<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: qwhelan</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=qwhelan</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 05:18:09 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=qwhelan" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've never ridden in Illinois, but yeah:<p>> § 11-1512. Bicycles on sidewalks. (a) A person propelling a bicycle upon and along a sidewalk, or across a roadway upon and along a crosswalk, shall yield the right of way to any pedestrian and shall give audible signal before overtaking and passing such pedestrian.<p><a href="https://codes.findlaw.com/il/chapter-625-vehicles/il-st-sect-625-5-11-1512/" rel="nofollow">https://codes.findlaw.com/il/chapter-625-vehicles/il-st-sect...</a><p>No idea if the lakefront trail is classified as a sidewalk but there are at least some cases in Illinois where either a bell or a "on your left" are legally mandatory.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 04:31:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699283</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699283</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47699283</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Unfortunately in many jurisdictions it is legally required to do that when passing a pedestrian.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:40:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691738</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691738</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47691738</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "More precise elevation data for GraphHopper routing engine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, it's understandable that the real world is messy and user-sourced data can be very suspect.<p>The case I'm thinking of is the eastern end of SR-520 over Lake Washington in the Seattle area. It has hundreds/low thousands of bicycle crossings/day (so surely dozens of Garmin users/day), the background is a dammed freshwater lake with a well known elevation, and clear view of the sky. Yet the elevation data is garbage somehow.<p>It doesn't really matter for planning purposes as any alternative has such a huge delta but it does signal that user data isn't being utilized to refine their data set even on high volume segments.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 21:47:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548745</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548745</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548745</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "More precise elevation data for GraphHopper routing engine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yet it's unclear to what extent they actually use them - on freeway adjacent bike paths that have different gradients than the adjacent freeway (typically steeper), it's very clear Garmin is using data referencing the freeway.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:38:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532641</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532641</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532641</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Geology of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also, part of the City and County of San Francisco!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:35:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46428020</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46428020</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46428020</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "An oral history of Bank Python"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well the login message I was greeted with on every ssh connection certainly threatened criminal prosecution for unapproved software at the extremely large bank I worked at.<p>Unlikely? Sure. But a lawyer somewhere thought it was worth reminding me 10x/day, so going to assume it's possible provided your unauthorized software caused a serious monetary loss.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Nov 2021 13:49:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119172</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119172</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119172</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "An oral history of Bank Python"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also worth mentioning that "unapproved software" on bank infrastructure is what an aggressive prosecutor would call "felony bank hacking".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Nov 2021 16:19:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109056</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109056</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109056</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Preston should listen to research, not insult researchers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also political activists who know how the lottery system works far better than the rest of the population: <a href="https://apnews.com/article/cad8b58711d54b178660a0ce379288a4" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/cad8b58711d54b178660a0ce379288a4</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2021 03:59:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992644</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992644</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27992644</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Caltech Awards 10,000th PhD Degree"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is an explicit rule introduced at the beginning of most Caltech courses, so the norm is that that behavior <i>is</i> cheating due to being warned in advance.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 06:17:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25133734</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25133734</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25133734</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Caltech Awards 10,000th PhD Degree"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Some professors would provide past exams for study aids or use them as homework problems.<p>However, the explicit default was that you should not look at solutions from prior years. Professors would announce at the beginning of the course that they reuse questions and looking at prior years solutions was an honor code violation. I think it's pretty clear it's cheating when the expectations are clearly outlined.<p>If you had inadvertently come across the problem before and independently solved it, you were expected to disclose that as part of your answer. I personally had to do this several times, and never suffered any negative consequences for it, but the expectation for honesty was there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2020 06:12:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25133709</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25133709</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25133709</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Caltech Awards 10,000th PhD Degree"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The opening words of ACM95a my year are seared into my mind:<p>"I would like to apologize to the students who took this course last year. I always aim for a mean exam score of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. Last year's mean was 29 and I will attempt to not repeat the mistake"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2020 02:30:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25119701</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25119701</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25119701</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Caltech Awards 10,000th PhD Degree"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One example of an adversarial university environment is how fraternities and sororities keep copies of exams and assignments from prior years. Professors know cheating is rampant, so have to change the questions every semester.<p>Some courses at Caltech had almost identical exams for at least a decade when I went through. The professors <i>knew</i> cheating like the above simply would not be tolerated by undergrads.<p>I sat on and helped run the Board of Control, which handled academic honor code violations, for several years and professors who had been at other universities would absolutely rave about how much more they could trust Caltech students. And that was while reporting a suspected cheating case to me.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2020 02:24:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25119661</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25119661</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25119661</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Andy Matuschak's Notes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>IIRC, CS1 was a mandatory class for other majors (like MechE) and a course in Scheme was basically hazing from their perspective.<p>I forget if Scheme was moved to a later course or made optional.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2020 16:27:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24295306</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24295306</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24295306</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Andy Matuschak's Notes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As yet another housemate of Andy's at Caltech, it is perhaps worth mentioning that he was also involved in updating Caltech's CS curriculum prior to it becoming as popular as it is today.<p>Hard to say how much of the trend is just what happened everywhere, but CS1 being in Python rather than Scheme probably helped a bit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Aug 2020 06:25:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290663</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290663</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290663</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Justice Department, states likely to bring antitrust lawsuits against Google"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We've come full circle - Amazon has a bookstore chain these days (Amazon Books).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2020 08:08:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23201411</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23201411</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23201411</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Wells Fargo temporarily suspending applications for home-equity lines of credit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Definitely a bit of the former, but JPM and a few other big players have made similar moves.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2020 02:42:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064039</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064039</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064039</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "Wells Fargo temporarily suspending applications for home-equity lines of credit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Happened a month ago: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-wells-fargo-mortga-idUSKBN21O35B" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-wells-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2020 02:07:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23056329</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23056329</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23056329</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "PandaPy has the speed of NumPy and the usability of Pandas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's opt-in to avoid breaking existing behavior. But given that ingestion points are easy to identify, it's pretty straightforward to turn on (especially if you have a schema for your inputs): <a href="https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/integer_na.html" rel="nofollow">https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/inte...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jan 2020 04:29:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144684</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144684</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144684</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "PandaPy has the speed of NumPy and the usability of Pandas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, there's a lot of existing code written assuming the old behavior. But most code has only a few ingestion points, so it's pretty simple to turn on.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jan 2020 04:04:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144585</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144585</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144585</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by qwhelan in "PandaPy has the speed of NumPy and the usability of Pandas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Occurs in pandas 0.25.1 (and the release notes for 0.25.2 and 0.25.3 don't mention such a change), so that would likely be still the case in the latest stable release.<p>It was released in 0.24.0: <a href="https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/integer_na.html" rel="nofollow">https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/inte...</a><p>For example:<p><pre><code>    pd.DataFrame({"foo": [1,2,3,4,None]}, dtype=pd.Int64Dtype())

        foo
    0     1
    1     2
    2     3
    3     4
    4  <NA>

    pd.DataFrame({"foo": [1,2,3,4,None,9223372036854775807,9223372036854775806]}, dtype=pd.Int64Dtype())

                       foo
    0                    1
    1                    2
    2                    3
    3                    4
    4                 <NA>
    5  9223372036854775807
    6  9223372036854775806</code></pre></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jan 2020 02:52:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144313</link><dc:creator>qwhelan</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144313</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22144313</guid></item></channel></rss>