Hacker News: frenchwhisker

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Kennedy promises to find environmental causes of autism"

frenchwhisker — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 06:12:03 +0000

If I lost the car keys, I don’t promise my partner to find them in the kitchen.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "The self-castrated hatmaker who killed John Wilkes Booth (2015)"

frenchwhisker — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 21:30:54 +0000

This was mentioned in the article:

> Having spent much of his life in the hat industry, Corbett could have been succumbing to mercury poisoning. The ill effects of the mercury vapors used in finishing, Corbett’s specialty, had become public by this time, even part of folklore after Lewis Carroll introduced the country to the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Mass grave of Roman soldiers found under Vienna sports field"

frenchwhisker — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 19:30:50 +0000

Roman wine was heavily diluted though, at least.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration"

frenchwhisker — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:24:17 +0000

Fair enough! Out of curiosity, in your words, what have LLMs achieved?

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration"

frenchwhisker — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 15:42:04 +0000

I see what you’re getting at but it does feel like goalposts are being moved, no? By and large we can ask a computer today a question and it will almost certainly spit back a sensible (!= correct) answer. We can ask what the words mean and ask it to translate it to other languages, and we can have a conversation.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "A layoff fundamentally changed how I perceive work"

frenchwhisker — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 14:30:53 +0000

Though it was about the finance sector in ‘07/‘08 and its obviously different circumstances, I enjoyed the way the movie Margin Call portrayed layoffs as the author here described them—cold and myopic.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Why thinking hard makes us feel tired"

frenchwhisker — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 21:12:25 +0000

Reminds me of a card game I played as a kid called Egyptian Ratscrew, where one of the possible rules is to slap the deck if a "sandwich" appeared (e.g. a 3, a J, then another 3), so you always had to keep the card before the last one in your head. I remember variations such as "double sandwiches"—which made the 2-back into a 3-back—and many others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Ratscrew

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Doug Lenat has died"

frenchwhisker — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 21:08:10 +0000

I've had the same idea (er, came to the same conclusion) but never acted on it. Awesome to see that someone has! Great name too.

I thought of it while daydreaming about how to converge public opinion in a nation with major political polarization. It'd be a sort of structured public debate forum and people could better see exactly where in the hierarchy they disagreed and, perhaps more importantly, how much they in fact agreed upon.

Addressing Climate Change Will Not “Save the Planet”

frenchwhisker — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 20:59:18 +0000

Article URL: https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/climate-biodiversity-green-energy/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33871841

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Flip the Switch for 5.5 Seconds"

frenchwhisker — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 06:23:11 +0000

I resent that 5.501 is a possibility.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)"

frenchwhisker — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 15:43:36 +0000

Use “App Expose” to show multiple windows (you can configure this to a swipe down gesture).

Use Command+` (backtick) to switch between windows.

New comment by frenchwhisker in "Spacecraft will fly by Venus week after announcement on signs of life"

frenchwhisker — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 15:35:24 +0000

Apparently it will, according to the ESA site: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/bepicolombo-flyby/venus1flyby