<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: ted_dunning</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ted_dunning</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 09 Oct 2026 07:57:47 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=ted_dunning" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Depends on the click-through license that linked to the terms of service that you agreed to as part of buying the machine.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 23:09:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013720</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013720</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013720</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Sub-1-Bit LLM Compression via Latent Factorization"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Counter evidence:<p><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.00042" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.00042</a><p>It is true that block-headed quantization of everything doesn't work. But, as I am sure will read, if you remove the spiky parts of the parameter values, the residue can be dramatically quantized and compressed while retaining performance.<p>This is a multi-modal sort of compression where you use different techniques for different phenomena. Simply compression all of the weights, each in isolation, ignores the benefits of compressing them collectively.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:41:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010991</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010991</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010991</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "4-hour battery storage is cheaper to install than gas turbines all across globe"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A non-carbon containing fuel that is almost entirely created by burning fossil fuels is effectively the same (and often worse) than just using the fossil fuels directly.<p>Biodiesel or biomethane looks at first glance to escape this, but it has serious other costs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:30:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010837</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010837</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50010837</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "How did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn't"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>After 1974 is when they decided to not award it posthumously. In 1962 that rule was still in the future.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 15:56:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50007427</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50007427</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50007427</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "3D-printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's nice and probably true. On average.<p>It is much less true when Russians invade your country planning to assassinate your chief executive.<p>Disorganized rabble aren't going to be able to stop that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:11:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002693</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002693</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002693</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "3D-printing platform rapidly produces complex electric machines"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>These new drones fly at 6000+m (20,000 ft). Machine gun turrets aren't going to touch that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:09:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002681</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002681</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002681</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Navier–Stokes Lost in Translation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Generating the lean proof first is a viable approach as well followed by an explanatory pass.<p>Actually, they are questioning whether the natural language description of the proof is either not faithful to the formal proof, or simply wrong, or both.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:48:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995375</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995375</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995375</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Navier–Stokes Lost in Translation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because it is really hard to read and the level of detail is so high that even lemmas that you can read may have such enormous levels of detail that makes real understanding difficult given that humans have limited working memory.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:45:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995318</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995318</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995318</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Navier–Stokes Lost in Translation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Natural language is ambiguous, but the Lean formalization is very well defined and unambiguous.<p>It's not the form language that is the real problem here. It's the ambiguity on the other side and the extreme difficulty of doing a useful and accurate translation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:43:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995292</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995292</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995292</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Navier–Stokes Lost in Translation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the common experience in replicating a published paper by hand ... it is common to find "obvious" aspects that are anything but.<p>The scary thing is when AIs generate unreadable formal proofs and then effectively lie (or fabulate, to be polite-ish) about the natural language version of the steps. Since the natural language version is arguably the most important aspect of a solution to a flagship problem, this fabulation deflates the value of the solution while the existence of the solution discourages further work on the problem.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:41:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995266</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995266</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995266</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "California closed the Montana license plate loophole"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It actually doesn't do that.<p>Did you even read what was written?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:59:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986519</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986519</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49986519</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is dead"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They put him on the Beagle to have dinner with the captain so that the captain wouldn't go mad. The captain himself was the one who went looking for a dinner companion.<p>Also, Darwin had to pay his own way (with his father's money) as a civilian passenger and received no salary for the trip.<p>So "the British" didn't put Darwin on the Beagle.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2026 19:45:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937724</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937724</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937724</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Nazi Germany had no hope of making an atomic bomb, uranium cubes reveal"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you think that the US is the same US as ten years ago when that was an insane delusion, then you are the one smoking too much weed.<p>This administration has gone to very great lengths to tear down the safety walls.<p>The boats in the Caribbean demonstrate this well. Service members who object to targeting civilians without any due process are forced out.<p>The difference between that is only a matter of scale. And even that scale factor has been breached in terms of the number casualties from the termination of USAID.<p>It may be delusional right now to imagine service members following a nuclear attack order on Iran, but it isn't clear it will stay that way.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Oct 2026 19:25:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937476</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937476</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937476</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "What a Massive New 728-Foot-Wide Crater Means for Future Moon Bases"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But the rate for milligram sized particles hitting a 100m x 100m patch is 2-3 per month.<p>At 20km/s, that's plenty big enough to ruin your day.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Oct 2026 03:26:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49917367</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49917367</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49917367</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Responsible Release of AI-Generated Mathematics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In normal English usage, "with extreme prejudice" is commonly understood to mean that you advocate killing the person in question.<p>Either you don't know what you are saying and should improve your language skills<p>Or you do and should be dropped from this site for advocating violence.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 23:09:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915662</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915662</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49915662</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Show HN: A working 3D model of an Enigma machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It would be nice to be able to back up in the sequence. There were a few times where I realized I had not fully understood a previous step and would have like to be able to review some previous steps.<p>Otherwise this is completely excellent!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:45:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49902945</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49902945</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49902945</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Toyota is taking the Corolla electric"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The average one way commute distance in the US is only 14.4 miles and the median is around 9 [1]. The one way average commute time is about 27 minutes.<p>As such, I don't think that "most" commutes in US cities are 30+ miles and 45 minutes or more.<p>[1] <a href="https://truedrivingcost.com/articles/average-commute-distance-by-state" rel="nofollow">https://truedrivingcost.com/articles/average-commute-distanc...</a> Data sourced from US census data.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 06:56:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49841063</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49841063</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49841063</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Coulomb's law remains tricky to test at home"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Charge splitting being equal depends on capacitance which can be hard to make equal.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:31:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834046</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834046</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49834046</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "Solving for faster SHA-1 collision detection"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Fuzz tests with tailored random distributions and good logical property tests are excellent tests.<p>What would you do better?<p>Also, the author didn't say that there were no other tests. They just said that they use fuzz + property tests a fair bit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2026 07:59:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827639</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827639</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49827639</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ted_dunning in "NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is dead"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's worse than weak. It is an argument that works better the stupider you are.<p>Seriously.<p>The stupider you are, the more likely it is that there is something valuable that you don't know about.<p>But sophistry on that level doesn't actually change the minimal economic value of putting people on Mars.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 22 Sep 2026 06:39:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797482</link><dc:creator>ted_dunning</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797482</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797482</guid></item></channel></rss>