Hacker News: gbjw

New comment by gbjw in "Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people"

gbjw — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:21:05 +0000

> Fun example from a friend: his family were extremely direct but his girlfriend’s family was very indirect. As a young naive guy he was having dinner with his girlfriend’s family and her father asked: “is there any salt” and my friend looked up at the glass salt shaker and said “yes” and continued with his meal.

Are we supposed to side with your friend here? The fact that he couldn't infer that the father might want some salt is, at best, very shortsighted and pedantic. It's roughly equivalent to a teacher responding to "Can I go to the washroom?" with "I don't know, can you?" -- except in this case it's not said in jest.

New comment by gbjw in "MacBook Neo"

gbjw — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:56:32 +0000

Don't think it's 16:9, just lower PPI than the air -- Neo: 2408x1506, Air: 2560x1664.

New comment by gbjw in "Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR"

gbjw — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:56:49 +0000

On the announcement page, they say "Studio Display XDR replaces Pro Display XDR" in the footnotes, so doubtful.

New comment by gbjw in "Apple Studio Display and Studio Display XDR"

gbjw — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:53:21 +0000

Do they still sell the Pro Display? https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/ redirects to the Studio Display XDR now.

New comment by gbjw in "AI Doesn't Reduce Work–It Intensifies It"

gbjw — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:56:34 +0000

Yeah the quote assumes you're riding without speed limits. In a typical commute, it does get easier once your cardiovascular ability exceeds the upper speed limit given the route.

New comment by gbjw in "How will the miracle happen today?"

gbjw — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:49:52 +0000

Strange "curse" if it can be rid of with some perspective change.

New comment by gbjw in "How will the miracle happen today?"

gbjw — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 16:39:14 +0000

You think it's a curse to be alive?

New comment by gbjw in "Why aren't smart people happier?"

gbjw — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 05:42:02 +0000

“ Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.” - Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

New comment by gbjw in "Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly"

gbjw — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:47:31 +0000

Because we all sold out to the man. Culturally, we have chosen the lavish life promised under the man's umbrella, to doing the work of trying to go our own way. We now reap what we've sown.

New comment by gbjw in "Ask HN: Best Job for Old Burned-Out Developer?"

gbjw — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 17:51:33 +0000

Whoosh.

New comment by gbjw in "Plants hear their pollinators, and produce sweet nectar in response"

gbjw — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:34:11 +0000

Fruit is plant flesh that is meant (designed?) to be eaten.

New comment by gbjw in "The year I didn't survive"

gbjw — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:00:59 +0000

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” - Aeschylus

Art and the Stubborn Reality of Subjective Value

gbjw — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 18:15:44 +0000

Article URL: https://adamantus.substack.com/p/art-and-the-stubborn-reality-of-subjective

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42741474

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by gbjw in "Deals with the devil aren't what they used to be"

gbjw — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 16:05:40 +0000

Great piece, though I do wish there was some more discussion about the Book of Job, in which God Himself makes a deal with the 'accuser' (Satan). The parallels with later 'deal with the devil' stories are numerous. I think it's particularly interesting to note that in Job, 'Satan' must still get permission from God to torment Job, and that, arguably, Job's final redemption rests on God coming down and speaking directly to him.

New comment by gbjw in "Ask HN: Can you recommend some poetry?"

gbjw — Mon, 06 May 2024 17:56:41 +0000

I like many of the poets you listed. In terms of 20th century folks, I also enjoy Khalil Gibran [0], Dylan Thomas [1], Sylvia Plath [2], ee cummings [3], and Leonard Cohen [4].

[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148576/on-marriage-5b...

[1] https://poets.org/poem/force-through-green-fuse-drives-flowe...

[2] https://allpoetry.com/mad-girl's-love-song

[3] https://allpoetry.com/may-my-heart-always-be-open-to-little

[4] https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/suzanne.html

New comment by gbjw in "For Brilliant Color: Packaging the First LSD Blotter"

gbjw — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 16:53:31 +0000

> Should everyone take acid?

> No, because you have to ask the right question to take it. Do you want a one-on-one with your maker?

New comment by gbjw in "Is Cosine-Similarity of Embeddings Really About Similarity?"

gbjw — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 14:38:43 +0000

To be very explicit, if |x| = |y| = 1, we have |x - y|^2 = |x|^2 - 2xy + |y|^2 = 2 - 2xy = 2 - 2* cos(th). So they are not identical but minimizing the Euclidian distance of two unit vectors is the same as maximizing the cosine similarity.

New comment by gbjw in "Scientists aghast at AI rat with genitals in peer-reviewed article"

gbjw — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:56:02 +0000

The reviewers' names are listed on the publisher's (Frontier) site [0, top right]

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2023.1339....

New comment by gbjw in "Benjamín Labatut Will Not Be Profiled"

gbjw — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 17:58:09 +0000

I read it on a recommendation from readers of McCarthy's last works "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris". Loved it! I've picked up Lebatut's latest, 'The MANIAC' and I'm not enjoying it as much (though, I will note that the first chapter is riveting).

New comment by gbjw in "Lessons I wish I had learned before teaching differential equations [pdf] (1997)"

gbjw — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 21:39:14 +0000

Yes, apologies -- using the term 'construct' muddied the point as sqrt(2) is a 'constructible' number as you point out. The term 'real' is what's at issue here and I am arguing for a distinction between a 'map-like' real and a 'territory-like' real, the latter of which has some sort of spatiotemporal grounding.

> There are some numbers that are not, and perhaps these can truly be said to not exist.

So then we have a real issue because the vast majority of the real line is composed of these uncomputable numbers which you've suggested don't exist.