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HighlandSpring

384 karma · joined March 16, 2017

hnchat.com:nTIUhuV43uYOfQuVQhpd
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HighlandSpring··on Zombie stats: Where the numbers AI quotes come from
I've had the same thought as probably have many others - what solutions exist in this space?

To put it into words: a layer over an LLM that tracks provenance: the documents it has access to, the facts it has extracted, the mathematical expressions and queries it's run and finally the artifacts and results it's yielded complete with receipts for exactly how it arrived at it's findings and conclusions.

I assume legaltech products have to do it like this. Is the general pattern implemented somewhere on github?

HighlandSpring··on Training a 4B model to produce 81% faster query plans than Postgres
Could you A/B at random, use that to collect data and eventually feed that back in to prefer A or B depending on the shape of the query?
HighlandSpring··on PostgreSQL for Everything
This isn't just theory either, for example: Revolut is a bank that does all its event persistence and streaming on top of postgres. No traditional message queues/brokers in their stack.

https://medium.com/revolut/recording-more-events-but-where-w...

HighlandSpring··on GitHub's fake star economy
I wonder if there's a more graph oriented score that could work well here - something pagerank ish so that a repo scores better if it has issues reported by users who themselves have a good score. So it's at least a little resilient to crude manipulation attempts
HighlandSpring··on What Happened to Maybe.co?
I remember only a few days ago this was a hosted version of https://github.com/maybe-finance/maybe

It looks like they're pivoting into corporate finance tracking which seems like a good move but still a bit jarring as I was curious to give this a go!

Existing customers - what comms have you received?

I don't really want to self-host this even though I might. Before I commit, what are some alternatives? The UI seemed very compelling

HighlandSpring··on What methylene blue can (and can’t) do for the brain
Selegiline is also known as Emsam, the patches reportedly Sam Bankman-Fried was on, alongside ADHD meds. I recall reading how this may have been a large driver of his compulsive risk it all decision making that eventually brought it all down.
HighlandSpring··on Vagus Nerve Stimulation Erases PTSD: Study
Try telling all this to someone who is effectively emotionally/physically disabled because their mind and body either enter a rollercoaster or just shutdown in response to anything vaguely reminiscent of something they experienced.

I think these treatments are better understood as methods to encourage one's mind and body to reprocess some experience so that it is "merely" a terrible thing that happened so they can live a stabler, more balanced, more normal life.

HighlandSpring··on Making Postgres scale
There are "better" databases but they're better given some particular definition that may not be relevant to your needs. If SQL/the relational model and ACID semantics is what you need then postgres is simply the best in class. The fact it dates back to the 80s is probably an advantage (requirement?) when it comes to solving a problem really well
HighlandSpring··on The Tensor Cookbook (2024)
Do point us at this standard notation
HighlandSpring··on Boeing's starliner docks at ISS after five thrusters unexpectedly shut off
Butch "Space Cowboy" Wilmore
HighlandSpring··on Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under the Radar at Busiest Airports
My best guess is a lack of willing participants combined with pressure from up top to move money to keep the operation going/meet targets.

We also don't know how much of that 500k is profit - maybe the margins in organised crime aren't what they used to be. Each $3,750 saved is money they can put straight into their pocket as their boss might never find out how many mules they ended up using.

Or maybe the reporting is fishy

HighlandSpring··on Nobody cares about your blog
Writing blog posts is the lowest barrier of entry there is to contributing to the sum total of knowledge for some particular keywords, problem space. Sometimes even, years of blogging gets edited and expanded upon into an entire book but I suppose no one cares about those either.
HighlandSpring··on Show HN: DriftDB – an open source WebSocket backend for real-time apps
Oh, cool! So kinda like IRC?
HighlandSpring··on Brief structured respiration enhances mood and reduces physiological arousal
The second sigh sounds like it may, in effect, progressively overload your lung capacity. Felt good too
HighlandSpring··on Surviving disillusionment (2020)
Maybe because it's a pretty good fit for the only things that ultimately matter: allocating budget and attributing revenue and PnL
HighlandSpring··on Git-bug: Distributed, offline-first bug tracker embedded in Git
tig-bug would be fun
HighlandSpring··on Ask HN: What Recession?
The recession(s) are fucking different demographics in different ways.

One thing that's certainly happening in London is that there's hundreds of entry-level candidates fighting for only a handful of openings.

The industry has generally become more risk-averse. Hiring less experienced people is now extra risky, as it is a bet that they'll generate some value for the company before moving on for a higher salary elsewhere. Hiring juniors is a great long-term move, especially in a 0% rates landscape and when VC funding is plentiful but if you only have 12 months cash it's pretty hopeful.

This budget is now being used to hire safer, more predictable hires: seniors (know what you're getting into) and contractors (can cut them with 28 days notice or even less, no employment contract to complicate things)

HighlandSpring··on The benefits of breakfast cereal consumption (2014)
Fine, will elaborate:

> Regular consumption of breakfast cereals is associated with diets that are lower in fat

why is this necessarily a good thing?

> Regular consumption of breakfast cereals is associated with diets that are higher in vitamins and minerals for adults, adolescents, and children

is the subset of vitamins and minerals and the corresponding RDAs that they look at responsible for driving meaningful outcomes or do they just pick whatever's convenient?

> Regular consumption of breakfast cereals is associated with a greater likelihood of meeting recommended nutrient intakes

again, recommended nutrient intakes is very convenient considering they're derived from how nourished a population is, i.e: as a nourishment goes down so do the recommended levels.

> Consumption of breakfast cereals is associated with higher daily milk intake

Only thing so far that might actually be causal to health. Probably not though because the frankenmilk we consume today is not the raw milk we were consuming a century ago.

> Consumption of presweetened breakfast cereals does not increase the total daily energy intake in children’s diets

calories in/ calories out is not as useful as made out to be, there's quite little wrong with consuming a lot of calories if those calories are well utilised

> Consumption of breakfast cereals does not increase the total daily sodium intake

Sodium is an essential electrolyte/signaling ion. Too much is bad in the presence of insulin insensitivity. Too little is really bad if the individual is metabolcially sound for the most part.

> Consumption of presweetened breakfast cereals does not increase total daily sugar intake of children and adolescents

second one so far that might actually be a really good proxy

tl;dr: no idea how many of these are useful proxies for things that actually matter

HighlandSpring··on Is the psychedelic therapy bubble about to burst?
Only tangentially related but quite interesting: https://mobile.twitter.com/GraduatedBen/status/1565041582671...

Sometimes I wonder if SSRIs are one of those things that the industry overinvested in and now that there's plenty of momentum (and budget) to support the narrative that they are the cure it's hard to suggest that there may be simpler alternatives

HighlandSpring··on Old Problem About Mathematical Curves Falls to Young Couple
Cute!!
HighlandSpring··on The EU Commission accepts high error rates when checking chats
> HNers believe this conspiracy theory about their own governments (that they are deliberately secretly plotting to be despotic, and using the cover of trying to protect children) with no actual evidence, just a lot of winks and eyebrow wiggling. Complete abdication of rational thinking.

Ha, I don't think most HNers would be quick to say think their governments are capable of conspiracy. I think most would say it's just more your regular run of the mill taxpayer-funded incompetency.

HighlandSpring··on I Choose Optimism
You're probably referring to another book as this one's main author is a she.

The book makes a point of how you can't predict the future. Instead it enumerates a bunch of shapes the future could take given various sets of assumptions. Some of the shapes look decent but require a lot of things to go right in the meantime.

HighlandSpring··on Edible insects role in transmission of parasitic diseases to humans (2019)
> I don't think disgust is "innate".

Oh it is and what til you hear about couple more fears we didn't have to learn through experience:

> Examples of innate fear include fears that are triggered by predators, pain, heights, rapidly approaching objects, and ancestral threats such as snakes and spiders. Animals and humans detect and respond more rapidly to threatening stimuli than to nonthreatening stimuli in the natural world.

Some adaptations are so worthwhile they get wired into our biology!

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32852735

HighlandSpring··on Ask HN: What is something you built but never marketed?
This seems like something that could have massive tail upside. You help someone with lots of resources recover something of sentimental value, they tip you couple $k.
HighlandSpring··on Black holes finally proven mathematically stable
And the individual lemmas could have author and chronology metadata attached, then you could plot the DAG as a roadmap/tech tree of sorts with an axis corresponding to time.

You'd be able to at a glance see the year a result entered public domain, who authored it, etc

One can dream

HighlandSpring··on What’s going on with Google and Facebook hiring freezes?
If PLN depreciates against USD (as it has this year) and the contract is USD denominated (which is simpler for Google so likely the case) then you'll have actually received a gradual payrise!
HighlandSpring··on VCs are scared when they should be greedy
It could be mostly 1)

If you hire a smart kid with an MBA from stanford and he gives you a bad name with a series of mistakes, well, bad apples happen. If you hire a smart kid from a no name university and the same happens people will be quicker to blame you.

Credentialism is a thing for the same reason brand recognition is a thing. When a product with good reputation fails it's bad luck. When a product with bad reputation fails it's to be expected. Power perpetuates.

HighlandSpring··on The Daily Wrong: AI-Generated Lies Every Day
Seems on brand
HighlandSpring··on Latest Soundboks firmware cuts the performance of their speakers by half
In an alternate universe: - firmware updates to intentionally reduce max volume, 1% at a time so people don't notice - monthly subscription to increase max volume
HighlandSpring··on How we built Hydrogen, a React framework for building custom storefronts
Going to take this as an opportunity to ask, has anyone here worked with https://www.reactstorefront.io/

It looks like a very competent solution but would like to hear from actual users

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