Hacker News: plank

New comment by plank in "Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language"

plank — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:15:44 +0000

I made an app ---- I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve officially launched a new app! This journey has been an incredible masterclass in problem-solving and perseverance. I’m so excited to finally share this vision with the world and continue driving innovation in the space. #BuildingInPublic #Innovation #TechJourney #Entrepreneurship

New comment by plank in "Can I run AI locally?"

plank — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:48:02 +0000

My favourite colour is blue. Oh, no, it is...

New comment by plank in "Euro cops take down cybercrime network with 49M fake accounts"

plank — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 09:03:32 +0000

Yep, I did as well. And visited the site to see how cops used fake accounts...

So... Clickbait title? ;-)

New comment by plank in "Wildthing – A model trained on role-reversed ChatGPT conversations"

plank — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 09:41:20 +0000

It just got into an "we is you" type of interaction. Never got a question myself.

New comment by plank in "How a hawk learned to use traffic signals to hunt more successfully"

plank — Tue, 27 May 2025 16:48:26 +0000

The point the story tries to make is that the Hawk learned traffic signals. That is not necessarily the case. It could be that the hawk just sees that the cars are blocking the sight of the prey.

Still an intelligent action, only does not mean the hawk understands the signal itself.

New comment by plank in "The principles of database design, or, the Truth is out there"

plank — Mon, 19 May 2025 07:39:33 +0000

There are big disadvantages from choosing e g. 5th normal form: any changing in business requirements leads to a big rewrite and data conversion. Never seen successful projects choosing beyond 3rd/BCNF.

New comment by plank in "British naval dominance during the age of sail"

plank — Fri, 16 May 2025 20:38:45 +0000

What I missed in the piece is a description on how they did against the Dutch. Both Spanish and French were more ‘land type’ armies, as a Dutchmen I remember in the history wé were taught that the Dutch punched above their weight on sea warefare.

Indeed, if I had to wager, I would assume that the English against the Portuguese or the Dutch would do worse then against the Spanish or French, given the same firepower/size of ships etc. (For the record, did not check ‘the mighty internet’ whether my gut feelings are supported by facts) (Edit: but -> both)

New comment by plank in "Our narrative prison"

plank — Wed, 14 May 2025 17:59:22 +0000

A variation of the theory that there are only 7 different stories told in (fiction) books.

New comment by plank in "Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2001)"

plank — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 20:32:03 +0000

Have a complete different experience. As a physical major, did a famous Millikan's oil drop experiment. Am a terrible experimentalist (went on to do my PhD in theoretical physics), so we got a charge of about 1/3 of the charge of an electron. Now, as I did not get a Nobel prize, I did not actually measure the charge of a single quark, but still got good enough grades for this study.

New comment by plank in "Andrej Karpathy: "I was given early access to Grok 3 earlier today""

plank — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 19:00:13 +0000

CommunicateD ?

New comment by plank in "I ask this chess puzzle to every new LLM"

plank — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 12:04:01 +0000

Replying to your other questions: Its been a while since I played chess regularly (in a chess club), but:

Two bishops (of different colour) is actually not that difficult. There are some simple heuristics to help you there (an LLM might actually tell you these, haven’t asked;-0)

Bishop+Knight is, in my opinion slightly more complicated, there are some ‘tricks’ necessary to keep the king from running from one courner to the next.

Bishop+bishop is - in most situations - a draw (you need three knights to mate).

New comment by plank in "I ask this chess puzzle to every new LLM"

plank — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:40:18 +0000

But there is a reasoning (see my reply above): winning is not possible (only the queen is strong enough against two bishops), so draw should be the goal. And underpromoting to knight is only way to keep the piece for another move while still promoting.

New comment by plank in "I ask this chess puzzle to every new LLM"

plank — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:37:28 +0000

Winning is not possible: only the queen is strong enough to win against two bishops, and that fails to the check and loss of queen from black tiled bishop.

So draw is most one can get. Underpromoting to knight (with check, thus avoiding the check by the bishop) is the only way to promote and keep the piece another move.

I guess in this situation the knight against two bishops keeps the draw.

New comment by plank in "People are bad at reporting what they eat. That's a problem for dietary research"

plank — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:50:47 +0000

And: I think it is very difficult to gain weight by eating to many cucumbers ;-)

New comment by plank in "A minimax chess engine in regular expressions"

plank — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 10:17:48 +0000

Well, winning with checkmate in just a few moves is also possible (d4 d5 - c4 dxc4 - e4 d8xd4 and after d1xd4, d4c4, c4xc7 and c7xc8 won by checkmate).

I guess playing 'good' chess is not the point, the point is that you can play at all using regexp. (The 'move a2a3 and lose as not considered legal' is more serious then it not actually playing well).

New comment by plank in "The number pi has an evil twin"

plank — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 13:38:45 +0000

Yes. But the question remains: is there a geometrical analogue?

New comment by plank in "Spotify's Plot Against Musicians"

plank — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 13:24:21 +0000

Yes, the /p is the problem (as the person above you stated).

New comment by plank in "When a Crystal Ball Isn't Enough to Make You Rich"

plank — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 13:09:02 +0000

Played the game (from 1M to 2.3M, a batting (?) average of 63.64%). Played big three times: one a big loss, twice a big win. Takeaway from the game: feels a bit like lottery (although I was relatively confident thrice, I was wrong one of those).

New comment by plank in "What is entropy? A measure of just how little we know"

plank — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 08:31:55 +0000

Sure.

Had to do some searching;-)

Info on thesis: https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=0ae63403-264b-4bf0-91c...

The document itself (self hosted) https://gofile.me/7uDSJ/sGJCFD3W7

Probably most important article: (sorry, only abstract): https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.54.24...

New comment by plank in "What is entropy? A measure of just how little we know"

plank — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 15:11:04 +0000

Answers to your questions: 1): all the way to the left, a mirror with a reflectivity|r| of 1 (or a 100%). In the middle an |r| of slightly below 1. Yes, optical, system with photons (a and a^dagger with [a,a^dagger]=1). 2) distance between mirrors 1 and 2: l. Distance mirror 2 and 3:L. (Later taking the limit L/l ==>> infinity) 3) the how is actually correct, I guess the word behaves is missing twice: .... how .... behaves and a .... behaves.