Hacker News: lnwlebjel

New comment by lnwlebjel in "As oceans warm, great white sharks are overheating"

lnwlebjel — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:08:55 +0000

I agree. I see climate engineering as the short term solution that will get us to the long term solution. Without commenting on this specific implementation, experiments could be done. Many of the aerosol-type ideas are not permanent and would not last (and neither would their impacts). Models are good enough to understand the impacts and if they are not now they can be improved through a cycle of experimentation and further modeling. Other solutions are decades away and they have been for decades. Time to take this seriously. We are already engineering the climate, just not one conducive to life.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?"

lnwlebjel — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:45:27 +0000

I'm not much of a tennis fan but I really enjoyed this book. The evolution of training and strategy during his era which is a subtext throughout is really interesting.

On Charlie Kirk and Saving Civil Society

lnwlebjel — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 19:47:57 +0000

Article URL: https://calnewport.com/on-charlie-kirk-and-saving-civil-society/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45225965

Points: 36

# Comments: 27

Extreme Personal Data Privacy Protection

lnwlebjel — Fri, 23 May 2025 18:24:26 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/05/extreme-personal-data-privacy-protection

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44075186

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by lnwlebjel in "NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions"

lnwlebjel — Fri, 09 May 2025 21:30:04 +0000

The restructuring and firings are already happening. The infrastructure is being destroyed.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Lessons Learned Writing a Book Collaboratively with LLMs"

lnwlebjel — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:02:23 +0000

Given that humans are 'wired for story', perhaps you should consider indulging. These could be what makes the books stand out after all.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Lessons Learned Writing a Book Collaboratively with LLMs"

lnwlebjel — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:00:23 +0000

Thanks for posting this, it's a very interesting case study. Considering that the thing they seem to excel at is this type of writing, it's interesting that they still seem to be only ok at it if you're trying to produce a serious, genuinely useful output. This fits with my experience, though yours is much more extensive and thorough. In particular I fully concur with the voice/tone, and the need to verify everything (always the case anyway), and "Never abdicate your role as the human mind in charge" -- sometimes the suggestions it makes are just not that good.

Question is, do you think this process was faster using the various LLMs? Could two (or N) sufficiently motivated people produce the same thing in the same time? (and if so, what is N). I'm wondering if the caveats and limitations end up costing as much time as they save. Maybe you're 2x faster, if so that would be significant and good to know.

In the abstract, this is similar to my experience with AI produced code. Except for very simple, contained code, you ultimately, need to read and understand it well enough to make sure that it's doing all the things that you want and not producing bugs. I'm not sure this saves me much time.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "There are two types of dishwasher people"

lnwlebjel — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:40:29 +0000

Seriously! Family of 5? Five bowls, five spoons ... Maybe have some extras in a hard to find place on the rare occasion of entertaining.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "B-2 Spirit Stealth Bombers Begin Unannounced Deployment to Diego Garcia"

lnwlebjel — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 19:05:07 +0000

"Briefly, the US has the capacity to decisively win on one or two fronts at a time, so its strategic logic leads it to want to wrap up conflicts in order: put an end to the Ukraine war, and address Iran next, to preserve its ability to respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The logic of its rivals is then the opposite: to tightly coordinate and threaten to expand conflicts on each front so that the US can’t effectively respond to any. This is a path to a world war."

So, if US hit Iran, we have to watch out for escalation from Russia and China.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "More than 20 Musk staffers resign over DOGE's 'dismantling of public services'"

lnwlebjel — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:11:54 +0000

where and how does one acquire the '1970's Cambodia feel' without having actually been there?

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Of Course It's a Coup"

lnwlebjel — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:07:47 +0000

I'll give the flaggers the benefit of the doubt and say that the article has a lot of assertions but little substance backing them up. I've seen comments (indeed on some of the flagged articles) with more substance than this article. Let's see some facts backing up these assertions (or articles with such) because I agree, this is super important.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "What's happening inside the NIH and NSF"

lnwlebjel — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 20:10:17 +0000

Insiders have little say. NSF is probably the most merit based system in all the US government. Literally any other program (defense?) is less merit based.

Also, if nepotism and favoritism are the criteria for removal, let's start with the Executive branch.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "What's happening inside the NIH and NSF"

lnwlebjel — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 20:04:24 +0000

I can't deny that person's experience but mine has not been that at all.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "What's happening inside the NIH and NSF"

lnwlebjel — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 18:19:58 +0000

This is false. The grants were not approved based on race. The grants were approved based on merit toward the goals of the field of science to which they were submitted. Showing how your work had broader impacts toward a more diverse, equitable and inclusive society was one part of a list of many criteria, recently updated here:

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/merit-review#our-merit-review-cr...

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Ask HN: PhDs/students, how do you come up with viable problems/solutions?"

lnwlebjel — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 23:05:38 +0000

I'm in a totally different field and this is 100% my experience. Some of the old papers have really great ideas that no one ever worked on, or talk about problems, which we have more data or better solutions/attacks on now. Finding these are like finding gold nuggets - they can set you up for years.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Digital Reality, Digital Shock: Growing Up at the Dawn of Cyberspace"

lnwlebjel — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 19:13:25 +0000

One of the hilarious things about rewatching old episodes of Seinfeld is his use of a cordless phone that I swear is the size of a toaster!

California first responders still use Thomas Guides

lnwlebjel — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 18:22:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/thomas-guides-los-angeles-firefighters-20049795.php

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42806463

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The Palisades Were Waiting to Burn

lnwlebjel — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 20:18:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/01/los-angeles-fires-drought/681243/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42742830

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Is the world becoming uninsurable?"

lnwlebjel — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 20:04:27 +0000

This is happening already, it has happened to my neighbors. As resident of CA in a neighborhood which previously was not, but now probably is, 'fire prone' I fully expect to hear from my insurance company to provide evidence of defendable space and other modifications to minimize the likelihood of structure fire.

I've read that once more than about 5-10 house were on fire, there was really no hope of containment, due to the orientation of the streets relative to the wind, the proximity of houses, and the intensity of the wind. Thus the key is prevention -- not letting the wild land fire get to the first 5-10 houses.

New comment by lnwlebjel in "Take the pedals off the bike"

lnwlebjel — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:59:09 +0000

Lots of comments stating as fact without explanation that angular momentum has no impact on rideability, so here is more information. I had no idea that this had been worked out (more or less conclusively):

"While gyroscopic and caster effects may contribute to balancing the bicycle, they are not the root cause. J. D. G. Kooijman and his collaborators confirmed that the root cause is a front-loaded steering geometry. A front-loaded steering geometry means that the steering shape of the front wheel and frame on a bicycle is constructed such that the front of the bike falls faster than the back. If the bike starts to tilt to the left after hitting a bump and succumbing to gravity, the front wheel falls to the left faster than the rest of the bike. As a result, the bike turns left. The amazing part is that turning the front wheel to the left causes the momentum of the bike to snap to the right because of centrifugal force (just like you are thrown to the right side of your car when making a quick left turn). The right lurch of the bike compensates for the initial fall to the left and the bike ends up straight again. "

This is from https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/04/18/what-keeps-a-bic..., which has a link to the relatively recent paper (2011) providing the most evidence:

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.1201959