Hacker News: madcaptenor

New comment by madcaptenor in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

madcaptenor — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:24:07 +0000

ai;dr

New comment by madcaptenor in "Bonnie Tyler has died"

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:53:02 +0000

Every now and then HN falls apart

New comment by madcaptenor in "Bonnie Tyler, singer of Total Eclipse of the Heart, dies aged 75"

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:52:43 +0000

IIRC her best-known song saw a spike in popularity around the 2024 solar eclipse. (I know I played it a few times.)

New comment by madcaptenor in "Bonnie Tyler has died"

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 13:05:40 +0000

"Strong Songs" podcast breaking down Total Eclipse of The Heart: https://strongsongspodcast.com/blogs/episodes/s07e06-total-e...

New comment by madcaptenor in "The Family Keeping Watch over a 52-Year-Old Pot of Soup"

madcaptenor — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:49:46 +0000

I am an Italian-American and would presume to speak for Italian-American foodways but not the foodways of Italians living in Italy.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Peppa Pig studio wants to clone child actors' voices with AI indefinitely"

madcaptenor — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:38:06 +0000

Bluey would never do this.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Solving Wordle using information theory"

madcaptenor — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:58:26 +0000

I had wondered if getting wordle in 1 based on social media data was possible! Now I know.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Solving Wordle using information theory"

madcaptenor — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:21:53 +0000

see also "absurdle": https://qntm.org/files/absurdle/absurdle.html

New comment by madcaptenor in "Everything is logarithms"

madcaptenor — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:56:54 +0000

These exist for various medical usages. I've seen one to compute the due date of a pregnancy (from either the date of conception or the last missed period). This was at an obstetrician's office. It was probably dropped off by a sales rep and had the logo of some medication or other.

New comment by madcaptenor in "US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%"

madcaptenor — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:58:57 +0000

That's what I was thinking.

New comment by madcaptenor in "US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%"

madcaptenor — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:38:47 +0000

Tax brackets are also inflation-adjusted, so shouldn't that cancel out?

New comment by madcaptenor in "A Crank Formula for π"

madcaptenor — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:30:26 +0000

It's hard to be totally sure, but I also don't think that's a picture of Dudley.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Algorithmic Monocultures in Hiring"

madcaptenor — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:53:20 +0000

From a glance at the paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.27371) it looks like they're using self-reported ethnicity.

"We only attempt to identify adverse impact based on self-reported racial information and do not impute data, noting that we do not have access to features like applicant name. 62.35% of all applicants in the data do not self-report race as belonging to one of the four racial groups we study."

New comment by madcaptenor in "The new bibliomaniacs"

madcaptenor — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:54:38 +0000

I should clarify. I remember the fact that I read them but I don't remember anything about them.

New comment by madcaptenor in "The new bibliomaniacs"

madcaptenor — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 13:42:37 +0000

I share this feeling. When I want to free up some space, the books I get rid of are the ones I don't remember reading.

New comment by madcaptenor in "What I've learned about the trombone"

madcaptenor — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:22:50 +0000

I had the same confusion - I'd move the [...] to the following sentence.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada"

madcaptenor — Fri, 22 May 2026 16:19:18 +0000

Another case: when Brexit happened, IIRC some people in Scotland were suggesting secession from the UK post-Brexit so they could rejoin the EU.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Michael Keating has died"

madcaptenor — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:39:38 +0000

Michael J. Fox's middle name is Andrew. But he didn't want to be Michael A. Fox because that sounded too much like "Michael, a fox."

New comment by madcaptenor in "Greek Alphabet Cards"

madcaptenor — Sat, 16 May 2026 21:43:49 +0000

right, but giving English-speaking kids the following would help them:

- a bear that looks like B

- an orange that looks like O

- a snake that looks like S

- a tree that looks like T

(and so on; that's just what I can think of off the top of my head)

New comment by madcaptenor in "Extremely Low Frequencies"

madcaptenor — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:11:52 +0000

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/

(in short, people have found the "Eureka" part in Asimov but not the "that's funny" part)