Hacker News: isolli

New comment by isolli in "The vi family"

isolli — Wed, 13 May 2026 08:06:05 +0000

I, for one, am happy that every terminal I've ever used still supports Emacs shortcuts. Useful, for instance, to cut a whole line and paste it later on (ctrl+k, ctrl+y).

New comment by isolli in "First G-SHOCK with a heart rate monitor, also featuring Smartphone Link"

isolli — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:26:29 +0000

I think it's nice that the watch falls back to effectively unlimited watch-mode instead of shutting down completely because the heart-rate tracker ate up all the battery.

New comment by isolli in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

isolli — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:31:24 +0000

Ha ha, that's such a wonderful description, that's exactly how it feels!

New comment by isolli in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

isolli — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:25:26 +0000

My father drove one of those in his childhood. Now retired, he has bought a used one and uses it to maintain about an acre of land (and his grandkids love helping him).

Once, it broke down, and I was astonished to see that there are forums dedicated to this tractor. If I remember correctly, it was a problem with the fuel line that is rather common, and we managed to fix it thanks to these communities.

As I was researching it, I read stories of MF135s found abandoned in a ditch and starting immediately again. A robustness that makes this and other models popular in Africa...

New comment by isolli in "Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors"

isolli — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:45:27 +0000

The sample of cheaters that we know about is biased towards cheaters who get caught.

New comment by isolli in "College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work"

isolli — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:59:53 +0000

Let me be blunt: the only reason I see not to implement solutions like this appears to be laziness from instructors.

New comment by isolli in "Anthropic decided to shut down our organization for an alleged violation"

isolli — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:33:33 +0000

The problem was solved (thanks to social media, presumably) and the cause was “anti-abuse rules that are over triggering right now”.

https://x.com/TheAmolAvasare/status/2045316711000445102

Anthropic decided to shut down our organization for an alleged violation

isolli — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:30:05 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/patomolina/status/2045281665363386504

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47814232

Points: 4

# Comments: 2

New comment by isolli in "Good Sleep, Good Learning (2012)"

isolli — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:12:25 +0000

Set a timer for 20 minutes, lie down (or at least close your eyes) and force yourself to stay motionless until the timer rings. Try to let your thoughts float freely... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you should try at least a few times. (And yes, maybe limit yourself to just one coffee in the morning.)

Gender Medicine Set Itself Up for Disaster

isolli — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:41:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-gender-medicine-set-itself-up-for-disaster/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47715648

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by isolli in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

isolli — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:25:21 +0000

My subjective appreciation of building materials depends essentially on how gracefully they age. I find that concrete does not age well... and dislike brutalism for this specific reason.

New comment by isolli in "French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?"

isolli — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 17:02:06 +0000

So I've been told... but I could never hear the difference myself!

New comment by isolli in "French e, è, é, ê, ë – what's the difference?"

isolli — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:40:00 +0000

While helping my children learn French spelling, I was horrified when I realized that there are 6 or 7 ways to write the sound [ɛ̃]: un in (im) [i]en ain aim ein

New comment by isolli in "AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion"

isolli — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:16:04 +0000

I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this:

> Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app.

> “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business around his discovery.

> The most frequent [delusion] is the belief that they have created the first conscious AI.

How can you seriously think you've created something when you're just using someone else's software?

New comment by isolli in "Antimatter has been transported for the first time"

isolli — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:50:19 +0000

How do we know there are no antimatter galaxies far away from us?

New comment by isolli in "Easy A's, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation [pdf]"

isolli — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:11:27 +0000

Since it's a PDF file, I'm pasting the abstract here:

Average grades continue to rise in the United States, raising the question of how grade inflation impacts students. We provide comprehensive evidence on how teacher grading practices affect students’ long-run success.

Using administrative high school data from Los Angeles and from Maryland that is linked to postsecondary and earnings records, we develop and validate two teacher-level measures of grade inflation: one measuring average grade inflation and another measuring a teacher’s propensity to give a passing grade. These measures of grade inflation are distinct from teacher value-added, with grade inflating teachers having moderately lower cognitive value-added and slightly higher noncognitive value-added. These two measures also differentially impact students’ long-term outcomes.

Being assigned a higher average grade inflating teacher reduces a student’s future test scores, the likelihood of graduating from high school, college enrollment, and ultimately earnings. In contrast, passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back and increases high school graduation, with limited long-run effects. The cumulative impact is economically significant: a teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of lifetime earnings of their students by $213,872 per year.

Easy A's, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation [pdf]

isolli — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:09:55 +0000

Article URL: https://econweb.umd.edu/~pope/Grade_Inflation.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47409843

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by isolli in "Roblox is minting teen millionaires"

isolli — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:32:13 +0000

Quite imaginative, too... thanks for answering :)

New comment by isolli in "Roblox is minting teen millionaires"

isolli — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 08:36:41 +0000

I probably lack imagination, but how would gambling work in this game?

New comment by isolli in "I miss thinking hard"

isolli — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 08:24:44 +0000

This is very insightful, thanks. I had a similar thought regarding data science in particular. Writing those pandas expressions by hand during exploration means you get to know the data intimately. Getting AI to write them for you limits you to a superficial knowledge of said data (at least in my case).