Hacker News: piombisallow

New comment by piombisallow in "GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics"

piombisallow — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 05:44:22 +0000

That's also what most grad students are doing. Even in the unlikely case they completely stop improving, it's still a massive deal.

New comment by piombisallow in "Pig lung transplanted into a human"

piombisallow — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 17:54:56 +0000

First heart transplant lived for 18 days post-op, it has to start somewhere.

New comment by piombisallow in "Why Romania excels in international Olympiads"

piombisallow — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 17:35:11 +0000

A lot of British bio/med researchers in the US too

New comment by piombisallow in "What medieval people got right about learning (2019)"

piombisallow — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 11:58:08 +0000

This is a very utilitarian view of learning. Mass education isn't meant just to teach you marketable skills, it's quite explicitly designed to create a shared understanding of the world, a nation. Plus in "medieval" times people also went to church a lot where someone lectured you from a book, with similar goals in mind.

New comment by piombisallow in "H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House"

piombisallow — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:44:20 +0000

IF implemented in a sane manner, I don't see how this is worse than a lottery based system.

New comment by piombisallow in "A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union"

piombisallow — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:41:23 +0000

"Same in the West" lmao, when were scientists executed in the West? The 1500s?

New comment by piombisallow in "Ageing accelerates around age 50 ― some organs faster than others"

piombisallow — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 21:28:09 +0000

Yes it is: "Group selection, which was once widely rejected as a significant evolutionary force, is now accepted by all who seriously study the subject." (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3110649/)

New comment by piombisallow in "Ageing accelerates around age 50 ― some organs faster than others"

piombisallow — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 19:17:42 +0000

Menopause is also an obvious planned partial shutdown (vs males who can reproduce when they're 80) and we're no closer to "curing" it, turning it off.

New comment by piombisallow in "Ageing accelerates around age 50 ― some organs faster than others"

piombisallow — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 19:14:44 +0000

Yes, it's widely accepted that you have variable proportions of individual vs group level selection depending on circumstances.

New comment by piombisallow in "Ageing accelerates around age 50 ― some organs faster than others"

piombisallow — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 18:21:21 +0000

Height is controlled by genes too and you don't get people shorter than 0.5 m or taller than 3 m

New comment by piombisallow in "Ageing accelerates around age 50 ― some organs faster than others"

piombisallow — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 18:00:12 +0000

It's very likely that aging is driven by some kind of scheduled gene program. It makes perfect sense to phase out individuals from a group-level selection point of view.

New comment by piombisallow in "Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers"

piombisallow — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 11:52:13 +0000

Nicotine by itself doesn't cause cancer.

New comment by piombisallow in "US Government announces $200M Grok contract a week after 'MechaHitler'"

piombisallow — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 21:50:10 +0000

Computers are just "doing math" too and the government uses them

New comment by piombisallow in "Optical and Acoustic Super-Radiance via a Microtubule (2024)"

piombisallow — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 19:58:32 +0000

I never understood what the microtubule woo is supposed to answer that isn't answerable by neural network dynamics.

New comment by piombisallow in "Soldier’s wrist purse discovered at Roman legionary camp"

piombisallow — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:52:31 +0000

It would have been bright and shiny when new back then too

New comment by piombisallow in "Machine Learning: The Native Language of Biology"

piombisallow — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 01:53:46 +0000

That's a lot of words, including a sentence that in which the author almost compares himself with Galileo. The proof is in the pudding no? What did you predict with it?

New comment by piombisallow in "Longevity Is Now a Factor When Picking an Embryo for IVF"

piombisallow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:46:08 +0000

One more way to scam desperate parents doing IVF out of their money.

New comment by piombisallow in "OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats"

piombisallow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 14:17:10 +0000

"public interest" is a much more ambiguous thing than the written law

New comment by piombisallow in "OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats"

piombisallow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:53:07 +0000

Regardless of the details of this specific case, the courts are not democratic and do not decide based on the interest of the parties or how many they are, they decide based on the law.

New comment by piombisallow in "How Should We Think About the Renaissance?"

piombisallow — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:36:57 +0000

Riveting bleeding edge research in the humanities - we now use one term instead of another for the same thing.