Hacker News: strangeloops85

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

strangeloops85 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:47:49 +0000

The energy economics in space are also a bit more complicated than usually thought. I think Starlink has been using Si cells instead of III-V-based ones, but in addition to lower output they also tend to degrade faster under radiation. I guess that's ok if the GPU is going to be toast in a few years anyway so you might as well de-orbit the whole thing. But that same solar cell on Earth will happily be producing for 40+ years.

Also the same issue with radiative cooling pops up for space solar cells - they tend to run way hotter than on Earth and that lowers their efficiency relative to what you could get terrestrially.

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Data centers in space makes no sense"

strangeloops85 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:38:19 +0000

The elephant in the room for all lunar scenarios is lunar regolith. Even ignoring the toxicity to humans (big problem and will happen quite quickly for any humans there!), it will be a big long-term problem for robots and machinery in general.

Gut bacteria have evolved rapidly to digest starches in ultra-processed foods

strangeloops85 — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:47:52 +0000

Article URL: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/gut-bacteria-evolved-rapidly-digest-starches-ultra-processed-foods

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307653

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA"

strangeloops85 — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 21:40:33 +0000

Really outrageous extortion. UCLA and UC as a whole are running budget deficits and facing reduced state support (as well as the grant cancelations). There's simply no money for this and the white house knows it.

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"

strangeloops85 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 18:05:26 +0000

The particular type of fraud described here (paper mills etc.) is less common in the U.S. (different types of fraud may exist but that's more subtle and complex). There tend to be specific geographic clusters associated with this behavior that have to do with how university expansions have been done in many countries.

Oddly enough, pre-LLMs, I would have said most of these crap paper mill papers didn't really affect the actual fields. Yes, they cited each other but outside the citation ring didn't really alter the field in a knowledge sense. But now.. if these get picked up in Deep Research it's a problem.

New comment by strangeloops85 in "OpenAI claims gold-medal performance at IMO 2025"

strangeloops85 — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:24:44 +0000

It’s interesting how hard and widespread a push they’re making in advertising this - at this particular moment, when there are rumors of more high level recruitment attempts / successes by Zuck. OpenAI is certainly a master at trying to drive narratives. (Independent of the actual significance / advance here). Sorry, there are too many hundreds of billions of dollars involved to not be a bit cautious and wary of claims being pushed this hard.

New comment by strangeloops85 in "OpenAI claims gold-medal performance at IMO 2025"

strangeloops85 — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:16:24 +0000

I assume there was tool use in the fine tuning?

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship"

strangeloops85 — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:17:17 +0000

To those saying all you need is a lot of radiators.. remember that the radiators themselves gain heat from both sunlight and the Earth itself. It is a surprisingly tricky problem and, yes, all heat can be dissipated to achieve a desirable set point given sufficiently large area. But it is certainly not easier than just having say an economizer and dropping the data center in Iceland or a cold place. Makes no sense

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College"

strangeloops85 — Wed, 07 May 2025 16:39:04 +0000

At least for many engineering and science disciplines a solution remains to force students to actually try to learn the material: in-class, closed book exams. Nothing is ideal, but this does force students to actually engage with the material and problems. They are welcome to use LLMs all they want to help them study (though they should be careful given how often I catch them making horrible mistakes in my discipline). But the assessment will be of them and their brain.

NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones

strangeloops85 — Thu, 01 May 2025 23:04:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01396-2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43864339

Points: 112

# Comments: 11

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?"

strangeloops85 — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:41:48 +0000

Public schools in the US get a relatively small fraction of their budget from state funding. The distinction between public and private is not as large or substantial as one might imagine.

For example the 10-campus UC system's total budget is $54 billion of which $4.6 billion comes directly from the state's general fund. https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4998 - the federal funding here is the same as for private universities, to do research or other work in the form of contracts/ grants.

New comment by strangeloops85 in "NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy"

strangeloops85 — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 20:04:28 +0000

I have to wonder what DOGE (including the alleged wunderkind Farritor that all the SV VCs were hailing) is planning for NSF. It’s amazing the arrogance of these people, to walk in and just do “hulk smash” on decades of hard work, infrastructure and institutional capacity.

FDIC to Cut 1200 Jobs

strangeloops85 — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 16:05:13 +0000

Article URL: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/fdic-aims-to-cut-1-200-jobs-as-trump-workforce-purge-continues

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43763700

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

Doge sets up shop at the National Science Foundation

strangeloops85 — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 21:44:08 +0000

Article URL: https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-halts-grant-awards-while-staff-do-second-review

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43710743

Points: 12

# Comments: 0

Trump Administration Wants to Install Federal Oversight of Columbia University

strangeloops85 — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 23:30:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/columbia-consent-decree-trump-federal-funding-2f4c4690

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648917

Points: 18

# Comments: 2

Department of Agriculture's National Plant Germplasm System Under Threat

strangeloops85 — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 17:30:08 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/opinion/doge-elon-musk-usda-crops.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447286

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

University of California orders hiring freeze, cuts

strangeloops85 — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 18:57:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-03-19/university-of-california-hiring-freeze-budget-trump-funding-cuts

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43416000

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

The Explosive Meeting Where Trump Officials Clashed with Elon Musk

strangeloops85 — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 17:28:36 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-power.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43292102

Points: 29

# Comments: 5

New comment by strangeloops85 in "Words for the Heart: A treasury of emotions from classical India"

strangeloops85 — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 04:36:11 +0000

This is perhaps a simplistic observation, but Bhartrihari’s linguistic idealism connects with how LLMs and their apparent intelligence is fundamentally language-driven. He would argue that is sufficient since our reality is fundamentally linguistic in nature:

“ Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it.”

Doge seeks to cancel lease on key NOAA computing facility

strangeloops85 — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:13:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/03/doge-noaa-weather-building-leases-trump

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43248492

Points: 64

# Comments: 22