Hacker News: monkeyjoe

New comment by monkeyjoe in "The Art of Money Getting"

monkeyjoe — Sun, 24 May 2026 14:19:10 +0000

Hey this really resonates. I’ve been looking for a way to describe the observation that talent is multi-dimensional without using that word, or just saying something generic like “people are good at different things.”

Maybe you should write some blog posts after all.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "The number of exceptional people: Fewer than 85 per 1M across key traits"

monkeyjoe — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 19:29:24 +0000

How does this pass as science?? There is no actual data on people. They simulated from a multivariate normal and then reported the frequency of observations where all three dimensions were one or more standard deviations above the mean. This has no bearing on the actual number of exceptional people, the results follow only from the assumed correlations and the assumption of normality (which is probably wrong).

New comment by monkeyjoe in "The CAP theorem of Clustering: Why Every Algorithm Must Sacrifice Something"

monkeyjoe — Fri, 27 Dec 2024 14:30:55 +0000

I think there is hidden gold in the linked research paper. In the second to last paragraph, it says if you are willing to discard the trivial partition (each point on its own) from Richness, then you *can* have Scale-Invariance and Refinement-Consistency as well. To me this suggests an optimal (in some sense) class of algorithms, perhaps to be chosen from based on computational complexity, cross-validation, etc.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Show HN: How did your computer reach my server?"

monkeyjoe — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:21:28 +0000

On my device, there are no intermediate steps shown between my device and the server. Just FYI.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "We're not Platonists, we've just learned the bitter lesson"

monkeyjoe — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 00:02:32 +0000

I think this is a really interesting take.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "About math limitations"

monkeyjoe — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 17:05:11 +0000

> Rational numbers are numbers that we can have in our hand while irrational numbers are ones which we can never have. It is important to have a setup that respects that difference.

Do you mean physically? Basic shapes like circles, squares and triangles allow us to hold irrational numbers in our hands as distances. Children playing with blocks can sense that root 2 does not conform nicely with other (rational) distances.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Stop eliminating good candidates by asking them the wrong questions"

monkeyjoe — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 16:25:17 +0000

I think it just means taking the input as an integer and then separating out the “ones place”and “tens place” using integer division and modulo operator. E.g.,

  ones = number % 10

  tens = number // 10

  do_print = (ones + tens) == 10

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Mobile phone calls linked with increased risk of high blood pressure"

monkeyjoe — Fri, 05 May 2023 15:24:54 +0000

Even subject level fixed effects would have made this a much better study. Doesn’t need to go all the way to IV to be a thoughtful design.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Mobile phone calls linked with increased risk of high blood pressure"

monkeyjoe — Fri, 05 May 2023 15:22:46 +0000

This study would be a lot more credible if they asked about cell phone use on follow up and then differenced everyone against their prior reporting, to determine if *changes* in cell phone use (and other control factors that might change over time) increased risk of hypertension. Still not perfect because of the long time lag to follow up, but much better. Either they didn’t know to do this or they did but then didn’t find the desired results… either way, not a good look.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Ask HN: What Happened to Big Data?"

monkeyjoe — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 14:16:50 +0000

Very well put.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "FCC Call Authentication Trust Anchor Final Rule (Jan 2022)"

monkeyjoe — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 16:27:20 +0000

OP here.

I've seen much recent discussion on HN about robocalls not being resolved by the new STIR/SHAKEN protocol arising from the TRACED Act. I found this on https://regulations.gov and thought it would be of interest.

The big US providers have implemented the STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication framework as of mid-2021 but there was a 2-year extension to mid-2023 for small providers. The implementation appears to have been ineffective at stopping robocalls because of origination via the exempt small providers. The FCC has now passed a rule that a subset of small providers (those most likely to be originating illegal robocalls) must be in compliance by mid-2022.

TLDR - if this works there should finally be a dropoff in robocalls this summer.

FCC Call Authentication Trust Anchor Final Rule (Jan 2022)

monkeyjoe — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 16:19:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FCC-2022-0030-0001

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30857304

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by monkeyjoe in "DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks"

monkeyjoe — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 03:30:00 +0000

Indeed! Ha. Thank you.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Start Self Hosting"

monkeyjoe — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 03:28:58 +0000

Oops! I missed that point entirely.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Start Self Hosting"

monkeyjoe — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 19:28:24 +0000

Sure, but my old Google cloud apps on python 2.7 will one day get rug-pulled and forced to upgrade. It can only stay working forever if the platform doesn't change underneath it.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks"

monkeyjoe — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 01:42:25 +0000

"intents and purposes" ... I think I was saying it your way until at least age 30.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Facebook loses users for the first time"

monkeyjoe — Sat, 05 Feb 2022 15:33:03 +0000

Nextdoor also used to do it well, but it has become like Facebook with flame wars and political craziness.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Ask HN: Solving problems by mapping to other problems that we know how to solve"

monkeyjoe — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:48:12 +0000

Hey just wanted to say thanks for sharing this.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Ask HN: Solving problems by mapping to other problems that we know how to solve"

monkeyjoe — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 15:35:31 +0000

Got a reference for this?

My understanding is Nash equilibrium exists in any game with finite states, regardless of perfect or imperfect information.

The bit about announcing your strategy holds by definition - the equilibrium is defined such that no player can improve, thus it doesn't matter if the other player's strategy is known. Also, I don't think there's a requirement that Nash strategies be reachable by iteration.

New comment by monkeyjoe in "Arxiv.org reaches a milestone and a reckoning"

monkeyjoe — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 13:00:47 +0000

I think it's because the publisher retains copyright. There is a limit on how "done" the manuscript can be and still be shared for free online. Some universities have started to fight back against this by limiting the scope of copyright restrictions that publishers can impose.