Hacker News: kdavis

New comment by kdavis in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

kdavis — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:47:57 +0000

Time to switch

New comment by kdavis in "MIT Radiation Laboratory"

kdavis — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:10:39 +0000

Ye olde building 20, how we loved to hate you.

New comment by kdavis in "Data Is Now the Front Line of Warfare"

kdavis — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:37:13 +0000

The conflict in the Gulf has now claimed several new victims: data centers. This marks a sea change in warfare and will force tech companies to reevaluate their posture around national defense. Defending them effectively means a new policy by the U.S. government—one that creates deterrence not just to protect life and health, but also data.

Data Is Now the Front Line of Warfare

kdavis — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:37:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.csis.org/analysis/data-now-front-line-warfare

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47520635

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by kdavis in "Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?"

kdavis — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 13:53:05 +0000

Almost anything, i.e. the next generation accelerator[1] at CERN is about 15B CHF which is about 20B USD.

[1] https://home.cern/science/accelerators/future-circular-colli...

New comment by kdavis in "Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes"

kdavis — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 14:54:37 +0000

The 3rd section of the 14th amendment[1] states that no person having engaged in insurrection[2] shall hold any office, civil or military, in the United States. So technically Trump isn’t a legitimate head of state either.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

[2]https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/g-s1-104190/capitol-riot-trum...

The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Hugh Everett PhD Thesis) [pdf]

kdavis — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 06:36:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/pdf/dissertation.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46418038

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by kdavis in "Ask HN: By what percentage has AI changed your output as a software engineer?"

kdavis — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 09:45:23 +0000

10x when working on a code base I'm very familiar with.

Basically, it amounts to being able to give detailed instructions to a junior dev (who can type incredibly fast) and having them carry out your instructions.

If you don't know the code base, and thus can't provide detailed instructions, this junior dev can (using their incredible typing speed) quickly run off the rails. In this case, as you don't know the code base, you wouldn't know it's off the rails. So you're S.O.L.

New comment by kdavis in "A Once-in-a-Century Proof: The Kakeya Conjecture"

kdavis — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 06:04:48 +0000

A simple question about a spinning needle has haunted mathematicians for more than a century. It led to the Kakeya conjecture, a cornerstone of modern analysis connecting geometry, fractals, and the behavior of waves. Now, mathematicians Hong Wang and Joshua Zahl have cracked the 3D case — a once-in-a-generation breakthrough that could reshape how we understand the Fourier transform. (Also featuring Terence Tao and Jonathan Hickman.)

A Once-in-a-Century Proof: The Kakeya Conjecture

kdavis — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 06:04:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3tYU_-IZI

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45499837

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by kdavis in "Group Sequence Policy Optimization"

kdavis — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 12:44:19 +0000

This paper introduces Group Sequence Policy Optimization (GSPO), our stable, efficient, and performant reinforcement learning algorithm for training large language models. Unlike previous algorithms that adopt token-level importance ratios, GSPO defines the importance ratio based on sequence likelihood and performs sequence-level clipping, rewarding, and optimization. We demonstrate that GSPO achieves superior training efficiency and performance compared to the GRPO algorithm, notably stabilizes Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) RL training, and has the potential for simplifying the design of RL infrastructure. These merits of GSPO have contributed to the remarkable improvements in the latest Qwen3 models.

Group Sequence Policy Optimization

kdavis — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 12:44:19 +0000

Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18071

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44961416

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by kdavis in "US to rewrite its past national climate reports"

kdavis — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 11:49:28 +0000

Despite a significant number of up votes in a short amount of time (174 in 1 hour as of this comment a comment to time ratio higher than anything on the front page) this got moved off the front page. Suspicious.

New comment by kdavis in "U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation"

kdavis — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 17:12:06 +0000

Guth may never get a Nobel.

How to 'See' the 4th Dimension with Topology

kdavis — Fri, 16 May 2025 20:08:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MURzTFRRuJQ

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44009356

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by kdavis in "Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex"

kdavis — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 09:05:47 +0000

“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.” ― Arthur Eddington, New Pathways in Science

New comment by kdavis in "US support to maintain UK's nuclear arsenal is in doubt"

kdavis — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 12:29:39 +0000

Given the past week, I think “there's no real possibility of the transatlantic defence alliance suddenly completely failing” is wishful thinking.

In his last term Trump wanted to pullout of NATO[1], but “cooler heads” prevailed. Now these moderating forces are no longer members of his cabinet. So he will doubtlessly try officially, through legal means, or unofficially, by weakening NATO to the point where its guarantees are no longer believed, to withdraw.

The only real moderating force preventing official withdrawal is the “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024”[2] which “prohibits the President from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO without approval of a two-third Senate super-majority or an act of Congress”.

There is no real moderating force preventing unofficial withdrawal.

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/23/bolton-book-trump-nato-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_from_NATO#:~:text=M...

New comment by kdavis in "Macron to open debate on extending French nuclear protection to European allies"

kdavis — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 21:31:51 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

New comment by kdavis in "Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]"

kdavis — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 17:06:09 +0000

As someone who has done lots of work in both fields, this is some BS.

New comment by kdavis in "Lessons I wish I had learned before teaching differential equations [pdf] (1997)"

kdavis — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 10:45:48 +0000

Goldstein?