Hacker News: mkprc

A New Kind of Creative Poverty

mkprc — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:35:07 +0000

Article URL: https://www.noemamag.com/a-new-kind-of-creative-poverty/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49664140

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by mkprc in "A misalignment of AI in mathematics"

mkprc — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 19:33:11 +0000

Baader–Meinhof phenomenon:

Baudelaire popped up in this article two days ago.

https://www.noemamag.com/a-new-kind-of-creative-poverty/

New comment by mkprc in "Retune FM – Your receiver's radio, back on air"

mkprc — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:16:30 +0000

This looks really cool at first, a great "use of the internet" for anyone with one of these old receivers. But I want to vibe check with HN.

Ambient notes: The site design is clearly AI-assisted. I couldn't find a human name associated with the site anywhere, just references to a "hobbyist", which is maybe fine if the creator values their anonymity. The Donate page requests crypto, no card payment. It's listed as free, but "After 90 days your receiver may show a 6-character code. Enter it here to check status" … why? What's the point of this? And for folks with a receiver that doesn't support a custom DNS, the landing page suggests they change their home network's DNS server to this one, which seems like a terrible idea.

Retune FM – Your receiver's radio, back on air

mkprc — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:16:29 +0000

Article URL: https://retunefm.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49642507

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by mkprc in "Mathematical Discourse"

mkprc — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:30:37 +0000

Terry Tao is on the board of scientific advisors and posted about this a couple days ago:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/08/22/mathematical-disco...

New comment by mkprc in "Mathematical Discourse"

mkprc — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:30:33 +0000

I'm not optimistic at the staying-power of this initiative. There've been a few things like it before, like a journal dedicated to asking authors to submit more informal "ELI5" versions of their popular papers for broader appeal. But the incentive structures in academia continue to favor only "original research". Just like expository papers aren't valued by hiring committees, grant reviewers, etc, submissions to this journal won't be valued.

New comment by mkprc in "How Big Tech Captured American Schools"

mkprc — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 10:58:08 +0000

https://archive.ph/ckPEg

New comment by mkprc in "The Generative AI Learning Penalty: Evidence from Chinese Secondary Education"

mkprc — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:38:06 +0000

Also posted here, with little discussion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366811

New comment by mkprc in "Simplifying and Refactoring Introductory Calculus (2018)"

mkprc — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:43:44 +0000

Calculus by James Stewart, Daniel Clegg, and Saleem Watson

https://www.stewartcalculus.com

New comment by mkprc in "To Improve Student Mental Health, University of Michigan Eases Grading"

mkprc — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:12:06 +0000

Previous discussion, still active

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49260250

New comment by mkprc in "The AI takeover of mathematics has begun"

mkprc — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 17:11:40 +0000

https://archive.ph/ecMAU

New comment by mkprc in "Sea Lion Radio brings Seattle's barks, bleats and yaps to the world"

mkprc — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 18:50:13 +0000

Here's the radio station website: https://www.sealionradio.org

Under the site's FAQ for “Is this a livestream?”

> Not yet, maybe someday. You’re listening to a set of field recordings I made in the spring of 2026. There are close to four hours of recordings, taken from various locations at Shilshole Marina over a few weeks. You could listen for quite a long time and never hear the same thing twice. I’ll keep adding recordings as conditions allow.

New comment by mkprc in "Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math"

mkprc — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 11:14:04 +0000

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101040

New comment by mkprc in "Explicit Instruction Works. Education Schools Just Won't Admit It"

mkprc — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:48:46 +0000

"Works" means "results in better average scores on exams". A fine thing, but it seems like every take I here on explicit instruction versus inquiry-based learning is so basic, these days from teachers who are rediscovering the effectiveness of just telling their students things explicitly after years of trying to shoehorn every lesson into an inquiry-based structure

New comment by mkprc in "The Miasma Theory of Education"

mkprc — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:06:24 +0000

For readers not working in academia, this essay and it's prequel provide a window into one aspect of the bureaucractic nightmare currently underlying US higher education.

New comment by mkprc in "Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math"

mkprc — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:30:05 +0000

I'm surprised company reputation, as a metric, doesn't come up more often in discussions of enshittification. This post is spot on, but the author only focuses on the negative externalities that profit-maximization imposes on the public. Every act of enshittification also impacts an organization's reputation. What if we were to make up some measurement for reputation and convince organizations to optimize for some combination of their reputation and profits?

New comment by mkprc in "CO, FL, GA schools testing pepper-spraying Mithril drones to stop shooters"

mkprc — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 11:30:43 +0000

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49091153s

New comment by mkprc in "The Canvas Breach Exposed the Risk of One-Platform Education"

mkprc — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 23:43:03 +0000

The final section of this offer only general "Universities should..." advice — nothing concrete. I worry that the major barrier to addressing this issue is the technical competence of teachers and faculty. Course materials could just be hosted publically, plain html or pdf files in most cases, and linked to from the LMS to appease the admin, but educators don't know how to do this.

New comment by mkprc in "The Canvas Breach Exposed the Risk of One-Platform Education"

mkprc — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 23:36:46 +0000

Did anyone else, at the beginning of a new term at university, download local copies of all the course materials from the course LMS page?

New comment by mkprc in "NSF partners with universities and industry on pilot 4-year PhD programs"

mkprc — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 23:32:09 +0000

Isn't this surrogation of university degrees for worthiness of employment getting absurd? A PhD holder is supposed to be on the frontier of some domain of knowledge. As human knowledge expands, it should be taking students longer to earn a PhD. But the insistence of employers on hiring only PhDs for certain roles incentivises this acceleration of PhD programs that undermine their original purpose. Three-year Bachelor's degrees are becoming more common for the same reason.