Hacker News: efavdb

New comment by efavdb in "Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy"

efavdb — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:19:44 +0000

Alexander the Great (died 323 bc) famously kept a copy of the Iliad under his pillow.

The Infamous Coin Toss

efavdb — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:26:10 +0000

Article URL: https://ergodicityeconomics.com/2023/07/28/the-infamous-coin-toss/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47857516

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "Jack Dorsey says Block employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings"

efavdb — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 15:17:51 +0000

If every manager initially had 5 reports, a quick geometric series shows that eliminating all managers would save you 20% of headcount. Of course, managers tend to get paid more, so maybe you'd save a larger fraction of wages.

I wonder if that's the main concern or if communication / coordination costs are the larger concern

New comment by efavdb in "The revenge of the data scientist"

efavdb — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 04:08:58 +0000

I'm a data-scientist now, and a fan of claude code for implementing things. But I have to say, I'm constantly surprised by how "dumb" chatgpt is as a math research partner. I will ask it a math question I'm thinking about, get a confident answer back, only to realize hours to days later that it was 180 degrees backwards. I'm so frustrated right now with this that I'm almost ready to stop asking it such questions at all. I'm aware this seems to contrast strongly with other math-people's enthusiasm e.g., Terrance Tao. Unclear why my mileage varies.

Much of my work takes the form above -- in other words figuring out what to do. once i've decided, it can of course spit out the boilerplate code much faster than I could, and I appreciate that. But for the moment I think I still have some job security thanks to the first issue.

New comment by efavdb in "TurboQuant: Redefining AI efficiency with extreme compression"

efavdb — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:18:07 +0000

The earlier paper was from 2021!

Optimal Elevator Placement

efavdb — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:46:52 +0000

Article URL: https://jslandy.com/elevators/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47478736

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "A pig's brain has been frozen with its cellular activity locked in place"

efavdb — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:08:24 +0000

>> This mind upload thought experiment convinced me…

Start at the color green and gradually add in some blue. As long as there are no sharp discontinuities there is no such thing as the color green.

New comment by efavdb in "Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars"

efavdb — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:58:02 +0000

When I look at traffic in my city, I rarely see it caused by full packing. Rather throughout seems to be the issue.

New comment by efavdb in "Waymo Safety Impact"

efavdb — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 05:11:09 +0000

The tldr for me from the report was Waymo is great and SF is a dangerous place to drive.

Queueing Theory of Traffic

efavdb — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 04:15:07 +0000

Article URL: https://jslandy.com/traffic-queue/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47384297

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "New iron nanomaterial wipes out cancer cells without harming healthy tissue"

efavdb — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:49:26 +0000

I never heard the “Bernoulli” part, new?

New comment by efavdb in "Tesla registrations crash 17% in Europe as BEV market surges 14%"

efavdb — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 21:06:04 +0000

FWIW I have heard the exact opposite. The people I know love the self driving feature.

New comment by efavdb in "The Four-Color Theorem 1852–1976"

efavdb — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 17:20:36 +0000

Agree 100% -- wonderful history here. And with such a simple statement, hard to believe / accept the "reason" is that it works for 633 limiting cases.

New comment by efavdb in "I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over"

efavdb — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 14:53:32 +0000

The privacy concerns are real.

The need / demand for some verification system might be growing though as I’ve heard fraudulent job application (people applying for jobs using fake identities… for whatever reason) is a growing trend.

Static Pricing Theory

efavdb — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 04:08:32 +0000

Article URL: https://www.varietyiq.com/blog/pricing

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083608

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by efavdb in "Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance"

efavdb — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 21:43:58 +0000

Here's the wikipedia on that one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox

Static Pricing Theory

efavdb — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 19:47:39 +0000

Article URL: https://varietyiq.com/blog/pricing

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696859

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by efavdb in "Why does a least squares fit appear to have a bias when applied to simple data?"

efavdb — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:22:00 +0000

Many times I've looked at the output of a regression model, seen this effect, and then thought my model must be very bad. But then remember the points made elsewhere in thread.

One way to visually check that the fit line has the right slope is to (1) pick some x value, and then (2) ensure that the noise on top of the fit is roughly balanced on either side. I.e., that the result does look like y = prediction(x) + epsilon, with epsilon some symmetric noise.

One other point is that if you try to simulate some data as, say

y = 1.5 * x + random noise

then do a least squares fit, you will recover the 1.5 slope, and still it may look visually off to you.

New comment by efavdb in "Show HN: Exploring Mathematics with Python"

efavdb — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 13:28:09 +0000

I would certainly buy a copy were it printed!

New comment by efavdb in "Show HN: Exploring Mathematics with Python"

efavdb — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 03:26:35 +0000

Looks like a treasure trove of knowledge.

I just recently went to the exploratorium in SF and saw an exhibit there suggesting that the catenary made a good arch, so browsed that chapter and saw a bit of explanation here which helped. Was also interested to see that Jefferson played some part in the history here.