Hacker News: tobinfricke

New comment by tobinfricke in "What is jj and why should I care?"

tobinfricke — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:35:12 +0000

Here are some notes on Jujutsu from Evan Martin that I found interesting/useful:

https://neugierig.org/software/blog/2025/08/jj-bookmarks.htm...

New comment by tobinfricke in "VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"

tobinfricke — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:09:24 +0000

I ran OS/2 Warp and was a fan of it... But to say that it was simply "better" than Windows 95 is a bridge too far. It had its strengths (rock solid multitasking) but also plenty of rough edges.

New comment by tobinfricke in "The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph"

tobinfricke — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:53:22 +0000

Seems like a game-theoretic problem

Taking their foot off the gas for a second only hurts them

New comment by tobinfricke in "California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years"

tobinfricke — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 23:59:33 +0000

This is practically all that need be said on the topic

New comment by tobinfricke in "Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?"

tobinfricke — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:13:45 +0000

Yeah so does CostCo

New comment by tobinfricke in "Do Users Verify SSH Keys? (2011) [pdf]"

tobinfricke — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:26:53 +0000

Also in compliance with Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

New comment by tobinfricke in "Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome"

tobinfricke — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 01:29:31 +0000

NIPT is non-invasive compared to amniocentesis

New comment by tobinfricke in "Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes"

tobinfricke — Sat, 03 May 2025 00:23:13 +0000

Unlike "the way oversized cargo/load moves today," the chase vehicle is just another Peterbilt truck pulling cargo, but with a safety driver. It's not a flag car or something like that.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]"

tobinfricke — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 05:56:25 +0000

What cargo would justify a supersonic flight?

New comment by tobinfricke in "Noise Filtering Using €1 Filter (2020)"

tobinfricke — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 20:17:02 +0000

This has the same vibes as "Tan's method", wherein someone managed to rediscover and publish the well-known trapezoidal rule for integration from Calculus in a medical journal

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9602/rediscover...

New comment by tobinfricke in "How do you juggle WFH with a baby?"

tobinfricke — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:18:33 +0000

I'm sure that some people are able to make it work, but in general the answer is: you don't. Taking care of a baby is a full time job in and of itself, associated with frequent interruptions and sleep deprivation.

New comment by tobinfricke in "FDA Proposes Ending Use of Oral Phenylephrine as OTC Nasal Decongestant"

tobinfricke — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 05:05:34 +0000

Well, it doesn't work.

New comment by tobinfricke in "The Visualization of Differential Forms (2021)"

tobinfricke — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 20:06:47 +0000

The same could be said when they are written using Gibbs notation with div and curl. Surprisingly, when Einstein wrote his paper on special relativity, Gibbs vector notation had not yet been widely adopted, and Einstein himself wrote out Maxwell's equations in component form.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Why does the chromaticity diagram look like that?"

tobinfricke — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 22:59:53 +0000

Wavelength (or frequency) is linear but light, in general, is made up of many wavelengths -- an entire spectrum.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Tokens are a big reason today's generative AI falls short"

tobinfricke — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 20:23:24 +0000

The output of ChatGPT almost always sounds good. That's the point.

But I would wager that its answer was at least wrong, and perhaps total nonsense.

That's the real hazard of using ChatGPT as a learning tool. You are in no position to evaluate whether the output makes any sense.

New comment by tobinfricke in "I Received an AI Email"

tobinfricke — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 08:03:02 +0000

Actually this is kinda a great idea. Honeypot the bots by engaging them with other bots. Would love to deploy this on telemarketers / spam calls.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (2015)"

tobinfricke — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 19:14:35 +0000

``In almost all textbooks, even the best, this principle is presented so that it is impossible to understand.'' (K. Jacobi, Lectures on Dynamics, 1842-1843). I have not chosen to break with tradition. V. I. Arnold, Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics [5], footnote, p. 246

It's funny that this quote is not ironic at all, and in fact the authors of SICM include it because they agree with the assessment (by Arnold of his own textbook and its predecessors).

The SICM authors do indeed break with that tradition.

New comment by tobinfricke in "IKEA's retailer's solved global 'unhappy worker' crisis by raising salaries"

tobinfricke — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 05:15:33 +0000

Apparently they are literally incorporated as a charity.

New comment by tobinfricke in "AMA: I'm Dave Greene, an accidental expert on Conway's Game of Life"

tobinfricke — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 04:54:35 +0000

If you do a second edition, I would love a chapter on Life implementations, particularly how to implement a Life simulator that can execute these enormous patterns efficiently.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24"

tobinfricke — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 05:06:29 +0000

The "Ivy League" consists of precisely these eight schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale.

Honestly I feel like some of these are negative indicators when it comes to engineering cred.

Meanwhile, stellar engineering schools like Caltech, Stanford, and MIT are in a league of their own.

This comment is mostly to complain that using "Ivy League" as a shorthand for prestigious engineering schools is inaccurate.