Hacker News: viraj_shah

Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics

viraj_shah — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 18:57:16 +0000

Article URL: https://ihavenapkinthoughts.substack.com/p/burning-man-death-rates-a-short-lesson

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49882754

Points: 179

# Comments: 243

New comment by viraj_shah in "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"

viraj_shah — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:14:23 +0000

I'm going to take a while guess here and say this strategy is part of their plan to get even more access to more code to learn from.

If you can see entire version histories of how code is generated, what bugs occur, what fixes are made and how they're implemented, you have the entire human and machine coding feedback loop to learn from.

New comment by viraj_shah in "CATL's new LFP battery can charge from 10 to 98% in less than 7 minutes"

viraj_shah — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:11:18 +0000

I didn't see a number for cycle life. That'd be my biggest question here. You can charge in less than 7 minutes but how many times before performance (capacity) degrades?

New comment by viraj_shah in "Mechanical power generation using Earth's ambient radiation"

viraj_shah — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:13:39 +0000

Fascinating 20 degrees C is huge. What's a fair bit of water? At what time of day and how long did you collect water?

New comment by viraj_shah in "Why Apple's Severance gets edited over remote desktop software"

viraj_shah — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 21:39:49 +0000

This is a tangent but what was your journey into VFX?

New comment by viraj_shah in "Operating System in 1,000 Lines – Intro"

viraj_shah — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:58:16 +0000

Hi OP, this looks super cool. I remember hearing about this (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) many years ago but have never done it.

Curious, what are the prerequisites for this? Do I have to know about how kernels work? How memory management, protection rings or processes are queued? Some I'd like to definitely learn about.

New comment by viraj_shah in "Nvidia announces next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs"

viraj_shah — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 17:02:44 +0000

Do you have a good resource for learning what kinds of hardware can run what kinds of models locally? Benchmarks, etc?

I'm also trying to tie together different hardware specs to model performance, whether that's training or inference. Like how does memory, VRAM, memory bandwidth, GPU cores, etc. all play into this. Know of any good resources? Oddly enough I might be best off asking an LLM.

New comment by viraj_shah in "Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton [pdf]"

viraj_shah — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:30:33 +0000

I am really surprised. I would have guessed that a Nobel Prize would be awarded to advancements in the field itself. Not for inspirations from it or to tools that led to advancements. Although as I write this I'm sure there have been several prizes awarded to scientists / engineers who have developed tools to advance physics. Like radio astronomy? Still surprised though.

New comment by viraj_shah in "Writing a C Compiler: Build a Real Programming Language from Scratch"

viraj_shah — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 16:17:20 +0000

Dropping this one here! (no affiliation)

https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

"Linux From Scratch (LFS) is a project that provides you with step-by-step instructions for building your own custom Linux system, entirely from source code."

New comment by viraj_shah in "Open source laser microphone picks up laptop keystrokes"

viraj_shah — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 17:46:31 +0000

Do you have a source for the vibrating windows? That is super interesting.

New comment by viraj_shah in "Launch HN: Undermind (YC S24) – AI agent for discovering scientific papers"

viraj_shah — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:21:35 +0000

Also very curious to see how this compares to: https://www.semanticscholar.org/

New comment by viraj_shah in "Launch HN: Undermind (YC S24) – AI agent for discovering scientific papers"

viraj_shah — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 22:00:36 +0000

Here is an open source tool for summarizing Arxiv papers: https://summarizepaper.com/

New comment by viraj_shah in "How to Turn Off AI Overview in Google and Set "Web" as Default"

viraj_shah — Tue, 21 May 2024 18:01:07 +0000

I'm really curious - how will this affect sites that monetize off of affiliate links and ads? It seems to me that AI summarization and overview will deter, at the minimum reduce, the number of page clicks and traffic to sites that are producing information.

New comment by viraj_shah in "What is permaculture? (2015)"

viraj_shah — Fri, 12 May 2023 01:21:18 +0000

I agree with the entrepreneurial DIYer aspect of it. But I do think sitting in front of screens all day screams for a longing for nature.

Also I think there might a counterculture aspect to it, which ties in to your reliance point. Growing your own food is one of the most subversive thing you can do. Get solar and a few other things, and you're completely self-reliant.

It allows one to take a shortcut to the fisherman life, in the fisherman and the banker story.

New comment by viraj_shah in "What is permaculture? (2015)"

viraj_shah — Fri, 12 May 2023 01:18:36 +0000

Apologies for the late reply. I have set my limits on HN use in the settings. :)

I took Permaculture New York PDC class (https://www.permaculturenewyork.com/). It was all online but many are in person.

If you reach out to me via LinkedIn (found if you go to link in my profile) we can exchange contact info. I'd prefer not to place it here.

New comment by viraj_shah in "What is permaculture? (2015)"

viraj_shah — Tue, 09 May 2023 17:35:36 +0000

I am surprised and not surprised to see this here. I often see themes of burnout, wanting to get back to nature, existential questions surrounding tech and similar here on HN.

I took a permaculture class earlier this year, after having researched it on the sidelines for a few years. It started from looking at sustainability, agriculture, homesteading (wanting to "leave it all behind") and blossomed into a wonderful learning experience about a philosophy where I felt a little more at home. It was great. It introduced me to a few really cool friends whose values largely aligned with mine. Anyone interested in this, please feel free to reach out.

New comment by viraj_shah in "FIDE world chess championship decided in rapid tiebreaks"

viraj_shah — Mon, 01 May 2023 02:42:48 +0000

"I played in the US Chess Open in 1978, but I am not much of a player. I did write the shitty little Chess program that Apple distributed on the Apple II demo cassette tape."

Sometimes...you meet the most interesting people on here!

New comment by viraj_shah in "The quantum computing bubble"

viraj_shah — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 19:24:25 +0000

This made me laugh, thank you!

New comment by viraj_shah in "A Case for Pencils: Interview with Cartoonist Tom Gauld"

viraj_shah — Sun, 26 Dec 2021 23:46:29 +0000

For my analog fans and family. Check out Blackwing pencils. Get the sampler or the 602 (most popular).

New comment by viraj_shah in "Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?"

viraj_shah — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 22:04:11 +0000

This is hilarious. Thank you for the laughs.