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kickopotomus

635 karma · joined August 11, 2017

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kickopotomus··on Explore the Hidden World of Sand
That's a tad pedantic. Everyone takes sand from the beach. That's simply the nature of going to a beach. The spirit of those laws is to prevent people from taking large quantities of sand for some personal or commercial purpose.
kickopotomus··on Astral to Join OpenAI
Private artifact repositories also help to mitigate supply chain risk since you can host all of your screened packages and don't have to worry about something getting removed from mvn-central, PyPI, NPM, etc.

Plus the obvious need for a place to host proprietary internal libraries.

kickopotomus··on Like Intel before it, AMD blames motherboard makers for burnt-out CPUs
In part, yes, but the whole picture is a bit more complex. Intel and AMD both work with vendors to work out reference designs and power regulator configurations that are compatible with their CPUs. Modern power regulators are relatively complex, especially when you get into the high-end desktop and server space. There are a lot of things that can be done wrong and cause issues, such as voltage or current overshoot when the CPU moves between different power states (e.g. low to high load).
kickopotomus··on Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
You say that as if they only operate in the US. The US represents less than 20% of their user base.
kickopotomus··on Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
> 'advisory board member' means that they are a board member in an advisory role, aka a nonexec

No, those are not synonyms. Advisory boards are distinct from the board of directors. Advisory board members have roles similar to what you alluded to in your original comment and do not have fiduciary duties, hence my confusion.

Non-exec board members are not involved with day-to-day business operations but their fiduciary duties are no different than exec members.

Language has meaning. Don't insult others for your own clumsy usage.

kickopotomus··on Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
No, I never said that her role is to "cheerlead". Refraining from public disparaging remarks is not a big ask for a board member. Especially if those thoughts were not first brought before the board, which is where such disputes should be resolved.

> Also I never said they had an 'advisory' board

From your comment: "...it's absolutely the role of advisory board members to continue their work".

Not sure how someone is meant to parse that except for you to imply that she was a member of an advisory board.

kickopotomus··on Before Altman’s ouster, OpenAI’s board was divided and feuding
OpenAI does not have an advisory board. She is on the board of directors and has fiduciary responsibilities. It does not matter that the parent organization is a non-profit. The duty remains.
kickopotomus··on OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns
Ehh I don't think SVB is an apt comparison. When the FDIC takes control of a failing bank, the bank shutters. Only critical staff is kept on board to aid with asset liquidation/transference and repay creditors/depositors. Once that is completed, the bank is dissolved.
kickopotomus··on Quantum Resistance and the Signal Protocol
It seems that your primary concern is that the government (or some bad actor) will be able to install a backdoor into PQC algorithms. Is that right? Why would PQC be more exposed to this type of subversion than existing public-key cryptography?

To your point about PQC being used exclusively, post-quantum encryption methods are designed to be resistant to both quantum and classical attacks. That is one of the key stated goals of the NIST post-quantum cryptography program.

kickopotomus··on Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor LK-99 preprint revision 2
High-end CPUs are actually not powered directly by DC. Basically all server (and growing portion of consumer) CPUs are powered by multiphase buck regulators[1] which split the power from from the DC PSU rails into a parallel set of modulated buck regulator power stages. The outputs of the parallel regulators are recombined to generate DC (as the combined waveform of the phased AC parts).

The reason for this multiphase design is because it offers better power efficiency and better transient response to the CPU as the CPU moves between it's different power states (high vs low load).

[1]: https://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva882b/slva882b.pdf?ts=169087951...

kickopotomus··on The fall of Stack Overflow, explained?
How would that work? If I just comment on some 8 year old question that the answer does not apply to $LATEST version of $FRAMEWORK, how would anyone with the know-how discover my question?

This truly is a new question because what is really being asked is what was the breaking change that occurred in $FRAMEWORK between the original question was answered and this latest version.

kickopotomus··on Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?
We stopped chasing clock speeds because of the physical timing limitations of gate and signal propagation. Not because of heat. Suppose you are using a 5GHz clock. Every cycle is 0.2ns. Light can only travel 6cm in that time. Electricity propagates a little slower through a conductor (and even slower through silicon). So if you are using some insanely fast clock, you are just wasting cycles waiting for signals to move across the chip.
kickopotomus··on Room temperature, ambient pressure superconductivity – this time for real?
Superconductors may reduce power consumption but they don't do anything to improve transistor density.
kickopotomus··on In 1961 a Gallup poll showed only 33% of Americans in favor of moon landing
I would say NASA is the public facing R&D arm. They also have DARPA as a more secretive R&D arm.
kickopotomus··on So what was that? Was Starship’s launch a failure or a success?
On the contrary, I find it more concerning that people are willing to discount the efforts of hundreds of people to progress human spaceflight just because the CEO is an asshole.

It is interesting that you would immediately default to a cult-of-personality retort when I never mentioned Elon in my original post. SpaceX is not just one man.

kickopotomus··on So what was that? Was Starship’s launch a failure or a success?
I agree with this sentiment. I have also been somewhat unsettled by the detractors here. I am not sure if this is purely an American sentiment, but it seems like more of the general population has started to view advancement in binary terms. In both science and public policy, it seems that an increasing proportion of the population view anything less than 100% success/improvement as an abject failure.
kickopotomus··on Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work
How is it any more dangerous than existing cloud storage use?
kickopotomus··on Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work
It seems like everyone is just focusing on auto-generated/summarized emails which is rather myopic. The real value add here is the ability to make all of an organization's data more easily discoverable and searchable.
kickopotomus··on Legal use of hallucinogenic mushrooms begins in Oregon
> You have a substance that you know, for a fact, a certain proportion of the population will abuse, to the detriment of both themselves and society at large.

I can understand why someone may take this stance, but I think this argument is something of a hasty generalization when it comes to drug policy. For starters, the policy alone (prohibited vs decriminalized vs legalized) does not appear to be the determining factor in the "certain proportion" of the population that use drugs problematically or otherwise. The US consistently has some of the highest drug usage and abuse rates compared to our western counterparts in Europe. I don't know of the exact reason for this. Could be other cultural differences between the US and Europe. Could be the fact that most European countries approach drug abuse as a public health issue opposed to a criminal one, and focus on harm reduction and rehabilitation instead of jail time.

kickopotomus··on FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to be released on $250M bail
I doubt they used a bondsman. $25 million is a pretty steep fee. They likely paid the entire bail amount and will get that money back once SBF shows up to court.
kickopotomus··on FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to be released on $250M bail
Not quite. You pay a bondsman 10%. The bondsman turns around and pays the full bail amount to the court. If you show up, the bondsman gets their money back from the court but keeps your 10% as a fee. If you don't show up to court, the bondsman does not get their money back and is left holding the bag for the other 90% of the bail amount.
kickopotomus··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2022)
Renesas | Staff Software Engineer (Frontend) | React, Typescript | Full Time | REMOTE | https://www.renesas.com/us/en/

We are currently seeking a staff or senior staff SW Engineer who is technically savvy and is excited about working within a SoC development team to produce customer-facing software to enable our end users. This position involves a wide range of challenges from interfacing with IC and firmware designers to working with marketing to present the IC products in intuitive ways. As part of one of Renesas’s fastest growing product lines, you will have the opportunity directly impact customer experience and build new software to enable feature rich hardware to shine. If you like problem-solving, working with systems involving Software/Firmware/Hardware, and challenging the status quo, we’d like to hear from you. Your opportunity to influence product architecture and our business success is limited only by your technical ability and creativity. If you seek a place to excel with no artificial barriers, apply now!

Apply Here: https://jobs.renesas.com/job/Austin-Staff-Software-Engineer-...

kickopotomus··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2022)
Renesas | Staff Software Engineer (Frontend) | React, Typescript | Full Time | REMOTE | https://www.renesas.com/us/en/

We are currently seeking a staff or senior staff SW Engineer who is technically savvy and is excited about working within a SoC development team to produce customer-facing software to enable our end users. This position involves a wide range of challenges from interfacing with IC and firmware designers to working with marketing to present the IC products in intuitive ways. As part of one of Renesas’s fastest growing product lines, you will have the opportunity directly impact customer experience and build new software to enable feature rich hardware to shine. If you like problem-solving, working with systems involving Software/Firmware/Hardware, and challenging the status quo, we’d like to hear from you. Your opportunity to influence product architecture and our business success is limited only by your technical ability and creativity. If you seek a place to excel with no artificial barriers, apply now!

* Position is mostly remote but will require occasional onsite meetings in Austin, TX.

Apply Here: https://jobs.renesas.com/job/Austin-Staff-Software-Engineer-...

kickopotomus··on Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
Median age in Kansas is 36.7. Median age in Missouri is 38.6. Kansas has 4 towns with population densities >4000/sq mile. Missouri has 38 towns with population densities >4000/sq mile.
kickopotomus··on Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
The technology is not brand new. It has been used in labs for decades. This is just the first time it has been used in a drug for humans. All traces of the vaccine leave your body within days of receiving the shot.
kickopotomus··on The ‘semi-rich’: Millions of high-income Americans may not feel wealthy but are
If you do a modest 2% annual withdrawal on $20M, that's $400K pre-tax. You can live very comfortably and likely never need to work another day in your life regardless of your current age.

If you are retired with $1.2M in assets, even a 3% draw down rate only gives you $36K a year. You can make that work if you are frugal but that is a vastly different lifestyle from the $20M individual.

kickopotomus··on In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires
You could sum up this whole article to "don't hire assholes" but I am not sure why that should be limited to tech? You probably don't want assholes in your business/ops side of the organization either. Most of the gripes in the article sound like management/culture issues as opposed to developer issues.

> Many business folks begin by asking for a specific feature or function. For example, maybe you want your billing system to send out customer payment reminders as text messages. Sounds straightforward. But a good technologist, before rolling up her sleeves, flexing her fingers and firing up a text message cloud service and a windowful of code, will ask questions.

If every company is now really a tech company as the article claims, why is it only the responsibility of the developer to extract requirements/intent? I am not saying that developers should not try to clarify problems but why is the onus of clarity on the implementer instead of the requester? Should business folks not be expected to clearly communicate the business goal that they are trying to accomplish?

> One bad actor can do more damage than you can imagine. I have seen a multimillion-dollar, high-stakes initiative almost derailed by one jerk who didn’t think he needed to prioritize a colleague’s project above his own and masterfully exhibited passive-aggressive behavior for weeks before getting called on it.

A single point of failure in a multimillion-dollar, business-critical project sounds like a management issue to me.

> Hiring a developer? Check out the GitHub “repository,” which is essentially the portfolio site for coders.

That is going to be a mixed bag. My GitHub account is a graveyard of half-finished toy projects in different technologies I felt like trying out. I would not say it is representative of my proficiency.

kickopotomus··on What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp?
Counterpoint: I had not even heard about the whistle-blower until seeing stories about the outage. One of the largest web services in the world being out of commission for multiple hours is a big deal in 2021. It's a top story on most news sites and other social media (e.g. here at HN, reddit, twitter). If you want something to pass under the radar, it's probably best to not attract global attention.
kickopotomus··on Gitlab S-1
> it crashes all the time, features are so amateurish (vs teamcity especially) that we're struggling just to do basic things.

Do you have an on-prem instance? What sort of features does teamcity have that are not there in Gitlab CI?

Teams in my org are currently switching from Gerrit/Jenkins combos to Gitlab and I have been pretty pleased so far. I do wish there was a nicer way to experiment with different CI configurations from within the browser to prevent a bunch of pointless commits messing with your config YAML; but, otherwise I have been pretty happy with the flexibility.

kickopotomus··on Scikit-Learn Version 1.0
It's like there is some strange belief now that software should be "finished" before a 1.0 version now. When did that start?
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