<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: pfisherman</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pfisherman</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2026 03:57:33 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=pfisherman" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Jason Arday, ex-Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism row, found dead"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t know.  Seems like a distorted sense of justice to me.  I am not so sure that academic fraud is in the same league as committing felonies (like E Holmes).  Also don’t know that anything beyond professional sanction is deserved for professional misconduct (that is not breaking any laws or endangering people).<p>Perhaps their real crimes were not having better PR, or enough money to hire a crisis management firm. Whatever it was, it really seems to have brought out the worst (in) people.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:45:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49309784</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49309784</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49309784</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Jason Arday, ex-Cambridge professor at centre of plagiarism row, found dead"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Many of the comments here in this thread are absolutely vile.  Very few people are undeserving of compassion.<p>I think some of the people in this thread should look themselves in the mirror and ask why feel different in this case than similar cases like Dan Ariely, Amy Cuddy, or Marc Tessier Levigne.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 04:36:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49307672</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49307672</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49307672</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Honey, I shrunk the embeddings: Matryoshka vs. PCA"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nice!  Thank you for doing this.  I am not surprised PCA holds up.  It comes with some pretty strong theoretical guarantees. The problem with it has always been scalability.  The O(n^3) complexity makes it infeasible to use for massive datasets.<p>That is where something like Matryoshka embeddings has appeal.  You trade a little bit of performance for a guarantee of training + validation set coverage.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:36:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232979</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232979</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232979</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "AI's top startups are barely publishing their research"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There are other reasons.  One is for career development of your researchers.  Another is to be good citizens, in good standing, in the community of scientific researchers.  Another is to flex on people and buy class and respectability - to comport oneself as the “old money” does.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 02:45:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105590</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105590</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105590</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "New US homeownership measure puts people first"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think land value tax is misguided.  Issue is what happens to retirees on a fixed income when value of their property increases?  Are they forced from their home to lower priced area? Regardless of how one might feel about the morality of that it is also worth asking whether this might create perverse incentives to become landlords?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 03:04:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49001333</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49001333</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49001333</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "SpaceX stock erases all its gains and slides below IPO price in intraday trading"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My understanding is that an ideally priced IPO should not move much from the opening price in the near term. If it pops it means they left money on the table.  If it drops, then I am not sure what the implication is exactly?<p>Now I think SpaceX is massively overhyped, but is the share price returning to IPO opening not just a sign that the banks accurately estimated something?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:43:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933686</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933686</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48933686</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You could drop the verb clause?  This would make the headline accurate while keeping it punchy.<p>> why Americans switch to soy<p>And<p>> why developers switch to codeberg<p>But the cynic in me thinks that the form of the headline that drastically overstates the the phenomenon in question by implication is something that has been workshopped and is commonly used because it turns something kind of boring into a spectacle.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:41:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844279</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844279</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844279</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "The classifiers Anthropic puts in front of Fable are too zealous"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Same experience with Fable.  Utterly useless for anything bio related.<p>Author of the post here wrote Salmon, which is a widely used bioinformatic tool in molecular biology. And the irony is that Anthropic has probably packaged Salmon as a tool in their Claude for Science suite with now remuneration or recognition for the original author.<p>There has been a lot of recent bs going on in biomed ML with companies publishing without releasing source code, restrictive licenses, etc; which have always given off a whiff of bad citizenship - Ark Institute and Deep Mind I am looking at you - but I feel like this is taking it to a new level.<p>Leveraging open source bioinformatics code and published methods to take in profit selling into the biotech vertical while restricting access to Fable feels downright cancerous.  I think the EA crowd at Anthropic probably has good intentions, but has galaxy brained themselves into becoming bad actors that make Sam Altman and OpenAI look like a paragon of trustworthiness in comparison.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:08:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48841225</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48841225</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48841225</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Heritability of human life span is ~50% when heritability is redefined"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One quick piece of semantic and linguistic housekeeping for the commenters…<p>Heritable != Molecular / Genetic Mechanism<p>There is a conflation of these terms in popular discourse that does a disservice to the field of statistical genetics, imo.  There are mechanisms of inheritance that operate various length / time scales other than that of biological macromolecules.  For example, if you tell me what language your parents natively speak I can tell you your primary language with >90% accuracy.<p>So before we start getting 3 replies deep into any thead, please remember that retrospective observational data measured with unqualified instruments is notoriously confounded and that we can barely infer causal structure in controlled functional genomics experiments (much less a GWAS of phewas).  So let’s all please keep an open mind and not be so certain about our beliefs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 16:19:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123956</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123956</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123956</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Gen Z Resentment Toward AI Grows as Adoption Stagnates and Workplace Fears Mount"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In some ways domain experience can be a hindrance, with ingrained pathways and practices shaped by constraints that no longer apply.  My personal opinion is that you probably want a mix of domain experts who are enthusiastic about AI and some kids who are free of preexisting dogma, and are willing challenge assumptions and try out things that the old heads might chafe at.<p>An example from software engineering is that all production code should undergo meticulous human review. Saying “no” to this sounds crazy to an experienced SWE, but might not actually be that crazy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 16:00:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085017</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085017</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085017</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Gen Z Resentment Toward AI Grows as Adoption Stagnates and Workplace Fears Mount"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t know about this. After some time sitting with it, I think that mid level and senior ICs - especially those slow to adapt - are going to be at risk of getting replaced by entry level “AI native” kids.  Net on net it probably washes out to “normal” patterns of turnover and hiring once things settle.<p>Think “Smithers, we need to hire some of these kids who know computers!” Only fast forward about 30 years and str.replace(“computers”,”agents”).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 13:34:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083859</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083859</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083859</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Apple accidentally left Claude.md files Apple Support app"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The comment above is on to something.  I find CarPlay to much more valuable and much more of a lock in to the iPhone than Siri.  I do not think I could ever go back to using the infotainment systems that ship with cars. So makes sense why they might prioritize over Siri.  And in the context of CarPlay, the simplicity of Siri is nice.  I really only need it to execute a few simple commands like looking up directions, making calls, reading / sending texts, playing a podcast, etc.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 13:19:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974491</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974491</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974491</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No you would not expect all efforts to target AB to work.  You can have the right target and the wrong molecule.  Look at GLP1s as an example.  Multiple pharma companies tried GLP1 receptor agonists for more than a decade and it was not until recently that Novo and Lilly got them to work.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:15:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47929786</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47929786</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47929786</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Why has there been so little progress on Alzheimer's disease?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t quite follow the reasoning behind this being “unbiased”. Studies must be designed to answer specific research question.  What is the question being asked by the study in question.  If the question being asked is whether AB the right target (in humans), then it would need to consider other forms of human evidence, such as genetic evidence, alongside alternative explanations of failure — bad molecule, wrong isoform, bad cohort selection, etc.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:33:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47915980</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47915980</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47915980</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Training mRNA Language Models Across 25 Species for $165"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nice work!  Here is an article you may find helpful if you have not already come across it.[0]. You may also want to consider benchmarking against some non ML methods.[1]<p>0. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35318324/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35318324/</a><p>1. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06127-z" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06127-z</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:11:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642889</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642889</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642889</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "I quit. The clankers won"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents?<p>I saw something similar in ML when neural nets came around. The whole “stack moar layerz” thing is a meme, but it was a real sentiment about newer entrants into the field not learning anything about ML theory or best practices. As it turns out, neural nets “won” and using them effectively required development and acquisition of some new domain knowledge and best practices.  And the kids are ok.  The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.<p>Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:31:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600625</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600625</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47600625</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Vatican Rebukes Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures in Rome"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think Peter Thiel is smart, but exhibiting one of smart people’s most common modes of failure, overestimating one’s ability while not maintaining a healthy sense of skepticism about the correctness of one’s own beliefs.<p>Put simply, he (and many other tech bros) have galaxy brained themselves into some very stupid stuff.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:41:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47478008</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47478008</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47478008</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Elite Overproduction"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, you are not wrong.  The topic is a bit like troll bait for me.  Probably because I have a first hand view of how the current strain of anti intellectualism and resulting policy in the US is destroying jobs and eroding competitive advantage.  My observation is that this type of rhetoric tends to be produced and consumed by “elites”, and is often used to advocate for policy that limits socioeconomic mobility.<p>The irony is that in limiting mobility and competition from the “non elite” out-groups to preserve status, they end up shrinking the overall size of the pie.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:58:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274972</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274972</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274972</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Elite Overproduction"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, and they are currently cleaning our clock when it comes to global competition in science and technology.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:30:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274668</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274668</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274668</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pfisherman in "Elite Overproduction"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We live in a globalized economy. Rapid transport of people, goods, and information necessitates it. The high paying STEM jobs will go to wherever there is an abundance of talent, and the network effects are quite significant.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:28:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274646</link><dc:creator>pfisherman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274646</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47274646</guid></item></channel></rss>