Hacker News: lambdasquirrel

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:16:35 +0000

Also worth noting that not all muscle mass is the same. Too many people read these things and lacking context, they get swindled one way and then another.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers"

lambdasquirrel — Wed, 27 May 2026 20:39:36 +0000

Volvo is complicated. Basically a lot of these smaller companies and countries realized there was no way they could make the economics work with the cost of electronics and software-related R&D being what they are. So they sold to larger players. But design and final assembly still happens in Gothenburg for high-end models that are typically destined for the EU market. The US now manufactures the SUVs.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers"

lambdasquirrel — Wed, 27 May 2026 19:32:14 +0000

I used to have aspirations to move to Canada and I know folks who have tried to hire SREs in Toronto. While that post may sound hyperbolic, it is for all intents and purposes accurate. You can’t build an SRE team in Toronto because the talent pool is too shallow. It really is that bad. The story repeats over and over. The degree to which the US captured the Western countries through its dollar system is actually quite astounding and should terrify people.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI"

lambdasquirrel — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:49:33 +0000

In my first job we worked in a room full of 4Us and it was always refreshing when we powered them all down for the weekend. So quiet. It’s almost like there was a reason why consumer-grade hardware existed.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "What makes a good smartphone camera?"

lambdasquirrel — Thu, 07 May 2026 01:28:38 +0000

I don't think this is even just an AI denoiser problem. Rain effectively looks like haze for the parts of the scene that are at sufficiently long distances. Therefore it's difficult to use dehaze with rainy scenes. The harder the rain is falling, the more limited your ability to dehaze. It's much the same with denoise. You won't be denoising at 100% in Topaz if it's dark and raining hard.

One day smartphone cameras might get there, but right now, the sensor technology isn't there yet. The problem isn't merely noise. It's that rain and snow are moving about in the scene, which means that the camera can't just do its usual trick of taking multiple exposures.

AI denoisers are nice, but they aren't strictly necessary for ILCs. Even those full-frame cameras without IBIS are able to take pictures of nighttime snow just fine.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

lambdasquirrel — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:55:13 +0000

There are still processes that we haven’t replaced petroleum for, like Haber-Bosch. China has already banned the export of fertilizer for this reason.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland"

lambdasquirrel — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:49:32 +0000

I wouldn't be that cynical. From the interactions I've had with people from mainland China, particularly those in the educated classes, I can say for certain that it was soft power that drew them towards the West and the US in particular. China already beat back the West in the Korean War.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "US SEC preparing to scrap quarterly reporting requirement"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:24:23 +0000

Would that necessarily be a bad thing? I remember how that would drive short-termism on the part of regular employees. Since stock comp was a major part of many companies' salaries, people would hope for a bump in the earnings report. We complain about short-termism in the markets, but you can't say one thing and then do something else.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Marcus AI Claims Dataset"

lambdasquirrel — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:06:44 +0000

Depends on how you look at it. In terms of overcoming fundamental limitations, I would argue it has indeed hit a wall. ChatGPT is how old, but LLMs still can't actually count?

But then, to your point, what does it matter, if they're still as useful as they are? Even at this stage, Claude Code makes Jira halfway bearable.

Of course, we have to consider the devil's advocate as well. Most CEOs don't seem to be reporting great ROI on their "AI" investments.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "I guess I kinda get why people hate AI"

lambdasquirrel — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:23:30 +0000

Yup, if you haven’t heard first-hand (i.e. from the source) at least one story where some exec was at least using AI to intimidate his employees, or outright terminating them in some triumphant way (whether or not this was a sound business decision), then you’ve gotta be living in a bubble. AI might not be the problem but the way it’s being used is.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Platforms bend over backward to help DHS censor ICE critics, advocates say"

lambdasquirrel — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 17:57:22 +0000

That only means that the UK government doesn’t have access to the backdoor.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 21:03:46 +0000

Do you want to go up against whatever patent portfolio AMZN has?

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 14:35:12 +0000

People in China know. Believe me they know.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Scott Adams has died"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:29:42 +0000

Well that’s the kicker right? Mao gave way for later leaders who lifted China out of poverty. The normalization of all this craziness is what led the USA to where it is today. Two quite different trajectories.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "How has mathematics gotten so abstract?"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:53:45 +0000

And yet it all circles back.

We used Peano arithmetic when doing C++ template metaprogramming anytime a for loop from 0..n was needed. It was fun and games as long as you didn't make a mistake because the compiler errors would be gnarly. The Haskell people still do stuff like this, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone were doing it in Scala's type system as well.

Also, the PLT people are using lattices and categories to formalize their work.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Fall Foliage Map 2025"

lambdasquirrel — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 04:54:10 +0000

Yeah you can't really have a foliage map without a drought map to accompany it. The fall colors are a fickle thing. Last year's was pretty drab in lower NY. The year before it was quite good.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Zuckerberg’s AI hires disrupt Meta with swift exits and threats to leave"

lambdasquirrel — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 19:33:54 +0000

We can hope that they both fail. :o)

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity"

lambdasquirrel — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 21:26:41 +0000

> This reads like it was written by a developer 'who doesn't get marketing'.

At first, I didn’t know what to say about the article other than to agree to something about it that I couldn’t put a finger on. But now it makes sense.

Developers really can’t be faulted to hate LinkedIn specifically because it’s marketing. It’s just pure noise to signal. It’s pure promotion.

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras"

lambdasquirrel — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 05:20:34 +0000

Yeah, and it’s an interesting problem because for a lot of casual photos, most people won’t care. But once you do care, there’s suddenly no recourse.

Folks will say it’s just the focal length. But can you crop when your sensor is already that small?

New comment by lambdasquirrel in "iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras"

lambdasquirrel — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 05:08:37 +0000

By the numbers, the casual cameras are having a quiet turnaround.

Fuji and Ricoh can hardly keep their X100 and GR cameras stocked. Fuji added extra production capacity in China because it exceeded their expectations. I brought them up specifically because the serious camera people rag on them for being hype cameras, but I see plenty of everyday people with them. Go to places like the High Line in NY and there’s folks with A6700s and various X-mount cameras in addition to the serious full-frame mounts. Leica is doing financially well because of their Q series.

I think five years ago you could say it was just two groups, but by the numbers and by what I see in the streets, the point and shoots have been prematurely declared dead. Fuji and Sony are meanwhile figuring out how to sell APS-C to a more casual crowd, after the other old players effectively left that market.