HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

markhollis

45 karma · joined August 15, 2016

submissionscomments
markhollis··on Ask HN: Improving health despite working in a screen-based job
I am doing something that is similar. But in my case, I maintain the position for 10 seconds. When bending backwards, I try to maintain my head in the same 'vertical position' (if that makes sense to visualize). My physical therapist described it as making a 'double chin'.
markhollis··on The grandfather of modern self-help
I remember the documentary 'The Century of the Self' where Adam Curtis talked about the origins of personal development and self-help.
markhollis··on Ask HN: Improving health despite working in a screen-based job
One issue that can develop over time is cervicogenic headache. This issue strains your muscles that span over your head. This origins from bad posture, typically from a screen-based job. Some exercises that help in these area, according to my physical therapist, are bending over your head as much as possible. Hold this position for 10 seconds. Then move your head back, such that you make a double chin. Also hold this for 10 seconds. The more you do these exercises, the better. They should strenghten your neck musculature. This way, you will develop a flexible neck.
markhollis··on Managing an underperformer who thinks they’re doing great
I got another perspective. I was/am someone who is labelled as an underperformer by my boss. I work at a electronics production firm, where I did some programming work. During feedback season, I was moved departments. Now I just do soldering, all days long.

What do I do in my situation? I feel like being in despair. I feel like I don't have any other options. Clearly, this situation feels like suicide for my career.

I was recently diagnosed with ASD, bipolar disorder type 2 and depression, for what it's worth.

markhollis··on Ask HN: Learning about philosophy
The author of Existential Comics offers some advice:

https://existentialcomics.com/blog/1/How_to_study_philosophy...

I like courses or philosophical works, which focus on a common themes, common threads. That allows one to see more connections across different thinkers.

One instance of this is John Vervaeke's Awaking from the meaning crisis (which isn't only philosophy, but also cognitive science).

Other courses like that are those from John Searle (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind).

Hubert Dreyfus has a course on existentialism in literature and film.

Thinking of it, there is also a channel called Like Stories Of Old. The maker publishes video-essays, which are often philosophical in tone and reference existential thinkers like Kierkegaard.

My own journey into philosophy started with Wittgenstein (apart from an introduction in Greek Philosophy in high school).

markhollis··on On Being Bipolar
I am sorry. I meant Autism Spectrum Disorder. ASS is the acronym in my native language, I mixed it up.
markhollis··on On Being Bipolar
I was a month ago diagnosed with bipolar type 2, together with ASS. I experience sleep problems. Some feelings in this article are familiar. To me, it was the feeling of being excluded for life from people. Also I am going through work problems. I find myself at a difficult place in life now...
markhollis··on Imperial mathematician scoops $3M Breakthrough Prize
I wonder how prize winners feel about such huge sums of money. Especially that very succesful people who win such prizes tend to win multiple prizes.
markhollis··on How can you make subjective time go slower?
Some days ago I saw a video that suggested that subjective time seems to be slower when we are younger because our neurons are firing more actively. As we grow older, they tend to fire less. Anyway, it is just one aspect.
markhollis··on Who Is Alexander Grothendieck? (2008) [pdf]
I'm also learning some algebraic geometry at the moment:

Some resources I have used are:

* video lectures by Richard Borcherds

* Lecture notes by Andreas Gathmann (https://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/~gathmann/class/alggeom-200...)

* This blog: https://rigtriv.wordpress.com/ag-from-the-beginning/

* An infinite large napkin, by Evan Chen (https://venhance.github.io/napkin/Napkin.pdf)

It also found it helpful to learn some (algebraic) number theory, to get a sense of where some of the motivation comes from (e.g. elliptic curves, modular forms). Grothendieck's work is abstract, but he was always motivated by concrete problems (e.g. Weil conjectures).

markhollis··on The Haskell Elephant in the Room
I'm not an expert and I don't do value judgments, but I think he's talking about something called 'smart contracts'. Haskell would make it easier to verify smart contracts. I thought he was talking about use cases like those as Cardano and with "some of the very founding contributors" he meant Philip Wadler (amongst others).

EDIT: didn't want to imply that Cardano is a shady company.

markhollis··on Friedrich Hayek on Evolution and Spontaneous Order (1983) [video]
The Mont-Pelerin society was established in 1947 by Hayek to promote more liberty with the world elites. There are pictures of him on the first conference with Mises. I'm genuinely curious what relative stability and prosperity you refer to. This was after the second world war.
markhollis··on Why you should re-read Paradise Lost (2017)
I can confirm. Reading Lucifer was one of the highlights in high school of my Dutch class.
markhollis··on Logic, Before ICs
My analogue design engineer colleague still uses this approach. One rationale I have heard him say is that he prefers to do things with transistors instead of logic ICs because of the direct availability of transistors, compared to ICs. It's an advantage when doing repair. You always have transistors laying around.

However, when you need to repair ICs on a PCB, you need a specific IC doing your function, which you may not have in stock. I wondering why the argument doesn't apply for transistors. The assumption seems to be that it doesn't matter much which transistors are used.

I don't know if anyone can validate what my colleague is saying.

markhollis··on Volkswagen explores using 3D printers to produce ventilators
I've been following the developments of these ventilators pretty closely, particularly of these using a ventilator for multiple patients.

The hard part is not the ventilation mechanism itself, but the specifications. Those ventilators must be controlled precisely, they must take into account the characteristics of COVID-19 patients. There is some overlap with ventilation for ARDS. The more you read into this subject, the more you realize how absolutely scary it is to actually design such a project. Lots of parameters have to be taken into account.

Read on mechanical ventilation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_ventilation

3D printed parts that where the air flow through must be air-tight.

markhollis··on Risky hack could double access to ventilators
This is another article seems to be written by someone who has deep knowledge about this topic.

https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/split-ventilators/

Continuous mandatory ventilation (CMV) is required, however it is necessary to accept permissive hypercapnia.

markhollis··on Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo
That last sentence is exactly what I like about Duolingo. 716 day streak here. Without Duolingo, I would not have commited to at least some minutes spending with a foreign language. Now I can at least give directions in French. I managed to have 8 years of French at school without being able to do that in the end.
markhollis··on I don’t use Semantic Web technologies anymore, though they still influence me
I'm curious what those toxic attitudes are. Surely the "we already invented it and you're reinventing it" can't be the only case. I'm also curious if it's in an academia or in industry.
markhollis··on Ask HN: What should be taught in high school?
I am interested in knowing which philosophers and which texts you found most helpful.
markhollis··on Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?
I use bitbucket repositories for every topic I'm interested in. There I keep track of the all the writing that I do, in markdown-files.
markhollis··on Drawing is the best videogame
I think one can experience something related in either writing or even just playing with puppets. J.K. Rowling had to 'program' the rules of her wizarding world, in a way. As a kid, I used to play some kind of civilization and empire game with K'nex pieces that I used as little puppets, without knowing that computers existed. Part of it is certainly the joy of building a dynamic model of a virtual world.
markhollis··on Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?
Also for job.
markhollis··on Ask HN: What technologies did you learn in 2018?
I learned a lot more about op amps, mosfets, SMD technology, bootloaders and PIC microcontrollers. These are fundamentals, so it's an investment with a high return value, I think.
markhollis··on Exclave: Hardware Testing in Mass Production, Made Easier
I am starting to use OpenHTF at work. I was not aware of Exclave. Seems like I have interesting homework to do. This blog post by Bunnie was a very nice read.
markhollis··on Topology of Numbers
I can imagine this text will be popular among Project Euler problem solvers, given the shared themes of continued fraction, Farey Sequences etc.
markhollis··on Introduction to logic programming with Prolog
I can come up with the following possibilities, although I have no experience with either:

- Using OWL in Java (with OWL API). So you use Java in combination with XML

- Use a Prolog embedding in Haskell.

markhollis··on Modeling Science as a Directed Graph
There's actually a subfield called 'scientific workflow systems' (SWS). An example of such a system is Kepler [1]. What the author(s) ask at the end of the article seems to me basically that they want process provenance. This is a fairly well studied problem.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_scientific_workflow_sys...

markhollis··on Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2017?
* How to make a simple MMORPG.

* Understand what toposes are.

* Understand what monads are.

markhollis··on Ask HN: What coding/programming podcasts are you listening to?
I like to listen to podcasts when I'm doing something repetitive, like walking or running. I like podcasts that are educative, not so much podcasts that are about new features and don't explain things very much. I like to listen to them when it's a subject I don't know very well (like microservices).

* SE-radio

* Java Pub House

* Type theory podcast: http://typetheorypodcast.com/

* Data Skeptic has podcasts about data science algorithms: http://dataskeptic.com/podcast