Hacker News: tommykins

New comment by tommykins in "JAXA is about to perform a Phobos sample return mission"

tommykins — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 08:26:57 +0000

My annual thing I can genuinely comment on in relation to hackernews. This is fucking so cool, I simply cannot tell you how rare it is we get primary material to do anything with.

New comment by tommykins in "Should managers still code?"

tommykins — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:48:55 +0000

I don't code much anymore, the vast majority is reviews the only time I really need to get on the tools is if it's a concept that I need to teach someone, or more likely, something has gone quite badly wrong and it's 2100 and I don't feel like waking anyone.

New comment by tommykins in "My son (9 yrs old) used plain JavaScript to make a game, and wants your feedback"

tommykins — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 23:47:57 +0000

Making me do math on my lunch break? This is outrageous

New comment by tommykins in "USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas"

tommykins — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 22:21:05 +0000

Ah spatial autocorrelation, my old friend.

Very good work - but typically we don't build prospectivity models this way (or rather we don't validate them this way anymore). Great to see the USGS starting to dip their toe back in this though, they and the GSC were long the leaders in this, but have dropped it on the last 5-7 years.

New comment by tommykins in "Wiley shuts down 19 science journals and retracts 11,000 gobbledygook papers"

tommykins — Mon, 27 May 2024 04:51:37 +0000

Strong recommendation is to read any other source of this news, not the Jo Nova nonsense spin of it.

New comment by tommykins in "KoBold Metals says Zambia copper find largest in a century"

tommykins — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 23:24:16 +0000

I like KoBold a lot, but this is a wild take on what has happened so far - a traditional mining exploration technique found this deposit, KoBold then brought into this as a typical cashed up midtier/large miner would and haven't released a resource and reserve calculation at all.

New comment by tommykins in "I don't want anything your AI generates"

tommykins — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 23:05:46 +0000

Not really the point but AI generated music recommendations have been great for me.

New comment by tommykins in "Launch HN: Talc AI (YC S23) – Test Sets for AI"

tommykins — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 21:40:07 +0000

As someone who uses Machine Learning to predict the presence of Talc I approve of this, even if I have no use case for it whatsoever.

New comment by tommykins in "Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy"

tommykins — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 00:17:01 +0000

I will never understand the use of Stata to achieve anything.

New comment by tommykins in "Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found"

tommykins — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 02:50:45 +0000

Welcome to the world of resource and reserve calculations, where the numbers are made up and the points don't matter.

It's very easy to come up with a back of the envelope calculation to say we have this much Lithium, or this much Copper and come up with an absolute whopper of a number, the question is how much of it is recoverable and can it form part of a resource. There's a reason we (mining industry) don't let people produce these kind of numbers offhand, it's wildly speculatory and holds no basis in mining reality (yet!) - however very cool stuff and might provide a new exploration target in the future.

New comment by tommykins in "Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found"

tommykins — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 02:46:34 +0000

Oh man - there's actually a much cooler version of this scenario, which is Sudbury impact crater, which was a massive Nickel deposit that was 'enriched' by the impact crater that hit it, not by adding Nickel, but by adding heat into the system.

New comment by tommykins in "Namibian fairy circle debate rages on: Sand termites or Turing mechanism?"

tommykins — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 00:17:24 +0000

Oh interesting - in Australia the current go to theory is Hydrogen leakage.

New comment by tommykins in "Deep space experts prove Starlink is interfering in scientific work"

tommykins — Sun, 09 Jul 2023 23:07:37 +0000

I think it's worth reading the article mate, it's talking about how they observed that satellite emissions and the effect it could have on their research and the things they do.

New comment by tommykins in "AI Is Not a Horse"

tommykins — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 23:21:29 +0000

Nick Cave and HackerNews intersection is not something I saw coming.

New comment by tommykins in "Goodbye, data science"

tommykins — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 21:14:20 +0000

I think is true for >general< data science houses and firms that offer Data Science across any domain - I'm generally wary of anyone who writes about Data Science as a concept, rather than the use of Data Science to solve a particular problem in a particular domain, the rise of the Machine Learning bros is very real.

New comment by tommykins in "Ask HN: How does your company handle late running projects?"

tommykins — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 23:23:59 +0000

Fly into a blind panic, normally.

New comment by tommykins in "A looming copper crunch and why recycling can’t fix it"

tommykins — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 05:52:34 +0000

Not US based but have done work in Nevada, Arizona + Utah and might be able to answer your question.

New comment by tommykins in "A looming copper crunch and why recycling can’t fix it"

tommykins — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 01:17:09 +0000

The major problem for copper is the lack of large projects in the pipeline - current mineral explorers are entering a new phase of what they need to look for and it's a super exciting time to be working in Exploration, honestly.

P.S - Incredibly biased as I work in Mineral Exploration.

KoBold Metals Raises $192.5M to Use AI to Find Battery Mineral

tommykins — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:44:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/kobold-metals-raises-192-5-million-to-use-ai-to-find-battery-minerals-11644472801

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30293111

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by tommykins in "Bangui magnetic anomaly"

tommykins — Wed, 03 Feb 2021 21:20:31 +0000

It's more to do with the overall intensity of the anomaly. If you'd like to become thoroughly confused, I'd recommend looking up remnant magnetisation, which is the bane of my existence.