Hacker News Reader

hackandthinkon A lost Schrödinger manuscript reveals a twist in quantum physics

Robert W. Spekkens (and I guess Matt Leifer) tried to model quantum uncertainty classically.

(my gut feeling was: it works till it does not work)

"In defense of the epistemic view of quantum states: a toy theory"

hackandthinkon Far-left party wins Berlin election, pledging to nationalise housing

Decades ago, when I was still living in Berlin, the predecessor party of Die Linke (the PDS) was made up of creepy former GDR officials.

Yesterday on TV, I saw mostly hip young people. Elif Erap, the party’s lead candidate, reminded me of Chrissy Hynde from The Pretenders.

hackandthinkon Cognition and consciousness arise from analog computations, says new theory

https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.mit.edu/dist/7/1739/file...

hackandthinkon Charts built for Chat

You can specify Apache Superset Dashboards, Charts, ... using yaml, for example:

https://github.com/preset-io/headless-bi-blog-post-examples/...

But this is mostly just a dump of internal Superset data structures.

hackandthinkon Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem

if you are a fast learner

hackandthinkon New Lower and Upper Bounds for the Grothendieck Constant

By Grothendieck's standards, there are a surprising number of important practical applications.

"Grothendieck's Theorem, past and present"

https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.4195

hackandthinkon Fields Medals 2026

Scary stuff from one of the winners:

"A Taxonomy of Omnicidal Futures Involving Artificial Intelligence"

(Jacob Tsimerman, Andrew Critch)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09369

hackandthinkon Profiling the "Abundance" housing bottleneck with real data

Berlin was divided.

Like Berlin, Vienna had occupation zones, but there was never a wall between them.

hackandthinkon Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say

Mearsheimer was right: Putin wrecks Ukraine.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...

hackandthinkon It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

It is neither obvious nor intuitive. But it is logical possible that we all are Zombies.

In my regard the weak link is our understanding of materialism. It is to simple minded. (though panpsychism sounds really crank)

hackandthinkon It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

Chalmers: “It is natural to hope that there will be a materialist solution to the hard problem and a reductive explanation of consciousness, just as there have been reductive explanations of many other phenomena in many other domains. But consciousness seems to resist materialist explanation in a way that other phenomena do not.”

"A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961072...

hackandthinkon Mearsheimer and Walt versus Nuland and Pompeo

That would be a good fit for a prediction market.

I think Restraint usually loses. In times like these, though, warmongers have a harder time, and those two are truly creepy characters.

hackandthinkon “Why not just use Lean?”

>the law of the excluded middle, which says something can't be true and false at the same time

This is the not excluded middle, it is the "Law of noncontradiction"

Excluded middle means: either p is true or the negation of p is true

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

hackandthinkon US is making Europe pay dearly for its half-hearted electrification

I don't care about gas prices either. But next winter is going to be expensive. I don't have the option of switching from natural gas to a heat pump.

But of course, electrification as soon as possible.

hackandthinkon US is making Europe pay dearly for its half-hearted electrification

I guess, a high oil price is a good thing for the oil industry, especially when producing oil domestically becomes more expensive.

But I also don't believe in some conspiracy by the American oil industry to eliminate other suppliers in order to fleece Europe.

(the article is not by Henry Farrell itself, it seems to be below his niveau)

https://shalemag.com/peak-oil-production-in-the-us/

hackandthinkon Germany suspends military approval for long stays abroad for men under 45

I had to undress back then.

But anyway:

"The Clash - The Call Up (Official Video)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ScaGjwkg2Y

hackandthinkon Miscellanea: The War in Iran

I checked the blog, You have a point. Brett Devereux was more cautious.

"If you are trying to follow the War in Ukraine, I strongly suggest watching the War on the Rocks podcasts for the times they bring in Michael Kofman."

I’ve been caught up in “guilt by association” here. Michael Kofman always struck me as a cheap propagandist. (but I should shut up now)

hackandthinkon Miscellanea: The War in Iran

That all makes a lot of sense. Mr. Devereux is being more realistic this time than he was at the start of the war in Ukraine.

My takeaway from the war in Ukraine is: it’s going to get worse and last longer than anyone ever imagined.

hackandthinkon Jürgen Habermas, influential German philosopher, dies at 96

Long version

https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/519683.j%C3%BCrgen-habermas...

hackandthinkon Jürgen Habermas, influential German philosopher, dies at 96

Habermas was a decent guy. He stood for a liberal and social democratic Germany. I respect that he didn’t fully go along with the shift towards crusading liberalism and militarism in Germany.

He was always part of the establishment. His writing was rambling and boring, and I always thought he was naive. RIP

hackandthinkon Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

thanks

hackandthinkon Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule

fourty

(1945 - 1949 it was split in 4 occupation zones)

hackandthinkon Facing a demographic catastrophe, Ukraine is paying for troops to freeze sperm

"The study examined different scenarios, from a "best case", in which the war ended in 2023 without significant further escalation, to a "worst case", ending in 2025 after further escalation."

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

hackandthinkon Typechecking is undecidable when 'type' is a type (1989) [pdf]

It is Burali-Forti 1897, predating Russel's paradox.

hackandthinkon Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability

"the new AirTag is 50 percent louder than the previous generation, enabling users to hear their AirTag from up to 2x farther than before"

Can that really be true?

hackandthinkon The US dollar and national security

Someone else wants a piece of the national security propaganda pie.

hackandthinkon Peter Scholze: Condensed Mathematics [video]

This is a lecture for a broad audience.

hackandthinkon European Russophobia and Europe's Rejection of Peace: A Two-Century Failure

"Poland, with the tacit backing of London and Paris, refused transit rights to Soviet forces even to defend Czechoslovakia"

Mr. Sachs could have elaborated:

"Other East European countries were Germany’s allies, and indeed Poland and Hungary gladly took part in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia."

https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/javais-toujours-raison

hackandthinkon Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

There are also pleasant experiences when traveling by train, but rarely in Germany.

The Swiss railways are excellent and friendly. In Milan, I was unable to catch the reserved train to Zurich, but the conductors on the Swiss train that was just departing even accepted my ticket for the Italian railway.

hackandthinkon Censorship in Western Academia and the War in Ukraine

Read his book a while ago, worth reading.

"Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist from Ukraine currently affiliated with the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, and author of Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War."