Hacker News: isaacg

New comment by isaacg in "James Webb Space Telescope finds 2 of the most distant galaxies ever seen"

isaacg — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:58:30 +0000

This article is about two galaxies which we are seeing as they appeared 300-400 million years after the big bang (over 13 billion years ago).

Those galaxies are magnified to the point where they are visible by another, much closer galaxy cluster, which is only 3.5 billion light years away.

New comment by isaacg in "Glorious glass – worth more than gold?"

isaacg — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 19:24:35 +0000

In particular, copper smithing predates glassmaking, 10000 years ago versus 4000 years ago

New comment by isaacg in "Show HN: Laser, a new game played on a chess board"

isaacg — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 07:40:08 +0000

Same here - the games just randomly end, sometimes my clock gets set to 0 out of nowhere, sometimes the opponent's. Fun game though!

New comment by isaacg in "Daniel Ellsberg has died"

isaacg — Sat, 17 Jun 2023 03:20:04 +0000

I met Ellsberg when I attended a live recording of the podcast Philosophy Talk in 2019. It was called "The Doomsday Doctrine", it was about the policy of mutually assured distruction. I remember he talked about the difference between "their bomb is in the air, so we're launching" and "their bomb has exploded, we're launching". Politicians vacillate between the two, when history shows us that they are very, very different. Airplanes and bombers encourage the latter, while missile silos encourage the former. This makes missile silos a severe liability, as they encourage first-steike launches.

I remember talking to him briefly after the talk. It impressed me how decisive, opinionated, and well-thought-out he was, at his age.

He liked my T-shirt, which said "Statistics means never having to say you're certain."

I'm glad I got a chance to meet such an important and positive figure in US history.

New comment by isaacg in "US military has been observing ‘metallic orbs’ making extraordinary ‘maneuvers’"

isaacg — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 20:40:37 +0000

My bet continues to be optical phenomena - that's why the orbs and other phenomena resemble simple geometric forms, rather than anything with complex structure, service irregularities, etc. Happy to be proven wrong, as this is the most boring explanation, but that's my current hypothesis.

New comment by isaacg in "How much of AI's recent success is due to the Forer Effect?"

isaacg — Fri, 26 May 2023 17:46:33 +0000

By the way, the word is "beeline", not "b-line". It originally was a reference to bees traveling back to their hive. Sorry to be pedantic.

New comment by isaacg in "First portable quantum computers on sale in Japan?"

isaacg — Thu, 18 May 2023 23:43:54 +0000

Real qubits have flaws, and you could experiment to see under what conditions they work better or worse, like by applying magnetic fields. Simulated qubits are presumably flawless, and so you can't experiment with them.

New comment by isaacg in "First portable quantum computers on sale in Japan?"

isaacg — Thu, 18 May 2023 19:45:59 +0000

They seem to be marketed for educational purposes. You could simulate them in software easily. They could be useful for research, but they're not directly useful for computing, except as a novelty.

New comment by isaacg in "First portable quantum computers on sale in Japan?"

isaacg — Thu, 18 May 2023 19:43:59 +0000

The cubit/kubit/qubit typo does not inspire confidence in this article. Here's the items for sale, in Japanese: https://www.switch-science.com/search?type=article%2Cpage%2C...*

New comment by isaacg in "Two algorithms for randomly generating aperiodic tilings"

isaacg — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 19:34:54 +0000

That pattern looks periodic, but it's super cool! I think the periodic unit is a flower shape consisting of 8 tiles: 2 in the middle making a hexagon, and then 6 more around the hexagon, like the petals of a flower.

New comment by isaacg in "Gaia's first black hole discovery: GAIA-BH1 (2022)"

isaacg — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 09:09:10 +0000

Your reaction should be "astronomy fun fact, that will have no direct effects on anyone's life." This black hole is so dim and distant that it required a super powerful telescope to even notice it exists. It will have no effect on life on earth, except by adding to scientific understanding of the cosmos.

Moreover, black holes aren't death machines or anything. This black hole puts out much less light and energy than an equivalent-mass star. It's quite safe.

New comment by isaacg in "Newfound Asteroid May Strike Earth in 2046, NASA Says"

isaacg — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 17:09:09 +0000

This object is rated as a 1 on the Torino scale, which combines probability of impact with size to get an overall danger level.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale

The last time an asteroid reached a 1 on the Torino scale was late January. That asteroid is 2023 AJ1. It was downgraded to 0 on the scale in early February, after further observations decreased the estimated chance it will hit the earth.

Overall, objects reach a 1 on the Torino scale 3-4 times a year. No objects have reached level 2 or above since 2006.

New comment by isaacg in "Joint statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC"

isaacg — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 23:25:49 +0000

Most cases of Polio are actually caused by vaccines - it's not a case of confusing cause and effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio#Epidemiology

This is only the case because the vaccine has been so effective that the disease is close to being infected, and a vaccine-caused case is much less severe than a wild case, but they're still looking into a different vaccine type that will lower the risk of vaccine-caused infections.

New comment by isaacg in "RustPython – A Python-3 (CPython >= 3.11.0) Interpreter written in Rust"

isaacg — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 18:24:45 +0000

https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython/tree/main/compiler/...

New comment by isaacg in "Containers of fossils from 1909 expedition reconstructed nondestructively"

isaacg — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 10:24:31 +0000

This is a story about documenting multiple kinds of history at once: documenting the dinosaurs, and documenting the expeditions that dug up the fossils. Prior to modern technology, it was either-or: Open the containers, or preserve them. Now, we can have it all.

ChatGPT on Probability

isaacg — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 09:35:53 +0000

Article URL: https://isaacg1.github.io/2023/02/20/chaptgpt-on-probability.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34866582

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by isaacg in "Shaking Ordinary Ice (Hard) Transformed It into Something Never Seen Before"

isaacg — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 19:33:33 +0000

They mention that "The water ice was first chilled in liquid nitrogen to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit" (77K). The paper mentions that the new phase of ice reverts to something less interesting when heated to 140K (-207F).

New comment by isaacg in "Shaking Ordinary Ice (Hard) Transformed It into Something Never Seen Before"

isaacg — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 19:32:41 +0000

Given that "The water ice was first chilled in liquid nitrogen to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit" (77K), I think it would taste like frostbite.

The paper mentions that the new phase of ice reverts to something less interesting at 140K (-207F). Out of range for terrestrial experiences, which is why the article discusses finding it in space or on other planets.

New comment by isaacg in "As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena"

isaacg — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 21:55:39 +0000

These videos just look like optical artifacts of the lenses of the cameras, as discussed here: https://youtu.be/jHDlfIaBEqw

Is there any evidence that there's more to these videos than that?

New comment by isaacg in "Fentanyl vaccine tested in rats"

isaacg — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 20:23:15 +0000

The abstract of the underlying research paper: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4923/14/11/2290/htm contains the quote "Vaccination prevented decreases on physiological measures (oxygen saturation, heart rate) and reduction in overall activity following FEN administration in male rats." These physiological measures are the precursors to overdose, which occurs when low oxygen saturation becomes hypoxia and becomes fatal.

To summarize, yes, this vaccine prevents overdose, as well as the other drug effects.