Hacker News: shiandow

New comment by shiandow in "Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau"

shiandow — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 22:06:56 +0000

Nope private data about people is published unintentionally regularly, Netflix history and medical records being some of the notable examples.

People are bad at making the tradeoff because they consistently underestimate the amount of information that is leaked. Forcing them to leak safe amounts of information is the right way.

Not sharing or collecting the data could in some cases be better but there is clear value in this data so the optimal amount to store and make public is not 0.

New comment by shiandow in "Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau"

shiandow — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 21:41:09 +0000

You shouldn't base political decisions on stuff that falls within the margin of error.

Anyway you either ensure any analysis is reproducible or not, if adding noise is one of the steps just make sure to fix the seed.

New comment by shiandow in "Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau"

shiandow — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 18:48:46 +0000

Not really, it has to be random in a predetermined fashion to be considered differential privacy. It is reversible in the way that someone shouting over an aicraft producing white noise is intelligible.

I guess someone could fiddle with the noise, but then why not nudge the originals? Or more insidiously, control what is published?

New comment by shiandow in "Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau"

shiandow — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 18:37:19 +0000

As far as I recall they did have some measures in place. Differential privacy just made it a bit more robust.

Arguably the defaults for differential privacy are too robust but that is a different story.

New comment by shiandow in "Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]"

shiandow — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:38:27 +0000

That's precisely what the phrase means. People are capable of evil acts just to earn more money or advance their career. There is no real malice involved, just wilful ignorance. Though that raises the question whether there even is a meaningful difference between the two.

New comment by shiandow in "Stop the Apple Music app from launching"

shiandow — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:42:54 +0000

I am utterly confused why pressing play would reasonably do anything other than playing something, or possibly pausing something.

New comment by shiandow in "Surveillance is not safety: A statement on the UK's latest threat to privacy [pdf]"

shiandow — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 22:29:49 +0000

The phrase 'banality of evil' comes to mind.

New comment by shiandow in "Vitamin D3 During Pregnancy and Cognitive Performance at 10 Years"

shiandow — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 16:36:00 +0000

Based on how many tests they did and the confidence intervals they got it's associated with fuck all. Doing lots of tests and then pointing to the few where the lower bound of the effect size was marginally above 0 proves very little.

At any rate their main marker for intelligence showed an impressive p=90%, so whatever cognitive effects were present they've not made them any smarter (at 10).

New comment by shiandow in "Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers"

shiandow — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 13:29:01 +0000

Orbital datacenters sound like a dangerous bet. I couldn't think of a worse place for a lot of delecate electronics.

New comment by shiandow in "Only 17% of all 64-bit Integers are products of two 32-bit integers"

shiandow — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:05:07 +0000

Interesting, one of those situations where the odd primes behave slightly differently. Which means it's probably above my paygrade.

I did say things would get complicated.

New comment by shiandow in "Only 17% of all 64-bit Integers are products of two 32-bit integers"

shiandow — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:39:53 +0000

If you bring overflow into the mix things become a lot more complicated. You likely don't even need 32 bits, the numbers 2 and 3 might be enough (I don't know for sure or if there's a quick way to check).

New comment by shiandow in "Memory decline after menopause linked to loss of estrogen production in brain"

shiandow — Sat, 30 May 2026 22:13:09 +0000

It will depend exactly which anti androgen is used. I think you're describing the effects of cyproterone. Spironolactone has other side effects (a lot of them), while triptoreline targets the production of LH and FSH directly and seems to have fewer effects on other systems (though honestly it's a bit hard to tell)

New comment by shiandow in "Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup"

shiandow — Sat, 30 May 2026 16:55:04 +0000

I have never seen a video of Dario Asmodei. Which tells me he's less of a liability than Altman. For now.

New comment by shiandow in "WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants"

shiandow — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:04:30 +0000

It was better not perfect but there is value even just in keeping up the pretense

New comment by shiandow in "Tulip mania: when a single flower was worth more than a house"

shiandow — Fri, 29 May 2026 12:39:18 +0000

Are you asking because you think the LSAT is at odds with the article's description of the mania? Because it is not.

New comment by shiandow in "Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier"

shiandow — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:03:09 +0000

In that case we can indeed safely assume they have no technical knowledge.

New comment by shiandow in "AWS Fired the One Employee Who Gave a Damn"

shiandow — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:01:15 +0000

Reader mode seems to salvage most of it. Though I will never understand why people mess with basic operations like scrolling.

New comment by shiandow in "Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)"

shiandow — Sat, 23 May 2026 08:40:18 +0000

If you try to understand by knowing every little detail it is bound to fail because that attempt only increases the number of things you need to understand.

I think the Buddhist had it right in this instance, if you want to understand yourself completely stop trying to know every little thing and just be aware.

New comment by shiandow in "Scientists “bottle the sun” with a liquid battery that stores solar energy"

shiandow — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:18:48 +0000

They can release it as glucose and oxygen actually, slightly better than just heat.

New comment by shiandow in "Where OpenClaw Security Is Heading"

shiandow — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:04:29 +0000

I know it's probably against the guidelines to comment on it, but any chance you could ask whatever agent is responsible to remove the scroll highjacking? It makes it incredibly tedious to read this article.