<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: waterheater</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=waterheater</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:48:17 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=waterheater" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>On one order, correct, but it's still on the order of hundreds of millions to billions.<p>Also, keep in mind that a stock price discounts expected future cash flows. Is it likely that SpaceX will have a near-peer competitor within a few years? No, it's not, and that market share is being priced-in.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:45:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365348</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365348</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48365348</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've seen the ins-and-outs of academia within an R1 research institution from about as top-level as one can while remaining a student, and my idea is based on extensive interface with the reality of academia.<p>Your observation that the doctoral degree system has always been that way is precisely my point: the world has changed, and new forms of training are needed to complement the paper-publishers. The PhD system is broken in part because it's catering to multiple audiences when it should regain its focus on its core mission. That being said, many people want to do research but don't want to work in academia; in fact, I think their numbers are far greater than the academia-oriented. My idea caters to those people, and I think all parties (students, schools, industry, government, the general public) will benefit in this arrangement with almost no drawbacks.<p>From a degree-focused perspective, it's somewhat unusual that U.S. universities almost exclusively assign PhDs, save for the professional degrees (e.g., MD, PharmD, JD). Multiple types of bachelors and masters degrees exist, and those degrees are certainly differentiated from one another. In some European countries, the ScD is a terminal degree higher than a PhD.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 16:09:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150362</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150362</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150362</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A few years ago, when I was actively involved with the academic world, I came to a similar realization. They're trying to do too many things at once. Universities need to acknowledge this reality and adjust.<p>After thinking about it, I came up with a straightforward solution (at least in STEM): offer more than one type of of doctoral degree. Every program will have at least two doctoral programs: a Doctor of Philosophy, and a Doctor of Science/Engineering/Mathematics/etc.<p>The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program is academia at its core, where the students in this doctoral program are explicitly seeking an academic teaching or research position as their career path. The coursework and educational activities are explicitly aligned for this area.<p>The Doctor of Science/Engineering/Mathematics is focused on creating a top-of-the-line researcher intended for industry or an FFRDC. Those students receive a different type of education which explicitly gives them the deeper research skills and connections needed to become an accomplished industry researcher.<p>The two programs are equally rigorous but have different end goals in mind. This specialization is overdue, and most departments already have a fuzzy line separating the "academics" from the "practitioners."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 17:29:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138439</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138439</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138439</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I knew a foreign student like that. He was a great guy and a friend, and we worked in the same building. One day, I told him that I purchased a condo to save money during the doctoral program (in my unique situation, my mortgage was less than basically all other grad student's rent, at least those I knew). A little while later, he told me that he also purchased a condo. I asked him about his mortgage rate, and he gave me a puzzled look. His well-off family paid >$250k, cash, for his condo.<p>In general, pursing a doctoral degree requires a certain degree of financial stability. The successful doctoral students usually came from wealthy families, whereas the ones who struggled the most also struggled with finances. I believe it's essentially impossible to perform truly novel academic research when your personal finances are volatile. I also firmly believe that graduate student unionization is an elitist mentality that must be unilaterally opposed, as it is guaranteed to destroy any constructive academic culture.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 17:14:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138225</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138225</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138225</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Consider Person A, who is self-interested and may use a secret recording against you, even if you're following all rules and acting ethically. Additionally, consider if Person A is neutral but shares the recording with Person B, who unbeknownst to Person A, is actually out to get you.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 17:28:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48097938</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48097938</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48097938</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> can they knowingly allow their child to do something harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly<p>That likely depends on how that "something" was publicly marketed to both parents and children based on the company's available information. Our laws historically regulate substances (and their delivery mechanisms) which may lead to addition or are very easy to misuse in a way which leads to permanent harm (see: virtually all mind-altering substances); even nicotine gum is age-restricted like tobacco products. Because nicotine is generally considered an addictive substance, it's regulated, but few reasonable people would argue that parents should be allowed to buy their children nicotine gum so their kids calm down.<p>Consider how, decades ago, the tobacco companies were implicated in suppressing research demonstrating that tobacco products are harmful to human health. The key here will be if ByteDance has done the same thing.<p>Also, to play off your point on cheeseburgers: remember the nutritional quality of one cheeseburger versus another will vary. If made with top-quality ingredients (minimally-processed ingredients, organic vegetables, grass-fed beef, etc.), a cheeseburger is actually quite nutritious. However, in a hypothetical situation where a fast-food chain was making false public claims about the composition of their cheeseburgers (e.g., lying about gluten-free buns or organic ingredient status), and someone is harmed as a consequence, the victim might have standing to sue the fast food chain.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:05:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46787669</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46787669</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46787669</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>From my cursory web searches, your photos may be the first online evidence that the restoration project was indeed completed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:13:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699521</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699521</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699521</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "User ban controversy reveals Bluesky’s decentralized aspiration isn’t reality"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just because something is common and widespread doesn't mean it should continue to be common and widespread, though it will continue to happen due to human nature. And yet, people striving to be constructive and positive won't celebrate the death of a stranger. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a cultural lodestar found globally for a very good reason: cheering the death of others may lead to others hoping to cheer your death, and that potential is enough to significantly curtail offers of constructive and positive assistance from the victims to the perpetrators, leading to a gradual social degradation within the perpetrators. Certainly remember and even memorialize a person's death, but the exaltation of a person's death is a sure path to cultural collapse.<p>Now, that's assuming people are one unified group. In reality, most people are forced into an "in" group or an "out" group. The "in" group exalts the death of the "out" group member, so the "out" group members must respond in kind. That eventually leads to the degradation of both groups, leaving the "above" and "beyond" groups with the remnants. In turn, the destructive and negative conflict continues.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:38:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510700</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510700</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45510700</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a bad idea. Now, with that established...<p>Microsoft has many intelligent people who work there and certainly do many risk vs. reward calculations for each modification to Windows. From Microsoft's perspective, they have much more control over the OS when everyone's linked to a cloud account. I morally disagree with that approach, but the security issues with Windows come from unpatched systems. They tried to win over software developers by creating WSL, but the privacy- and security-minded software developers never really bit.<p>Also, consider that Microsoft's future is obviously pivoted toward cloud infrastructure. Yes, they smartly have other ventures, but all those ventures will rely on Microsoft cloud infrastructure in some way. Server farms are a much better business model, from Microsoft's perpective, especially because it pulls Microsoft into the domains of true wealth: land acquisition, energy production, and data mining.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2025 01:18:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45498355</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45498355</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45498355</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Some years ago, I snagged a great deal on some Sennheiser HD600s. After also acquiring a Schiit stack (Magni + Modi) and finding high-quality audio sources, I would close my eyes, lay down on the couch, and just listen...actually, I'll call it perceive the music. No other audio experience compares, just like a huge screen which fills your vision is truly the best way to experience a movie.<p>Virtually all people on the planet perceive the world with their eyes but push the other four physical senses into the background. There's good reason for this reality, of course: of our five physical senses, the eyes are capable of providing the richest information. And yet, most discussion around increasing perceptual abilities are vision-centric. Learning to perceive with your ears, smell, touch, and taste in addition to eyes should also be learned.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Sep 2025 17:08:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45129547</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45129547</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45129547</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "New records on Wendelstein 7-X"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Tokamaks are conceptually elegant but contain significant inefficiencies which negatively impact potential net power output. Both tokamaks and optimized stellarators have magnetic fields possessing omnigeneity [1], but tokamaks require two magnetic fields (poloidal and toroidal) whereas stellarators employ one.<p>The bigger question is if <i>magnetic</i> confinement fusion will lead to the best energy producing devices. Competitors include inertial confinement, pinches, or some other exotic method. If a magnetic confinement fusion device produces net power, it's going to be a stellarator.<p>Sources:<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnigeneity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnigeneity</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Jul 2025 17:07:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44637610</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44637610</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44637610</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "TSMC bets on unorthodox optical tech"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>>serial interfaces dominating over the parallel ones<p>Semi-accurate. For example, PCIe remains dominant in computing. PCIe is technically a serial protocol, as new versions of PCIe (7.0 is releasing soon) increase the serial transmission rate. However, PCIe is also parallel-wise scalable based on performance needs through "lanes", where one lane is a total of four wires, arranged as two differential pairs, with one pair for receiving (RX) and one for transmitting (TX).<p>PCIe scales up to 16 lanes, so a PCIe x16 interface will have 64 wires forming 32 differential pairs. When routing PCIe traces, the length of all differential pairs must be within <100 mils of each other (I believe; it's been about 10 years since I last read the spec). That's to address the "timing skew between lanes" you mention, and DRCs in the PCB design software will ensure the trace length skew requirement is respected.<p>>how can this be addressed in this massive parallel optical parallel interface?<p>From a hardware perspective, reserve a few "pixels" of the story's MicroLED transmitter array for link control, not for data transfer. Examples might be a clock or a data frame synchronization signal. From the software side, design a communication protocol which negotiates a stable connection between the endpoints and incorporates checksums.<p>Abstractly, the serial vs. parallel dynamic shifts as technology advances. Raising clock rates to shove more data down the line faster (serial improvement) works to a point, but you'll eventually hit the limits of your current technology. Still need more bandwidth? Just add more lines to meet your needs (parallel improvement). Eventually the technology improves, and the dynamic continues. A perfect example of that is PCIe.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 26 May 2025 20:44:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44101503</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44101503</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44101503</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "The origin of the cargo cult metaphor"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Great argument overall. What strikes me is that I have also thought long and hard about fundamental natural rights, and my proposition is that Free Will is paramount and Privacy is the close second.<p>I believe such a claim can be robustly supported, and it is my hope to one day do so, ideally supported with a degree of philosophy. Your perspective is, in some ways, quite similar to my own, though it also has notable differences. I do believe it can be rigorously argued, for example, that Life is an outcome of Free Will, not the other way around. I believe it can also be shown that Privacy (not the cybernetic privacy, or cyberprivacy, articulated with privacy policies, GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA) is (a) distinct from Free Will, (b) uniquely allows for the expression and development of Free Will, and (c) that maximal expression of Free Will is the global optimum for Life.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jan 2025 05:02:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42680234</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42680234</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42680234</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>True. You should look into Project Xanadu, which was created with seventeen original rules, one of which is the following:<p>>Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ("transclusions") of all or part of the document.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 17:05:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380672</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380672</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380672</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Historically, people trusted something reported as fact and were naturally skeptical of opinion. It seems that many people are realigning to an environment where the "facts" were presented to create a limited, specific perspective of the world (which is closer to opinion) and the majority of "opinion" producers were challenged to be, and in some cases became, more evidence-based (which is closer to fact). In effect, the system is self-correcting to reflect the natural state of the world: truth exists, and the task is on you to discover it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 17:01:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380622</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380622</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40380622</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "How photos were transmitted by wire in the 1930s"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The obvious solution is to actually have librarians correctly classify the videos. DDS focuses on the nature of the work itself, not on the keywords or spam in the content. Librarians understand how to class all kinds of works, and it should be relatively simple to build a DDS/MDS index (Melville Decimal System since it's open, see <a href="https://librarything.com/mds" rel="nofollow">https://librarything.com/mds</a>) for YouTube videos. Just like with books, disagreement on classification is inevitable and perfectly natural; there's no perfect classification scheme, though DDS/MDS does a generally good job.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 Mar 2024 04:35:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39700636</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39700636</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39700636</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Ephemeral usernames safeguard privacy and make Signal harder to subpoena"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, ephemeral usernames are not differential privacy. Differential privacy is repeatedly sampling a database through a differentially-private interface which returns data samples which are either real or fake. The mean and variance of the sampled data match the true mean and variance of the dataset according to a system-defined epsilon value. The end user isn't able to know if any given piece of data is real or fake.<p>I really don't like differential privacy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:20:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39597890</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39597890</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39597890</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "US permanently deploys training mission in Taiwan"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Other folks have highlighted the basics, so here's an analogous situation to think about: imagine that the US civil war saw the CSA taking over the territory of the USA, with the US federal government moving to a large hypothetical island off the East Coast. The CSA never completely eliminated all constituent US elements, so the USA still technically exists.<p>Fast forward to sixty years after the fighting just stopped one day. How would you view those two political entities? Are they equal? Does the existence of the CSA mean the USA doesn't exist as a country? What if the CSA implements trade policies which dissuade you from recognizing the USA as an independent nation? Does the USA still exist in your eyes? Is the USA or the CSA the "true" country?<p>The answer at this point in time is quite simple: the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) is clearly an independent country. However, the People's Republic of China (aka China) holds such economic power, they bully the rest of the world (though trade policies, etc.) into not recognizing Taiwan as an independent country. Also, the combination of geography and maritime law means that if Taiwan is an independent country, China has very little direct access to the open seas. They want freedom of navigation, so there's a geopolitical angle as well. Look into the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea to advance the Nine Dashed Line policy.<p>You also need to remember that Chinese civilization is extremely old. The PRC claims to hold something called the Mandate of Heaven, which is a fairly important concept in Chinese history, as it is divine authority to rule over the Chinese people. Frankly, based on how the PRC acts, the RC clearly holds the Mandate of Heaven these days.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2024 06:10:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587480</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587480</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39587480</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by waterheater in "Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It likely depends on what constitutes a valid contract in this jurisdiction. For example, some states recognize a "handshake agreement" as a legally-binding contract, and you can be taken to court for violating that agreement. I'm certain people have been found guilty in a legal context because they replied to a email one way but acted in the opposite manner.<p>The Articles of Incorporation are going to be the key legal document. Still, the Founding Agreement is important to demonstrate the original intentions and motivations of the parties. That builds the foundation for the case that something definitively caused Altman to steer the company in a different direction. I don't believe it's unfair to say Altman is steering; it seems like the Altman firing was a strategy to draw out the anti-Microsoft board members, who, once identified, were easily removed once Altman was reinstated. If Altman wasn't steering, then there's no reason he would have been rehired after he was fired.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2024 19:00:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565425</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565425</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565425</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Altermagnetism: A New Type of Magnetism]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://phys.org/news/2024-02-altermagnetism-magnetism-broad-implications-technology.html">https://phys.org/news/2024-02-altermagnetism-magnetism-broad-implications-technology.html</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39383946">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39383946</a></p>
<p>Points: 4</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:36:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://phys.org/news/2024-02-altermagnetism-magnetism-broad-implications-technology.html</link><dc:creator>waterheater</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39383946</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39383946</guid></item></channel></rss>