<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: j_w</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=j_w</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2026 03:43:48 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=j_w" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "I Remain a Skeptic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes I didn't say this. I'm using it to show how absurd the original claim was.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:28:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330504</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330504</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330504</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "I Remain a Skeptic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If that claim were even reasonable in the first place you would have to accept that they were idiots long before by allowing bugs to be introduced in the first place.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:34:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319924</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319924</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319924</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "We charge $10k a week to delete AI-generated code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>How do you "throw away" the bloat when it becomes embedded through the code base? Is GitHub just going to rollback to some commit from 3 years ago?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:29:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831081</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831081</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831081</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Commenting just so I can check later what he comes back with.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:57:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822898</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822898</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822898</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Captcha proves you're human. HATCHA proves you're not"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Simply use a browser plugin (or any other mechanism) that invokes the agent when the "HATCHA" appears.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:41:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687204</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687204</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687204</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Number 2 is the thing, right?<p>Why bother asking? Is a recruiter going to fly out to my high school and see if they can get records? Interview a teacher that still works there?<p>You also are likely selecting not for high school calculus geniuses, but for people willing to lie. Presumably they ask because there is a more desired answer, so if you want to get a job you should provide the more desirable answer.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jun 2026 20:32:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650949</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650949</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650949</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Becoming a dad changes men's brains"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>+1 to this method. Prior to having a reserved ~6 hour slot of sleep the lack of sleep was getting BAD.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:27:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637189</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637189</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48637189</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Pre-2022 Books"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well they aren't people churning out 40k words :)<p>I've spent very little time on ao3, but I imagine it's slightly better than RR where seemingly a mark of value is "huge length (word count and chapters)" with weekly updates.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 01:10:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48614703</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48614703</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48614703</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "The AirPods Effect"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The metro is a much less stressful experience for me with noise cancellation on. Without them the noise in tunnels just makes me anxious. The outside tracks are all fine without them though.<p>And for walking around - it's the traffic noise that bothers me, not people. Traffic noise can just be so loud along some roads (and at certain times of day) that it makes me not want to walk at all.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:31:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600914</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600914</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48600914</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Lore – Open source version control system designed for scalability"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I was also confused why commit and push are different steps<p>I think most people think about file access in the word processor terms, like you mentioned. You "edit," "save," "upload," and "download." Actions like that.<p>Then they have to use git for the first time and the terms/actions are really foreign. It's likely made worse if they have experience with auto-syncing file software, since that software does the whole remote management process for them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:36:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584409</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584409</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584409</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Lore – Open source version control system designed for scalability"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>These criticisms of git always seems so shallow to me.<p>'add' tells git to start tracking some file(s)<p>'commit' tells git to save the currently tracked files<p>'push' says "upload my changes to some other location." Git isn't dropbox magically 'rsync'ing the directory to some server.<p>'pull' says "download any changes from some other location." Same deal as push.<p>That should satisfy the majority of git casuals that get frustrated with it. You should learn the tools of your trade, and version control (specifically git) is one of the tools of the software trade. If you work adjacent to software why is it so hard to learn a little about git?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:50:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576696</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576696</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48576696</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Leaked OpenAI financials show $38.5B loss and compute burn"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> converting all subscription customers to api customers would yield 10x boost in revenue immediately so the demand is there<p>If OpenAI started charging all subscription users API pricing they would lose the majority of users.<p>If they increase the price demand will plummet. They have no moat and there are competitors.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:39:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48575728</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48575728</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48575728</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "U.S. science is in chaos"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because the same reasoning behind that statements implies that certain races are innately inferior to others. You chose to write "Asians" and "whites" here - why not make the same statement with "whites" and "blacks?"<p>Saying "Asians" are intellectually superior to "whites" is a thinly veiled way to say "and whites are superior to all other non-Asian/white races."<p>And the claim that "Asians" are intellectually superior to "whites" isn't even correct "because of race." I'm not aware of any real study that attributed racial identity to measure intelligence. Cultural differences? Socioeconomic differences? Country of origin? Sure. Race? Used as a proxy for the former.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:54:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48569797</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48569797</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48569797</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well the .NET random is bad.<p>It seems really the problem is twofold: the reference is from 1992 and cites a 1981 publication's reference to an unpublished 1958 generator. Not to say that being old makes the algorithm bad, but it's a bad implementation of an algorithm that already is questionable given more recent research.<p>I'll go section by section:
> //Apparently the range [1..55] is special (Knuth) and so we're wasting the 0'th position.<p>This is a silly comment. Knuth explicitly states that "24 and 55 in this definition were not chosen at random; they are special values that happen to define a sequence whose least significant bits, {Xn mod 2), will have a period of length 2^55 - 1. Therefore the sequence (Xn) must have a period at least this long."<p>Then you have the initial seeding of the LCG with with a = 21 and m = 55, which is interesting. Numerical Recipes uses those values, but Knuth whom they got the algorithm from does not suggest them. The closest Knuth suggests is 24 and 55. This suggestion is from 1981, so the viability is questionable (and Knuth clearly states that this is an unpublished algorithm from 1958 - Numerical Recipes itself questions the quality).<p>Then they use 21 for inextp - this is wrong. Numerical Recipes uses 31, and that is significant per the period length quote above. The use of 21 should measurable lower the period.<p>Instead if it were a simple LCG using values found in L'Ecuyer's 1999 publication on the topic (<a href="https://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/1999-68-225/S0025-5718-99-00996-5/S0025-5718-99-00996-5.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/1999-68-225/S0025-5718-99-...</a>) I assume it would have a better distribution.<p>So the implementation is a questionable algorithm from 1958, and it's done incorrectly. Numerical Recipes opens the chapter on randomness almost immediately with: "Now our first ... lesson in this chapter is: be very, very suspicious of a system-supplied rand()," and then the authors of the .NET random package show exactly why that is.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:01:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558343</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558343</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558343</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in ""Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It definitely takes a lot of work. I've read that it takes a good writer themselves to translate well, since it's such an artistic endeavor.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:53:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48517371</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48517371</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48517371</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in ""Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As somebody who regularly reads translated works, including the occasional machine translation (MTL), they (MTL) suck. You got a hugely biased result, which you recognize.<p>Translation is hard. If you're familiar with reading translations from specific languages MTL works have a very specific smell to them, it's a bit hard to describe but it's there. A good translation is miles (kilometers, for those outside of the US) above MTL.<p>That's not to say that perhaps the latest LLMs will have better translation abilities, but that they are generally crap currently. Maybe they are fine for something very short, but absolutely not for longer content.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:24:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509058</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509058</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509058</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "A dumpster arrived behind my university's library"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So if you want them just dumpster dive for them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:14:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506766</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506766</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506766</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Core PPI up 9.6% annualized (0.8% MoM) in May"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And this doesn't even include tariffs...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:56:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491221</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491221</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48491221</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "A €0.01 bank transfer could compromise a banking AI agent"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's when you bust out the third LLM. Nobody expects the fourth LLM to be the REAL LLM in the chain.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 18:00:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480184</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480184</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48480184</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by j_w in "Dopamine Fracking"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just live on /active and that stuff doesn't show up.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:02:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447115</link><dc:creator>j_w</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447115</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48447115</guid></item></channel></rss>