Hacker News: orforforof

New comment by orforforof in "Think in math, write in code (2019)"

orforforof — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:52:09 +0000

I really enjoyed the book Mathematica by David Bessis, who writes about his creative process as a mathematician. He makes a case that formal math is usually the last step to refine/optimize an idea, not the starting point as is often assumed. His point is to push against the cultural idea that math == symbols. Sounds similar to some of what you're describing.

New comment by orforforof in "“Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps"

orforforof — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 19:48:34 +0000

It would be more relevant to look at reading scores for children who specifically tuned into Reading Rainbow. I suspect the number of viewers was a small fraction of all children in the US, in which case the show's ability to affect the nationwide reading scores would be low. In other words, I don't believe the data you cited supports a conclusion that the show was ineffective at educating individual viewers.

New comment by orforforof in "The average college student today"

orforforof — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 22:53:40 +0000

At the State university where I teach, literally part of our mission statement is to graduate every student who we admit. It has become a big part of the messaging from upper administration in the last few years.

New comment by orforforof in "The NIH is being slashed and burned, not "reformed""

orforforof — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 05:51:55 +0000

I can think of two factors. First, some direct costs could be prohibited. But more importantly, to make this work universities would need to restructure to make all of their services fee-based, and researchers would need to allocate these fees item by item in their proposals. Which seems doable, but is no way to run an efficient operation. Even if the bottom line looked the same, the value to NIH and taxpayers would be far worse due to the inefficiency.

New comment by orforforof in "Signalens' SignalSDR Pro Is a Raspberry Pi-Like High-Performance SDR"

orforforof — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 02:14:14 +0000

Another competitor: https://redpitaya.com/

New comment by orforforof in "I no longer grade my students’ work, and I wish I had stopped sooner"

orforforof — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:01:30 +0000

This sounds good in some niche cases, like an English class with a small class size and a highly experienced teacher. However of all the potential fads in higher education this one seems particularly risky to students. In the end the grade is given based on how the prof feels about you, and if they agree with your self assessment. Which can be easily gamed (e.g. student pretends to be a bad writer at first and has a seemingly miraculous transformation) and is subjective. The assessment will also be tainted by one's individual biases, by definition. Whether you agree or disagree about the importance of diversity equity and inclusion in higher ed, one useful principle of that movement is that of clearly defined evaluation, precisely to avoid effects of personal bias.

New comment by orforforof in "Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article"

orforforof — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 04:30:52 +0000

Agree. Academics are now going to write an extra $11k into their grants (=$15k if you count uni indirect costs), with the justification "I plan to produce Nature quality results". If your article doesn't get accepted by Nature, all the better there's now an extra $9k in your budget to play with. Let's just keep in mind, these grants are funded by taxpayers.

New comment by orforforof in "Intriguing New Approach for Predicting Earthquakes"

orforforof — Sun, 16 Jan 2022 08:14:53 +0000

My layman's understanding of earthquakes is that they have a heavy tailed probability distribution which makes predictions fundamentally difficult. Does ML (as in this approach) get around that somehow?

New comment by orforforof in "Ask HN: Should I publish my research code?"

orforforof — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 16:24:22 +0000

I would agree with many others here who say publish it. In some fields there is an additional question of where to host it, lest your paper's impact outlast the lifetime of your current GitHub repo or whatever. There are good solutions out there. Assuming you are at a university it's worth having a chat with a librarian.

New comment by orforforof in "Annotated equations for increased readability and understanding of papers"

orforforof — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 04:05:01 +0000

For many of the papers I read (engineering) I would love to be able to click on symbols in an equation and have it link me back to where that term was first defined in the paper, either in another eqn or in the text. Tracing back in this way is a major pain point e.g. when trying to reproduce calculations. Seems like something journals/latex could easily implement in an automated fashion (maybe already possible?)

New comment by orforforof in "Bob Saget has died"

orforforof — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 02:43:19 +0000

His recent podcast series called Bob Saget's Here For You is worth a listen, as a reminder of what we've lost. He really was deserving of the title America's Dad. RIP.

New comment by orforforof in "Omicron variant was 73% of U.S. covid cases last week"

orforforof — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 04:39:44 +0000

According to Table 2 their sample had 8,199 unvaccinated and 9,269 vaccinated. It seems odd that more cases were found in the vaccinated people, can anyone suggest why? Statistical anomaly?

Edit: I misread the table, I thought column 1 was number of subjects. The replies explain well why the # of cases would be larger for the (larger) vaccinated population.

New comment by orforforof in "Show HN: Long Range E-Bike"

orforforof — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 19:58:53 +0000

The only saving grace is at least they know the word 'safety'. I've ridden with such guys too and yes they are assholes, but notably they espouse the same defensive riding opinions of most riders, and they're still alive. That's the key in my opinion, being safe/responsible is not the same as being polite, and I think this gets lost when people focus only on (e)bikers needing to learn good manners and be nice to other road users. (One should do both of course.)

New comment by orforforof in "Show HN: Long Range E-Bike"

orforforof — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 17:22:40 +0000

I used to ride a motorcycle, now I have an ebike. They seem equally safe to me, which is to say neither are safe at all if there are other people on the road. The only solution is extremely defensive driving/riding, assume no one (including pedestrians) can see you. This attitude has been embedded deeply in the motorcycle culture and is the best way to all-around responsible riders -- and it needs to be propagated to ebike riders. I don't think it's about having manners, really. Also, sound awareness is a myth propagated by Harley riders.

New comment by orforforof in "Taking notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim (2019)"

orforforof — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 23:01:40 +0000

People learn in different ways. Personally, I've always been a "learn by using my hands" person, and in college I was a meticulous note taker. I could never use the method you described, but have met others like that too.

New comment by orforforof in "The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. (2010)"

orforforof — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 16:50:47 +0000

That can be really difficult. Having just read the fantastic addendum in the blog post, "HOW TO: Get tenure", I think there is good information in there for finishing a PhD too. My advice is to not be afraid to bring new ideas to the table at this stage; do what your advisor says to do, but also add in your own ideas. In my experience it is normal for a PhD to follow a course of minor progress for 4 years, followed by major success in year 5 once the student hits on a good direction and (more importantly) is able to recognize that for themselves and push forward, while taking on the risk and responsibility that goes with that. Then things start to click into place, your advisor learns to see you as "ready", you start executing as a team, and stuff gets done fast. Maybe this has no relation to what you're struggling with, but just my 2c.

New comment by orforforof in "Show HN: I built a sonar into my surfboard"

orforforof — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 03:03:55 +0000

Look up acoustic impedance matching. By analogy, your ultrasound technician needs to smear ky jelly (or similar) on your skin to ensure a good connection between the transducer and your flesh. You need an analogous material to make the sonar transmit efficiently into water. You can get special epoxy that works, but off the shelf fiberglass will likely not be very good.

New comment by orforforof in "Show HN: I built a sonar into my surfboard"

orforforof — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 02:44:38 +0000

Bubbles will come and go, unless you're really in the white water (where you probably aren't interested in depths anyway). You'll likely have success if you make a simple software filter like "take the max depth over the past 30 seconds" with some tweaking. You'll get brief glimpses through clear water that you can capture as actual depths. People do this with sonar from jet skis, so don't despair it's a surmountable problem. (Of course those jet ski systems are big and clunky which is why your stuff is cool.)

New comment by orforforof in "Show HN: I built a sonar into my surfboard"

orforforof — Mon, 18 Oct 2021 03:46:22 +0000

I have some expertise here (have used sonar under breaking waves) and I'd say you're spot on. Bubbles act like acoustic black holes, they absorb sound like crazy. Whether you're trying to ping through them in the water, or also if they get stuck on the transducer. The lidar analogy seems apt. The OP speculates that wave breaking noise might be causing interference, but the noise will be way lower frequency than the sonar (ie audible frequencies) so masking by bubbles makes more sense. Any new ideas to mitigate this would be a big deal for sonar!

Also, very cool idea and project!

New comment by orforforof in "Ask HN: What excites you today (technologically speaking)?"

orforforof — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 04:16:21 +0000

I'm excited by the idea that entry level embedded stuff like Arduino and RPi will keep feeding a new generation of tinkerers, in the same way PCs did (speaking as a child of the 80s). With the amount of plug and play sensors and code nowadays, it seems like imagination is the only limiting factor for inventing useful physical things. I suppose this has been going on for a while now, but I'd say we've yet to see the dividends as it takes a generation of kids to start really being creative with the possibilities.