Hacker News: iamcurious

New comment by iamcurious in "Claude 4"

iamcurious — Fri, 23 May 2025 10:11:45 +0000

Newton was a smart guy and he devoted a lot of time to his occult research. I bet that a lot of that occult research inspired the physics. The fact that his occult research remains, occult from the public, well that is natural aint it?

New comment by iamcurious in "Social Skill Training with Large Language Models"

iamcurious — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 14:45:18 +0000

I have never felt closer yet farther away from y'all. Thank you, I need to cry, and revaluate my social habits.

New comment by iamcurious in "Interview with Yanis Varoufakis on Technofeudalism"

iamcurious — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 08:18:47 +0000

If you depend on that brand and following for your livelihood and they arbitrarily ban you, what rights do you have?

New comment by iamcurious in "You won't find a technical co-founder"

iamcurious — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 11:45:52 +0000

I really liked the list, probably cause my resume kinda fits and as a true generalist, my resume rarely fits anything.

It is true that working for free is bonkers. Priority number 1 is always rent, at minimum cover that so that business is priority 1.

New comment by iamcurious in "Nature Conformable to Herself (1992)"

iamcurious — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 03:10:10 +0000

> Eugene Wigner once wrote an article titled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.” I don’t know what he wrote in the article, but it is certainly a fact that, up to now, especially in the domain of fundamental physics, we have had striking success with our use of mathematics

It is odd that he mentions it only to say that he doesn’t know it.

I didn’t find the article main point particularly strong, but all the references and overall mentions were interesting.

New comment by iamcurious in "Linux Crosses 4% Market Share Worldwide"

iamcurious — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 08:42:47 +0000

They are taking steps in that direction with Windows subsystem for Linux

New comment by iamcurious in "A mathematician who finds poetry in math and math in poetry"

iamcurious — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 16:35:29 +0000

On the surface: The world would be premises and stories would be proofs.

Linear Logic for Non-Linear Storytelling by Anne-Gwenn Bosser and Marc Cavazza and Ronan Champagnat has an example.

Then generating proofs means generating valid stories. Linear logic is tough though, it is a logic that admits contradiction so straightaway most logicians are clueless in how to handle it.

What Is Backward Error?

iamcurious — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 13:56:00 +0000

Article URL: https://nhigham.com/2020/03/25/what-is-backward-error/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39590517

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by iamcurious in "A mathematician who finds poetry in math and math in poetry"

iamcurious — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:17:55 +0000

I liked the bit about the hobbit, even if it was a bit out of the blue.

those interested in the link between math and literature might be interested in the link between narratives and linear logic.

New comment by iamcurious in "Writers can write anything. Programmers can't"

iamcurious — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 15:56:58 +0000

I appreciate measuring productive when profit is the objective. Still, there exists code that does resonate and evoke emotional response. Quines, code golf, adding a paradigms to a lisp in a few lines of code, categorical haskell or the Doom wtf algorithm.

Beauty is something to strive for, it is just not the purpose of business programming. Unless you are Dijkstra.

New comment by iamcurious in "Smart binoculars can identify 9k birds"

iamcurious — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 14:08:22 +0000

Well, the comic did say it would take 5 years.

New comment by iamcurious in "The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube"

iamcurious — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 20:40:45 +0000

Should YouTubers hop on board of this? Or is the safest bet to assume Google will cancel it?

New comment by iamcurious in "Economists are flocking to Silicon Valley"

iamcurious — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 15:09:13 +0000

I'm glad I read this comment. I had conversations with people who used "skin in the game" and "intellectual yet idiot" constantly, but I always had other books on my to-read list. The added context sheds some light.

New comment by iamcurious in "I often have to cut into the brain (2012)"

iamcurious — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 14:08:53 +0000

>Even amongst doctors I know, most woes are pinned down to the NHS's modern addiction to statistics to judge everything.

Yes, statistics are never a substitute for knowledge, no matter how much SVs insists that it is.

New comment by iamcurious in "Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven"

iamcurious — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 23:53:22 +0000

Yup, it seems a side effect of data driven approach is that Windows no longer cares about its own reputation.

New comment by iamcurious in "Fake musicians: a million-dollar Instagram verification scheme"

iamcurious — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 22:12:47 +0000

You still have the problem of two famous persons named the same. It would be better to have separate checks. Have a check that means "this person showed us their passport" and another that says "this account is owned by the famous person mentioned in this news article".

New comment by iamcurious in "List of Creepypastas"

iamcurious — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 17:37:42 +0000

Interesting, that definition of "prequel" creates a strange conceptual symmetry with the word "sequel".

Both "prequel of A" and "sequel of A" imply "published later than A but set in the same universe", with "pre" and "se(q)" referring to the timelines, we can factor out "quel" to mean just that. I guess "Back to the future III" would be neither a sequel not a prequel, but definitely a quel.

New comment by iamcurious in "The importance of stupidity in scientific research"

iamcurious — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 12:39:36 +0000

Luckily those that respond strong to external incentives go straight to industry.

New comment by iamcurious in "SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk"

iamcurious — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:39:28 +0000

Seeing how smoking cigarettes went from being popular to being rare in a lots of places I would say:

1 - make it uncool (no more james bond smoking in cinemas, packaging that reminds of diseases)

2 - make it expensive (tax the hell out of it)

3 - make it a hassle (no smoking in closed spaces, airplanes, universities etc)

The thing is, both weed and social networks became popular right about when smoking stopped being popular. So maybe there is an extra step, a perverse one:

4 - provide a substitute addiction.

New comment by iamcurious in "Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?"

iamcurious — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 17:30:34 +0000

>Ask yourself: How does Elon Musk work 80/90/100 hours per week in his early 50s

My guess is that he is exaggerating, he has a track record of doing that. Or that what he means by "work" is actually way more layback than what a cashier at costso means by "work".