Hacker News: efavdb

New comment by efavdb in "AI coding at home without going broke"

efavdb — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 23:24:16 +0000

Pleading has worked for me. “My job depends on this, please help me” and ChatGPT would do a task it previously claimed it wasn’t able to (extract text from an image, it claimed it couldn’t make it out at first)

New comment by efavdb in "Why are cells small?"

efavdb — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:32:27 +0000

FWIW I wrote a paper on nutrient-limited growth rates of cells and how that depends on their shape. one of the interesting findings was that elongated cells can grow exponentially quickly (as observed) while spheres quickly max out.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0674

New comment by efavdb in "Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes"

efavdb — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:59:23 +0000

When reading and writing became prevalent, the ancients bemoaned our reduced facility to memorize long texts. Are we now “less smart” because of that technology?

New comment by efavdb in "How we index images for RAG"

efavdb — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 01:16:04 +0000

Article says this misses important details, eg data that might be in the image.

New comment by efavdb in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

efavdb — Sat, 30 May 2026 00:19:26 +0000

FWIW: A few nearby towns that are supposed to have good schools: Castro Valley, Albany, Alameda.

Canada in Technical Recession

efavdb — Fri, 29 May 2026 20:23:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/recession-gdp-may-2026-statscan-9.7216352

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48328718

Points: 68

# Comments: 36

Interest Rate May Explain Consumer Sentiment Anomaly

efavdb — Tue, 26 May 2026 04:23:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32163

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274967

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "Every Frontier AI Is INTJ"

efavdb — Tue, 26 May 2026 01:46:27 +0000

I’ve noticed that people in my field tend to have relatively similar personalities and relatively similar MB categories (close to INTJ). That combo is relatively rare within the broader population. Given this consistency I don’t think we can say it’s pseudoscience in a strong sense.

LTV and the Time Value of Money

efavdb — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:55:52 +0000

Article URL: https://jslandy.com/ltv-and-time-value-of-money/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48225796

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

efavdb — Thu, 21 May 2026 00:08:57 +0000

It’s as if the body of human knowledge is our I’ve mind. It used to be expensive to access that, but no more.

Cool thing is now when someone contributes something to the hive mind, it can instantly be applied to any other problem people are working on.

New comment by efavdb in "I’ve joined Anthropic"

efavdb — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:24:01 +0000

Tesla self driving works. I don’t know if Karpathy deserves credit for that or not.

New comment by efavdb in "We've made the world too complicated"

efavdb — Sat, 16 May 2026 22:27:55 +0000

Worldwide poverty rate in 1800 = 81%. Today under 10%.

https://cepr.shorthandstories.com/history-poverty/

PCA vs. Regression Slope

efavdb — Sat, 16 May 2026 15:46:55 +0000

Article URL: https://jslandy.com/pca-vs-regression-slope/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161208

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline"

efavdb — Thu, 14 May 2026 16:50:46 +0000

Agree, and I think it's probably healthy that the large endowments are being taxed a modest amount.

Avoiding and reducing microplastic false positives from dry glove contact

efavdb — Thu, 14 May 2026 01:13:02 +0000

Article URL: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2026/ay/d5ay01801c

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48129934

Points: 104

# Comments: 43

New comment by efavdb in "Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer"

efavdb — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:27:42 +0000

Hmm I also tend to clean house thoroughly only when guests come over. Perhaps an effect that should be applied.

Allocation with Substitutes

efavdb — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:16:28 +0000

Article URL: https://jslandy.com/allocation%20with%20subs/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039624

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

All Eyes on the Nerd? The Unequal Distribution of Teachers' Attention [pdf]

efavdb — Tue, 05 May 2026 19:21:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/25144.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48027235

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "Nonlinearity Affects a Pendulum"

efavdb — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 04:11:41 +0000

Never saw that AGM expression for K0 before in the earlier linked post. Nor had I heard of the AGM, very cool.

An Explicit Solution to Black-Scholes Implied Volatility

efavdb — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 01:06:22 +0000

Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24480

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47942967

Points: 1

# Comments: 0