News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Djrhfbfnsks

Re:Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus on Sunday November 28, 2021 @10:33AM (#29369649)
If you don't trust the code of a PoW client, how could you trust it to not simply empty your wallet as soon as you import your private key?
Re:Rust-CUDA: Fast GPU code fully in Rust on Monday November 22, 2021 @08:29PM (#29313637)
How does the compare with writing GPU code in Julia?
Re:What elements does a plant need to grow? on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @05:59PM (#29247345)
I don't know the biology, so I can't answer specifically, but surely there are many cases of "useless" and even detrimental elements being stored in living bodies. Just look at heavy metal accumulation in animals for example.
Re:Bayesian Optimization Book on Monday November 15, 2021 @03:44PM (#29232457)
Thanks for your suggestions. For my use case (tuning parameters of a financial market simulation), I'm essentially able to get good noise estimates for free by re-sampling a set of parameters multiple times.

So for example, rather than simulate an entire month in one shot, I'll simulate a day 30 times and therefore have a decent estimate of the noise for that result and be able to clearly distinguish the noise from the covariance of the Gaussian process.

The noise in these simulations can vary dramatically in parameter space (easily 10-100x), so it seems like it would be important to model.

Re:Bayesian Optimization Book on Sunday November 14, 2021 @07:38PM (#29222200)
For most of the problems for which I've tried to use Bayesian Optimization, I've had poor results because of unknown and heterogeneous noise in the underlying process that I'm trying to optimize.

I believe that modeling the noise directly using a 2nd Gaussian Process [1] could help, but I haven't gotten reliable results. I was hoping this topic would be addressed in the book, but don't see it.

[1] https://rdrr.io/cran/hetGP/

Ask HN: How do you back up your Android phone?

I am primarily concerned with app data. I have many apps like messaging apps that have important private data such as contacts and message history that is difficult or impossible to export. A big concern is if I lose my phone, there are some accounts that can only be recovered using the same phone number, which may be impossible if the phone company refuses to issue another SIM card with the...

( Read More... | 56 comments | 56 points | on HN )
Re:Sign arbitrary data with your SSH keys on Saturday November 13, 2021 @07:25AM (#29209286)
Because they may be used to learn the identity of an otherwise pseudoanonymous github account if one uses the same keys with another account that is tied to his real identity.
Re:How trains could replace planes in Europe on Thursday November 11, 2021 @02:55PM (#29192361)
I'm as libertarian as they come, but if you're doing $x of damage to the environment, it seems totally fair to charge $x in taxes to cover that damage. That wouldn't stop you from enjoying an activity -- it's just making the price more accurately reflect the true costs.
Pre-covid Japan had the right balance IMO. It was common to (voluntarily) wear a mask in public when you had a cold (or didn't feel like putting on make-up), but no one was going to force you to wear one.
I don't think it's a bad thing that most current legislation wouldn't pass as-is. If it's not popular enough to reach the required threshold on its own, then it shouldn't become law.
neovim
I was trying to find information about a recent scandal and was surprised that I couldn't find any discussion on reddit. Restricting the results to reddit.com made it clear what was going on. These search terms are not censored on Yandex.

It seems that they've recently removed some search terms from the blacklist. If I remember correctly, the terms I had searched originally were "qanon" and "pizzagate" , but those are no longer censored. "pedo" and "jailbait" still trigger the censor though.

Maybe they're vim or emacs users? I can't remember the last time I used one of those keys.
Google is also censoring a large list of search terms when used in combination with reddit. For example, you'll get zero results for "site:reddit.com underage".