<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: kurthr</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kurthr</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:09:07 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=kurthr" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "I'm a USB-C Maximalist"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Part of the reason is that they used NiMH for the batteries in those (I have 3 that are 20-30 years old some predating the Phillips logo). All of mine still work. The NiMH is good for 1000s of deep cycles. The one from the mid 90s is only good for about 15x 2min brushings. Luckily, you can still get new heads for them!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:29:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48913165</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48913165</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48913165</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Even in the 80s HPs would do derivatives (and simple integrals). 
But, open book tests are the worst, nothing could save you!<p>I still remember giving Mathematica a relational equation of the atomic radius expectation values for it to integrate by parts and collect terms... at the time it failed to find the right integrating factor and gave gibberish. Probably works now.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:16:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911692</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911692</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911692</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you can't work in order of magnitude calculations and estimations you're not going to last long in physics. Many useful models give good answers only within a certain range of inputs, while at the same time you often can tell where in a dynamic space you are by external observations. For example, estimating Martian wind speed within a factor of 3x from the size of the sand dunes, can be done having only seen pictures and with only the knowledge of a few dimensionless parameters.<p>That's also how you can tell if your calculator is "lying" to you (or you typed wrong). I guess I have a few similar tools in spaces where I'm more experienced to see when "hallucinations" and gibberish are being generated by LLMs. Of course having it "check sources" and evaluate its own solutions sometimes also works, if those are reliable, but you're on the hairy edge at that point.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:11:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911651</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911651</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48911651</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But what if those unstudied accessible "natural" remedies have even more problems? Should we choose to do nothing, only study nothing, or just redefine what "natural" is?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 Jul 2026 20:01:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884182</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884182</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884182</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wait till you find out how much uranium there is in coal ash and how many tons a year are put in the air or dumped into ground water. Both the ash and uranium tailings are in the 50ppm range, but we make 100Mt per year of one of them and basically no uranium tailings in the US. Globally, the ratio is over 1Gt of coal ash and 10-20Mt of uranium tailings.<p>One is currently a problem, the other isn't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:01:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826601</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826601</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826601</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Drone Physics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not the OP, but due to neighboring rotor interactions an even number (or a single helicopter like lift rotor and a tail rotor ignoring airfoil lift possibilities) rotor makes design easier and improves performance significantly. Think of the rotors like gears meshed together and realize that an even number spins easily, while an odd number is locked.<p>Of course there are 6, 8, and larger numbers of rotors used in actual drones. The advantage of more rotors is that redundancy to failure can be built in, and that rotor tip speed for a given lift can be somewhat reduced at the cost of efficiency.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Jul 2026 21:41:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48789367</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48789367</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48789367</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "The Fall and Rise of Screwworm"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The screwworm is spread by the DOGE fly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:44:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780372</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780372</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48780372</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Deriving the SVD (Single Value Decomposition) from scratch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, obviously no LLM would make this mistake.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 05:36:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48742670</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48742670</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48742670</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The collapse of global trade would greatly reduce economic efficiency, output, and investment. It has been coming for while, though greatly accelerated by the orange pdf file. It takes a lot longer to build systems of trust and belief in enforcements of global order than to disrupt them. I suppose we'll move closer to the fear side of the financial/political axis from the greed side.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:17:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721199</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721199</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721199</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I should mention that the list of thefts (other than an umbrella which I promptly replaced with its neighbor) are not ones that I have personally experienced, nor do I suspect that it is statistically accurate to those reported to police (conbini shoplifting and transit fare skipping must be larger). However, it is accurate to the top 3 "thefts" I've heard Tokyo residents complain about. If a native cares to correct me, I'd retract it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:33:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711344</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711344</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711344</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Japanese police are very rarely willing to even ask to look at any of the disorganized hodgepodge of private cameras for property crimes or even minor physical altercations. They are far more likely to rely on personal accounts. TV dramas not withstanding.<p>Although Tokyo does have a system of traffic cameras which log traffic movement and license plates, that's most all that it does. Except in cases of murder or kidnapping (or political influence), it's quite rare to request the recordings of many private cameras. Outside of big cities, it's even more rare.<p>The largest connected system of cameras I'm aware of are for the subway camera systems (Shinjuku, Shinagawa, etc). Although independent systems, together they can do facial recognition to track individuals. Not a lot of AI yet, though.<p>In Tokyo, it is not uncommon to see bikes parked on residential streets with keys left overnight in their wheel locks (as if there aren't even mischievous 12 year olds?!). Oh, and outside of the cities, crime is even more rare. It is common in youth hostels for there to be open cubbies where personal items are stored in the front near the door. Nothing is taken. Most common thefts are: umbrellas (considered a fungible public good?), unlocked bikes (in high traffic business areas), women's underwear (off of outdoor drying racks).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:43:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708376</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708376</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708376</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "AI learns the “dark art” of RFIC design"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>All theories are wrong.<p>Some are useful.<p>Having theories that only give answers, but you can't reason about is not as useful. Having a theory where you don't know the limits of it's applicability, can be very dangerous.<p>At least in the physical realm there is not yet anything that combines relativity with QM so they can only be approximations. Even in math so far there seem to be similar challenges using programatic and "AI" driven solutions and proofs.<p>Still, I know that LLMs will be useful for Verilog/VHDL and particularly with verification, where they are already heavily used. Defined outputs and complete test coverage is already such a big part digital/asic design, I'd be surprised if it isn't used a lot more. Many software people would say that hardware is badly written copy-pasta, as it is. That said,  higher velocity slop and hardware "technical debt" isn't something you can fix with an update. And no matter how fast you "ship", you won't get parts back in less than a few months. Poorly used, it will lead to expensive failures.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 05:33:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48704679</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48704679</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48704679</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "International investment and local rules push prices up faster than supply"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Some 10-15% of San Francisco housing is unoccupied.
The exact why and how to fix it are arguable, but I'm doubtful the investment is actually helping.<p><a href="https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-francisco-homes-are-vacant/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:24:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695401</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695401</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695401</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "U.S. allows Anthropic to release Mythos AI to ‘trusted’ US organizations"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So no need to do any deep consideration or evaluation, just the approval of the  Epstein class.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:11:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695333</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695333</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695333</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "OpenAI leans toward waiting until next year for IPO"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>QQQ is the largest of the Nasdaq100 tracking funds. It's only about 1%, increasing to 4% of the QQQ, which is ~$350B in size.
So it's only $3.5B of forced buying or a little less that 5% (of $75B).
For the second float would be and additional ~$14B, again about 5%.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 04:54:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695252</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695252</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48695252</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am still suspicious that this has something to do with the relationship between Springer-Verlag and the Max Plank Digital Library (MPDL) which supports open access.<p>In 2014 MPDL purchase 110k out-of-print and historically significant titles.
In 2015 Springer acquired open-access journals from Max Plank Society. 
In 2022 There was an open-access book deal allowing Plank Institute members to more easily publish books.<p>Things were more not always so intertwined and in 2007 the Society canceled a licensing agreement with Springer due to subscription prices and usage restrictions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:03:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688205</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688205</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688205</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I sort of agree with this in the abstract. The problem is that concretely, these LLMs are being used to decide whether you receive healthcare, government benefits, or whether your job/agency gets cut. So they have already had real world consequences due to DOGE, Insurance companies, and other uses. I certainly don't find either the methodology or graphical conclusions of this link very valuable.<p>One can argue what fraction of the several million children's (under 5) deaths are (going to be) due to cuts by DOGE to USAID (and later congressional appropriations) from Grok recommendations/justifications, what fraction were politically pre-determined, and which are "just deserts", but it would be hard to put it at zero.<p><a href="https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-more-14-million-preventable-deaths-2030-if-usaid-defunding" rel="nofollow">https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-more-14-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:54:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680735</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680735</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680735</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "OpenAI leans toward waiting until next year for IPO"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But they are going to coincide lockups with the release of additional stock float from 5% up to 20% of the total "valuation" with a 3x QQQ multiplier so that stock indexes will treat them as 60% float even though 2/3rds of those shares are unavailable. Thus they guarantee that even more shares must be bought by tracking ETFs and institutional buyers. Everybody (that already owns pre-IPO shares) wins!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:36:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680598</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680598</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680598</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also perhaps relevant, Vinge's Marooned in Realtime, bobbles (time bubbles) take the remains of humanity with varying levels of technology and culture 50 million years into the future long after a singularity "extinction event" in the 2200s occurs.<p>Of course the story is just a murder mystery.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 25 Jun 2026 23:23:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680492</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680492</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680492</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by kurthr in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep, 'panacea' was grandmaster, but 'quire' was intermediate?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 20 Jun 2026 05:13:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606538</link><dc:creator>kurthr</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606538</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48606538</guid></item></channel></rss>