Hacker News Reader

hansboon Anders Tegnell defends Sweden's virus approach

Perhaps, but seeing as Sweden has had quite large changes in behavior (most people who can work from home, do; people are much better at washing their hands; the subways of Stockholm are significantly less crowded, going from being crowded while standing up, to always being sparse even during rush hour), it's not hard to consider the death rate being much higher than in 1993 without the media panic.

hansboon Anders Tegnell defends Sweden's virus approach

Sweden has a low population density yes, but that's irrelevant - most is unpopulated land, which doesn't have an effect. If you count Greenland when measuring the population density of Denmark, it's super low, but that would be ridiculous.

More relevant measures would be things like urbanization, where Sweden is number 23 in the world and Croatia number 104 (by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country). Or, perhaps, the population density of the most dense areas (5,200/km2 for Stockholm, 4,055/km2 for Zagreb). These are just examples of possible metrics, of course there are many more which might be more relevant, but population density of the entire country has no relevance at all.

hansboon Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong

And, I suppose, the centripetal force caused by the rotation. But maybe that is the whole reason for earth being a spheroid?

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the local depth of the sea should not matter, as water would fill the depth before the levels stabilized. But perhaps the local volume of the water affects the size of the effects of tidal forces and local land mass.

hansboon Why Our Intuition About Sea-Level Rise Is Wrong

I don't think the comparison with the surrounding land mass is relevant here. The landmass might have a much larger effect than the ice, but the landmass will not melt. While my mental image considers the water to envelop the world as a sphere, I actually have no idea how large the differences in the distance from the core to the water surface is in different parts of the world.

hansboon Show HN: This Word Does Not Exist

I got Undercrowded

  undercrowded
  un·der·crowded
  (of a place) not full of people or vehicles
  "the area was undercrowded with traffic"

hansboon Show HN: This Word Does Not Exist

Quite amusing.

  shishkodachi
  shishko·dachi
  a man who behaves in a shishkodachi
  "a priest in shishkodachi who refused to accept marriage"

hansboon Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

I always found this fascinating. The enormous shift in physics that occurred in the early 20th century must have been so exciting to experience first hand.

hansboon Roger Penrose – Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered? [video]

Don't they, though? The path of an orbit in vacuum should follow pi, unless coordinates are discrete (which they might be, I suppose)

hansboon Time Has No Meaning at the North Pole

How do you mean? When you are not moving but only rotating, how can it rise and set apart from the world rotating around the sun?

hansboon Anxiety as an algorithm

No analogy is ever perfect, but auto immunity seems to be a good extension to cover anxiety: identifying a threat from a disease or a noisy bush is helpful, but overfitting reality to find threats that aren't there is the opposite.

hansboon Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't

Fair point - almost every vegetable plant has a fruit, but not every vegetable is.

hansboon Bananas Are Berries, Strawberries Aren't

I read up on these things some time ago, and what amused me the most is that while almost every vegetable is a fruit, the Juniper berry is, in fact, a cone.

hansboon An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

> Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals.

Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive system. Another which can fight off invaders, like white blood cells, or perhaps muscles. The anthill, in turn, is like a body; constructed by the cells and neurons, and protecting the system as a whole.

hansboon Former White House climate adviser calls methane ‘irrelevant’ to climate

This has always been my thought as well, and I have never gotten a good explanation as to why it's wrong. If anyone has one I would love to hear it.

hansboon The Awkward but Essential Art of Office Chitchat

I read the first part of the sentence as an estimation, and the second part as a joke.

hansboon Shepard Tone

That was really cool. Tried to tap along and noted how my rythm increased, but changed how many taps per beat I did over time.

hansboon Dogs demonstrate the existence of an epileptic seizure odour in humans

Yes, I’ve seen that clip before and thought it might be what I’m having. IANAD though.

hansboon Dogs demonstrate the existence of an epileptic seizure odour in humans

I have partial temporal lobe seizures as well. My primary symptom, which is visible from the outside that is, is that I lose the ability to use language. If I try talking, it just becomes a mangled mess of words in English and Swedish. I also can not understand what other people say.

It's a very peculiar feeling to be conscious and fully aware of what is happening, but still completely lose such a fundamental part of my brain functions.

hansboon Inside the court of Ashurbanipal, king of the world

The wikipedia article points Ashur to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashur_(god), which could very well influence words in other languages.

hansboon How plants evolved to make ants their servants

I believe you are thinking of Each an Explorer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Each_an_Explorer

hansboon Two men are trying to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone

I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

—The Left Hand Of Darkness

hansboon Simple proofs of great theorems

I think the simplicity of the proofs were somewhat overstated.

hansboon Mathematician-M.D. claims to have solved the 110-year-old Lindelöf hypothesis

It was a fascinating read. Reminded me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/386/

hansboon Return type polymorphism in Haskell

As far as I can tell, however, the article gives no examples of this. All the functions that are written are based on "read" and "mempty" and similar. I'm having issues understanding how to write these functions "from scratch".

hansboon Return type polymorphism in Haskell

Is it possible to write functions using this, without also using the polymorphic functions already in place in Haskell?

hansboon Portugal’s radical drug policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?

After quick research, this seems to be incorrect. Non-gun homicides are unaffected, but total homicides increase.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an...

hansboon Seven earth-sized planets discovered circling a star 39 light years from Earth

I don't understand how it could be less than 39 years for the traveler. Time dilation is a thing, but being less than 39 years would mean the traveler observed the planet approaching faster than the speed of light, which should be impossible.

Or does space contract as well?

hansboon Why I Left White Nationalism

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. The criticism that has been directed towards Trump is not about him thinking all Mexicans are rapists, nor that he calls for a ban on Islam. Rather, it's directed towards his rhetoric being strongly hostile towards both groups, based partly on the quotes you are referring to. Do you think that interpretation is incorrect?

hansboon P = NP

I've read that one too, but I don't particularly like it. P=NP implies only that all problems which can be verified in polynomial time can also be solved in polynomial time, not necessarily that it can be solved as quickly, nor that it can be solved easily.

Perhaps writing a piece of music is also done in polynomial time, but it requires more training (more advanced algorithm)? Or, perhaps, the time complexity is x^3 for writing, instead of x for appreciating.

hansboon We're getting slower... and more dumberer.

How is the Flynn effect related to this? As I've understood it, the average IQ has, since the turn of the century, risen by around 20 points.