Hacker News Reader

avsteeleon Entire website in a single HTML file

One of the comments mentions a notable problem: Safari does not support 'Lazy' loading of images so every one they will be downloaded even if they are not seen.

avsteeleon Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

This is very well written. Thank you. Did you live under such a regime yourself?

avsteeleon Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

I know they generate a moderate fraction now, that's the point of my post. I think they are backing themselves into a corner.

The problems to date include very high energy prices. Even larger challenges await; these will grow as renewables they become a larger fraction of total output. Renewable variability isn't a problem when they are a small fraction, but a very large one when they are a large percentage. These are unsolved problems. Land use is also an issue.

avsteeleon Germany is closing half of its reactors before the end of the year

Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that nuclear doesn't ramp up/down very well either. Most nuclear plants use fission for the base load but gas or other fossil fuel generators for the variable part. Since in Germany green power in the form of solar/wind are even more variable, this makes Nuclear + Solar/Wind a bad combo.

Wind and solar don't even make sense for Germany given their climate/geography.

Germany should ditch the green and use its amazing engineering to build better nuclear reactors, IMO.

avsteeleon An iframe from googlesyndication.com tries to access the camera and microphone

Has anyone seen any well done research showing these effects?

avsteeleon Zed: lightning-fast, collaborative code editor written in Rust (Atom team)

What's the meaning of "immediate mode" in their description? The only context (no pun intended) in which I know this phrase is the old, deprecated way of writing OpenGL vertices.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6733934/what-does-immedi...

avsteeleon Ask HN: Why is building Windows apps so complicated?

Really disagree with the OP.

Google "Windows desktop development" -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/

Click the first chapter -> "Overview of app development options". It explains the options and their differences at a high level. Admittedly if you choose WinUI3 I haven't much experience, but if you chose WPF...

Google "Microsoft WPF" and click the 1st result:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/?view=ne...

Click the link "Create a WPF application". You get a lovely guide that was updated within the last month or so.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/get-star...

You can't really complain if you are a newbie, don't follow the tutorial, and find things confusing.

Dayshine's post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29529535)shows the easiest way to do things from the command line.

avsteeleon Training computer vision models on random noise instead of real images

I'm confused. Are they just saying if you throw noise-like images at your hot dog classier and label them 'not hot dog' it improves performance?

avsteeleon Pixel prevented me from calling 911

So, this implies that a serious bug in any program with the 'call' hook could prevent your phone from making a call, even 911? Seems like a big deal!

In software I write, the logic for 'emergency' priority events doesn't go through the same call chain for this reason.

avsteeleon Pfizer and Biontech provide update on Omicron variant

If there is an expert in immunology here I'd really like to ask a question:

Aren't antibody titers just one measure of immunity?

Since ~everyone with just two shots get them a while ago, and people receiving the boosters are receiving them now, wouldn't we expect must higher levels of neutralizing antibodies in boosted people? I know the number of antibodies fades over time, (whether from vaccine or infection) but this doesn't mean you don't have lasting protection after this, right?

Wouldn't it therefore be a mistake/misleading to conclude something specific about a level of protection from this titer data alone?

avsteeleon AWS us-east-1 outage

Getting strange errors trying to manage my amazon account right now, could this be related?

494 ERROR and "We're sorry Something went wrong with our website, please try again later."

avsteeleon Numerics applied to Casimir geometry generates intersection with Alcubierre warp

Good Post.

I'll just put my back-of-the envelope calculation here to insert some optimism. While the energy emitted is immense, since the event was so far away (1.6e9 lt-yr), then if we plug in the solid angle subtended by the detector (~4000m4000m) I'm only seeing about ~2 kJ of energy passing through LIGO.

Caveats:

I assume the gravitational wave pattern is spherical; probably wrong but I'm not sure what the radiation pattern looks like for these event and in where we lay in relation to it.

avsteeleon England mortality data suggest systematic mis-categorisation of vaccine status

Notwithstanding the main thrust I wanted to comment on something in the abstract:

"The risk/benefit of Covid vaccines is arguably most accurately measured by an all-cause mortality rate comparison of vaccinated against unvaccinated, since it not only avoids most confounders relating to case definition but also fulfils the WHO/CDC definition of "vaccine effectiveness" for mortality"

But has the obvious confounder of assuming the two populations are equal in all other ways other than being vaccinated. This is probably false.

There was a US dataset where it was shown the mortality from a variety of diseases was lower among the vaccinated. This isn't because the vaccine is protective against those diseases!

Measuring via all-cause mortality is not advisable unless your population dataset is very large (a whole country is certainly enough though).

avsteeleon YAML: It's Time to Move On

I have nesting up to three levels deep. I use inline tables^ for the many innermost (or other few-element) tables. It's never seemed excessively verbose.

^https://toml.io/en/v1.0.0#inline-table

avsteeleon YAML: It's Time to Move On

I'll give my opinion as someone who has to choose among JSON, XML, TOML, and YAML about two years ago for a new project. Whatever I chose had to be easy for end-users who don't know the specification to to understand later.

Here were my thoughts on the options.

JSON - No comments -> impossible

XML - Unreadable

YAML - 2nd place. Meaningful indentation also made me worried someone was going to not understand why their file didn't work. The lack of quotes around strings was frustrating.

TOML - 1st place. Simpler than YAML to read & parse. It truly seems 'obvious' like the name says.

I haven't encountered any situations where I wish I had more than TOML offers.

avsteeleon Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation

Great, thanks for the info

avsteeleon Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation

I am an expert. I have a PhD in experimental atomic physics. My work thesis work was on laser cooled atoms and ions. I have multiple publications in this topic area^. I started and run a company that is making the first commercial instruments that rely on laser-cooled atoms.^^

There is nothing wrong with making few conversational comments without being aware of the details in a particular paper. This is how scientists talk to each other BTW. If I was at a conference with the authors I'd say something similar to the OP above, then they'd agree or disagree.

^https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mBN1xwcAAAAJ&hl=en

^^https://www.zerok.com

avsteeleon Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation

The innovation here appear to be the chamber. (caveat: I still need to read the paper). A few thoughts follow.

They are going for a UHV***, probably <1e-10 mbar, but want to do it with a passive pumping design. In an ordinary chamber to get there you'd do a pump down, then bake it to remove the water. Then use an ion pump plus occasional firing of a titanium sublimation pump to remove the hydrogen that leaks in (ion pumps don't work so well for hydrogen at low pressures). They have some expensive chamber that doesn't suffer from these leaks.

Still a lot of other work to do though. I see a table full of optics to make the MOT*. Also see a pair of anti-Helmholtz coils for the magnetic field. They could maybe replace those coils (which probably drive a few amps) with permanent magnets (assuming they don't need to switch the fields on and off which I imagine they don't because it can't imagine a pulsed design that wouldn't risk missing data)

Passive getters work for a good long time with low leak rates. These you can just buy**. To be honest I'm not sure why you need such a fancy chamber. I'd guess a good NEG pump, a small chamber, and good seals would make you fine for a long time, but I'd need to do the math to be sure.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_trap

**https://www.saesgetters.com/products-functions/products/neg-...

***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high_vacuum

avsteeleon Making the dislike count private across YouTube

Why not just make sure the person has watched >X% of the video before allowing like/dislike?

Its like they haven't though this through...

avsteeleon WSL2 can now mount Linux ext4 disks directly

Reasons I installed:

* I wanted to work at the Linux command line without exiting windows/rebooting

* I didn't know anything about VMs. What options are available, cost, how to set them up etc..

* zero-knowledge to installation took 5 minutes.

avsteeleon Elite Underproduction

There are quite a few places like this:

* GTRI * Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab * MIT Lincoln Labs * ~All the national labs (NIST, Argonne, etc...)

They are still mostly full as I understand.

If I was to write an article on what might be improved: We need more translational research (product focused, using existing knowledge) and less academic research.

One problem I see is that there just isn't the springboard from academic research to commercialization in physics like there is in comp sci or biotech.

Granted I'm biased. I founded my company (zeroK NanoTech) to capitalize on laser cooling research. Two Nobel prizes and countless professors pushing the boundaries on this stuff since the 90's. And my little company is going to be the first to deliver a product that's a black box to the user wrt to the science but delivers some new capabilities. The ion trap quantum computing may yet pay (much larger) dividends to society and those guys are also now making big pushes as well. Might be fair to count the resurgence of rocketry and fusion in this category as well.

So maybe things *are* looking up after all!

avsteeleon Elite Underproduction

I disagree with the article's premises and conclusions, my perspective is that of a physicist who also knows many lapsed physicists.

The premise seems wrong in that he disagrees with the elite overproduction thesis, but the professions he lists are " lawyers, MBA holders,..." and later to finance. But these are the professions likely to be zero-sum. So to me the article really is "I agree with the elite overproduction thesis, I just don't think it applies to physics".

OK lets talk about that then.

If there is something that's gone wrong with pushing forward the boundaries of our knowledge it isn't a lack of bodies producing the standard unit of scientific knowledge: "the peer-reviewed publication". These have grown exponentially. I don't think I've seen anyone even argue the rate of knowledge increase is growing commensurately. It *might* be the case that new knowledge requires exponentially more people looking for it but that's a pretty different article. Personally, I'm skeptical more NSF funding would help.

I do agree with this part:

   Our apparatus of scientific education, especially mathematics education, is deeply flawed. It takes too long to bring young people to the research front, and it produces a false view of what doing science is really like.

But this research is in a academic setting, and there is definitely, unambiguously, an overproduction of physics PhDs relative to academic positions available. Letting more new students in the door wouldn't help anyone!

avsteeleon Long-term NAEP scores for 13-year-olds drop for first time since testing began

No Child Left Behind passed in 2002. My understanding is that this mandated a lot more annual standardized testing that continues to this day.

Is the data from the NCLB tests consistent with the NAEP results?

avsteeleon I'm sorry

I am not versed in all the details here, but it is clear there is a diverge of expectations between MS and some of the repo owners. This is just part of business. Legal agreements and projects are complicated. Not everything is going to be spelled out. In a good business relationship you acknowledge this and work in good faith to resolve differences when they occur.

However, top comments make clear there is a dire need for professional communications training among these programmers. There is entirely too much emotion on display here. Stuff like this:

   While I appreciate that this must have been hard to write, this is a total non-apology and just about meets the incredibly low expectations I and others had for the .NET Foundation's public statement.

.. and the other comments like it, are not productive. There is a difference in expectations, so resolve it by making offers to MS for proposed changes. Ultimately there is a negotiated settlement or you walk. That's it. Don't bring emotions into it.

avsteeleon FCC plans to rein in “gateway” carriers that bring foreign robocalls to US

Though STIR/SHAKEN is now common on the IP networks of large phone companies, carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers still have until June 30, 2023, to deploy the technology.

So... the major carrier already have this, and its still making no difference? Is this rule going to fix the situation when applied to smaller entities or not?

The entire situation is such an utter failure of the FCC. Literally millions of people can no longer answer their phone, and its been this way for years.

avsteeleon Excision's CRISPR HIV therapy is heading into human testing after FDA clearance

Imagine a study where half gets vax and half doesn't. If population is pristine at outset at end of study VE is 1-ratio between people who get COVID in the two arms.

Now, if there is any prior exposure to the disease among participants (this isn't always known, esp. for something like COVID), and if there is any natural immunity that accrues, this will pull that ratio towards 1 (VE=0)

avsteeleon Excision's CRISPR HIV therapy is heading into human testing after FDA clearance

There are numerous bodies of data supporting waning immunity at this point. This data is based on real-world breakthrough rates, not antibody counts.

Two examples:

1) Israel data shows high level of breakthrough infection. This is the basis for their booster policy:

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-doctors-fi...

2) Moderna just released their own study showing reinfection rates at 2x at 13+ months relative to <8 months post second dose.

https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d...

avsteeleon Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets

I mean, someone can buy stocks short and then burn down a company's HQ/factory today.

This isn't a reason to not allow equities markets.

avsteeleon Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets

read==listen here.

Do a search for "manipulate" in the text for a simple counter-argument.

tellingly. None of the critiques I see address these counterarguments even, so I suspect knee-jerk responses are mostly whats posted here.

avsteeleon Futarchy: Robin Hanson on prediction markets

Commenters saying: "but someone can influence the market" should at least listen to the podcast (and really should also) familiarize themselves with the existing literature.

Do you think this critique has never been considered? If you disagree with the reasons why this is not a problem, go ahead and critique those directly.

Please don't reflexively pooh-pooh an idea you don't really understand.