Hacker News: numbers_guy

New comment by numbers_guy in "DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones"

numbers_guy — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 15:33:32 +0000

I can assure you that anyone who touches numerical simulations of any kind (physicists, engineers, chemists, biophysicts...etc) has tried their hand at ML based surrogate models in the last 5 years, so it's not like they aren't being tested. From my experience, they aren't very robust. Weather modeling is actually one of the very few areas where it seems to work half decently.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Tax cuts for the wealthy only benefit the rich (2023)"

numbers_guy — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:09:00 +0000

No shit. If you want a tax cut to have an economic impact, cut taxes for the poorest, the ones with the least disposable income.

EDIT: Seems like the article is suggesting that giving more disposable income to the rich, results in them using that extra income to buy capital rent seeking assets. So it is a double fuck you to the poor. Because not only do the rich end up paying proportionally less in taxes, but they also use the extra money to compete with you for your home, buy the home and rent it back to you, putting you in an even worse financial situation.

New comment by numbers_guy in "US strikes $1.2B deal to pay German firm to halt offshore wind projects"

numbers_guy — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:20:59 +0000

Why are they scared shitless of wind power? What's the deal? I don't get it. Like, they seem to be more determined to stop wind power than solar power. Why?

New comment by numbers_guy in "Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities"

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:23:57 +0000

Exactly what I was thinking. In Europe (e.g. UK or Germany) people often complain when chip shops or other fried food establishments open below them, because of the constant smells.

New comment by numbers_guy in "US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money"

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:47:25 +0000

I don't remember when I first found out, but it blew my mind that sausages in the US are typically beef. Like, what? Sausages are like quintessentially pork products. Like the whole point is that you have a lot of off cuts of a cheap meat and you make sausages. Beef sausages? Yeah, that's like a step change in wealth, haha.

New comment by numbers_guy in "US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money"

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:45:20 +0000

All economic activity is a key driver to climate change. Why single out one thing? You're clearly imposing a self-serving moral judgement on other people.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Rice Deserves Better Than a Kochbeutel"

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:30:44 +0000

I eat a lot of rice, but I don't come from any Asian tradition. I find parboiled to be the easiest to cook and is very versatile unless you need glutinous (sticky) properties, and often also the cheapest on the shelf (in non-Asian stores). With jasmine and basmati, although they are more fragrant, if you over cook them they'll end up bloated with water.

But these days I almost never cook rice in water but in a stock or sauce or stew or soup of some kind.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Show HN: Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism"

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 13:06:35 +0000

No, social democracies are subservient to capital.

The whole modern democratic socialist movement as I understand it is primarily to fix exactly that issue.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Explosive drone at German airport raises new danger, minister says"

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:32:37 +0000

I don't want to start another thread but this separate news story is also alarming:

Germany Thwarts Russian Plot to Assassinate Executive of Donaustahl, Drone Supplier to Ukraine https://militarnyi.com/en/news/germany-thwarts-plot-donausta...

Seems like there's a lot of covert activity happening, surrounding/involving drones.

Explosive drone at German airport raises new danger, minister says

numbers_guy — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:23:16 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/german-police-examine-suspicious-object-leipzig-airport-2026-08-05/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49194807

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by numbers_guy in "Discovery Loop"

numbers_guy — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:58:29 +0000

You can use simulators. However the problem is that if you're for example running material science experiments, those simulations will consume a lot of compute and take weeks, so spamming different approaches in the way an agent tends to work might not work quite as well.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Discovery Loop"

numbers_guy — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:22:55 +0000

When they say experiments, do they mean using physics simulators?

New comment by numbers_guy in "Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI"

numbers_guy — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:33:53 +0000

Not really. These same techniques fall flat on their face when applied to most physics and chemistry problems. All of academia has already been doing ML4Science for the last 8 years. God knows how many billions have been spent.

The only two major highlights are weather modeling and folded protein backbone prediction.

Mostly everything else, either lacks enough data, or there are contraits on the size of the foundational models that render them impractical or they just fail to generalize.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Three Six Mafia – Data about "6/6/6 dating" (2024)"

numbers_guy — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:36:46 +0000

I'd group the Dutch with the Scandinavians as the "other Germanic branches", possibly also including the UK. As a taxonomy it makes far more sense to me. Western Europe is too broad. You have the French and the Portugese and the Spanish which are all quite different.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Three Six Mafia – Data about "6/6/6 dating" (2024)"

numbers_guy — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:32:18 +0000

I worked with a many short men, some of them bald. I mean, STEM, tech, hello, tends to be a big chunk of the demographic. They consistently underperformed when it came to charming women. Tall nerds tended to swoop up the few women on campus.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Build123d: A Python CAD programming library"

numbers_guy — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:29:50 +0000

FreeCAD has a Python API that you can use to too. It's their "macro" functionality.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Equation: Reinforcement Learning and Diffusion Models"

numbers_guy — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:13:26 +0000

I guess I have the opposite experience. I have a post-graduate level of mathematical education and I am dismayed at how little there is to be gained from it, when it comes to AI/ML. Diffusion Models and Geometric Deep Learning are the only two fields where there's any math at all. Many math grads are struggling to find a job at all. They aren't outclassing programmers with their leet math skillz.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters"

numbers_guy — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:21:00 +0000

Unfortunate. The Grok team built a phenomenal model. I use it all the time and it very often out performs GPT and Claude, on coding and STEM research related tasks. I was part of the beta for a while Grok 4.2 Beta with multi-agents and it was just amazingly good.

People aren't using it for reasons other than its capabilities. I mean, I don't think my boss would approve a paid Grok subscription for example.

New comment by numbers_guy in "IRS Tactics Against Meta Open a New Front in the Corporate Tax Fight"

numbers_guy — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:07:01 +0000

The less they tax corporations the more the burden will fall on income tax. These big multinationals have been defrauding countries worldwide for decades. The issue is at the core of the political turmoil we are experiencing.

I'd like to know how much less income tax would be, if we could tax multinationals properly.

New comment by numbers_guy in "Binance fired employees who found $1.7B in crypto was sent to Iran"

numbers_guy — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:34:35 +0000

Back in 2011 I remember a lot of people talking about how the Chinese oligarchs were using it to evade currency controls and funnel their wealth out of China.