Hacker News: sgirard

New comment by sgirard in "AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford"

sgirard — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:14:50 +0000

This is interesting. I don't know how the AI agent guidelines will be enforced because there will always be a model outside the curriculum that a student can use to bypass the guidelines. Encouraging academic integrity is useful but requires the student to buy into the idea that they are paying for an education, not a diploma. This is a tough problem and I have been wondering how CS departments are incorporating AI into the curriculum while encouraging appropriate use in a learning environment.

New comment by sgirard in "More Mac malware from Google search"

sgirard — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:52:29 +0000

I imagine that an AI agent like OpenClaw, if given browser access and system control with Peekaboo or similar could easily fall prey to this attack.

New comment by sgirard in "Blogging in 2025: Screaming into the Void"

sgirard — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 17:52:32 +0000

Write for yourself, because you enjoy writing, and don't worry whether anyone reads your writing. If someone reads it and enjoys it, all the better. If not, your personal satisfaction is the reward.

New comment by sgirard in "Neurotoxic worms growing up to 3ft long are in Ontario, Canada"

sgirard — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:08:23 +0000

How did these hammerhead worms arrive in Ontario? As for earthworms, are they native to Ontario? I thought I had read that earthworms are not native to the glaciated parts of North America.

New comment by sgirard in "Fossil is quitting smartwatches"

sgirard — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 23:43:27 +0000

I put the Apple Watch on the charger while I'm in the shower/getting dressed and it feels like the charge lasts indefinitely. It charges pretty fast.

New comment by sgirard in "A new 66M-year history of carbon dioxide offers little comfort for today"

sgirard — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 16:33:23 +0000

It's rarely discussed because it's impossible to have an open-minded discussion about climate change.

New comment by sgirard in "Leaving Twitter"

sgirard — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 20:10:35 +0000

It started off well. I thought this idea was insightful:

"This is often the real challenge to tech incumbents: once the network effects are locked in, it’s very hard to get people to switch to something that’s roughly the same but 10% better - they switch to something that solves one underlying need in an entirely new way."

Then it devolved into a rant about Nazis.

New comment by sgirard in "WiFi can read through walls"

sgirard — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 19:16:06 +0000

I would love to be able to image elements inside a wall cavity: studs, pipes, ductwork, electrical lines. I don't know if it's possible with this technique, but maybe someday these ideas will lead to something like an x-ray for building structures.

New comment by sgirard in "Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock"

sgirard — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 20:06:30 +0000

I find it interesting because it raises questions that I don't have answers to. For example:

- What caused the temperature above Greenland to be 5°C warmer than today? Why is it cooler now compared to 120,000 years ago? What causes the interglacial periods? Is glaciation the more common state of the climate?

- The article says the ice sheet is melting at the bottom? Why? Pressure from above? Friction from movement? Heat from the Earth? Something else?

- Was the ice sheet shrinking or growing when the temperatures above Greenland were 5°C warmer than now? Does existence of the ice sheet imply that 5°C warmer for some period of time is not enough to melt the Greenland ice sheet?

- How much climate data has been lost to melting from the bottom? Is the ice sheet thickening or thinning compared 120,000 years ago? How would we know?

- How much has the Greenland land mass moved in 120,000 years due to plate tectonics? Could this have impacted the ice sheet in this short amount of time?

- Humans adapt. How did humans adapt to a climate that was warmer by up to 5°C 120,000 years ago?

- How long did the warm temperatures persist 120,000 years ago? 10,000 years? 50,000 years? Or more?

- Could a cooling climate be more worrisome to humanity than a warming one?

New comment by sgirard in "Ice core scientists in East Greenland reach bedrock"

sgirard — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 16:53:20 +0000

Interesting: "Towards the base, the ice is more than 120,000 years old and dates back to the last interglacial period, a time when the atmospheric temperature above Greenland was 5°C warmer than today."

New comment by sgirard in "Ask HN: What are some good non-subscription Mac apps?"

sgirard — Tue, 10 May 2022 15:10:45 +0000

SnippetsLab https://www.renfei.org/snippets-lab/

I keep project notes in SnippetsLab. The Markdown support is great and I output really nice looking PDF files when I need to share something professional looking with management.