000

The Quantenkoffer by qutools is an interesting kit for learning about quantum stuff [1]

Also, Qiskit pulse was fun to play around with (haven't in awhile, don't know what the current capabilities are) [2]

[1] https://qutools.com/quantenkoffer_science-kit/

[2] https://qiskit.org/documentation/apidoc/pulse.html

New comment by codekilla in "Deepmind’s AlphaCode conquers coding, performing as well as humans"

codekilla — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 19:39:19 +0000

Mathematical Biology/Bioinformatics. We have to think very carefully about every step in the process of extracting information from large, diverse datasets--often writing things from scratch, combining/transforming things in novel ways, and implementing new mathematical ideas efficiently enough to be computable on large datasets.

New comment by codekilla in "Deepmind’s AlphaCode conquers coding, performing as well as humans"

codekilla — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 18:27:42 +0000

Absolutely spot on. I actually do algorithm design, usually over a period of weeks (at least), and leet code is a joke for the serious algorist (I’m sure I’d fail an interview based on it). Nothing has so clearly illustrated the robotic nature of the leet code expert quite like this result has.

New comment by codekilla in "Why I am learning category theory"

codekilla — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 18:19:48 +0000

Try Eugenia Chang’s new book, The Joy of Abstraction. Riehl’s book is very technical.

New comment by codekilla in "Ask HN: What kind of life do you dream about?"

codekilla — Sat, 12 Nov 2022 17:59:50 +0000

Something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_of_All_Possibilities, where they were guided by the idea we could be artists, explorers, and scientists.

New comment by codekilla in "The value of owning more books than you can read (2018)"

codekilla — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:49:36 +0000

It’s nice to finally have a name for what I suppose is an incurable addiction (maybe 1K books in my library). The most fun for me is buying almost exclusively used books, and then finding interesting inscriptions in them, or when the books come from an interesting place (many have ex-university library marks/stamps). For instance, I have a first printing of Weiner’s The Human Use of Human beings that came from the Redford Arsenal Library.

New comment by codekilla in "Stanford gets $1.1B for new climate school from John Doerr"

codekilla — Wed, 04 May 2022 21:36:18 +0000

Well....for starters there is the monkey tunnel that leads from Broad to the Chen building because....you guessed it....the vivarium was in the basement (and still is) of Broad. Many neuroscience labs were in Broad (a VERY nice building in and of itself).