Hacker News: schrototo

New comment by schrototo in "Alexander Grothendieck Revolutionized 20th-Century Mathematics"

schrototo — Sun, 24 May 2026 06:56:21 +0000

There is an incredible (alas unfinished) multipart Grothendieck biography by the German mathematician Winfried Scharlau: Wer ist Alexander Grothendieck? Anarchie, Mathematik, Spiritualität, Einsamkeit. I think an English translation exists, at least for the first and in my opinion most interesting volume: Anarchy. It mostly deals with Grothendieck’s childhood and his parents, who lived unbelievably fascinating lives as anarchists in pre-war Berlin.

Nobel laureate invents machine that harvests water from dry air

schrototo — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:51:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/21/nobel-laureate-omar-yaghi-invents-machine-that-harvests-water-from-dry-air

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100855

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by schrototo in "Apple releases open-source model that instantly turns 2D photos into 3D views"

schrototo — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 17:13:16 +0000

That is simply not true. The details might vary by jurisdiction and the protection might not be under the exact name of “copyright” but there most certainly are comparable legal protections for the contents of databases (“tables of numbers”). See for example: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intel...

New comment by schrototo in "The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora"

schrototo — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 11:06:44 +0000

Presumably, being able to use Sora to generate some pictures or videos involving Disney characters does not mean being able to actually distribute those pictures or videos, right? Those are still copyrighted characters.

New comment by schrototo in "Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban"

schrototo — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 12:44:10 +0000

It wasn’t an election. One of the more prominent youth groups involved in the protests used Discord to organize and decide internally which leader they should endorse and suggest to the president and army leadership. No one was directly elected on Discord.

New comment by schrototo in "Europe's GDPR privacy law is headed for red tape bonfire within 'weeks'"

schrototo — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 13:26:05 +0000

This is simply not correct. You absolutely DO NOT need to obtain consent for strictly necessary first-party session cookies (such as would be used by an online shopping cart, for example, or to maintain a persistent login) [1].

[1] https://gdpr.eu/cookies/

New comment by schrototo in "Grumpy Cat NFT sold for nearly $80K"

schrototo — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 11:47:33 +0000

I am absolutely implying that blockchain tech is fundamentally useless, and cryptocurrencies doubly so.

New comment by schrototo in "Grumpy Cat NFT sold for nearly $80K"

schrototo — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 11:03:24 +0000

God this is infuriating. Apart from being an obvious scam, NFTs are actively doing harm to the environment. This is not funny, it's just bad. It’s a net negative for humanity.

As, of course, are any and all cryptocurrencies and blockchain-related get-rich-quick schemes. I can’t wait for this whole pyramid to collapse.

New comment by schrototo in "Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement"

schrototo — Fri, 29 May 2020 19:03:31 +0000

The worst effect the GDPR had was on offline bureaucracy. "Data protection" has become the go-to excuse for blocking every single goddamn thing.

New comment by schrototo in "Ask HN: What are your favorite developer-efficiency tips?"

schrototo — Fri, 08 May 2020 23:08:37 +0000

Get enough sleep. [1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.02544.pdf

New comment by schrototo in "A Case Study of Complex Table Design"

schrototo — Fri, 08 May 2020 06:45:47 +0000

The font change seems like a wash to me. Notice how the decimal points and thousands separators for the balance column don't line up in either of the screenshots? A change that would actually improve readability would be to use tabular numbers, supported by both San Francisco and Inter.

Great White Robot God: Artificial General Intelligence and White Supremacy

schrototo — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 10:41:08 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@davidgolumbia/the-great-white-robot-god-bea8e23943da

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18996967

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by schrototo in "Blood money: Bayer's inventory of HIV-contaminated blood products"

schrototo — Sun, 25 Nov 2018 19:05:26 +0000

Abstract:

This article presents an overlooked case of research misconduct and violations of basic principles of medical and business ethics. When Bayer's Cutter Laboratories realized that their blood products, Factor VIII and IX or antihemophiliac factor (AHF), were contaminated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the financial investment in the product was considered too high to destroy the inventory. Cutter misrepresented the results of its own research and sold the contaminated AHF to overseas markets in Asia and Latin America without the precaution of heat treating the product recommended for eliminating the risk. As a consequence, hemophiliacs who infused the HIV-contaminated Factor VIII and IX tested positive for HIV and developed AIDS.

Full article: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24785...

Blood money: Bayer's inventory of HIV-contaminated blood products

schrototo — Sun, 25 Nov 2018 19:03:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24785997

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18528291

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

How Bitcoin made right-wing conspiracy theories mainstream

schrototo — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 16:48:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.salon.com/2018/06/08/how-bitcoin-made-right-wing-conspiracy-theories-mainstream/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17278916

Points: 12

# Comments: 5

Activists Are Already Targeting Google and Facebook Over GDPR

schrototo — Fri, 25 May 2018 09:14:33 +0000

Article URL: http://fortune.com/2018/05/25/google-facebook-gdpr-forced-consent/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17151836

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by schrototo in "Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM"

schrototo — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 19:11:15 +0000

Neither of the articles you link to say that unionisation is the reason for the ongoing shift to contract work, or even mention unions at all...

If anything, (stronger) unions are exactly what contract workers need.

What caused the shift to contract work? Greed. Greedy employers who don't want to give up the tiniest bit of profit to pay for living wages, health benefits, retirement plans or workplace safety, and then have the gall to re-brand deregulation as freedom.

New comment by schrototo in "Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM"

schrototo — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 13:31:05 +0000

Why is there a need to reconcile? Worker’s rights trump ROI. If you can’t run a profitable company without discriminating against and exploiting your workers, you shouldn’t run a company at all.

Also, look towards more socialist countries (e.g. Germany), for practical strategies to keep making money while at the same time ensuring people don’t get exploited. Hint: empowering workers, letting them unionize and collectively bargain, treating them as humans rather than “Human Resources”, will not actually significantly decrease your ROI.

New comment by schrototo in "Bezos Says He’ll Spend ‘Amazon Lottery Winnings’ on Space Travel"

schrototo — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 22:24:06 +0000

How about he spend it on paying his workers a living wage?

What do scientists think about the biological claims in the Google Manifesto?

schrototo — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 21:27:42 +0000

Article URL: https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin?srid=2n17&share=1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14984473

Points: 19

# Comments: 1