Hacker News: imh

New comment by imh in "The Brain Is Not a Computer (2016)"

imh — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:18:06 +0000

Yeah, you could make the same complaints about jpeg compression.

New comment by imh in "How random can you be?"

imh — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 23:50:39 +0000

One way to generate a sequence of heads and tails is to start with either heads or tails, then randomly choose how many of those to use before switching to the other. You're sampling the length of runs. e.g. Heads, then choosing 12113 would translate to HTTHTHHH.

It feels easier to ditch some of my biases generating a sequence this way.

New comment by imh in "San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690"

imh — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 06:16:11 +0000

>What cant there be more housing development on the edge of SF...

Three of the edges of SF are water.

New comment by imh in "Why Are So Few Male Students Studying Abroad?"

imh — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 02:47:51 +0000

I was so bummed when I looked into this in college. Going for a physics degree, there was basically nowhere I could go in the spanish speaking world with classes that counted towards my degree. Which is nuts, since physics is a degree almost everywhere.

New comment by imh in "Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon"

imh — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 23:01:52 +0000

>The seventy percent of New Yorkers who supported Amazon and now vent their anger also bear responsibility and must learn that the silent majority should not be silent because they can lose to the vocal minority and self-interested politicians.

This like makes me frustrated. It shouldn't be everyone's responsibility to go on twitter or wherever and be loud. Maybe politicians should put in real effort to learn about who they represent. They could engage in the same kind of polling they do during election season, rather than just paying attention to whoever is loudest.

New comment by imh in "Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High"

imh — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 21:02:48 +0000

The definition of best is irrelevant. The point is the distinction between maximizing something for an individual versus maximizing that same thing for the group.

New comment by imh in "Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)"

imh — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 20:55:00 +0000

I think your hands probably have more bacteria than your junk.

New comment by imh in "Pee, Not Chlorine, Causes Red Eyes from Swimming Pools: CDC (2015)"

imh — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 20:44:18 +0000

I doubt Phelps was fucking with the interviewer. I was also a competitive swimmer and my experience matches what Phelps said.

New comment by imh in "Toxic Workers Are More Productive, But the Price Is High"

imh — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 17:42:27 +0000

It'll reward the companies with the best groups of people, but not the best groups of companies, which I think the other comment was getting at.

New comment by imh in "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction (2018) [pdf]"

imh — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 20:27:46 +0000

I'd bet that sample efficiency is a factor in translating they most hyped bits of RL into solving IRL problems. So many business problems translate to "Learn which of these things to do, as quickly and cheaply as possible."

New comment by imh in "Github restricts public Faceswap repo to logged-in users"

imh — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 08:05:20 +0000

>The best argument might be that eventually no one will trust video.

Obama talked about it this afternoon. He said "This is bad, blah blah oh no." Of course, you don't believe me because I made this up. That doesn't preclude you from believing written quotes, given the right chain of trust. It's been great to have formats like video that didn't require the chain of trust for a while, but if that time has passed, there's nothing we can do. It is hard, but in the context of text where quotes have been easy to fake for ages, we have dealt with it. It's good for everyone to be on the same page.

New comment by imh in "Incompleteness ex Machina – proving Gödel's theorems in terms of algorithms [pdf]"

imh — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 07:35:32 +0000

Thanks for the answer! Out of curiosity what about systems we can prove able to "do" basic arithmetic, ignoring whether they can talk about it?

I'm imagining the difference between a system that can show "P(n)" for any n, rather than a system that can show "P(n) for any n."

It seems like the former must come with a proof about the system. The quantifiers "for any n" have to come somewhere. If they aren't embedded within the system, do we still end up with a system that must be able to express "This sentence is not provable?"

New comment by imh in "Artificial intelligence, algorithmic pricing, and collusion"

imh — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 19:48:45 +0000

Neat work, but doesn't behavior require colluding to be considered collusive? Otherwise this is just another neat equilibrium.

New comment by imh in "Incompleteness ex Machina – proving Gödel's theorems in terms of algorithms [pdf]"

imh — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 06:24:34 +0000

I never understood the step about how a system that can do basic arithmetic can express the "I am not provable in F" sentence. Does anyone have an ELI30 version of that?

New comment by imh in "Aether for Redditors"

imh — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 03:40:46 +0000

>Anything you post on Aether will be gone in about 6 months. This is nice, because no one can stalk your decade’s worth of Reddit history and figure out where you sleep.

This seems really misleading. If I can view it, I can save it. Enough people take data dumps from reddit that even if reddit decided to follow the same policy, it wouldn't mean "no one can stalk your decade’s worth of Reddit history and figure out where you sleep."

New comment by imh in "Regulate Facebook and Twitter? The Case Is Getting Stronger"

imh — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 02:53:00 +0000

Of course I don't consider myself insulated from these platforms.

> You do use them, even if you didn't sign up or agree to it, you do use their services. Your contact info is already there and every chance FB or whoever gets to learn something new about you, they take it.

That's what I mean by "Write privacy regulation." That's separate from the whole news/propaganda/content thing.

And the "first they came..." poem is a ridiculous comparison. I'm not laughing about the oppression of people who have beliefs or traits they stand up for. I'm laughing about people who don't like an unnecessary product but aren't willing to walk away.

New comment by imh in "Regulate Facebook and Twitter? The Case Is Getting Stronger"

imh — Thu, 14 Feb 2019 22:09:45 +0000

As someone who doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, or their subsidiaries, the debate is kinda laughable. Sure break them up for antitrust. Write privacy regulation. But regulating the content shared there? If you don't like it, it's so easy to opt out, and it feels great. People write like these are utilities necessary for a good life, which sounds crazy from the outside.

New comment by imh in "How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t"

imh — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 17:39:27 +0000

Hacker news does some parts of that better, like promoting new comments higher. On reddit, a new comment is unlikely to be visible enough to get traction.

New comment by imh in "Facing opposition, Amazon reconsiders NY headquarters site, two officials say"

imh — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 21:45:54 +0000

Do you have a source for the claim that NYC has more devs than silicon valley? The only source I could find was about tech jobs, not just devs. It says

>[NY's] tech work force, according to most analyses, is less than half and perhaps one-third that of the Bay Area.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/new-york-tech-...

New comment by imh in "Ask HN: What big programming productivity gains you see happening in 5-10 yrs?"

imh — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:14:36 +0000

As languages with more interesting type systems come along, more powerful IDE tooling will be possible (e.g. idris 2/blodwen code completion https://twitter.com/edwinbrady/status/1050528305743622147)

More hopefully, maybe new language developers will put more work into easier and easier FFIs? How often have you thought "I wish language X could catch on, but all the useful libraries are in language Y?"