Hacker News: pablobaz

New comment by pablobaz in "Peptides: where to begin?"

pablobaz — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:16:19 +0000

Sorry to hear about your aunt. My condolences. I think your misinterpreted my intent, I would dearly love a good diagnostic test for ME/CFS and agree research has been hugely underfunded.

I have followed closely the research for many years and there has been false promise of good diagnostic tests previously. What I'm arguing for is that we need a test that is specific for ME/CFS. E.g. it will test positive for a patient with ME/CFS regardless of they are obese or not, but more importantly it will not test positive for everyone who is obese. This is known as the sensitivity and specificity of the test.

What I've seen in the past is some previous ME/CFS tests show positive for groups with related symptoms but who don't have ME/CFS. This then becomes a worthless diagnostic tool. For example this would not have helped your aunt.

Hope this explains my thoughts!

New comment by pablobaz in "Peptides: where to begin?"

pablobaz — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:02:49 +0000

I think I would need to see testing on a control group of housebound patients with other conditions to believe this. It's easy for ME testing to pick up markers for being housebound and limited exercise for an extended period of time.

New comment by pablobaz in "A sufficiently detailed spec is code"

pablobaz — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:32:15 +0000

which bits of this do you think llm based agents can't do?

The Bet on Juniors just got Better

pablobaz — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 08:39:59 +0000

Article URL: https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/the-bet-on-juniors-just-got-better

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46286192

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by pablobaz in "Anscombe's Quartet"

pablobaz — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 15:28:22 +0000

Or:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Anscombe

:-)

New comment by pablobaz in "Atlassian terminates 150 staff"

pablobaz — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 19:52:56 +0000

That could work. 15 managers doing 10 1:1 meetings each isn't so hard. It can get tricky with people being on vacation etc. But very possible and normal.

New comment by pablobaz in "The US island that speaks Elizabethan English"

pablobaz — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:12:01 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit0OkNp7s8 This Irish Sheep farmer is my favorite example of a hard to understand Irish accent. I've lived nearby to this location and can attest that it is quite common.

New comment by pablobaz in "The US island that speaks Elizabethan English"

pablobaz — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:04:49 +0000

Some of the west of Ireland accent also reflects pronunciation prior to the Great Vowel Shift. For example pronouncing "tea" as "tay" and "meat" as "mate"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

New comment by pablobaz in "Take the pedals off the bike"

pablobaz — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 08:18:42 +0000

If the child had practiced on a balance bike for balance and a tricycle for pedalling it all comes together quite easily.

New comment by pablobaz in "Mistakes engineers make in large established codebases"

pablobaz — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 23:12:22 +0000

In my experience with very large codebases, a common problem is devs trying to improve random things.

This is well intentioned. But in a large old codebase finding things to improve is trivial - there are thousands of them. Finding and judging which things to improve that will actually have a real positive impact is the real skill.

The terminal case of this is developers who in the midst of another task try improve one little bit but pulling on that thread leads to them attempting bigger and bigger fixes that are never completed.

Knowing what to fix and when to stop is invaluable.

New comment by pablobaz in "Why did people rub snow on frozen feet? (2017)"

pablobaz — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:38:04 +0000

What you are seeing is probably cold induced vasodilation

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4843861/

Incidentally there are some studies that show you get better at it with more frequent exposure. I have kayaked for many years and have found this to be the case - if my hands get cold now, dipping them into the water to further cool then hence opening the veins is very effective if counterintuitive way of warming my hands up.

New comment by pablobaz in "The online sports gambling experiment"

pablobaz — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 22:32:14 +0000

As the article discusses you don't need to ban alcohol you can just make it more awkward: - tax it - restrict the sales by age, location and time(see Nordic countries for a really strict version of this) - minimum unit pricing - warning labels Etc. You can argue if this is the right thing to do or not but it is enforceable and there's good evidence that these measures reduce consumption and harms.

New comment by pablobaz in "Behaviors reveal sophisticated tool use and possible “pranking” among pachyderms"

pablobaz — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 20:52:34 +0000

It goes deeper than that. Fundamental forces have chirality. This was a little controversial when first discovered.

New comment by pablobaz in "The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World"

pablobaz — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 22:55:40 +0000

That's nice! Another one is remembering the phrase: Can I have a large container of coffee please sir.

New comment by pablobaz in "Roll-Invert-Unroll: An easier way to replace a duvet cover"

pablobaz — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 21:45:41 +0000

As a kid we didn't have duvets. It was all sheets and blankets. Duvets were a bit new-fangled so it's not surprising the knowledge wasn't passed down.

New comment by pablobaz in "Roll-Invert-Unroll: An easier way to replace a duvet cover"

pablobaz — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 20:37:21 +0000

IME lots of people just try stuff the duvet in and then shake it to get it in the right place.

New comment by pablobaz in "Roll-Invert-Unroll: An easier way to replace a duvet cover"

pablobaz — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 20:15:33 +0000

My preferred technique is to also start with the cover inside out. Then put your hands inside the cyber into its corners. Then grasp two corners of the duvet through the fabric. A bit of shaking to turn the cover the right way out and you are done.

New comment by pablobaz in "Ask HN: What are good books/blogs to read for a first time CTO?"

pablobaz — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 11:38:35 +0000

Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building

This is a great book for larger team sizes.

https://amzn.eu/d/hnEQvsV

New comment by pablobaz in "Gemini AI"

pablobaz — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 17:41:24 +0000

> "Using the power of Google Tensor G3, Video Boost on Pixel 8 Pro uploads your videos to the cloud where our computational photography models adjust color, lighting, stabilization and graininess."*

I wonder why the power of Tensor G3 is needed to upload your video to the cloud...

*https://blog.google/products/pixel/pixel-feature-drop-decemb...

New comment by pablobaz in "A carbohydrate revolution is speeding up pro cycling"

pablobaz — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 16:44:41 +0000

So many words but so little actual information as to how the increased consumption is now possible.