Hacker News: toolslive

New comment by toolslive in "We will need more (not fewer) scientists"

toolslive — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 06:52:30 +0000

Our knowledge is an inflating volume. New knowledge gets acquired at surface level, and the surface is ever growing.

New comment by toolslive in "Aphantasia Beginner's Guide"

toolslive — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 06:39:48 +0000

I have the same. I'm looking at my laptop's screen as I type this, and if I close my eyes while typing I cannot even visualise said screen. Now, I can blind-type, recognise faces, navigate aso without any problem. I can even play chess quite well (fide ~2050, 2200 blitz on chess.com), but I cannot visualise a chess board, nor can I visualise my moves or the moves of my opponent.

However, I don't "see" (pun intended) it as a problem. On the contrary, I'm not wasting cycles on irrelevant details while I'm thinking.

New comment by toolslive in "SpacetimeDB: a short technical review"

toolslive — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 08:25:19 +0000

the halting problem?

New comment by toolslive in "SpacetimeDB: a short technical review"

toolslive — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:02:42 +0000

One of the problems with running the application code inside the database server is that you need to make application developers use the programming language(s) you prepared for them. The other is that you need to trust them to not do crash out, or do infinite loops. Good luck moving application developers from their choice into the right choice.

New comment by toolslive in "Donkey.bas is 45 Years Old – 131 line of Glory"

toolslive — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 19:16:25 +0000

tangential: I still remember how disappointed I was in PCs being used to a C64 (which was released in 1982) The quality of the games & sound effects was just not on the same level (C64 being much more advanced)

New comment by toolslive in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

toolslive — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:47:42 +0000

> "guardrails matter" This thing has been solved in the 70s. Basically, have a powerful type system, and a compiler that beats you into submission when you try to stray from the straight and narrow. Languages like (S/OCa)ML, Haskell and Rust will bring this to you. As a consequence, you fight the compiler, and once it submits, you have a good chance it's going to work. The compiler is also the ultimate refactoring tool here. Change the concept? Just change the type in the code and follow through by fixing the error messages the compiler spits out.

New comment by toolslive in "Nearest Pint"

toolslive — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:00:14 +0000

yup. soldiers in dire need of a drink

New comment by toolslive in "Nearest Pint"

toolslive — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:47:42 +0000

OK, I think this will be close to an all time record: Leopoldsburg (Belgium, 14k inhabitants) had more than 150 pubs in the 1980s.

New comment by toolslive in "Karpathy’s Pelican"

toolslive — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:13:52 +0000

Reading the title, I was thinking "Karpathy? I don't know this chess player." (The Pelikan is a well known chess opening, and famous chess players often have book titles like "X's Y" where X is the player, and Y is the opening)

New comment by toolslive in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

toolslive — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:12:09 +0000

football games can have "momentum". An extra break allows for a breather and a tactical intervention from the coach. That also why we saw keepers sitting down (faking injury) in the Premier league last season. Anyway, a hydration break while it's raining is a bit of a tell it has nothing to do with the needs of the players.

New comment by toolslive in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

toolslive — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:08:40 +0000

I was wondering what exactly what to think about the Tom Cruise speech before the final.

New comment by toolslive in "Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)"

toolslive — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:56:03 +0000

Not a one-note solo, but Miles Davis's solo on So What is really minimalistic.

New comment by toolslive in "Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)"

toolslive — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:52:08 +0000

I only skimmed the article. There's a lot of good stuff (debunking a lot of classical harmony) but they miss some important things too. There's nothing about repetition. Repetition legitimizes. Our brain is really good at pattern recognition, and as soon as it can predict something you're more than half way there to make it sound good. There's plenty of chromaticism that works because the brain "gets" the sense of direction.

New comment by toolslive in "No Spanish reading crisis?"

toolslive — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:50:36 +0000

These guys are from Galicia. Maybe that makes a difference.

New comment by toolslive in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

toolslive — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:42:20 +0000

hold on. Just realised it's not even (part of ) a vector space. It's not linear, non-euclidian and can't be mapped onto 3 dimensions. It's not even constant or always reproducible:

    Look at an object; 
    Observe colour X; then look at the wrong thing; 
    then look back and you might observe colour X' != X.

New comment by toolslive in "No Spanish reading crisis?"

toolslive — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:47:41 +0000

I have some Spanish ex-co-workers. I just verified it. They both had it on their required reading list in high-school. (one of them is in his 30s, the other in his 40s)

New comment by toolslive in "No Spanish reading crisis?"

toolslive — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:57:28 +0000

> Democracy is safe in Spain!

iirc, The Prince from Machiavelli is required reading during secondary education. That will surely awaken their political awareness.

New comment by toolslive in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

toolslive — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 09:28:17 +0000

Tetrachromacy !?

New comment by toolslive in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

toolslive — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:01:19 +0000

Doesn't matter: there's no RGB model that captures the colour space. That exactly the reason CIE exists.

New comment by toolslive in "The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]"

toolslive — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:37:07 +0000

Just going to sound really pedantic here, but RGB does not capture the entire colour space. In fact, it only captures about 35% of the colours the human eye can perceive.

https://www.oceanopticsbook.info/view/photometry-and-visibil...