Hacker News Reader

geenewon Segment Anything Model (SAM) can "cut out" any object in an image

That’s it for me

geenewon Bing Newcomb, Whose E*Trade Transformed Stock Trading, Dies at 79

This video, by Bill Clinton, prominently includes the etrade spokesdude. It gives an idea of how culturally prominent etrade was in the dotcom boom.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hi39UO57LHw

geenewon MacUser 1996: How to Rig Up the Fastest Photoshop Machine

Speaking from my own impressions, the UI was noticeably faster. There were many applications - mp3 playing, for example - that only worked on PowerPC.

Over time Intel became faster, but there was a period of ~1-3? years when PPC was faster. AFAIR :)

geenewon If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

This was a good show, about the relationship between birdsong and human language:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05tz9jr

geenewon MacUser 1996: How to Rig Up the Fastest Photoshop Machine

To be fair, PowerPC was dramatically faster at the time. Akin to the jump with M1.

geenewon Zuckerberg: Early-career eng tend to perform better when in person '>=3 d/week'

Branched from

Meta hires DJ to play in cafeteria to urge workers to return to the office (businessinsider.com) by randycupertino:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35396701

geenewon BloombergGPT: A Large Language Model for Finance

This must be the 'big data' I heard so much about.

LLMs in general, I mean. They seem to be the first widespread application for large, unstructured datasets. Still hype-y, but maybe even a /practical/ application.

geenewon How to draw dotted lines on chalkboards, MIT style (2021)

Straying a bit from the topic, but those 'magic eraser' home cleaning products work on laminated plastic, like you find on day-planner erasable calendars.

Porcelain whiteboards are nice, I've always managed to get them very clean with just rubbing alcohol.

Is there any concern about chipping or even breaking with the glass whiteboards (if, for example, it somehow falls on the floor, eg during moving)?

geenewon The F-15 Eagle: Origins and Development, 1964-1972 [pdf]

There's an HBO movie about development of the Bradley called 'Pentagon Wars'. It's a rare bureaucratic comedy movie.

geenewon Gordon Moore has died

RIP. Nothing more to add.

geenewon Why construction projects always go over budget

It has a bearing on the cost associated with road closures, which can't be insignificant.

Anyway, some quick looking found:

> Gov. Janet Mills toured the Veranda Street site of the new bridge being installed along Interstate 295 in Portland on Saturday afternoon and said she was pleased with the rapid progress of the project.

> “I’m thrilled with the technology, thrilled that it’s going on time and on budget,” Mills said. “Three days’ time, and this bridge will be done. It’s amazing. It’s like giant Legos going together.”

https://www.pressherald.com/2022/04/23/i-295-bridge-replacem...

which seems like enough to go on to presume it's at least close to being on budget.

geenewon Costs of the U.S.-Led War in Iraq Since 2003

Related, this is a worthwhile retrospective of the same war:

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/iconic-images-from-the-...

geenewon Retiring a favourite C++ joke

Better phrasing (and good advice!):

Don't mock try all the time

geenewon Retiring a favourite C++ joke

Maybe he can mock try next?

geenewon 'Financial Times' Issues 103-Year-Old Correction (2017)

It's pedantic to say, but, based on what they said, their original was not incorrect, simply less exhaustive than it could have been. It could (and, seems to) be that the fellow's work on anaesthetics was seen as more important than his work on cholera. Given the (often overlooked) importance of modern anaesthetics, I can easily believe this.

geenewon South Korea to build world’s largest chip center in Seoul with $230B investment

  s/\(\w*\)\([ ->]*\)\(\w*\)$/s\/\1\/\3/

geenewon Lidar Reveals 650-Square-Mile Maya Site Hidden Beneath Guatemalan Rain Forest

It’s a bit trickier than that; some of the photons from the pulse pass through the canopy to hit the ground. In other words, a single pulse can have multiple detected returns, some from the top of the canopy, some the middle, some the ground.

It’s important to realize that the laser pulse doesn’t remain at the same diameter the whole time; it’s path looks like a cone, albeit a very narrow cone. By the time it hits the ground it can be a couple of metres in diameter.

That two metre wide bunch of photons is what is travelling through the canopy. Some fraction hit the top of the canopy and are reflected; some fraction of the reflected photons travel back in a straight line to the detector, the rest are lost to the environment. The same process repeats until the pulse hits the ground, and whatever photons are left reflect back.

The energy returned to the detector is a tiny fraction of the energy sent out.

geenewon Repairing a tiny ribbon cable inside a 28 year old IBM ThinkPad 701c

I fixed an old model M with a bit of telephone wire and tape; a connection had shorted out, and I just bridged it. The fix worked reliably for years.

geenewon “Clean Code, Horrible Performance” Discussion

"constrained problem within a resource constrained environment" is a good phrasing

geenewon The Vindication of Ask Jeeves

Yahoo's directory was created by humans, too, afair, which might be one solution to the current problem. It costs a lot to create and maintain, but in a sea of gamed websites, it might be a viable solution to the problem of finding genuinely good information.

geenewon My Hardest Bug Ever (2013)

The collision between the words 'crash' and 'Crash' whilst developing Bandicoot must have been a conundrum.

geenewon The Dogs of Chernobyl

> This study presents the first characterization of a domestic species in Chernobyl, establishing their importance for genetic studies into the effects of exposure to long-term, low-dose ionizing radiation.

That comes across as an especially clear, or at least understandable, statement about why a paper represents preliminary research.

geenewon The Italian city-states as a distant mirror

Are you sure that people from Europe who don't fall into that group also didn't see America as a symbol of freedom relative to what they knew at home? It's possible, but it also seems possible, even likely, that the opposite would be true, given the degree of entrenched social stratification in post-medieval Europe.

geenewon How to Get Hold of a Research Paper

5 & 7 (getting in touch with the researcher, via website or email) have been the most successful for me, for hard-to-get papers.

I'm not certain about this, but I believe that authors maintain personal redistribution rights in many cases, making the whole thing above-board.

geenewon Online Lens/Optics Simulator

Is there a consensus on the standard optics 101 textbook?

geenewon 80k megapixel panorama photograph of New York City (2021)

I was implying it would be good to have a zoom limit so the image is sharp at max zoom

geenewon 80k megapixel panorama photograph of New York City (2021)

Still looks kinda blurry when you zoom in all the way

geenewon Civilization 7 Is in Development

Good news

Edit: This is objectively good news, given the creativity demonstrated throughout the game's history.

geenewon Normalization of Deviance (2015)

I once encountered a situation with a very expensive field laser. At one point, measurements started showing an increasing amount of offset.

Over a period of days, the error became increasingly, comically bad, until finally the system refused to boot.

A technician was called, and after hearing about the behaviour, the first request was that a photo of the laser light exit port be taken.

It was obvious why it wouldn’t boot: a mirror in the light path had fallen off.

The worst part was, the mirror had been held on by glue, and had been slowly slipping out of place. The hot climate was probably a factor.

They really should have had someone to say ‘you can’t ship that’ when the topic of glue to hold mirrors came up.

geenewon Bing AI can't be trusted

> You get redirected to a page with allegations of "suspicious activity" and are presented with endless CAPTCHAs.

I always took a bit of pride when that happened. Having google think that the searches are as systematic as what a computer would generate is high praise.