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jhap

129 karma · joined April 18, 2020

johnhenrypezzuto@gmail.com
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jhap··on Decoupling Compute and Memory for Async GPUs
This seems like a better version of CUDA, for Hopper GPUs?
jhap··on Show HN: Konga Beat – A custom track editor for Donkey Konga 2 and 3
I like to use the bongo drum controller to play super smash bros with my friends! It's a fun and goofy time!
jhap··on Death and typos: my six years screening online obituary comments
By any chance does anyone here know where I could find the text data from obituaries? I thought might have some luck asking the HN crowd! It's for a research paper I'm working on.
jhap··on National Geographic lays off its last remaining staff writers
I inherited a lot of these too that I probably won't read. Do you want me to send mine to you?
jhap··on MIT’s Barry Duncan demonstrates the power of writing in reverse
and Palindrome's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5F66JwLq90
jhap··on Making a Maradona: Meat Consumption and Soccer Prowess
No causation reported
jhap··on We don't have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model
I thought this was kind of a lame article. The point of behavioral economics is to systematically understand the heuristics people are using. That is hard to do! Trying to describe all the heuristics together is difficult and untestable -- i.e., not that good for the experimental research which most behavioral economists practice. Still it is well-known in the field that this is an open question worth theorizing about and I think many people do[1][2], although there is not a consensus on the "best" theory as far as I know.

The author like then lauds some impressive/hard to conduct/large-scale interventions which are formidable but don't really teach us about economic theory, and in fact neither were published in economics journals. Maybe the field should move in that direction, I am agnostic on the point, but the author's argument wasn't coherent in my opinion.

[1] https://rajchetty.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/behavioral_...

[2] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/Selective%20Atte...

jhap··on The last Howard Johnson's restaurant closes in Lake George, N.Y.
I second the book rec, I thought it would be fairly predictable and lame, but it turned out to be completely awesome.
jhap··on What caused the hallucinations of the Oracle of Delphi?
I don't think most people "lie about it", at least not intentionally.

I think it's more likely they get really caught up in the moment or something among those lines. I am interested in what in what it would be like to go to a concert of a bar with one of these people.

jhap··on Jack Dorsey’s $2.9M NFT dropped 99% in value
I'm not the OP, but this from the Matt Levine newsletter last week, which I think is what he is getting at:

> 1. If you hold your coins at a regulated exchange, sure yeah the authorities can probably get a warrant and seize your Bitcoins.

> 2. If you hold your coins in your own wallet but you write down your private key in, like, your phone’s notes app, and it backs up to the cloud, then the authorities can probably get your cloud provider to give them access to your notes and read the key and use that to seize all your Bitcoins. (This happened to the alleged Bitfinex hack launderers.)

> 3. If you write your private key on a scrap of paper, the authorities can search your house until they find it and seize all your Bitcoins.

> 4. If you memorize your private key, or just write it down somewhere really safe, then they can arrest you and throw you in jail until you tell them what it is, and then seize all your Bitcoins.

jhap··on Albini pitching Nirvana: “I would like to be paid like a plumber” (1992)
Can someone with more experience help me recognize the differences between this version and the released version? I'm having trouble hearing them.
jhap··on Must-read psychology books
I second the recommendation. I thought it was great.
jhap··on To boost your intelligence, learn how to self-soothe
I wonder what the actual single most impactful thing you can do to boost your intelligence is?

Besides going to school for 20 years, being well-fed and rested, presumably it's taking modafinil?

jhap··on If you think psychological science is bad, imagine how bad it was in 1999
> In a sense we do have this: engineering and finance. Engineering turns good hard science into new tools, machines and weapons, and Finance turns good (predictive) soft science into new ways to make money.

I think this is a common critique, but I also think it is missing the point. What if the question of interest isn't so easily verifiable like in Engineering? Do we just throw up our hands and give up on those questions? [The alternative to good social science is not no social science, it’s bad social science](https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/03/12/the-social...).

Finance is also a bit tautological in this regard. It seems that often prediction models are impossible to disprove (e.g., our arbitrage method doesn't work anymore, the market updated). Yes good for putting skin in the game, but doesn't seem like it does much to advance our long-term understanding of humans.

jhap··on JavaScript and the next decade of data programming (2020)
Do you have any advice for R users on making the transition? Even though I am primarily an R user, these days I have been using a fair amount of JS in my work, and I'm not sure how I can get to the "next level" in my programming that your alluding to. It seems like most of the tutorials are either too rudimentary or way over my head (like the three step drawing meme).

Maybe it makes sense for someone in my position to just go bite the bullet and go through the Eloquent JavaScript even though I feel like I already have a fair grasp of the content? Or learn some key principles of Software Engineering?

jhap··on Poor in Tech
I recommend the book Scarcity for anyone interested in learning more about the psychology behind this. It was written Mullainathan and Shafir, both stars in their respective fields.
jhap··on Who cares about the Ivy League?
> "Ivies really wanted to promote social justice, they would let in more poor kids"

> This is not their main priority.

I think you're right to say that this is not their main priority, but I think they actually do quite good letting in more more poor kids (at least better than most people expect).

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/09/th...

jhap··on Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it'll take to cancel it
Does anyone here know of canceling Wired is also this difficult? I was considering starting a subscription after seeing a compelling offer from them, but if it will be this hard to cancel this puts me in the fence.
jhap··on We don't need data scientists, we need data engineers
> The data science field has been flooded with PhDs with nowhere else to go that have no background in engineering, and sadly often have a very poor understanding of both machine learning and statistics.

I am a PhD student in a non-engineering field. I've been taking as many math and stats courses as I can, but what other courses should I be trying to take if I want to excel as a data scientist? Software engineering CS type courses?

jhap··on Open-source RGB lighting control for keyboards, fans, etc
Do you have any other ideas you recommend? I thought this mirror idea was brilliant!
jhap··on Coolest custom mechanical keyboards
Do you mean mechanical ergonomic keyboard? I’ve been enjoying my Microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard (~$100)
jhap··on Ask HN: About Financial Inequity
Yeah right, so I've been having mixed feelings recently. I'm considering dropping out of my program to get a data science type job in industry or I'm wondering if this just means I'm with the wrong person.

To bring things back to the original question, I think this whole experience has made me skeptical of people who optimize their life around income (past a certain point). At the same time I think chasing a higher income is probably an addictive to some degree, so I understand how people can fall into that and I think it might change people (my girlfriend obviously was not like this when we met).

My takeaway as a low-income person, is that I think high-income people will always dismiss me if I make these types of statements. "Of course he thinks this way, he's just a poor a student!". It's this kind of tautology that makes it impossible to deny being an alcoholic, etc. As far as I'm concerned, from my current position, it is impossible to persuade anyone that is dismissive about low-income people to think otherwise.

jhap··on Ask HN: About Financial Inequity
hey I really appreciate that, thanks for the kind offer!
jhap··on Ask HN: About Financial Inequity
Yes in so many words.

She has told me about how her coworkers make fun of men behind their back when their wives are promoted to higher positions than them (e.g., things like "we know who's in charge of that relationship"); asks me questions like how would I afford to pay for my parent's cancer treatment if they were to get cancer; reminds me I will not be able to afford a house while her friends are buying houses; has expressed dissatisfaction for me preferring designer Uniqlo collections rather than actual designer clothing; and has given me a hard time about being in a low income field (not studying CS or engineering).

edited: I thought of more points to add.

jhap··on Ask HN: About Financial Inequity
I make a little bit less than the median income (grad student). If it was up to me, I feel totally satisfied with my income. I can afford anything I want to buy, I can go out for dinner without worrying, I have savings, etc. Similarly I do not feel envious of others who have more than me, I am not looking for a change in lifestyle, and like some others in this thread I think some degree of inequality is optimal.

However when my longtime girlfriend (working in finance) feels insecure dating a man with a lower income, and is not happy with me because I can't afford / am not interested in luxury vacations and sport cars then my income becomes an issue. When I chose my job I knew I'd be taking a big loss in earnings and I knew I would be okay with that, but when it affects the people important in my life and they think less of me because of my low salary it feels bad.

jhap··on Hire people who give a shit
> For another, it’s going to bias you towards treating, e.g., janitors as subhuman, and that way is the path to a very bad place.

Do you have any more thoughts about this point? In my own life I’ve seen some of my friends with hotshot jobs develop this sort of mentality, and I sort of don’t know what to make of it. I want to be like “this is a toxic attitude to have!” but at the same time I can’t make a better argument than it’s immoral and without janitors we’d all be dead.