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djrhails

25 karma · joined October 3, 2020

hails.info

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/djrhails; my proof: https://keybase.io/djrhails/sigs/LWSTYuHmFqxHPhAXkZPOCfJVq8QsdjNvA8BPlSJwfRA ]

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djrhails··on How Professional Gamblers Size Bets
Thanks! Think interactivity makes 'non-fiction' much more interesting.

There's definitely more complexity layered in - most things in life are not as clear cut as a coin flip. However, I do tend to think the idea of thinking 'geometrically' is pretty universal.

djrhails··on Show HN: Browse neologisms for the feelings and experiences English can't name
Worth checking out the [Explore page](https://words.hails.info/explore?color=true&tag=source) - genuinely surprised by the embedding space quality.
djrhails··on Google Titans architecture, helping AI have long-term memory
https://github.com/lucidrains/titans-pytorch - is the only public iteration.

But no one appears to have taken the risk/time to properly validate it.

djrhails··on NeurIPS 2025 Best Paper Awards
There is TITANS - https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.00663
djrhails··on The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
I just made a reverse-dictionary search for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (and some of my own words).

- Introduction article: https://hails.info/projects/missing-words/

- Search: https://words.hails.info/

Great to see the resurgence of interest!

djrhails··on Men in the mixed-gender squads do not perform worse
After randomly assigning men to mixed-gender and single gender squads for Norwegian Bootcamp, this study found no performance or perceived satisfaction impacts.

Moreover, the men in the integrated squads developed more egalitarian attitudes. Interestingly, these attitudes were not maintained once no longer in a mixed squad.

djrhails··on Don't Farm Bugs
This was fascinating, although I strongly disagree with a lot of the points - and arguments used, it's such a wildly different perspective that I couldn't help but be intrigued. In many ways it is a masterclass on how to write persuasively for what feels a ridiculous premise.

The drunk driving parallel I thought was more that a little amusing. A more apt comparison might just be driving itself - it's a risky activity both for yourself and the others around you. Perhaps even to the speculated 1% marker but that doesn't appear to create any sort of moral imperative to change our willingness to drive.

Equally I couldn't help notice the level of subtle anthropomorphism going on - name dropping depression as related to anhedonia is a clever literary technique for encouraging this natural thought pattern; even while adding the "perhaps", "some think" it makes no difference to the "bias ... easily distorting our intuitions".

I'd love to see a similar essay for plants - or even the AI that they mention. I could see the outline for an equally persuasive essay (a shame that the author sees AI being trivially less likely to be sentient - one I have trouble believing beyond a "biological bias")

djrhails··on Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
Frankly, right now anyone who isn't already in the game isn't able to acquire Ether without paying for it.

Mining at a rate necessary to get any reasonable amount of Ether is a huge investment, and is already out of reach for the average person. Setting your desktop computer to mine definitely won't pay for your small smart contract.

djrhails··on CLI Guidelines – A guide to help you write better command-line programs
I think the problem with this approach is when you start to utilise large (normally mono) repos the earlier stages can take significant time.

Then you're in a condumdrum of if you make the loading more generic or have an input lag to get to "writing objects".

djrhails··on Show HN: Dial-a-Podcast
Probably a bit of both - it feels too excited. Podcasts tend not to be things you shake your fist in the air for - that's more winning the lottery territory.
djrhails··on Show HN: Dial-a-Podcast
Looks interesting! I'll be honest took me a little longer than you'd want to work out what the product was.

I know now that it is in the name! However I'm used to ignoring names to understand what a product does. Replacing the "connecting organisations with ears" tag line with something like "Access your podcast via the phone, and get more listeners" would be more clearer even if it's not as clever.

djrhails··on GHunt – An OSINT tool to extract information about a Google account
Good question, found a reference to it in a related blog post: https://sector035.nl/articles/keeping-a-grip-on-google-ids and took it at face value. Can't find anything more looking further.
djrhails··on GHunt – An OSINT tool to extract information about a Google account
Looks like Google has a mostly internal user id ("gaia_id"), once you've got this small identifier you can look on each Google related site for publicly available information relating to that user id.

Looks like Google is aware of it as the reference to gaia_id has been removed from Youtube pages source (Aug 2020), locked down public accessibility of photo albums (Sep 2020), and prevented connected email address leaks from Webmaster tools (Sep 2020).