Hacker News Reader

avsteeleon Pre-exposure to mRNA-LNP inhibits adaptive immune responses in mice

This is a good question. It also highlights the danger of a lay-interpretation of these results.

It is certainly already known that exposure to one viral strain can weaken response to others. But this fact has to be taken as part of a body of knowledge on how these effects balance each other to come to any kind of cost-benefit conclusions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

avsteeleon “Is there a heuristic we might use to identify and flag questionable papers?”

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/04/social_desirabi_1.h...

The proximal desirability bias is that of publication gatekeepers. Biases of society at large also can play a significant role for certain topics.

avsteeleon “Is there a heuristic we might use to identify and flag questionable papers?”

For non-experimental, non hard science, and based on the replicability studies of the last few years, and the things we have already known for a long time: I feel pretty comfortable with a prior probability of a paper's result being true positive at ~50%. For experimental, hard science, papers I still have a high belief, maybe 90%.

After this I use the following heuristics:

- => Lower belief

+ => higher belief

effects multiply, of course, but each is few %.

++ => sufficient details present that I think I can attempt to replicate without contacting authors (this is rare)

+ => code used is available in public repository (subset of above)

+ => published in med-to-high ranking journal

--- => published in obscure journal

-- => socially desirable outcome

+++ => socially undesirable outcome

-- => non-US, non-EU university or nat. lab

+ => national lab

I mostly read papers in my field (exp. physics), of course. But I began reading a bit more in medical and psyche a few years ago. My views are influenced by books like "Medical Nihilism", and "Science Fictions". Reading COVID papers was also caused me to revise my prior-probabilities downward.

avsteeleon Nobody wants to teach anymore

Never trust an article with no numbers in it.

Median teacher pay in NJ is $73K in 2020, and they get summer off.

avsteeleon The Science of Scientific Writing (1990)

This is a good document. I remember receiving it from my boss at NIST when I got there as a postdoc.

avsteeleon Who Makes Ridgid Tools?

So wait: Rigid, Milwaukee, and Ryobi are all manufactured by the same company (TTi?)? I had no idea Is there any actual difference here or is it all marketing?

There are the only 3 brands in power tools I recall seeing, so this is very odd.

avsteeleon Models are sucking the fun out of fun

Online communities do this to many games. As soon as you have thousands upon thousands looking to optimize the thing, it isn't the same game you might play with your friends. Creativity goes right out the window in favor of tested strategies. Applies especially to M:TG, or other CCG's IMO, as well as many strategy computer games.

I personally hate it. Though I can see many do not mind.

avsteeleon Using grape harvest dates to estimate summer temperature over 650 years

I thought that Europe experienced sustained cold years in the 1600s? You can see something near the start, but the crop failures where close to the end of the century. Surprised this plot doesn't show that.

Maybe this method is heavily biased by the outliers?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

avsteeleon Google’s video chat merger begins: Now there are two “Google Meet” apps

I don't even know what I'm 'supposed' to be using.

Which app goes with my google workspace account for work stuff? If I create a "Meet" room from within GMail and give my family the link as a text, now all of a sudden when they kick it asks to open the "Meet (original)", what does that even mean. How is a normal person supposed to understand this?

I'm not even upset, it's just so goofy that this is the work product from one of the largest companies with the best engineers.

avsteeleon 20B-parameter Alexa model sets new marks in few-shot learning

notwithstanding voice->text part:

Is it just me or does it seem like these tasks would be not all that hard if you just, you know, programmed them rather than trying to be so fancy with ML?

avsteeleon Jury finds former CIA programmer guilty of leaking CIA hacking materials

If he's guilty this is a more or less normal process. The real shocker is the stuff surrounding the leak in the article:

It was one of the largest leaks of information in the history of CIA and a huge embarrassment for then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who responded by labeling WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence agency" and developing "secret war plans" against the media organization that included kidnapping or even killing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Just so we are clear: if you are a member of an org, anywhere in the world, with no particular obligation to keep the CIA's secrets, but who's only mission is to make public CIA actions / capabilities, they may try to extra-judicially murder you.

Real are we the baddies? vibes. If you work there, or for them as a contractor, please consider putting your abilities to more ethical use.

avsteeleon Problems at Roblox

Kids aren't robots. They are human beings with underdeveloped brains. You can't tell them something and expect good compliance.

I teach my kid to not run into the street. He does it anyway if he gets distracted. He isn't 'trying' to get hit a by a car.

When he's older he'll be able to control himself. For now I don't let him near the street on his own.

avsteeleon USB installer tool removes Windows 11’s Microsoft account requirements

Win 11 will require a Microsoft account?? That's nuts.

How am I supposed to set up shared machines that run equipment in e.g. labs? The users want a single account with shared settings and data. Am I supposed to make a new throwaway MS account with email address for each machine?

avsteeleon YouTube removes criticism of dangerous fractal wood burning, but leaves up tips

It could easily be the case that a popular channel warning 'DON'T DO THIS' could make the situation worse by telling more people about an idea they would never have heard of otherwise.

The fact that some (presumably less seen) videos haven't been removed (yet) doesn't change this calculus.

avsteeleon Ask HN: What's the coolest website you know?

We buy a ton from there. The price is a little high but not enough to matter unless its a significant part of your expenses. They save me money on balance by being fast and convenient.

I'm a huge fan of their website.

avsteeleon Lessons from the golden age of the mall walkers

For my wife its mostly about being able to walk in the air conditioning. Hot outside

avsteeleon I've locked myself out of my digital life

With no second factor you are vulnerable to anything that could sniff your password. I guess this is fine as long as you never log on from any untrusted machine/location?

avsteeleon Orange Pi 800 Keyboard PC – A Raspberry Pi 400 alternative powered by RK3399

Can you elaborate? Is the problem with using a sd card is that the transfer speed is too slow? How bad is it?

avsteeleon The next Google

It will still pay to put ads in to paying customer's feeds. It's more or less inevitable if the customers tolerate it. If you think that's impossible I'd point to how streaming services are now serving up ever more adds.

avsteeleon Ubiquiti vs. Krebs

Speaking only for myself I disagree. I only had vague notion of them, but read Krebs on occasion, but didn't have any strong feelings on them ... until this. As long as the info in the 1st post form the lawyer is correct, I wouldn't buy from them

avsteeleon Today Google is turning on tracking for many users that previously turned it off

Same here. I checked when they announced, and now today. As well, no dice. Maybe it will be there tomorrow? Bizarre

avsteeleon Today Google is turning on tracking for many users that previously turned it off

I still can't figure out how to turn this off! Can anyone tell me?

If I read:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328#zippy=%2Chow-do...

Then the instructions say:

> You can enable or disable Google Workspace search history:

> * Go to the My Activity page.

> * Click Other Google activity and then Google Workspace search history.

> * Click On or Off.

If I go to:

https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Yes, I can find "Other Google activity" (check the top left hamburger menu if you don't see it)

But inside this, there is NO "Google Workspace search history". How are you supposed to do this? I'm definitely logged in as my workspace account.

avsteeleon Sumerian dog jokes, or the difficulty of translating dead languages

Translation is hard, for mostly-dead languages too. I recall this essay by Tolkien on translating Beowulf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Translating_Beowulf

avsteeleon Windows needs a change in priorities

Article is 90% spot-on. Win11 is the first time I do not want to upgrade, because it turns the actual bad parts of Win 10 up to...11!

MS is annihilating the good will they get from me via VSCode, Terminal, VStudio etc...

1) The ads, my god, the ads! Even normal, non-tech, people see this stuff and make a sour face.

2) "Lets finish setting up your PC" : Excuse me sir, its been set up for 4 years. Stop trying to get me to link my phone! I don't want O365 at home! I don't want to switch to Edge (it is not terrible but have made another choice.) I better be careful ant not mis-click or god knows what settings will be changed.

The UI stuff i really don't care a wit about.

Suggestion: Whatever, fine leave this garbage in 'Home' edition but let 'Pro' mean PRO and stop fighting me.

avsteeleon YouTube Won't Distinguish Between Misinformation and Reporting

The platform punished The Hill's morning show, Rising, for showing a clip of Trump speaking.

avsteeleon Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star

Good catch

"With the small stellar radius, Proxima d ... equilibrium temperature may reach 360K,"

NB: Earth's is 255K. Venus 260K, Mars 215K. So this doesn't tell the whole story, but is probably quite hot.

avsteeleon Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off

What crazy to me is how hard to parse the email was. I could hardly make heads or tails of it, and I'm no dummy. It almost seemed intentional, and now it makes sense.

Even manually setting this feature once you understand it I can't do either!

So first you might land here:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/11194328#zippy=%2Chow-do...

Then the instructions say:

> You can enable or disable Google Workspace search history:

> * Go to the My Activity page.

> * Click Other Google activity and then Google Workspace search history.

> * Click On or Off.

But this is wrong! When you follow the link the "Google workspace search history" is hidden in a hamburger menu in the top left. You have to click that to open the menu, THEN you can click on "Other Google Activity". But on THAT page there is no setting called "Google Workspace Search History". Just the old "Web & App Activity"

So what, I have to set a reminder for after 3/29/22 to come back to this screen? Madness!

avsteeleon Unusual login activity was due to bug

Exactly. What a garbage post from LastPass.

What's the error?

- was the message which says 3rd party had the correct password wrong?

- was it was sent out to accounts other than those for which the 3rd party had the password?

- something else?

avsteeleon Ask HN: How did my LastPass master password get leaked?

Careful doing this if you travel. Could be a real PITA if you get to a job site and can't log in to LastPass.

avsteeleon Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

Google workspace sends yes/no meeting confirmations that you make in workspace, to people within your own organization, to spam unless you specifically make a rule to allow them.