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simon-b

28 karma · joined February 9, 2025

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simon-b··on Integer multiplication below n log n
The relative difference is so absurdly small to be irrelevant at any realisable input size. At least that's my read; e.g. even at n=10^80 (~number atoms in universe), the relative difference is ~0. That's still probably underselling how similar this is to n log n.
simon-b··on Polars 2.0
I'm not sure this is true e.g. you can specify schema `pl.Datetime("ns")`. That survives roundtrip to/from parquet in my experience. True though that the default is `us` whereas pandas defaults to `ns`.

https://docs.pola.rs/api/python/stable/reference/expressions...

simon-b··on Getting the most out of Opus 5.5 in Claude and Claude Code
The cost of the standard `actions_linux` is $0.006/minute, so spending $500 to save 6m per invocation, break-even is at ~14k invocations. But, if they're using larger machines and/or parallel jobs the $$$ saving accrues faster. IMO the wall-time saving shortening feedback loop may be a bigger win, but harder to value.
simon-b··on Strutt's Powered Wheelchair Is Not a Wheelchair (For Legal Reasons)
It's used all the time in mathematical optimization, referring to the best feasible solution found so far and therefore the "answer" until/unless something better appears. If you work with people in that space, it leaks out to mean anything "current" you're trying to improve upon.
simon-b··on Oracle on the hook to pay data centre investors even if site has no electricity
I saw a breakdown (don't have on hand sorry) where server depreciation was by far the majority. Power was the largest cash opex, probably matching your intuition.
simon-b··on Two parallel neural ectoderm progenitors contribute to the developing brain
It's also explored in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", which I assume many here have read. Interesting ideas that are probably more at home in fiction.
simon-b··on OpenClaw 2.0, Accidentally
Re Signal, I've taken a few flights lately where there's messenger-only wifi, and it's been handy to have OpenClaw on a box accessible through telegram to do web_searches for me.

That's certainly not justification for setting it up in the first place, but is a mildly useful benefit of having done so.

simon-b··on Command Line Interface Guidelines
This is indeed an annoying, but solvable, less default. You can eg use `export LESS="-XF"` to change behaviour.
simon-b··on Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
As an aside, yt-dlp presents a perfect use-case for uvx (part of uv):

  uvx yt-dlp <yt_url>
No manual download/install required.