Hacker News: djrhails

Ignoring the Wisdom of Crowds

djrhails — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:00:31 +0000

Article URL: https://longform.asmartbear.com/wisdom-of-crowds/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47312797

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by djrhails in "How Professional Gamblers Size Bets"

djrhails — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:25:41 +0000

Thanks! Think interactivity makes 'non-fiction' much more interesting.

There's definitely more complexity layered in - most things in life are not as clear cut as a coin flip. However, I do tend to think the idea of thinking 'geometrically' is pretty universal.

How Professional Gamblers Size Bets

djrhails — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:07:08 +0000

Article URL: https://hails.info/writing/kelly-criterion/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122526

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by djrhails in "Show HN: Browse neologisms for the feelings and experiences English can't name"

djrhails — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:56:37 +0000

Worth checking out the [Explore page](https://words.hails.info/explore?color=true&tag=source) - genuinely surprised by the embedding space quality.

Show HN: Browse neologisms for the feelings and experiences English can't name

djrhails — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:52:29 +0000

Article URL: https://words.hails.info

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46962748

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by djrhails in "Google Titans architecture, helping AI have long-term memory"

djrhails — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:46:25 +0000

https://github.com/lucidrains/titans-pytorch - is the only public iteration.

But no one appears to have taken the risk/time to properly validate it.

New comment by djrhails in "NeurIPS 2025 Best Paper Awards"

djrhails — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 16:37:10 +0000

There is TITANS - https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00663

Traumagotchi: Why Friend.com Trauma Dumps

djrhails — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 21:29:32 +0000

Article URL: https://hails.info/writing/traumagotchi/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43357393

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Arc Max Achieves Magic, at a Cost

djrhails — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 23:15:02 +0000

Article URL: https://hails.info/writing/arc-cards/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40151079

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by djrhails in "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"

djrhails — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 21:25:49 +0000

I just made a reverse-dictionary search for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (and some of my own words).

- Introduction article: https://hails.info/projects/missing-words/

- Search: https://words.hails.info/

Great to see the resurgence of interest!

New comment by djrhails in "Men in the mixed-gender squads do not perform worse"

djrhails — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 21:43:11 +0000

After randomly assigning men to mixed-gender and single gender squads for Norwegian Bootcamp, this study found no performance or perceived satisfaction impacts.

Moreover, the men in the integrated squads developed more egalitarian attitudes. Interestingly, these attitudes were not maintained once no longer in a mixed squad.

Men in the mixed-gender squads do not perform worse

djrhails — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 21:39:58 +0000

Article URL: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/136/2/987/6054550

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28428066

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by djrhails in "Don't Farm Bugs"

djrhails — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 17:28:05 +0000

This was fascinating, although I strongly disagree with a lot of the points - and arguments used, it's such a wildly different perspective that I couldn't help but be intrigued. In many ways it is a masterclass on how to write persuasively for what feels a ridiculous premise.

The drunk driving parallel I thought was more that a little amusing. A more apt comparison might just be driving itself - it's a risky activity both for yourself and the others around you. Perhaps even to the speculated 1% marker but that doesn't appear to create any sort of moral imperative to change our willingness to drive.

Equally I couldn't help notice the level of subtle anthropomorphism going on - name dropping depression as related to anhedonia is a clever literary technique for encouraging this natural thought pattern; even while adding the "perhaps", "some think" it makes no difference to the "bias ... easily distorting our intuitions".

I'd love to see a similar essay for plants - or even the AI that they mention. I could see the outline for an equally persuasive essay (a shame that the author sees AI being trivially less likely to be sentient - one I have trouble believing beyond a "biological bias")

New comment by djrhails in "Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge"

djrhails — Tue, 18 May 2021 16:04:45 +0000

Frankly, right now anyone who isn't already in the game isn't able to acquire Ether without paying for it.

Mining at a rate necessary to get any reasonable amount of Ether is a huge investment, and is already out of reach for the average person. Setting your desktop computer to mine definitely won't pay for your small smart contract.

Over 10% of OWA servers hacked

djrhails — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 23:03:07 +0000

Article URL: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2021/03/08/owa-web-shells.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26392853

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by djrhails in "CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programs"

djrhails — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 11:56:31 +0000

I think the problem with this approach is when you start to utilise large (normally mono) repos the earlier stages can take significant time.

Then you're in a condumdrum of if you make the loading more generic or have an input lag to get to "writing objects".

New comment by djrhails in "Show HN: Dial-a-Podcast"

djrhails — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 21:56:56 +0000

Probably a bit of both - it feels too excited. Podcasts tend not to be things you shake your fist in the air for - that's more winning the lottery territory.

New comment by djrhails in "Show HN: Dial-a-Podcast"

djrhails — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 21:54:30 +0000

Looks interesting! I'll be honest took me a little longer than you'd want to work out what the product was.

I know now that it is in the name! However I'm used to ignoring names to understand what a product does. Replacing the "connecting organisations with ears" tag line with something like "Access your podcast via the phone, and get more listeners" would be more clearer even if it's not as clever.

New comment by djrhails in "GHunt – An OSINT tool to extract information about a Google account"

djrhails — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 12:32:40 +0000

Good question, found a reference to it in a related blog post: https://sector035.nl/articles/keeping-a-grip-on-google-ids and took it at face value. Can't find anything more looking further.

New comment by djrhails in "GHunt – An OSINT tool to extract information about a Google account"

djrhails — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 09:20:24 +0000

Looks like Google has a mostly internal user id ("gaia_id"), once you've got this small identifier you can look on each Google related site for publicly available information relating to that user id.

Looks like Google is aware of it as the reference to gaia_id has been removed from Youtube pages source (Aug 2020), locked down public accessibility of photo albums (Sep 2020), and prevented connected email address leaks from Webmaster tools (Sep 2020).