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dataminded

782 karma · joined September 3, 2013

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dataminded··on Anthropic Risk August 2026 [pdf]
Fable was amazing during the first preview. Once they added it back, the limits are too low to get anything done. I might use it in chat if I remember to select it once a month but don’t even bother to try and code with it.
dataminded··on Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation
I did go back and play with it to confirm I felt as strongly as I do. I used a combination of my inputs and the notebooks available here to see how much it mattered (https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/introduction-to-calcu...)

ASCII entry is great if you already know exactly what you're doing. There's no built-in tooling to help you convert your intent to ASCII. You have to be confident that your entry accurately represents what you intended, since the input isn't typeset in the output either. And you have to be comfortable doing the translation in your head as you go back and forth across your work, fast enough that it doesn't get in the way of reading your own notebook.

A lot of what makes Mathematica notebooks valuable is that they're readable. I can't read a Woxi Studio notebook, I can only re-parse it. It seems that mathematical expressions included in text don't render in Woxi Studio either so it isn't possible to read notebooks that include math content. The ASCII position is completely reasonable for Woxi as a language; it just falls short of what Mathematica notebooks do for me.

I'm really impressed with everything else. Functions, plotting, solves — the tool works, is really fast and I'm super impressed. I might reach for your browser playground going forward. This is the type of software that makes me glad open source exists.

dataminded··on Show HN: Woxi - Open-source Mathematica / Wolfram Language reimplementation
Really excited about this, would love to stop paying for Mathematica.

I cannot adopt it until this gap is closed in the studio.

Interactive 2D mathematical typesetting / notation input (front-end)

dataminded··on Google limits Meta's use of its Gemini AI models
Meta's latest model is Spark Muse and not available outside of its products.

https://ai.meta.com/blog/introducing-muse-spark-msl/

dataminded··on Morningstar values SpaceX at $780B, half its IPO target
SpaceX made fast index inclusion a condition of where it listed. Nasdaq changed its index rules so that instead of having to wait months to a year, SpaceX can enter an index after 15 trading days.

Index funds track an index mechanically. If you run an S&P 500 fund, you have to mirror the S&P 500. If a company gets added to the index, every fund tracking the index must buy it to match the index -- there is no discretion. Pension funds hold a lot of index funds.

So the causal chain is that pension funds track indexes, indexes have to buy the companies in the index, SpaceX got a fast path to the indexes. SpaceX will launch and pension funds will buy the stock, presumably propping up the stock price.

It would take a lot for pension funds to undo this and would be the opposite of index investing.

dataminded··on Ask HN: Why Did Python Win?
Python was easy to read and write. Network effects did the rest.

Perl6 was a much greater mess than Python3.

I'm more surprised that Ruby didn't do better.

dataminded··on Launch HN: Vassar Robotics (YC X25) – $219 robot arm that learns new skills
Enjoy my money!
dataminded··on Cloud AI for Video Games Is Dead on Arrival, On-Device Is the Future
Very interesting. How do we get our hands on it to try it out?
dataminded··on Is your Master's degree useless?
Unless a Master's is required for your profession, only do it if you are intellectually curious and have the cash to burn.
dataminded··on Ask HN: How to leave a startup as a founder?
+1 lawyer up hard and fast. This is the time to get an exceptional attorney that is very comfortable being an ass on your behalf.
dataminded··on Twenty, a modern CRM alternative to Salesforce
You buy Salesforce for the ecosystem not the CRM technology. I'd want to see a much stronger emphasis on integrations to feel better about this.
dataminded··on I built an ROV to solve missing person cases
Amazing. Exactly the type of content that I come to HN for.
dataminded··on Why Triplebyte Failed
It's because companies don't want capable, experienced or well-equipped. They want genius and it is really hard to test for genius. Granted, almost nobody that gets through any process is an actual genius....
dataminded··on G.M. Will Retire the Chevrolet Malibu to Make More Electric Cars
One of the best cars I ever had -- it was terrible how pricing and lease incentives played out on this one. It became so much cheaper to get an SUV.
dataminded··on How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways
The renting experience absolutely sucked. You were expected to pay a premium, there is meaningful variance in the quality of the different cars and they needed you to bring it back charged (as if everyone has an extra 30-90 minutes on their way to the airport).

They should have treated these like any other car in the same class and done a market price fee for the battery.

dataminded··on Attending industry events and its impact on product awareness / customers
Events are just one of many signals that you can use to start a conversation. Reach out to every interest that is going, or that may want to go and just use the event as a reason to talk. I've landed A LOT of great leads by just reaching out about events that ultimately neither I nor the contact was going to. It was a good enough reason to start a conversation and assess fit/interest.

When you reach out you can position yourself as a thought leader, someone saving them time, etc.

dataminded··on Attending industry events and its impact on product awareness / customers
It shouldn't be harder to do pre-work for a larger event. What specific challenges are you facing?
dataminded··on Attending industry events and its impact on product awareness / customers
My advice: Get the value before the event. Reach out to everyone that you want to meet with before the event and schedule in-person meetings at the event, that will give you license to schedule remote meetings before the event for introductions.

Only go to the event if you have enough meetings with a clear line to enough value for it to make sense. Folks that do events for sales/customers, are working those events well before the actual event and have clear lines to value. If you just 'show up', odds are that you will waste your time and not get value.

dataminded··on BASE TTS: The largest text-to-speech model to-date
As an avid consumer of audio books (150+/year) - we are well past the point where narrators are necessary. Professional audio books take too long to release, are too expensive, are concentrated on a limited number of platforms and just aren't THAT much better than the automated stuff for the long tail of books.
dataminded··on Fortran vs Python: The counter-intuitive rise of Python in scientific computing (2020)
You can make this claim about anything that isn't direct machine instruction.

End users are using python - the advantage of modern computing is that whatever happens afterwards is irrelevant.

dataminded··on Fortran vs Python: The counter-intuitive rise of Python in scientific computing (2020)
Frequently because those performance gains aren't actually needed. We live in an age where you can cheaply and quickly scale the hardware for 99% of tasks. Tasks that are too expensive to compute inefficiently are also unlikely to be profitable enough to be doing at all.
dataminded··on Announcing Amazon Aurora Limitless Database
Yay!
dataminded··on Announcing Amazon Aurora Limitless Database
Would love to know why they aren't working on the data API.
dataminded··on Ask HN: Quiet Quitting as Tech Lead
If it is resulting in measurable negative outcomes (outages, lost sales, delayed delivery), time to have lunch with your bosses boss and get yourself a promotion.
dataminded··on Ask HN: Working with CPG Retail Data
There are very common problems. The data vendor wants you reliant on their platforms. Knowing exactly what you are looking at and how frequently is valuable to them. Keeping you tied to their tools and interfaces is also valuable to them. The friction is a feature, not a bug.
dataminded··on Ford cutting F-150 Lightning production by half in 2024, suppliers told
Terrible dealers. Horrible prices. No reasonable entry-level model.
dataminded··on Can AWS keep up in generative AI?
The AWS moat is security and procurement. If your enterprise has approved AWS, you are going to use the AWS tool. Getting a second cloud approved and implemented is borderline impossible at many enterprises because it requires a scaling and maturity that many enterprises lack. Microsoft can drive adoption through its office suite much more readily than through Azure.

The business case for LLMs will have to change drastically for enterprises to consider migrating to Azure. LLMs are cool today but almost nobody is making actual money from using them.

dataminded··on Advice: Co-Founder Disagreements and Equity Challenges in a High-Valued Startup
Is the secondary market an option?
dataminded··on Matter 1.2 – New device types and improvements
I want to be able to turn it on/off and set the temperature from Homekit. I can't imagine any fancy automation that would matter beyond that.

Saving money on this is not a priority for me. Ecobee already works with Homekit, I would gladly buy an ecobee AC that did the same.

dataminded··on Matter 1.2 – New device types and improvements
We tried this first in one room and couldn't get the bulbs with the range that we wanted. Hue really stood out in how dark and bright they could get. The RGB also ended up being much more useful than we thought.
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