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hillz

105 karma · joined December 22, 2016

data scientist, artist, hedonist, utilitarian, friend.
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hillz··on Investigating immune response of a man who received 217 Covid vaccines
> clearly guilty as hell

I think you underestimate the power of neuroses. Good chance no money was involved.

hillz··on Coronavirus Spike Protein Binder Design
It sounds like they don't really use it. Their about page says:

  We’re collecting data to find out if humans' pattern- 
 recognition and puzzle-solving abilities make them more 
  efficient than existing computer programs at pattern- 
 folding tasks. If this turns out to be true, we can then 
  teach human strategies to computers and fold proteins 
  faster than ever!

Indicating that at some point they may use it, though judging from recent trends in reinforcement learning, they probably won't.
hillz··on The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
> We’ve seen the opposite phenomenon happen in every market.

Not really? If buffalo wings are like a man's name, or men's pants, the same trend would be for women to adopt those things (which we do). Similarly, if you market only towards women, it is seen as somewhat shameful for a man (and sometimes, even for a woman) to purchase that good.

hillz··on The Most Gender-Switched Names in the U.S.
> This [plot # 2] view wasn’t very useful

I disagree. It shows that far more gender-neutral or boy names become significantly more popular as girl names, compared to the other way around. That's pretty interesting.

This conforms to the idea that a boy with a girl's name (or other girlish attribute) is bad, whereas a girl with a boy's name (or other boyish attribute) is not as bad, or is even good.

hillz··on Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?
If a tree is planted, grows, and then for example is burned down and paved over, that'd be true. But if a tree grows and eventually dies in a forest, it'll be replaced with new trees naturally, cancelling out the CO2 leaked from the tree dying. This C02 can also be stalled by harvesting the tree and using it in some way that stops C02 from being released for a longer time than natural.
hillz··on Always the Model, Never the Artist
> the bare edges of the canvas suggest that the woman has agency, physical and otherwise; in Morisot’s garden scenes or beflowered interiors, the dresses melt into the background, refuting the viewer’s possession of the figure. Morisot’s messy brushstrokes—some of the most daring among her contemporaries’—suggest that “woman” is pure fiction, an idea bursting at the seams of the experience it supposedly names.

Seems like the author is projecting their own opinions onto Morisot's art.

That being said, it's incredibly sad that women were so devalued and minimized in that time.

hillz··on Is the Default Mode of the Brain to Suffer?
I think s/he means evolutionary speaking.
hillz··on Ask HN: What's your total income?
$0. Left a 108k job, now developing recipestasher.com for free and fun on my own. Will probably get a real job again soon...
hillz··on Ask HN: Will we ever have affordable and attractive urban housing for all?
Living in a city does tend to produce fewer greenhouse gases. But the reason most people live in cities? Jobs.
hillz··on Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
Why draw the lines by state? Wouldn't income or race be better dividers?
hillz··on Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
That's like saying: let's ignore 58.55 million voters for no reason other than where they live. More than 18% of the entire US population.

States are arbitrary dividers, it's silly to think there's some great reason for allowing people in some random groups (states) have much more voting power than others. What if the dividers were based on income, race, etc? Wouldn't even that be more reasonable?

hillz··on Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s
I mean... He did lose the popular vote. So 'most' people didn't have an influence on the election. Or at least, the plurality of people.
hillz··on I've removed all ad network code from my blog
Yeah, that's fair. I'm doing the same thing with recipestasher.com. I lose about $400/yr on it, but I really like using it and so do a few other people. No ads, no clickbait crap. But, I realize that I'm quite privileged to be able to do it.
hillz··on 'Legitimate' US healthcare pricing could reduce costs by a third
I've tried asking multiple times (for non-emergency procedures) and each time they've said they don't know. (Kaiser)
hillz··on I’m Joining LinkedIn
First I thought this was Jim Dale - the amazing narrator of Harry Potter - and was pretty confused.
hillz··on Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Increase Ticket Prices
Apart from perhaps printing a boarding pass and (given security) food on very long flights, these all seem OK to me. Not charging for checked baggage is equivalent to taxing those who pack light and subsidizing those who pack heavy (and cost more fuel).
hillz··on Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Increase Ticket Prices
But that's an inherently wrong way of looking at it. If you're traveling somewhere in a plane vs on the road, you're way more likely to die. Even if you factor own your own human error (but not others').
hillz··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2017)
To save people time: I created an account but it still doesn't seem to work. Now the URL seems to always redirect to the login page.
hillz··on What a Sensory Isolation Tank Taught Me About My Brain
> "As quantum mechanics demonstrates, observing changes the thing being observed"

This isn't really a fair corollary. It's not that true observation that changes particles, it's that once we hit them with light (to enable observation), they change their state. This is so so often misinterpreted in journalism. The change has nothing to do with a conscious observer being present.

hillz··on Bitcoin Price Tops $1,000 in First Day of 2017 Trading
It's used every day in some legitimate ways. For example, Premise Data Corporation pays their data collectors in almost entirely bitcoin. https://medium.com/@premisedata/premise-payouts-get-easier-w...
hillz··on Solar power at 1¢/kWh by 2025 – “The promise of quasi-infinite energy is here”
Hmm. So the head of innovation at a company in France says that he believes solar (etc.) is in a J curve of upward growth. I'd like to know more about where his 1¢/kwh estimate is actually coming from.
hillz··on Ask HN: Do you feel/fear that you're more disposable as a remote employee?
Yes, a little. A big issue is that people forget you're around, and so forget to include you, which makes you more disposable.
hillz··on Google Photos corrupts your photos that you paid for
So, the cause of the corrupted photos still is undiscovered?
hillz··on From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way
Yes, there are also quite a few grammar errors. Makes it hard to read.
hillz··on From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way
It's kind of a bummer that she knew she wanted to work with computers the whole time but her parents thought it would be more responsible to be a secretary. Glad she got there.
hillz··on An American airline wins the right to weigh passengers on its Samoan route
First, I agree with you. But to answer:

One chooses to be obese more than one chooses to be tall, so arguing that tall people should have to pay more for their size while the obese shouldn't seems illogical.

hillz··on Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case
I'm quite confident that they store the voice data. It's very valuable to them as a source of training data for future versions of 'Alexa'-like products.
hillz··on Police seek Amazon Echo data in murder case
Sentences after the 'Alexa' key word are still recorded as un-identified questions that you can view in the Alexa app. Source: bought mom one, have used it.