Hacker News: tatrajim

New comment by tatrajim in "Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip"

tatrajim — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 23:53:53 +0000

The AVP has greatly enhanced my productivity through access to a large virtual mac window inside a variety of environments, facilitating deep focus while reclining, sitting outdoors, or traveling. And the 3D image conversion of treasured photos is remarkable. On the whole, I've used it near daily for over a year and a half, and marvel at how many naysayers there are.

New comment by tatrajim in "Derivation and Intuition behind Poisson distribution"

tatrajim — Sat, 03 May 2025 13:58:47 +0000

Famously used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow. The notion of obtaining a distribution of random rocket attacks blew my young mind and prompted a life-long interest in the sturdy of statistics.

New comment by tatrajim in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

tatrajim — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 06:26:01 +0000

They burned the church and tried to break into the White House forcing an evacuation of the president! The 1/6 riot, by contrast, was by turns both violent and civil, but no one was armed and attempting "to overthrow the election results". In fact the Trump plan of continuous debate over the merits of the election was thwarted by the riot. It was diametrically opposed to his interests and ended up favoring the Democrats. Many questions still linger over the identities of major participants, including the "pipe bomber" and the "scaffold commander", whom the FBI unaccountably never identified. Note that the 1/6 participants were relentlessly tracked by the state for years by some 6000 FBI agents and tried in DC courts, unlike the 2020 rioters aiming to storm the White House.

New comment by tatrajim in "The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE"

tatrajim — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 03:13:54 +0000

Remember May 31, 2020?

"Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.

"Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The account was confirmed by an administration official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds."

As near as I can find, some 6 people were arrested for this violent protest by the Secret Service, and some 16 by DC police. Is is vanishingly difficult to find if anyone was subsequently charged and convicted for this event, which was without parallel, at least in my lifetime. This followed the events of May 30, 2020, when the Church of St. John's Episcopal In Lafayette Square, across from the White House, was sent on fire. To date it seems that no one has been arrested or charged for this destruction.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-george-f...

New comment by tatrajim in "DeepSeek advances could heighten safety risk, says Yoshua Bengio"

tatrajim — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:11:53 +0000

A fair point. Amidst the nationalistic preening over DeepSeek, the question of what the unintended consequences of an all-out AI arms race are lies fallow. Apart from everything else, it is tantamount to an information war, with competitions versions of the human past vying for supremacy.

New comment by tatrajim in "DeepSeek releases Janus Pro, a text-to-image generator [pdf]"

tatrajim — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 02:46:05 +0000

I've lived and roamed across much of China, studied in Taiwan and South Korea, and know Japan and Hong Kong well. Many Chinese are indeed great, but in the end the Chinese tendency to game every possible system, make clever use of naive 老外 to advance themselves, and just shamelessly appropriate IP ("hey, they did it too in the 18th century, and remember the Opium War!") has massively turned me off China generally. Not to mention the 50,000 RMB bounty now offered in China for reporting a "foreign spy". The recent TV drama 赤热 (English title: Silicon Wave, available with subtitles on youtube) shows the whole China nationalist tech narrative in vivid relief, including "veiled racism" against Americans, e.g. the depiction of the Chinese protagonist's American mentor at UC Berkeley. And just look at the history and career of Li Kaifu and the cavalier way he has treated all the benefits he received in the US turned into promoting the glorious 祖国. Foolish 老外 indeed.

New comment by tatrajim in "DeepSeek releases Janus Pro, a text-to-image generator [pdf]"

tatrajim — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:16:26 +0000

Is it "veiled racism" to point out how China continues to wield the great firewall that effectively blocks most internet users from outside news and entertainment while Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan et al. do not? The basic world view in China of 天下 -- the universal dominion of China. Hence the general unpopularity of China in Vietnam, South Korea, and japan.

New comment by tatrajim in "Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro"

tatrajim — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 23:59:39 +0000

No, it's still rolling out globally, and has a growing group of owners, particularly using AVP for productivity applications after the recent system software update allowing ultrawide screen sharing of mac screens. See /r/visionpro on reddit for developer chatter and the latest developments.

New comment by tatrajim in "Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro"

tatrajim — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 23:56:01 +0000

Perhaps around 400K sold? Production to date is said to be limited by Sony. The AVP is very much alive, especially with the recent system software update allowing ultrawide viewing of mac screens. See the reddit group /r/visionpro for lively discussion of the latest developments.

New comment by tatrajim in "Google search won't autocomplete searches related to Trump assasination attempt"

tatrajim — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 20:32:19 +0000

Not sure about this. There have been multiple Congressional hearings that produced continuing nuggets of information, provoking yet more speculation.

And in the past 24 hours ABC had a rather shocking interview with the local police revealing that: "The local SWAT team assigned to help protect former President Donald Trump on July 13 had not had any contact with the Secret Service agents in charge of security before a would-be assassin opened fire, those officers told ABC News. . . . We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened," said Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the SWAT team in Beaver County, Pennsylvania."

This report seems sure to fuel further rounds of speculation concerning the abnormal security arrangements.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/failure-communication-local-...

New comment by tatrajim in "Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate"

tatrajim — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 12:15:24 +0000

Gives power to the permanent committee staff members and lobbyists who have institutional memory and social networks. No legislator could possibly understand all the nuances of policy with such short limits. Four terms, say, as a Senator and eight as a House member would be more practical.

New comment by tatrajim in ""AI", students, and epistemic crisis"

tatrajim — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:36:06 +0000

And, on a related note for education, AI is quickly obviating the need to master and plumb the depths of foreign languages. Dating myself, doubtless, but as an undergraduate, it was an unalloyed joy to study ancient Greek and read Plato and Euripides in the original, however haltingly. And later Korean, Japanese, and Chinese beckoned providing a lifetime of rich understanding of life outside the confines of English. For Americans, at least, perhaps ours is the last generation that will seek rewire our understanding of reality through linguistic hacking.

New comment by tatrajim in "The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs"

tatrajim — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 04:42:57 +0000

The shift in the US from the 1980s to banning forced retirement age has only added to the trend toward accruing and maintaining status through navigating an established, and increasingly sclerotic, hierarchy. The quest for lifelong tenure has become increasingly and necessarily political as the length of future job security has extended into one's 80s.

New comment by tatrajim in "The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs"

tatrajim — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 04:37:54 +0000

Thanks be for online investing. It's been my place of economic refuge to fund my lifelong impracticality.

New comment by tatrajim in "Proof of geometric Langlands conjecture so complex almost no one can explain it"

tatrajim — Thu, 23 May 2024 14:56:06 +0000

The ABC Conjecture and Mochizuki's IUT theory comes to mind.

New comment by tatrajim in "This is a teenager"

tatrajim — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 04:17:21 +0000

As an anecdote on the topic of education, as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in rural South Korea in the 1970s, I routinely visited secondary schools that (at the time) were little more than drab warehouses for large (-70 students/class) using ragged textbooks and ancient furniture. Spirits were high, though, and these farm kids were successfully learning math through basic differential calculus plus a daunting array of other subjects.

Thereafter, I have only felt (perhaps unfairly) mild contempt for the perennial whining of US critics who blame low funding for educational failing in the public schools. In my opinion the blame lies elsewhere, starting with the family.

New comment by tatrajim in "I Lost Faith in Kagi"

tatrajim — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 08:59:47 +0000

I use Kagi many times daily for search and for access to Clause 3 Opus. Can't say I care about t-shirts. Keep up the good work.

New comment by tatrajim in "U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly"

tatrajim — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 02:42:05 +0000

And in my circle, my home address, the kind of car I drive, the universities I attended, and the places I vacation all affect -- subtly and sometimes more blatantly -- my relationships. Are you arguing for absolute uniformity across all choices in life?

New comment by tatrajim in "U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly"

tatrajim — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 02:12:29 +0000

Sounds like you need new colleagues. Why would you wish to be part of such a snobbish group? I fail to see why anti-trust law should be brought to bear on issues concerning teen fads. How about wearing the right kind of sneakers? Branded purses, handbags? Parkas? Should uniformity reign universal across all consumer products lest someone, somewhere be excluded to a faddish distinction?

New comment by tatrajim in "U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly"

tatrajim — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 02:05:43 +0000

So the technology of a global company must be hobbled and regulated because of US parents being so foolish as to allow their teens access to age-inappropriate technology? Did I miss the "teen fads determine anti-trust results" section in the legal code?