Hacker News: marojejian

New comment by marojejian in "Why insects aren't huge: a new challenge to a decades-old idea"

marojejian — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:35:21 +0000

This podcast interview really challenged my priors. In general highglight that a lot of the theories I believe might have much less evidence backing them than I thought.

paper (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10291-3

summary article: https://phys.org/news/2026-03-massive-insect-body-size-milli...

Why insects aren't huge: a new challenge to a decades-old idea

marojejian — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:35:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00976-0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818838

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

New comment by marojejian in "Scientists discover "cleaner ants" that groom giant ants in Arizona desert"

marojejian — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:24:22 +0000

NYT story earlier on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47754440

New comment by marojejian in "Tumour cells use a genetic trick to become drug-resistant"

marojejian — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 18:04:35 +0000

archive: https://archive.is/GNeGX

Paper the story is based on: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(26)00278-3

This ecDNA sounds a lot like the tactics of viruses & prokaryotes, and supports my mental model of cancer as a sort of virtual organism within us, with a strategy of defecting from multicellularity. I imagine this niche has been fought with since the beginning of cells getting together, and cancer today represents billions of years of selection for that strategy.

Tumour cells use a genetic trick to become drug-resistant

marojejian — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 18:04:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/04/16/tumour-cells-use-a-genetic-trick-to-become-drug-resistant

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818045

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

ProgramAsWeights: Natural language specs compiled to tiny neural programs

marojejian — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:49:02 +0000

Article URL: https://programasweights.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768831

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by marojejian in "For Ants, a 'Cleaning Station' in the Desert"

marojejian — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:26:57 +0000

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/science/harvester-cone-an...

As the article notes, this seems convergent with the cleaning stations fish host in reefs. A bunch of interesting research has come out of those, displaying behavior that seems to mimic aspects of human economics. e.g.: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/economics-in-nature...

For Ants, a 'Cleaning Station' in the Desert

marojejian — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:26:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/science/harvester-cone-ants-cleaning.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47754440

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by marojejian in "One neat trick to end extreme poverty"

marojejian — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 19:10:55 +0000

archive: https://archive.is/BnBFT paper cited: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34583

>it would cost $318bn a year to reduce the global poverty rate to 1% at the $2.15-a-day line—roughly 0.3% of global GDP— with imperfect, real-world information.

>around 60% of rich-world respondents say they would be willing to give up 0.5% of their income if that were enough to end extreme poverty.

While in reality I'm sure this would be much harder than the article suggests, I buy the direction of the key points:

1) it costs a feasible amount, 2) there is strong support to do it. 3) creative approaches might be effective.

Note: I kept the title I found in the print Economist version, since it is more informative.

New comment by marojejian in "Lethal conflict after group fission in wild chimpanzees"

marojejian — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:44:08 +0000

The Science Podcast interviews the researcher and is very interesting. It did leave me with the impression there are lot of analogies between conflict in our species:

- polarization / separation results in categorizing others out of our group identity. - xenophobia is an ingrained response - encounters occasionally escalate, validating the xenophobia, and increasing the separation.

https://www.science.org/content/podcast/chimpanzee-civil-war...

New comment by marojejian in "Alibaba shifts towards revenue over open-source AI"

marojejian — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:36:47 +0000

archive: https://archive.is/NIALN

Alibaba shifts towards revenue over open-source AI

marojejian — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:36:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ft.com/content/b39da303-3188-447b-8b65-3dd8dad8b59a

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47721312

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by marojejian in "Mythos escapes a secure sandbox [in test]"

marojejian — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:31:21 +0000

>Mythos found an exploit to escape a secure sandbox and then posted exploit details on "multiple hard-to-find, but technically public-facing, websites"

Mythos escapes a secure sandbox [in test]

marojejian — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:31:21 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/a_karvonen/status/2041589039955112119

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47681612

Points: 7

# Comments: 4

New comment by marojejian in "Congress Became the Weakest Branch"

marojejian — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:43:59 +0000

Read this as part of my effort to understand this question. Seems like a good overview. while the solutions proposed seems good, they also appear to small/tactical

Congress Became the Weakest Branch

marojejian — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:43:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/how-congress-became-the-weakest-branch/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642602

Points: 20

# Comments: 15

New comment by marojejian in "No One at Waffle House Remembers FEMA Official Who Says He Teleported In"

marojejian — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:33:33 +0000

Increasingly hard to determine which are The Onion headlines...

New comment by marojejian in "Project Monarch: Tags on butterflies track their exact migration route"

marojejian — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:16:52 +0000

Great podcast on applying air-tag like crowdsourced tracking to Monarchs. It's already giving cool insights into their insanely long migrations.

Project Monarch (with links to apps) https://swmonarchs.org/ProjectMonarch.php

Project Monarch: Tags on butterflies track their exact migration route

marojejian — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:16:52 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-51-quirks-and-quarks/clip/16204443-tiny-tags-monarch-butterflies-allow-scientists-track-exact

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630072

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by marojejian in "How to redraw a city (Land readjustment in Japan)"

marojejian — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:11:22 +0000

Listened to the podcast version of this ably read by Stuart Ritchie, who cohosts the fine "Science Fictions" podcast

https://share.transistor.fm/s/88a5081d

I found this to be full of interesting data, and it makes a good case for attach problems like this by combining democracy with deals that enable the vast majority to benefit from a big change.