Hacker News: lowdest

New comment by lowdest in "Blue light filters don't work – controlling total luminance is a better bet"

lowdest — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:15:56 +0000

>the effect of poor sleep seems to be MUCH worse for me than other people. I go from extreme motor coordination to dropping cups in a span of 3 days of poor sleep.

Are you sleeping enough? When I was getting too little sleep, averaging 5.5 hours per night, this described me well. A single sleep interruption could make me lose most of a day of work. I'm sleeping better and longer now, and it seems I'm more able to tolerate small interruptions.

New comment by lowdest in "Fathers’ choices may be packaged and passed down in sperm RNA"

lowdest — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 16:26:57 +0000

Slang term for frequently reloading game state from recent save when a non-ideal outcome occurs. E.g. this method can be used to collect rare outcomes from a RNG-based game event.

New comment by lowdest in "OpenAI are quietly adopting skills, now available in ChatGPT and Codex CLI"

lowdest — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 03:26:30 +0000

I am under the impression that I'm a natural general intelligence, and I am far from the optimal entity to perform my job.

New comment by lowdest in "Coffee linked to slower biological ageing among those with severe mental illness"

lowdest — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 22:41:03 +0000

Do you like sweets? I noticed as I became an adult sometime in my mid-20s, I stopped liking sweet flavors as much and developed a new appreciation for bitter flavors. Like coffee and some vegetables.

New comment by lowdest in "Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI"

lowdest — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 04:03:45 +0000

I've always wanted a deeper, historical explanation rather than just the end result. Like, how did they even arrive at these things I'm memorizing? Who, and why?

I think generative AI has great potential here to enrich learning, not only by having the ability to quickly cross reference history and science, but to compose it with storytelling technique.

New comment by lowdest in "The birth of AI poker? Letters from the 1984 WSOP"

lowdest — Fri, 09 May 2025 21:00:39 +0000

Some of the cryptocurrency casinos pioneered having cryptographically signed random sequences that are revealed after the game is over. That way you can confirm that the game was fair. It's not a very popular feature, however, as it's not a major selling point for most people.

New comment by lowdest in "Learn electricity and electronics fundamentals without taking a formal course"

lowdest — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 03:43:51 +0000

The answer key to the first quiz says "1. a"

New comment by lowdest in "What really happens inside a dating app"

lowdest — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 03:56:25 +0000

OKCupid was doing pretty well at this until they were acquired.

New comment by lowdest in "Exposed DeepSeek database leaking sensitive information, including chat history"

lowdest — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 05:31:10 +0000

Yes, I'm aware that most devs can't do it. I'd guess 1 in 10 can.

>An open dev database is rather normal

Not open to the internet it's not! Internal network, perhaps.

>someone whose only interaction with a development is numpy, pandas, julia, etc

This person should be aware of their limitations and give the task to someone who knows what they're doing.

New comment by lowdest in "Exposed DeepSeek database leaking sensitive information, including chat history"

lowdest — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:10:17 +0000

Hundreds of thousands. My employer alone probably has 1000.

New comment by lowdest in "Hotel booking sites overcharge Bay Area customers"

lowdest — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 23:59:22 +0000

I once used booking.com to book a block of several rooms for a wedding. Paid and confirmed. When we arrived, the hotel had no record of our reservations! The explanation was that their sync with booking.com was prone to failure and hadn't been updating for several weeks and they hadn't noticed. Luckily, they still had enough rooms available for us, but I will never use a 3rd party site again and I will always call ahead to confirm the reservation is still on the books.

New comment by lowdest in "I've acquired a new superpower"

lowdest — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 19:03:22 +0000

Yup I used to do this with tile floors as a child.

New comment by lowdest in "Ticker Tape Synesthesia"

lowdest — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 00:12:51 +0000

I do this when I'm trying to really focus on what the speaker is saying. It helps keep my mind from wandering. It's completely voluntary, though.

New comment by lowdest in "Trudeau government bans TikTok from operating in Canada"

lowdest — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 05:52:49 +0000

No. US and Canada share a language and have historically intermingled their populations significantly. We're the same because we have largely similar daily lives as individuals, we have similar problems, and we're populated by people of similar origins. If, for example, conditions caused our paths to diverge, an extreme example would be the split between East and West Germany, then you would expect differing views. Even prior to modern media we were very similar peoples.

New comment by lowdest in "Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web"

lowdest — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 16:20:13 +0000

I admire your dedication to preserving life in the face of discomfort! I personally use a two-tiered approach: if the spider inhabits the DMZ, they may persist unmolested. This includes most parts of the house where we aren't likely to come into physical contact. However, protected territories include my bed, my clothes, and pantry. Venturing into protected territory as an arachnid is, unfortunately, a capital crime.

New comment by lowdest in "Is running a more efficient way to travel than walking?"

lowdest — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 02:20:52 +0000

Same here! Have you found a solution? I was pretty happy with 3 miles 3-4 times per week, 10 to 11 minute pace, but apparently for me that's pushing too hard according to zone training. I tried going much slower, and even then my HR raises more slowly, but eventually gets way up there. Alternating my slowest possible jog and walking has taken all the fun out of running for the time being.

New comment by lowdest in "The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script"

lowdest — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 18:38:36 +0000

Definitely not, but I like my neighbors and like maintaining good relations with people in the nighrborhood, so I would forgive them.

You know, I thought about this overnight. I'm pretty sure I feel this way partially because talking to people real time isn't free for me, it has a cost. I have to mask neurodivergence all day to get along in the corporate world, I do not want to put the mask on again unexpectedly when there's a knock at the door. It's my off time, it's like getting paged or something.

The second part is the privacy aspect, I don't want to do business in a power asymmetry -- they can reach me where I sleep but I cannot do the same to them. I don't want anyone I engage in a business relationship with to get any ideas of any type about who/what they see at my home, from judging negatively to jealously to planning to come back and take it. It's unnecessary risk surface for a business transaction.

New comment by lowdest in "The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script"

lowdest — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 23:02:48 +0000

Showing up on my doorstep uninvited is at best an invasion of privacy, and at worst a crime in progress that I interrupted.

New comment by lowdest in "The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script"

lowdest — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:11:45 +0000

Those are very niche. How would you have known that's what I'm looking for? Sounds like groundwork for a larger crime. I'll say I'm busy but take your name and number and later do OSINT research on you to level the playing field. Why would I engage someone who knows where my family sleeps when I don't know where theirs sleeps?

New comment by lowdest in "The real "Wolf of Wall Street" sales script"

lowdest — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:51:38 +0000

For privacy sake, and having encountered too many scammers, I have a hard rule about never giving money or personal info to any request, for any reason. If it's something I want to buy or participate in, I will follow up through other channels after some online research. If it's a business I already buy from, still a scam, I will use their website on my own. If it is emotionally charged or urgent, it is definitely a scam.

The most manipulated I've been in recent years is when I actually feel bad for the salesperson because their job sucks so much.