Hacker News: smfjaw

New comment by smfjaw in "Oxide raises $200M Series C"

smfjaw — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:56:41 +0000

Yea agree, I worked at a bank during covid and helped do some work that tangentially helped relief/social security payments go through. Warmed me heart it did

New comment by smfjaw in "Remarks on AI from NZ"

smfjaw — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:32:18 +0000

Don't feel left out, big data architect in NZ and didn't even hear of this.

New comment by smfjaw in "DARPA exploring growing bio structures of "unprecedented size" in microgravity"

smfjaw — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 22:04:32 +0000

the flood!

New comment by smfjaw in "NOAA's public weather data powers the local forecasts on your phone and TV"

smfjaw — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:47:31 +0000

NOAA is fantastic, I was alpine climbing in the very bottom of south america near El Chalten and NOAA is pretty much the only place to get a reliable forecast down there. Fantastic service.

New comment by smfjaw in "When are two proofs essentially the same? (2007)"

smfjaw — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 01:04:03 +0000

computational reducibility/irreducibility is a big topic in computer science and is incredibly interesting. It allows us to prove that certain "computers" are the same through proofs and that they can carry out the same tasks regardless of the actions that take place within them. I would suggest looking into that as it really opens your eyes to just how similar computationally so many things are

New comment by smfjaw in "My business card runs Linux and Ultrix (2022)"

smfjaw — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 02:00:58 +0000

subtle off green PCB, my god, that's really nice

New comment by smfjaw in "Belenios: Verifiable online voting system"

smfjaw — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 04:22:47 +0000

I wonder why no one has introduced a hybrid of the two, for example, you have a private key on your Gov ID, you turn up to the polling station, sign your paper with your ID, bob's your dads brother.

Seems like this would solve the ballot stuffing issues as well as being easily electronically verifiable, it's just not a fully digital solution

New comment by smfjaw in "Amazon's exabyte-scale migration from Apache Spark to Ray on EC2"

smfjaw — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 22:45:24 +0000

I work in finance and it's great having big historical datasets, even if the figures are far lower in previous years it's good to see system 'shocks' and these can be used at a different magnitude/scaled for future forecasting

New comment by smfjaw in "Why Discover is no American Express"

smfjaw — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 03:06:52 +0000

Amex isn't very popular in my country but they meet a really good intersection between the old school white glove service and an easily usable hassle free modern service

New comment by smfjaw in "Pay $1 to Hear Wu-Tang Clan’s Secret Album (Eventually)"

smfjaw — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 23:47:04 +0000

I imagine the "talks" amount to one of them (probably ghostface) telling them to go f themselves

New comment by smfjaw in "Ask HN: Why don't VCs just "suck it up" and pay founders a competitive salary?"

smfjaw — Tue, 21 May 2024 21:36:37 +0000

I grew up lower middle class, which gave me a good hunger to go to college, get a degree and make some money. VCs are trying to incentivise that same mindset except by making with riches equity instead of opportunity

New comment by smfjaw in "Non-code contributions to open source"

smfjaw — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 19:54:21 +0000

It's a great thing to do, I get the warm fuzzies when I help someone on a mailing list,even on big projects like Apache Spark, I'm not the smartest guy and can't help write a query planner but if I can help someone fix a bug it's good enough for me

New comment by smfjaw in "Pooled number of deaths by age group in EU"

smfjaw — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 22:38:33 +0000

that's such a sad statistic, people in the prime of their life, mainly caused by being out enjoying life at the wrong time

New comment by smfjaw in "Infinite Craft"

smfjaw — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:28:10 +0000

My computer programs always crashed in my first year of college, clear sign computers fail spectacularly

New comment by smfjaw in "Prediction markets have an elections problem"

smfjaw — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 01:21:00 +0000

you took on the settlement risk and got paid for it, if you look into financial markets and central clearing and OTC contracts, central clearing/exchanges effectively get rid of that issue.

New comment by smfjaw in "Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated"

smfjaw — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 01:08:30 +0000

I somehow think the ccp might look favourably and ignore some liabilities if someone else becomes the new bag holder, you know, saving their RE industry and stuff

New comment by smfjaw in "[dead]"

smfjaw — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 02:35:49 +0000

seems you missed a vital step of selecting something after your search

New comment by smfjaw in "Due to AI, "We are about to enter the era of mass spying," says Bruce Schneier"

smfjaw — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 20:58:04 +0000

I was being a bit naive/non-descript in my first comment but I'm a pretty firm believer they already had some secret sauce that could do the same job of summarising the information they collect into a human useable level

New comment by smfjaw in "Due to AI, "We are about to enter the era of mass spying," says Bruce Schneier"

smfjaw — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 20:24:56 +0000

Haven't we been in that era since the Patriot Act and Five Eyes?

New comment by smfjaw in "The United Arab Emirates' takeover of African forests"

smfjaw — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 21:56:16 +0000

Cambridge did a great study on how 'real' these credits are https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/carbon-credits-hot-air