Hacker News: wrp

New comment by wrp in "How Costco Won in Japan (2025)"

wrp — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:54:25 +0000

When Costco came to Korea, it was a great source of American products at reasonable prices. They have gradually shifted to more Korean brands over the years. Even if you are only buying local products, my Korean friends tell me they prefer Costco for the produce, with greater variety and turnover than domestic supermarket chains.

New comment by wrp in "Personal Statement of a CIA Analyst"

wrp — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 21:20:51 +0000

This comment or something like it should be at the top, because it's the main point about polygraphing. It's the process, not the answers that matter.

I knew a guy who did security clearance checking for the Three Letter Agencies for many years. He told be that if I ever had to do these interviews, I just need to pick good sounding lies and stick to them. He said it's the ones who try to be honest and introspective who get failed out.

New comment by wrp in "I fed 24 years of my blog posts to a Markov model"

wrp — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 23:26:55 +0000

There was an MS-DOS tool by James Korenthal called Babble[0], which did something similar. It apparently worked according to a set of grammatical transformers rather than by generating n-grams, so it was more akin to the "cut-up" technique[1]. He reported that he got better output from smaller, more focused corpora. Its output was surprisingly interesting.

[0] https://archive.org/details/Babble_1020, https://vetusware.com/download/Babble%21%202.0/?id=11924

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique

New comment by wrp in "The Life Hunt for Red October"

wrp — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 05:35:06 +0000

Thank you

New comment by wrp in "The Life Hunt for Red October"

wrp — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 04:56:20 +0000

> Sam Neil writes hilariously about the filming.

That piqued my interest, so I searched for it but Google AI told me to give up. :-/

Sam Neill has not written about the filming of The Hunt for Red October; he was not in the cast of that film, which starred actors like Alec Baldwin, Sean Connery, and Scott Glenn. He is, however, known for his role in Jurassic Park, and there are interviews where he discusses that experience and his work with Steven Spielberg.

New comment by wrp in "Space: 1999 – Special Effects Techniques"

wrp — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 05:52:00 +0000

I recently watched the whole season of UFO, wanting so badly to like it because of its music and set design, but episodes were soooooo dull. The plot premises seemed promising, but the development was poor.

New comment by wrp in "Music eases surgery and speeds recovery, study finds"

wrp — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 14:58:18 +0000

I recently attended someone in the hospital. The constant beeping and alarms round the clock prevented any deep sleep for days, and seemed to hinder recovery.

New comment by wrp in "Brain has five 'eras' with adult mode not starting until early 30s"

wrp — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 19:38:17 +0000

Support for part of this from another source. I've read through the collected letters of many famous intellectuals (just for hobby), and I've noticed a common dramatic shift in personality starting around age 28-30. People become more attentive to the needs of others and their own role in a network of social responsibilities. It's no longer "me, me, me".

New comment by wrp in "Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub"

wrp — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 16:37:57 +0000

I was in Hokkaido many years ago for work and loved it. Compared to the rest of Japan, indoor/outdoor spaces are wider, food is better, and people are friendlier. I never could swing another work visit, so I dream about spending time there in retirement.

I could imagine, though, that companies might have trouble attracting quality talent to Hokkaido, because people see more opportunities in the big cities down south. I suppose it's like if you were trying to build a tech hub in Montana.

New comment by wrp in "We are building AI slaves. Alignment through control will fail"

wrp — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 04:26:06 +0000

What would be the plot of a movie equivalent to Blade Runner for this scenario?

New comment by wrp in "Artificial Writing and Automated Detection [pdf]"

wrp — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:58:36 +0000

As a teacher, I have closely watched the effect of LLM use on student writing and attempts by colleagues to use automated detection. I plead with you, DO NOT USE AUTOMATED DETECTION.

I hate AI slop and I fight against it in my work, but as that style of writing becomes increasingly prevalent, students are unconsciously adopting it for their base writing style. Automated detection of LLM writing never worked well, and now LLM and human writing have converged so much in style that machine detectors are worthless.

Our response should be to refuse to accept slop, whether produced by human or machine. I strive to point out the stylistic details of slop and how to avoid or edit them away.

New comment by wrp in "When is it better to think without words?"

wrp — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 23:14:06 +0000

Problem solving is a well-explored field in experimental psychology. TFA is a bit unfocused, making both some generally supported speculations and some traditional ideas that haven't been supported. A very good survey is the edited volume, The Psychology of Problem Solving (Davidson 2003).

Although TFA doesn't refer to it by name, "insight" problem solving is when you are stuck on something and then suddenly realize the solution. The common explanation for being stuck is "fixation" on the wrong things. In agreement with TFA, there is indication that verbalization supports fixation more than visualization.

New comment by wrp in "The Battle of Hastings Isn't Over"

wrp — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 04:27:29 +0000

There is an even longer history of denigration of the Anglo-Saxon-Jutes and mythologizing the Normans, but 11th century animosities were a different phenomenon that the modern British use of those groups as political symbols.

New comment by wrp in "Trump plans to build a Paris-like arch near the Lincoln Memorial"

wrp — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 05:45:46 +0000

The traditional grand monuments in the West are arches and obelisks/columns. We already have an obelisk. How about a pyramid/ziggurat? After all, we have one on our money.

New comment by wrp in "Former Trump adviser John Bolton criminally indicted"

wrp — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:05:55 +0000

Speaking from knowing many people who once had jobs requiring security clearance, I think it's likely that a thorough search of their papers would uncover some stuff that officially shouldn't have left the office. People work on stuff from home and the evaluation of how sensitive something is can be fuzzy. The real concern should be whether the possessor was deliberately acting against national security. This "possession of classified materials" charge has become a political tool. Maybe once both political sides have suffered from it, there will be some effort to reign it in.

New comment by wrp in "America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom"

wrp — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 04:59:39 +0000

Japan used that strategy very successfully for at least a century. The high cost of imported goods encouraged consumers to buy domestic at prices that were also high, which subsidized exports at competitive prices. The Japanese public is less docile now, but this is one example where import restrictions worked well. I believe you can find other examples from the 20th century, but I'm not sure whether they would work well in the current global environment.

New comment by wrp in "For centuries massive meals amazed visitors to Korea (2019)"

wrp — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:55:06 +0000

I hang out with a mostly older crowd and often eat in downmarket neighborhoods, and I've seen that dish mixing after meals.

Nice to learn that bit about long kimchi slices. I just assumed it was because people like it long, like with spaghetti.

New comment by wrp in "For centuries massive meals amazed visitors to Korea (2019)"

wrp — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:02:45 +0000

A substantial restaurant meal in Korea is usually served with several standard side dishes. Due to the expense and effort of providing these to each table, restaurants often require a minimum party size of two. Also, I'm not sure if it's illegal or just gross, but if a dish looks untouched, sketchier places will sometimes just pass it along to the next customer.

New comment by wrp in "What happens to college towns after peak 18-year-old?"

wrp — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 04:32:22 +0000

In medicine and law, it is unethical and sometimes illegal to choose your course of action based on profitability against the needs of the client. Teaching has been traditionally been held to the same ethical standard.

New comment by wrp in "What happens to college towns after peak 18-year-old?"

wrp — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 02:47:06 +0000

They won't close. They will just rely more heavily on foreign students. The primary focus of academia is to remain employed, not to serve the needs of the domestic student population.