Hacker News: viscousviolin

New comment by viscousviolin in "Small Models Have Arrived"

viscousviolin — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 18:44:14 +0000

If someone has an old GPU laying around, say a GTX 1080 with 8 GB of memory, would that be enough to get a (small?) local model running?

New comment by viscousviolin in "Origami research takes top prize at 2026 Regeneron ISEF competition"

viscousviolin — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:44:11 +0000

The software that won the competition seems to map the configuration space of an origami crease pattern using techniques from statistical mechanics - pretty snazzy!

More technical details here: https://isef.net/project/phys021-mcmc-sampling-of-origami-an...

Origami research takes top prize at 2026 Regeneron ISEF competition

viscousviolin — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:44:11 +0000

Article URL: https://www.snexplores.org/article/2026-regeneron-isef-winners-origami

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108122

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by viscousviolin in "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus"

viscousviolin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:27:55 +0000

Does it usually get taught in the undergrad maths curriculum?

New comment by viscousviolin in "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus"

viscousviolin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:36:21 +0000

Seems like Katex from the scripts getting loaded. I love the design too, kinda medieval-chic.

New comment by viscousviolin in "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus"

viscousviolin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:34:58 +0000

Today I learned there's a CSS property for styling the first letter of a paragraph, neat. (https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/i/initial-letter/)

--edit: The font used for those initials is called Goudy Initialen: https://www.dafont.com/goudy-initialen.font

New comment by viscousviolin in "Telnyx package compromised on PyPI"

viscousviolin — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:35:03 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by viscousviolin in "Telnyx package compromised on PyPI"

viscousviolin — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:03:56 +0000

Is there a notification channel you can subscribe to / look at if you want to stay up to date on compromised PyPI packages?

New comment by viscousviolin in "Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]"

viscousviolin — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:18:22 +0000

That's a great find. My personal favourite so far from Dust is "Laboratory Conditions": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N25e4Ss34Q

New comment by viscousviolin in "The “small web” is bigger than you might think"

viscousviolin — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:51:56 +0000

That's a lovely bit of automation.

New comment by viscousviolin in "The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein"

viscousviolin — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 19:13:22 +0000

I've never read up on the republic of Venice, but after quickly scanning the Wikipedia article on its election procedure... that is a strangely large number of voting rounds and lotteries.

New comment by viscousviolin in "The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein"

viscousviolin — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:51:49 +0000

Agreed, I'm not sure if it can be made to work either. I have an inkling of a thought that instead of an egalitarian society being required for lottocracy to work, an egalitarian society can be created using lottocracy. But it's just a thought. Hopefully that book holds something close to an answer, but I'll see :)

New comment by viscousviolin in "The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein"

viscousviolin — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:08:50 +0000

It's a potentially big problem for sure. It reminds me of stories I've heard about the public education system in some of the Scandinavian countries. From what I remember off the top of my head, Finland has a system where private educational facilities do not exist. Meaning that, if rich or otherwise elite people want their kids to receive a good education, they need to support the public education facilities their own kid attends. I quite like this idea that everyone is nudged towards helping everyone else, even if they mostly care about their own family and friends.

Similarly in a lottocracy you'd want everyone to be a capable leader when their name is picked from the hat. As the professor I listened to put it, lottocracy makes you think what a democracy really values. Is it about everyone's voice being heard, or is there another goal we should care about more? Not an easy question to answer.

New comment by viscousviolin in "The time I didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein"

viscousviolin — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:48:31 +0000

I heard about lottocracy/sortition for the first time not long ago and I quite like the idea. The last time was when I heard a professor talk about it, and I was recommended reading the book "Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections" by Guerrero [0].

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217981747-lottocracy

New comment by viscousviolin in "Introduction to Formal Real Analysis"

viscousviolin — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 14:42:22 +0000

Lecture recordings available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs6rMe3K87LHu03WWh9rE... And the interactive tutorial server can be found here: https://adam.math.hhu.de/#/g/alexkontorovich/realanalysisgam...

Introduction to Formal Real Analysis

viscousviolin — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 14:42:22 +0000

Article URL: https://alexkontorovich.github.io/2025F311H/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796001

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by viscousviolin in "European Alternatives"

viscousviolin — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 21:16:59 +0000

Something I'd love to see is a Europe-hosted mirror of software repositories like pypi, juliahub, and the like. It feels pretty essential to have these be available no matter what, but I haven't found any such mirrors.

New comment by viscousviolin in "Level S4 solar radiation event"

viscousviolin — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 02:18:49 +0000

It's amazing to hear it's visible in such a big city. I don't have a good intuition for all the metrics that describe how strong this storm was/is, but when put like this it hits home.

Nice to hear earth weather apps also work great in space haha. I'll keep that in mind when I set up my own notifications. Hopefully I have time to look into it before the next storm hits.

New comment by viscousviolin in "Level S4 solar radiation event"

viscousviolin — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 23:45:22 +0000

Could you see it from the inner city or only closer to the edges?

Lean Game Server

viscousviolin — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 20:17:22 +0000

Article URL: https://adam.math.hhu.de

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46683940

Points: 2

# Comments: 0