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sandwichsphinx

1,862 karma · joined July 10, 2024

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sandwichsphinx··on The Broad Decline in Health and Human Capital of Americans Born After 1947
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

if you copy paste the title into google scholar you will find a copy

sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: To what extend have you stopped or limited your use of AI?
I stopped using AI for code, everything it gives me requires manual checking and editing to work but now I have the overhead of not having the deep understanding I would otherwise have had if I figured out things myself from the start. I also stopped using AI as a sort of replacement for quick google searches in general, but I didn't go back to using google because now I feel those results are too shallow. I been trying to figure things out from primary sources as much as possible and thinking for myself since it seems to me the value going forward is having depth and breadth over the competition that you only get by doing things the very old and slow way.
sandwichsphinx··on Pet ownership and cognitive functioning in later adulthood across pet types
would be interesting to see rabbits included as well, it's a social mammal and does well in rentals
sandwichsphinx··on Law360 mandates reporters use AI "bias" detection on all stories
reminds me of the essay "Politics and the English Language" George Orwell wrote in 1946, it's a good read
sandwichsphinx··on Sora is here
not dishes but the other day I saw this recent papers for clothes

>RoboHanger: Learning Generalizable Robotic Hanger Insertion for Diverse Garments

https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01083

>To overcome the challenge of limited data, we build our own simulator and create 144 synthetic clothing assets to effectively collect high-quality training data.

the strategy is simulation

sandwichsphinx··on Banning free plastic bags led to customers buying more plastic bags
My dad is getting older and often forgets to bring reusable bags when he goes shopping. As a result, he ends up buying new ones every time, adding to a growing stockpile of unused bags at home. On the other hand, I’ve adapted by buying less and only purchasing what I can carry by hand to avoid needing a bag altogether.

This feels (but I cannot say if it "is" without proper data) like a lose-lose situation: individuals either end up purchasing more bags (which defeats the purpose of reusables) or, like me, change their shopping habits in ways that might not be ideal for businesses themselves who would wish I spend more. I’ve also noticed more people skipping supermarket trips entirely and ordering everything online from places like Walmart or Amazon, which often deliver in boxes or reusable bags anyway.

It seems there isn’t a big-picture solution beyond individuals like me reducing consumption as much as possible—not necessarily out of environmental consciousness, but because it’s now more of a hassle to consume unnecessarily.

sandwichsphinx··on Linux 6.13 Supports Ultra Capacity SD Cards "SDUC" for 2 to 128 TB Storage
>cards up to 128TB and up to 985MB/s speeds

this is impressive, seems that SDUC is just a specification so it applies to both full-size and micro SD cards. I don't know of many devices that still support full-size but I hope to one day see a 128TB microSD card. Not sure how they'll figure it out, last I check the biggest size Sandisk sells is 2TB tho the article mentions we'll be seeing 4TB+ cards soon.

What worries me, given my time with the raspberry pi, is reliability. They seem prone to random failure, not that I've personally ever had a card die on me (and it seems that even in failure they lock into read only mode so you don't lose data?), but it seems that there's no standard way to check the health of the card like you can with SSDs using SMART data. This makes me hesitant to trust larger-capacity SD cards for data tho I know of some industrial cards that seem to have some kind of support for viewing card health but I feel safer with small capacities since there's less to lose if something goes wrong but faster speeds are always a plus.

sandwichsphinx··on Wildfires Spread Across New Jersey and Connecticut
https://archive.is/V4fIe
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What are some real problems people can solve with coding projects?
> what problems do you have that could potentially be solved by developers?

an offline Grammarly alternative, ideally as a progressive web app that I could add to my home screen without needing to install anything from the App Store. I find the built-in spell check on my iPhone underwhelming, so I’ve disabled autocorrect and predictive text.

sandwichsphinx··on How Can You Stop Batteries from Catching Fire? Perhaps by Adding Some Water
https://archive.is/HgoYp
sandwichsphinx··on Diet-dependent host metabolite shape gut microbiota to protect from autoimmunity
Title character limit, adding the "s" results in

>1 too long

sandwichsphinx··on Japan Is Entering a New Era of Instability
https://archive.is/IxouT
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: Can high school math be motivated by writing code to train and use LLMs?
One of the most effective motivators I’ve seen is combining math and computer science with game development. Language models on their own can be a bit dry, but if you integrate them as agents in a game world alongside math-based challenges, it could be really engaging. I remember Raspberry Pi’s Educational Minecraft; using a setup like that, where you train characters to have their own personalities, could be an exciting way to teach both
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: Navigating AI Tooling Choices
I'm currently subscribed to both ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro, but if I had to choose only one, I'd stick with ChatGPT. The message limits are more flexible, especially with unlimited mini-usage, which lets me experiment and iterate freely. With Claude, I frequently hit the message limits, which makes me hesitant to use it at all—like saving items in a game only to never use them, ultimately defeating the purpose.
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What would you preserve if the internet were to go down tomorrow?
The entire library of google scholar
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What books do you recommend for marketing a SaaS?
"Advertising: A Very Short Introduction" Winston Fletcher, Oxford University Press 2010

"Marketing: A Very Short Introduction" Kenneth Le Meunier-FitzHugh, Oxford University Press, 2021

sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: There is an open-source alternative to almost any SaaS, what do you use?
Photoshop (requires Adobe Creative Cloud) -> Photopea & Gimp
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What product / service have you early-adopted and still use today?
I been using chatGPT since before it had a nice interface, when it was just the davinci text models
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: Who is the smartest person you've ever known and why?
the smartest person I ever knew was my first manager, would talk about SmartOS a lot, didn't even know about Solaris at the time so it was like magic to me
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: How can tech help with mental health?
According to this paper, talking to AI companions is helping reduce loneliness

"AI Companions Reduce Loneliness" (Harvard Business School, 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613513

sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: I Need Startup Ideas?
> What is something you hate doing that could be solved by software?

I dislike how much hassle 3D scanning is and exporting the model out to share easily online in an open file format

>Something you'd be willing to pay for?

No more than a dollar

sandwichsphinx··on Putting Data Centers in Space Could Reduce Their Carbon Footprint
>I can't read the article,

https://archive.is/Zy1vl

sandwichsphinx··on Extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb(2017)
(2017) Past discussion (143 points, 7 years ago, 81 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14194422
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: How do you search for low level content nowadays?
I noticed the same thing, especially with many of those old authoritative sources that seem to have disappeared or suffered from link rot. It reminds me a lot of the movie Soylent Green, where basic repairs had to be done custom because there were no replacements. Outside of academic journals and printed books, I don’t bother searching for information because it’s just not worth the effort given how hard it is to find reliable sources. The only way I’ve been dealing with this is by relearning my fundamentals. There are only so many ways hardware and software can be designed correctly, so I rely on recurring patterns, motifs, improving my reverse engineering skills, and adopting a clean-room design approach.
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What are some hard mostly unsolved software challenges currently
An unsolved software challenge I’ve noticed being discussed on HN is the difficulty in creating a competitive alternative to Nvidia’s CUDA and the rest of its toolchain. Intel and AMD making strides, but nothing substantial so far. I understand that this is an incredibly difficult problem, especially considering the significant investment Nvidia has made over time, which can’t be matched overnight
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What do you use ChatGPT / Claude for?
Ever since I read that thread [0] about how AI companions are helping reduce loneliness, I started using ChatGPT and Claude just for casual conversations, similar to how I used to chat with friends on Discord. I initially used them for coding help, but now I often max out my message limits just chit-chatting, especially since the larger models are great for that. The only thing holding me back is the message limits—ChatGPT and Claude often tell me I’ve hit a cooldown, or when the conversation gets too long, I’m prompted to start a new one and lose context. As these models improve, I think I’ll use them more and more for conversation, treating them as characters to talk to rather than just tools like most people do.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41613513

sandwichsphinx··on Norway to increase minimum age limit on social media to 15 to protect children
> The Scandinavian country already has a minimum age limit of 13 in place. Despite this, more than half of nine-year-olds, 58% of 10-year-olds and 72% of 11-year-olds are on social media, according to research by the Norwegian media authority.

I think my life today would be significantly better if I hadn’t been exposed to unsupervised internet access at around 10 years old with the Nintendo DSi web browser. Who knows how people growing up on TikTok brain-rot streams will turn out. I don’t look back fondly on my early experiences with the internet.

sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What books have most influenced your coding style?
Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Martin Kleppmann (O'Reilly 2017)

The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt, David Thomas (1999)

Gwynne's Latin, N. M. Gwynne (2015)

sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: What is a programming language that you don't use at work but enjoy?
I really like Lua, it's simple and easy to compile
sandwichsphinx··on Ask HN: Autodidacts, give me your book recommendations
Mastery by Robert Greene, 2012
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