Hacker News: ocschwar

New comment by ocschwar in "Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin"

ocschwar — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:28:02 +0000

The Pyramids have a recently noticed Tamil inscription from Indian tourists visiting 2000 years ago.

And the Neo-Babylonian Empire had the first tourism minister taking care of a paleo-Babylonian site.

New comment by ocschwar in "Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers"

ocschwar — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 22:08:14 +0000

The firmware for a diesel engine goes into a diesel engine. The company can be required to get a PE's signify for putting the firmware in. After that, if it's copied elsewhere, that's not their problem.

New comment by ocschwar in "Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers"

ocschwar — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 15:25:36 +0000

This is why we need Professional Engineer licenses for software.

There are times when a product design needs to be reviewed and approved by someone who cares more about his license than about his job. It doesn't happen as often with software as it does with civil engineering, but often enough that it needs to become a thing.

New comment by ocschwar in "William Golding's Island of Savagery"

ocschwar — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 03:53:52 +0000

Well, the Tongan boys provide the only empirical data on how unsupervised children behave on a desert island.

Everything else written about the idea is speculation, from The Coral Island to The CHildren's Island to Lord of the Flies.

But Golding did observe behavior in a boarding school, and while the Tongan boys did also go to boarding school, they also were being raised in Tongan culture, and that culture, including its behavioral norms, was what helped them survive on a desert island.

New comment by ocschwar in "Beginning January 2026, all ACM publications will be made open access"

ocschwar — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 02:54:02 +0000

Maybe it's time to do a Eurovision style thing for the quality badge. Everyone uploads to Arxiv. Every who's in the field votes on the worthiest papers (not allowed to vote for anyone you actually collaborated with).

Winners get to put a shiny sticker on their papers.

New comment by ocschwar in "William Golding's Island of Savagery"

ocschwar — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 14:34:59 +0000

Who could have guessed that growing up in a Polynesian culture is a better preparation for such a thing than going to an English boarding school..

New comment by ocschwar in "Four Million U.S. Children Had No Health Insurance in 2024"

ocschwar — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:48:59 +0000

Whatever it takes to keep you from leaving your post.

New comment by ocschwar in "Four Million U.S. Children Had No Health Insurance in 2024"

ocschwar — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:57:14 +0000

The value you get from the health care system isn't just from the services they provide when/if you need them.

It's from the system existing and being ready to help you.

We're not talking about widgets, onions, haircuts, or pork bellies here. You can't opt out of the system existing. And you can't opt out of the horrific consequences if the system doesn't exist.

So it's a bit silly to talk about health care like it's something that has a free market.

New comment by ocschwar in "The past was not that cute"

ocschwar — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 13:48:20 +0000

My childhood was dominated by the smell of licorice in some places because chocolate was too expensive.

New comment by ocschwar in "Autism's confusing cousins"

ocschwar — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 14:52:11 +0000

And then they enroll their patients in the Drug of the Month Club.

New comment by ocschwar in "Older Adults Outnumber Children in 11 States"

ocschwar — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 03:25:54 +0000

Young people moving out, and those who stay are not inclined to bear children.

New comment by ocschwar in "America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy"

ocschwar — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 21:39:39 +0000

It's true, but it's cold comfort. the amount of reading I can do in a single sitting has declined a lot.

New comment by ocschwar in "Show HN: Autism Simulator"

ocschwar — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:19:23 +0000

It's things like having a grating monotone, and having to pause before speaking and willing yourself to adopting the right tone for your state of mind and the effect you want to have on your audience. Every. Time. You. Speak.

It's like being an actor, except the whole world is your stage, and you have to be conscious of your character, lines, and motivation, the entire time you're awake.

New comment by ocschwar in "A cryptography expert on how Web3 started, and how it’s going"

ocschwar — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 21:23:19 +0000

Discord servers are half of a good counterexample, since people try to avoid the extreme end of network effects and want their chat partners pre-screened.

But... it's all on Discord, not IRC or jabber or anything.

New comment by ocschwar in "New executive order puts all grants under political control"

ocschwar — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 11:47:03 +0000

Until now, once you got a grant, you could count on it.

Now? One of your grad students says something a little too on the nose on Bsky, and your lab gets shut down.

New comment by ocschwar in "New executive order puts all grants under political control"

ocschwar — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:26:18 +0000

This ends science in the United States.

You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.

New comment by ocschwar in "Cognitive decline can be slowed down with lifestyle changes"

ocschwar — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:08:24 +0000

There are many contexts where doing an experiment with proper controls is literally a crime against humanity.

Which means, yes, that there are many studies where the control isn't quite proper. And that does slow down progress in medical science.

New comment by ocschwar in "Cognitive decline can be slowed down with lifestyle changes"

ocschwar — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:07:23 +0000

If you have access to statistics for the general population, you can forego the control group, I would think. But that requires doing the study in a country with a well run health care system and properly regulated medical records so that you can get these stats without privacy issues.

(Glances in Denmark's general direction.. )

New comment by ocschwar in "Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"

ocschwar — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 02:44:20 +0000

Problem #3 is relatively easy to address: shift from journals to conferences. Organizing fake conferences is a lot harder than setting up paper mill journals.

New comment by ocschwar in "Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"

ocschwar — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:57:17 +0000

Once you get that annuity you wind up embroiled in the fighting to decide who gets tenure next. Your proteges or other people's.