Hacker News Reader

roflmaostcon Why doctors hate their computers (2018)

Medical companies could self host their speech to text translation. At the end the medical data is also on some servers stored. So doing speech -> text translation seems just efficient and not too much worrying if done properly.

roflmaostcon A Photonic SRAM with Embedded XOR Logic for Ultra-Fast In-Memory Computing

The main promises in optical computing are energy consumption, latency and single core speed.

For example, in this work Lin, Z., Shastri, B.J., Yu, S. et al. 120 GOPS Photonic tensor core in thin-film lithium niobate for inference and in situ training. Nat Commun 15, 9081 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53261-x

they achieve a "weight update speed of 60Ghz" which is much faster than the average ~3-4Ghz CPU.

roflmaostcon Thunderbird 140 "Eclipse"

Since some months somehow the windows are weirdly aligned inside Thunderbird, like the attachment bar is cut off at the bottom. I might be connected to my Awesome WM but I haven't changed anything on this side.

Anyone else noticed something?

roflmaostcon Python can run Mojo now

https://docs.modular.com/mojo/faq/#open-source

> Will Mojo be open-sourced?

> We have committed to open-sourcing Mojo in 2026. Mojo is still young, so we will continue to incubate it within Modular until more of its internal architecture is fleshed out.

Soon it might be though.

roflmaostcon parrot.live

many of those commits are in private repos.

I've seen people pushing e.g. weather data to GitHub in regular intervals blowing up their commit numbers.

Just check this to find crazy numbers: https://committers.top/

roflmaostcon Show HN: A Tiling Window Manager for Windows, Written in Janet

I use AwesomeWM on Linux since over ten years.

For example, GIMP works without any issues. And the productivity boost is tremendous, for me it's very hard to work on anything else. I barely encounter programs where it does more harm than use.

Especially having multiple desktops with different names allow me to localize windows so much quicker than looking through a dozens of terminals manually.

Right now, I do have: 1 mail, 2 web, 3 gimp, 4 chat, 5 notes, 6 terminal, 7 ssh cluster

roflmaostcon University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy

And fusion reactors cannot end up like a Chernobyl disaster. That's a huge safety plus and one of the major concerns many countries are phasing out fission reactors.

roflmaostcon Data manipulations alleged in study that paved way for Microsoft's quantum chip

https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html

roflmaostcon Data manipulations alleged in study that paved way for Microsoft's quantum chip

Why do you think so?

Your words sounds like what people said in the 40s and 50s about computers.

roflmaostcon Heat stress mitigation by trees and shelters at bus stops

actually the reflectance of UV is usually much lower than visible light.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-01315-1/figures/2

roflmaostcon Evolving OpenAI's Structure

Just to get things right. The big AI LLM hype started end of 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, ....

Most people in society connect AI directly to ChatGPT and hence OpenAI. And there has been a lot of progress in image generation, video generation, ...

So I think your timeline and views are slightly off.

roflmaostcon 108B Pixel Scan of Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring

There is a company doing the same for microscopy. Super large scale images of anything in the centimeter scale.

https://gallery.ramonaoptics.com/gallery

roflmaostcon Try Switching to Kagi

I recently switched to the Kagi ultimate plan.

Since I almost considered getting a paid AI service, with Kagi I get the freedom to choose different models + I get a nice interface for search, translate, ... With Kagi the AI service also does not know who I am.

I'm quite happy so far, also the Android app works fine. 95% of the time I don't open a browser but instead the app to answer my questions.

The privacy feature somehow did not work in my firefox browser yet.

roflmaostcon A Pixel Is Not a Little Square (1995) [pdf]

Mathematically speaking the paper is correct.

I think it actually depends what you define as "pixel". Sure, the pixel on your screen emits light on a tiny square into space. And sure, a sensor pixel measures the intensity on a tiny square.

But let's say I calculate something like:

  # samples from 0, 0.1, ..., 1 
  x = range(0, 1, 11)
  # evaluate the sin function at each point
  y = sin.(x)

Then each pixel (or entry in the array) is not a tiny square. It represents the value of sin at this specific location. A real pixelated detector would have integrated sin from `y[u] = int_{u}^{u + 0.1} sin(x) dx` which is entirely different from the point wise evaluation before.

So for me that's the main difference to understand.

roflmaostcon Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

But it says "unused"? If it's used for CI it shouldn't break.

roflmaostcon GPT-4.1 in the API

What about old books? Wikipedia? Law texts? Programming languages documentations?

How many tokens is a 100 pages PDF? 10k to 100k?

roflmaostcon I maintain a 17 year old ThinkPad

I changed recently from X1 Yoga Gen 2 to X1 Yoga (2-in-1) Gen 9. The decline in quality is so clearly visible, the external pen is poorly designed and died after 6 months. The hinges are as loose as in a 600$ laptop. The whole thing makes cracking noises under slight stress. Also, Linux compatibility is poor, my Webcam still does not work. Battery lifetime is a joke too.

Lenovo made this Laptop worse than 7 years ago, and it's their top line model for > 2000$. It's such a shame and sad to see. There's no very good alternative with integrated touchscreen and stylus.

roflmaostcon What I would do if I was 18 now (2016)

> capitalist slave system.

Half of the article is based around making money and saving money. This is exactly the capitalist system you are playing.

What about doing a job which brings joy and pays the costs while living a nice life. There is many of those jobs.

roflmaostcon AI will change the world but not in the way you think

That's not entirely true. AI can solve math puzzles better than 99.9% of population.

Yes AI makes mistakes, so do humans very often.

roflmaostcon AI will change the world but not in the way you think

For me the speed is already there. LLMs can write boilerplate code at least an order of magnitude faster than I can.

Just today I generate U-Net code for a certain scenario. I had to tweak some parameters, at the end I got it working in <1hr.

roflmaostcon Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users – including its own employees

I feel like the most important factor is UI consistency. If the UI changes, it costs so much time and re-learning.

Thunderbird has mostly been the same since many years. The only thing I noticed is, that the quick search has become buggy and scrolling in the inbox takes a second to load the titles.

roflmaostcon A proof checker meant for education

Why? There is no legal requirement for a LICENSE

https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...

"You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work."

roflmaostcon Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

Yes, Sigma ART lenses are insane for that price. Also, they look very elegant compare to plastic Canon lenses.

I was hoping for the new Sigma BF camera, simple and elegant. Unfortunately no Bluetooth, which is a deal breaker for me.

roflmaostcon Teslas monitor everything – including you [video] from WIRED

I use a decent U lock. Always lock the frame to something metal and solid. Additionally I have a ~100USD insurance to cover my several thousand dollars bikes. Never got stolen any.

Yeah you need to adapt to weather. But a good pair of biking pants, rain cover for the shoes, thick leather gloves and different pairs of coats (which you anyway need) usually do the job.

If your bike is super uncomfortable there is tons of different sattles and options. Even bike fitting to fit your bike perfectly to your body.

roflmaostcon Teslas monitor everything – including you [video] from WIRED

Living in Europe this is much less of an issue. Yeah car drivers tend to oversee you but after a while you can anticipate their movements very often. I bike every day to work and the only semi-serious crash was 90% my fault because I was speeding lol

roflmaostcon The FFT Strikes Back: An Efficient Alternative to Self-Attention

anything is "constant" time if you build big enough hardware and if it's fixed size.

roflmaostcon Teslas monitor everything – including you [video] from WIRED

In most cities going by bike is even faster. Ofc, it needs some effort to overcome weather, sweat.

But at the end it pays off. Full privacy, free workouts, faster commute, being outside (getting sun, maybe fresh air).

Invest in a good bike (maybe even eletric bike) and commute faster :)!

roflmaostcon The FFT Strikes Back: An Efficient Alternative to Self-Attention

Reference for the later part?

roflmaostcon Just Write

The internet is overflowing with low quality content and information.

I feel like, rather push the extra mile for a nice blog entry and more people will appreciate it.