Hacker News: pneumonic

New comment by pneumonic in "Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged"

pneumonic — Fri, 08 May 2026 19:09:14 +0000

It doesn't help that your first sentence makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist riding his hobby horse. I read on despite that, but others may not.

New comment by pneumonic in "Technical Details on Today's Outage"

pneumonic — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 03:09:04 +0000

> we are doing a "root cause analysis to determine how this logic flaw occurred"

That's going to find a cause: a programmer made an error. That's not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is allowing such an error to be released (especially obvious because of its widespread impact).

New comment by pneumonic in "Show HN: An ad free temporary mail service"

pneumonic — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 09:41:34 +0000

The problem with using gmail variants is it's easy to transform terr.yc.ody+abc@gmail.com into terrycody@gmail.com, and spammers or spammer suppliers can do that automatically.

New comment by pneumonic in "Alaska Airlines 737 Max makes emergency landing due to depressurization"

pneumonic — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 09:52:00 +0000

In 2000, an Alaska MD-80 went down, killing all 88 onboard. The NTSB found that it was apparently due to failing to adequately lubricate the tail jackscrew, as required by manufacturer documentation, not just once, but in at least two successive scheduled maintenance periods. Also, Alaska had been increasing, with FAA approval, the period between scheduled maintenence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261

New comment by pneumonic in "Asking 60 LLMs a set of 20 questions"

pneumonic — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 04:23:05 +0000

Siblings and half-siblings are not the same.

New comment by pneumonic in "Motorola phones receiving random notification: “Test for Ricardo”"

pneumonic — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:32:14 +0000

There's a thread on Reddit r/TechSupport on this. Moto phones worldwide getting the notification.

New comment by pneumonic in "Test for Ricardo"

pneumonic — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:30:51 +0000

There's a thread on Reddit r/TechSupport on this. Moto phones worldwide getting the notification.

New comment by pneumonic in "Where in the USA is this?"

pneumonic — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 23:16:04 +0000

The instructions do say:

> Each day, a random location is generated, along with five photos within five miles.

So the pictures are all within 53,000 feet of each other (10 miles). Note that the random location is just some point, and probably not in a town or city.

New comment by pneumonic in "The Reddit blackout has left Google barren and full of holes"

pneumonic — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:37:53 +0000

That is exactly where LLMs are useful. (People thinking of them as "AI", meaning AGI is just so wrong. Writing legal briefs??) Using them to ex post facto adjust transcripts in order to make them available and searchable is great.

New comment by pneumonic in "Always the same warning signs"

pneumonic — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 17:30:15 +0000

La Round, er, Laronde, seems to have a singular focus.

New comment by pneumonic in "Reddit Strike Has Started"

pneumonic — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 19:09:30 +0000

True, but luckily they don't intrude on the community or impact the Wikipedia site too much beyond their ever more frequent "We desperately need donations" campaigns. As the Foundation has gotten richer, its desire for more milk from its Wikipedia cash cow has only grown.

New comment by pneumonic in "Roger's little rule book (2008)"

pneumonic — Sat, 20 May 2023 02:00:34 +0000

> "Do not make challenges you are cannot to back up."

One of his rules. I was ready to stop reading anyhow.

New comment by pneumonic in "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: From Plausible to Proven (2013)"

pneumonic — Mon, 15 May 2023 06:23:44 +0000

It seems to be a blog post titled "Galileo’s great bluff and part of the reason why Kuhn is wrong." by Thony Christie dated Nov. 12, 2010, at https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/galileo%E2%80%99s-gr... Google led me there.

New comment by pneumonic in "The evolutionary innovations that wait millions of years to come good"

pneumonic — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 23:19:10 +0000

Don't waste your time on this article; it's just a collection of anecdotes with a thin thesis for which it gives no supporting evidence.

New comment by pneumonic in "Google DeepMind"

pneumonic — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 22:09:21 +0000

Sounds like some key people will be leaving "Google Deepmind" in the next few months.

New comment by pneumonic in "Google DeepMind"

pneumonic — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 21:29:06 +0000

> Digital with Western Digital

Digital (DEC) had no substantial connection with Western Digital; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Digital#History

New comment by pneumonic in "New study sheds light on how amino acids “evolved”"

pneumonic — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 20:17:50 +0000

Selection is what the article describes (solubility and structure). They don't claim that they reproduced; they're just talking about amino acids that come about by non-reproductive chemical processes.

New comment by pneumonic in "Quordle"

pneumonic — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 07:39:14 +0000

Four at a time may be overkill; the two at a time that Dordle offers (linked from Quordle) seems more my speed.

New comment by pneumonic in "With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment"

pneumonic — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:03:52 +0000

“I advise strongly against trying to pursue ketamine, commercially or clinically, because of safety concerns and the risk of losing our opportunity to study it rigorously,” said Kolevzon [the clinical director]

Research to gain quality evidence is good, but sometimes other considerations outweigh that. Visible improvement in the sufferers of a rare disease may be such a case.

New comment by pneumonic in "Soil bacteria could improve crop yields, via fungi"

pneumonic — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 22:15:27 +0000

> 'Among the hyphae microbiomes were... “bacterial predators” that kill and eat other bacteria by causing them to burst and release their contents.'

This occurring at the surface of the hyphae may provide phosphate and nitrogenous compounds that the fungus can absorb.