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shanusmagnus

Re:Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @01:37PM (#48736254)
It seems like you'd get a lot deeper understanding by doing it that way, and be much more able to adapt the knowledge to the real world, vs only knowing how to solve problems in the exact form they were presented to you. I had so many semesters of undergrad math, did fine, but feel like I took basically nothing from it.
Re:NetHack 5.0.0 on Saturday May 02, 2026 @08:43PM (#47992066)
This is going to seem either beyond idiotic (which it may be) or a troll (which it is not) but: is this game actually fun? Like, if you have zero nostalgia or anything, and your evaluation of it is based solely on what it is, is it something a person in their 20s would want to play? Is it fun in a different way than, say, Dwarf Fortress is fun? (Haven't played DF but I think I understand why people do.)

Would really love informed takes on this.

Re:The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:35PM (#45034854)
A lot of life wisdom wedged into those two sentences, I think, that goes beyond journalism.
Re:The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction on Tuesday August 26, 2025 @10:29PM (#45034824)
Sounds a bit like Gingko, which I used to really love:

https://gingkowriter.com/

Re:I'd rather read the prompt on Monday May 05, 2025 @09:27AM (#43894896)
Are you saying the US is the only country that has an excess of applicants for entry-level positions? Or the only one for which credentialism is the solution to this problem? If the second, how does the place you're from solve it?
Re:History of Maths for Beginners on Friday March 14, 2025 @08:55AM (#43362169)
This looks like an absolute delight:

"Cambridge University History of Mathematics Society presents an illegal, immoral, and fattening lecture series, without the endorsement, approval, or approbation of University authorities on: HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN ANTIQUITY"

Gives me a warm feeling. Here's one of the lectures to get a flavor:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wkQmFPcrkLM9oJk1G7jF...

Contains this banger of a quote:

"The Greeks were very poor at using YouTube."

Re:Obscura VPN – Privacy that's more than a promise on Thursday February 20, 2025 @09:36AM (#43115164)
What would you suggest?
Re:Watch R1 "think" with animated chains of thought on Tuesday February 18, 2025 @09:34AM (#43089927)
But in a larger frame, of "things tightly associated with coffee", they mean something extremely close. Whether these things are opposite from each other, or virtually identical, is a function of your point of view; or, in this context, the generally-meaningful level of discourse.

At scale, I expect having dairy vs non-dairy distance be very small is the more accurate representation of intent.

Is there a place to download the old Infocom games, or play them on the web somehow? HHGTTG was my favorite game, but I never played LGOP or MFV and would like to.
Re:Drawing Animals with Margaret Mead on Thursday January 09, 2025 @01:55PM (#42648730)
There are psychological hypotheses that can be stated and tested empirically. So yeah, you can find people who maintain that it's a science.
Re:Show HN: Org-Supertag on Friday January 03, 2025 @07:35PM (#42591040)
Is org-roam still alive? Last release almost 3 years ago. Could be because it's nearly perfect, which, if so, great.
Re:Hoarder: Self-hostable bookmark-everything app on Wednesday December 25, 2024 @02:13PM (#42510523)
I didn't know this term before, thanks! Are there any examples (e.g., products you like) that demonstrate this One True Way in practice?
Emacs org-mode -- it's less visually obvious that it's exactly equivalent from a structural / hierarchical point of view. But the editing experience is infinitely better, because Emacs.
Re:GPT-5 is behind schedule on Monday December 23, 2024 @10:37AM (#42495133)
Ironically, if it plays out this way, it will be the biggest boon to actual AGI development there could be -- the intelligence via text tokenization will be a limiting factor otherwise, imo.
It's all a matter of point of view I guess. Given that I replaced it with something costing zero dollars may explain my attitude. Also, the fact that it started out as basically free, and is now a recurrent expense over a hundred bucks a year.

That said, the author seems like a cool guy. Hope he's finding success.

You're thinking of this [1]. Super duper cool idea, ahead of its time. Author seems to have transitioned to a ludicrous pricing model, but I suspect it's because the people who like it really _love_ it. I used to be among them, but then switched to org-mode .

[1] https://gingkowriter.com/

Re:Building LLMs is probably not going be a brilliant business on Tuesday November 26, 2024 @07:36PM (#42251695)
That insight, or lack of it, is esp surprising giving the example of how sticky the Coke brand is.
I love a good analogy. Can you expand on this one?
Re:Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds on Saturday November 09, 2024 @07:13PM (#42097727)
I'm very curious, from the perspective that you have based on your experience at the retreat, what it means to you when you talk about "processing" these traumas?

Maybe a very concrete way to ask would be: what's the difference between someone who undergoes the ayahuasca experience and successfully "processes" a trauma, vs someone who does not? Is there such a thing?

Re:Evaluating the world model implicit in a generative model on Thursday November 07, 2024 @10:58AM (#42077773)
Makes me think of an interesting related question: how aware are we, normally, of our incoherence? What's the phenomenology of that? Hmm.
Re:Evaluating the world model implicit in a generative model on Thursday November 07, 2024 @10:52AM (#42077710)
Brilliant analogy.

And we can imagine that, in a sci-fi world where some super-being could act on a scale that would allow it to perturb the world in a fashion amenable to causing hurricanes, the hurricane model could be substantially augmented, for the same reason motor babbling in an infant leads to fluid motion as a child.

What has been a revelation to me is how, even peering through this dark glass, titanic amounts of data allow quite useful world models to emerge, even if they're super limited -- a type of "bitter lesson" that suggests we're only at the beginning of what's possible.

I expect robotics + LLM to drive the next big breakthroughs, perhaps w/ virtual worlds [1] as an intermediate step.

[1] https://minedojo.org/

Re: on Thursday October 31, 2024 @10:38AM (#42007362)
Ah. I was thinking the critique was about combining different crypto methods in serial; I've heard people say this is a bad idea but have never understood why.
Re: on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @11:26PM (#42003193)
> "Don't rely on a single cipher" is an anti-goal, and a reason your hobby project won't be taken seriously.

Why?

Re:Unoffice Hours on Monday October 07, 2024 @07:06PM (#41772071)
It's interesting to imagine what a market solution would do to this.

On the one hand, the vibe is very much "show up and let's talk like friendly socialized people" and I bet that's a huge amount of the joy in it.

On the other hand, perhaps the people who _really_ want to talk to Matt should be able to? And while imperfect, paying for is an unshakeable signal that you _really_ want to.

(Note: I started this comment eight hours ago and apparently didn't submit it, so maybe someone has said the same thing in the meantime. I'm too annoyed with myself to check.)

Re:Unoffice Hours on Monday October 07, 2024 @10:06AM (#41766160)
Same. Somebody always posts a good discussion about why such things always devolve into hellscapes, and I always read them and say: oh yeah, I get it, that makes sense. And then as time passes I forget the logic and resume thinking that it would be a Really Good Idea.
Re:Being Raised by the Internet on Monday September 30, 2024 @10:42AM (#41697685)
I wasn't trying to straw-man you and I agree with this more verbose phrasing. There's a vibe in some related comments that suggests that the proper way to manage your work affairs is to interact through some narrow "proper" API, in which nothing is sought nor proffered, that we exist to each other as callable services only.

I try to generally be polite and treat people the way they seem to want, but I'm not going to live some meek life terrified that someone might take offense at my over-reach. If I'm going to screw up, my defaults are set for errors of commission.

Re:Being Raised by the Internet on Sunday September 29, 2024 @08:04PM (#41692052)
> A nosy question is nosy because it demands an answer to which the querent is not entitled.

Jesus, is this really what you meant? I can't imagine how barren my life would be if I restricted my interactions with others to only include things to which I was "entitled."

Re:Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @05:24PM (#41572944)
Maybe not _equally_ but yeah, this is a key point. There's not a good way to place this bet, but I bet the day comes when the full-remote advocates will rue that advocacy, or at least, many of the Americans will.
Re:Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @05:21PM (#41572889)
I think you're arguing with someone who isn't me.
Re:Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week on Tuesday September 17, 2024 @11:10AM (#41568454)
I agree the world isn't "fair" for most definitions of the word. Unlike many, I don't attribute zero weight to human pettiness that desires a sea of toiling workers as a prestige accent to an executive's self-image.

But also unlike many, I believe that that weight, whatever it is, to be overwhelmed by the colder calculation of profit, growth, etc.

If our corporate overlords could get it done with 50% of the present workforce fully remote, they would, happily. Even better if they were in Bangladesh. Which is another reason to be careful what you wish for.

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