<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: pjbk</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pjbk</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 21:41:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=pjbk" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Understanding the Kalman filter with a simple radar example"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>True. I have often encountered motion controllers where the implementer failed to realize that calculating derived variables like acceleration from position and velocity using a direct derivative formula will violate the Nyquist condition, and therefore yields underperforming controllers or totally noisy signal inputs to them. You either need to adjust your sample or control loop rates, or run an appropriate estimator. Depending on the problem it can be something sophisticated like an LQR/KF, or even in some cases a simple alpha-beta-gamma filter (poor version of a predictor-corrector process) can be adequate.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 05:36:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699664</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699664</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699664</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "John Bradley, author of xv, has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I mostly learned programming GUI applications, in Xwindow and in general, studying the code of xv. The GUI controls were written from scratch using X resources and the code quality was top notch. I remember printing the full source code back in the winter break of 1994 at my university printers since I was going on vacations with my family and I was going to be completely disconnected. I studied the code writing side notes every time I had a moment to relax. Good times. Many thanks, John.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:30:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47538062</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47538062</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47538062</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, for 'The Nine Billion Names of God' the monks finally ended up renting a computer. ;-)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:29:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120007</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120007</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120007</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Towards Autonomous Mathematics Research"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It seems that common sense is very difficult to program. Perhaps because we don't really know how to properly define it or how an encoding of it would look like.<p>All of these models keep trying to convince me they can solve the Post Correspondence Problem.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 02:35:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030268</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030268</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030268</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "New York’s budget bill would require “blocking technology” on all 3D printers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>People print guns and gun parts. More than you think. Now even more since metal printing is starting to become affordable. I print grip and grip attachments for my 9mms and my AR15, trigger guards, barrel clamps, etc. I also find it stupid since, as the article suggests, what kind of algorithm can you implement to do smart detection of something that could be potentially dangerous? Will it also detect negative space? I print inserts in elastic filament with my gun outlines instead of foam (or as foam templates) for my carrying cases. Will the "algorithm" prevent me to do that too? What about my plastic disc thrower toy gun, or my PKD Blaster prop? Both look like guns to me. What about a dumb AI algorithm that lacks common sense?<p>Printing barrels and FCUs -- the fire control unit, which is the only thing tracked and serialized in a gun at least in the US -- is more difficult but not impossible. Actually, building a functional FCU that can strike a bullet primer, or a barrel that can be used once is not difficult at all and if you look around you can find videos of people that have tested that with a mixture of 3d printing and rudimentary metal working skills. The major issues on designing those parts are reliability and safety. In the Philippines there is a full bootleg gunsmith industry dedicated to build illegal guns that match commercial ones in those aspects too.<p>Sadly, instead of having better laws we get fallacy rhetoric by people who probably have never touched, much less fired a gun in their lives.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:17:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873853</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873853</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873853</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Scott Adams has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yet he did a lot of good leaving his money to academia and medical research.<p>I think the Egyptians had it right. Ultimately your heart will be weighted against the feather of Ma'at, and it is up to the goddess to decide. We mere mortals don't know the true intentions and circumstances of other people and their lives to judge, nor to throw the first stone.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 18:21:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605316</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605316</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605316</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Interview Coder Just Leaked Full Names and Companies of All SWEs Who Cheated [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hmmm... So you are telling me in the age of AI you still need to hire software developers that know how to code? How ironic. ;-)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 01:04:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596194</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596194</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596194</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Statements like these always brings me to memory the opening line of Hamming's Numerical Methods book: <i>The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers</i>. It is very easy to get carried away and forget that - in particular today when processing power grows exponentially. Even more when we know there are a myriad of problems that are uncomputable, literally, and human common sense and intuition (insight) are as relevant now as ever.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Dec 2025 06:00:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46201744</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46201744</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46201744</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Lie groups are crucial to some of the most fundamental theories in physics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Correct, the famous d*F=J differential form formulation with one of the versions of the Hodge operator, which I have seen named in several ways. Also depending on your definition of the star operator and current density, you often see this as two equations with Hodge duals, like dF=0 plus d*F=*J. The tensor equivalent can be stated as a single equation or as a set, too.<p>To be fair and looking back at history, the discovery of Maxwell equations, relativity and quantum theory are so intertwined with the discovery, invention and application of new Mathematical ideas, in particular emanating from the work of Hamilton, Grassmann and then Lie, Levi-Civita, Cartan, etc. that is difficult to separate at what extent those concepts influenced over each other in their attempt to explain and describe reality. The ability to express Maxwell equations in a compact form with quaternions before vector calculus was even a thing provides some evidence. One can argue that the classical formulation for electromagnetism could be expressed that way because Hamilton was trying to find the proper framework that could capture his ideas about physics. Fast forward some 60 years and you also have a similar thing happening with Pauli matrices in quantum theory, and the work of Noether in modern physics.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:47:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46145701</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46145701</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46145701</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Lie groups are crucial to some of the most fundamental theories in physics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Indeed you can use symmetry, but it feels more like a mathematical hack, and the fact that it agrees with reality could be a coincidence. You can state that, and there is a lot of evidence for, that nature follows some basic geometrical rules. Applying that through a Lie theory framework on a symplectic manifold to see how charges behave differentially will eventually get you to Maxwell equations because of how those Lie algebras operate. However for me the real revelation was just using the Lienard–Wiechert approach to calculate how charged particles should behave in a relativistic field, which is as simple as it gets, and then see that you can build the full electromagnetic theory on top of that, with the bonus that the formulation is already relativistic. The same resulting symmetry in a corresponding Lie group is consequence of that (nicely captured by Hodge's equation), and invariance or operator rules don't need to be forced.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:55:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142480</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142480</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142480</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Lie groups are crucial to some of the most fundamental theories in physics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What I always miss from this introductory abridged explanations, and what makes the connection between Lie groups and algebras ('infinitesimal' groups) really useful, is that the exponential process is a universal mechanism, and provides a natural way to find representations and operators (eg Lie commutator, the BCH formula) where the group elements can be transformed through algebraic manipulations and vice-versa. That discovery offers a unified treatment of concepts in number theory, differential geometry, operator theory, quantum theory and beyond.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2025 20:18:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139532</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139532</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139532</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Git 3.0 will use main as the default branch"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Which for some of us, Spanish speakers, was on occasion amusing or lewd, depending on the context and culture. The Spanish equivalent is 'tronco' which is very similar and it is slang for a couple of things.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Nov 2025 13:09:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033711</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033711</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033711</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "How the Mayans were able to accurately predict solar eclipses for centuries"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They also mainly continued to be loyal to the Spanish crown after Argentina and Chile went through their independence, and carried out the final pacification of the Mapuche territories in the 19th century. By then only a very small part of the population had not mingled with Europeans.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2025 10:07:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797496</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797496</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797496</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "VST3 audio plugin format is now MIT"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You would have thought they learned from their mistakes implementing VST2, but they doubled down going even further basing VST3 on the Windows Component Object Model. I guess it was a decision to avoid reinventing the wheel, but you can quickly realize it is a very bad model for real time audio plugins and audio host support. The API just exploded in complexity, and testing was a nightmare. In contrast you can tell the U-He developers have all the experience from the trenches.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 07:47:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45679314</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45679314</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45679314</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Rescuer at Fatal Tesla Cybertruck Crash Says Car Doors Wouldn't Open"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Today I drove past a new Tesla Model Y, still with a temporary paper tag. As I was passing by I immediately noticed some pretty heavy water condensation inside one of the lateral tail braking lights. I just rolled my eyes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2025 04:26:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45458984</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45458984</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45458984</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "The manager of Windows on the World survived 9/11 while 79 of his employees died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://archive.is/vKXcG" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/vKXcG</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 05:59:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219045</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219045</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219045</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "How to Draw a Space Invader"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ahh... Brings me memories. Back in the 80s I did something similar after reading Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker and his Biomorph evolution app. I wanted to recreate it but doing something more fun. So I hacked an Atari Logo space invaders game that used genetic programming on the invaders that survived most of the hits based on their shape (some pixels worked as shields) and motion. After 5 levels the game was almost impossible to beat.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2025 15:14:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44962699</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44962699</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44962699</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Who Invented Backpropagation?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>To be fair, any multivariable regulator or filter (estimator) that has a quadratic component (LQR/LQE) will naturally yield a solution similar to backpropagation when an iterative algorithm is used to optimize its cost or error function through a differentiable tangent space.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2025 17:12:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942982</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942982</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942982</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Who Invented Backpropagation?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As it is stated, I always thought it came from formulations like Euler-Lagrange procedures in mechanics used in numeric methods for differential geometry. In fact when I recreated the algorithm as an exercise it immediately reminded me of gradient descent for kinematics, with the Jacobian calculation for each layer similar to an iterative pose calculation in generalized coordinates. I never thought it was something "novel".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2025 16:27:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942431</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942431</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44942431</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pjbk in "Airbrush art of the 80s (2015)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Things have improved. Modern water-based acrylic paints and sealers are much easier to deal with and give you similar if not better results than enamels. There are finally now some decent compact and quiet tank-less electric pump compressors. Cleaning solutions and cheap airbrushes are much better too. Some cheap airbrushes these days have improved designs and materials that make them superior to expensive 80s airbrushes. For example, I just got a Gaahleri Mobius airbrush and it is almost as good as my far more expensive Iwata airbrush, and far better than my old Paasche which cost me a fortune back then. The future looks bright!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2025 06:07:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44909111</link><dc:creator>pjbk</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44909111</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44909111</guid></item></channel></rss>