Hacker News: tpudlik

New comment by tpudlik in "Early progress on accelerating drug development with Claude"

tpudlik — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 03:56:41 +0000

They put it at the end because they list the parts chronologically...

New comment by tpudlik in "Moving to a RTOS on the RP2040"

tpudlik — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 16:17:17 +0000

I don't think people choose Python because it's virtues as a language for tooling (it's not great from that perspective, statically linked binaries would be better). They choose it because of the ecosystem of libraries. For data analysis, visualization, and scientific computing, there are no comparable offerings in any other language. And a lot of this is stuff you _really_ don't want to be reimplementing from scratch, because it's very easy to introduce bugs (around numerical stability, say) that cause your software to produce correct results 99% of the time, and plausibly-looking but totally incorrect ones 1% of the time.

New comment by tpudlik in "Generative AI and scientific images/diagrams"

tpudlik — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 04:11:23 +0000

Getting images of simple molecules or lattices seems tricky.

Generative AI and scientific images/diagrams

tpudlik — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 04:11:22 +0000

Article URL: http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2024/01/generative-ai-and-scientific.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39152465

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Physics Examples and Other Pedagogic Diversions by K. McDonald

tpudlik — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 22:16:47 +0000

Article URL: http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/examples/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38905724

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by tpudlik in "Visual Anagrams: Generating optical illusions with diffusion models"

tpudlik — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 04:24:34 +0000

Did you mean to say it's _related_? The original "spiral" image by Ugleh is explicitly credited in the "Related Links" section.

New comment by tpudlik in "My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM"

tpudlik — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 03:37:26 +0000

Thank you for the prompt, that's very useful! I'm surprised GPT "knows" what Monster of the Week is. RPGs in general are somewhat obscure, and to ask for a specific one at that?

New comment by tpudlik in "My kids and I just played D&D with ChatGPT4 as the DM"

tpudlik — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 03:26:20 +0000

I agree with all these criticism. But I also know many human DMs who make the same stylistic decisions as GPT did here. It's definitely not good Burning Wheel, but it might be ok D&D?

On the other hand, I appreciate the GPT's willingness to follow the players' revealed interests where they lead, instead of sticking to a predetermined railroad. The comment here about engaging zombies in a multilevel marketing scheme illustrates this nicely. That's very deft DMing in my opinion. (Whether _asking_ for such a tonal shift is deft playing on part of the non-DM player is a different question.)

New comment by tpudlik in "A study on the extent of global air pollution"

tpudlik — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 15:31:26 +0000

Yeah, maybe there's a confusion between percentage and fraction, and this was meant to be 0.001 (not 0.001%). But if so, the error is not the journalist's: I clicked through and the original paper also contains this improbable figure.

New comment by tpudlik in "Binance outflows hit $6B as Mazars halts ‘proof of reserves’ work"

tpudlik — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 18:54:22 +0000

Re 2: this is not true if you're doing margin or futures trading, which was FTX's main business (and may be Binance's). This type of business is what characterizes an "exchange" (as opposed to a non-margin brokerage or a custodial bank).

New comment by tpudlik in "Medieval ship found in Norway's biggest lake"

tpudlik — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 17:56:19 +0000

Yeah! Its deepest point is only 10 m shallower than the deepest point of the Baltic Sea!

New comment by tpudlik in "Space-based solar power is getting serious"

tpudlik — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 15:13:21 +0000

Relatively little energy is actually used for heating and cooling. In the UK, a country pretty far north, it's about a fifth of energy use (https://www.withouthotair.com/c7/page_53.shtml), and could be substantially reduced if heating was actually done using electricity (i.e., with heat pumps, rather than direct heating; heat pumps are available with "efficiency" exceeding 400%, e http://www.withouthotair.com/c21/page_140.shtml, but of course require electricity to run, while most heating today is done by directly burning fuel).

Seasons are definitely not "the biggest obstacle to solar". That would be the night and especially the weather.

New comment by tpudlik in "Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco"

tpudlik — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 02:44:05 +0000

There must be a little more to this, since clearly they are not a wholly owned subsidiary.

New comment by tpudlik in "Complex game worlds, simple text interfaces (2015)"

tpudlik — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 21:17:16 +0000

I bought and played it after reading this piece. It's a small but enjoyable game; if you're at all intrigued, I'd encourage checking it out!

New comment by tpudlik in "I saw millions compromise their Facebook accounts to fuel fake engagement"

tpudlik — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 15:08:08 +0000

Looks like the fundamental problem is that a substantial number of users are perfectly willing to sign up for providing fake likes, as long as they receive fake likes in return. A tragedy of the commons.

New comment by tpudlik in "India's artisanal fountain pens are making their mark"

tpudlik — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 03:16:56 +0000

Interesting. I use Pigma Microns for line drawing, but never used them for writing. They are lovely!

New comment by tpudlik in "Why did I leave Google or, why did I stay so long?"

tpudlik — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 03:56:06 +0000

He was the CEO of Waze, but not of Google. After the acquisition, he had to adopt Google promo processes.

New comment by tpudlik in "The Architecture of My Life"

tpudlik — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 14:24:35 +0000

He does have a passion for automation, but where's the dissonance? He recognizes it in the very opening, with the xkcd!

New comment by tpudlik in "Google bans Zoom from employees' computers"

tpudlik — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 03:34:01 +0000

I believe they are talking about using Zoom to call friends/family from your work laptop.

New comment by tpudlik in "Zotero: Personal Research Assistant"

tpudlik — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 20:19:08 +0000

You can export to BiBTeX (.bib).