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kmitzon An atlas of periodic solutions to the three-body problem

Fantastic UX, so smooth even on smartphone ! Congrats

kmitzon PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD

PISA data show that students who use AI for specific schoolwork tasks, such as summarising texts, drafting or conducting research, attain lower scores in science than students who do not use AI.

See graphs on PISA 2025 homepage : https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/pisa-2025-results-volum...

So much for all the EdTech startups that want you to use their AI teachers. Seriously, this should be a major signal to keep screens and AI solutions out of classrooms. That's not solving everything but at least students would be given a few hours window of de-brainroting everyday. I'm open to accept that AI can have a positive impact on education but people and tools are apparently not ready and for the moment using it is a net negative.

kmitzon Mistral OCR 4.1

I tested different models of the 5.6 family with different settings, although I couldn't exactly remember precisely which ones.

kmitzon Mistral OCR 4.1

I got the opposite experience very recently : tried to OCR a bunch of handwritten emails addresses with chatGPT and I had to make so many corrections that I gave up. Whereas Mistral nailed it on first pass.

kmitzon The kids with phones are alright

I say this is a click bait article. The guy is taking a contrarian view on smartphone use by young people, with weak and very subjective arguments.

> the impetus for the most authoritarian internet regulation in the UK, including the <16s ban, has come from the affluent/wealthy/1% elite on the political right wing

Very strong take with no justification at all. What we observe is that many developped countries with different political orientations are currently taking action against harm caused by social media and more generally by excessive screen time. This is not about political right wing.

>It’s easy to understand why: the upper classes have always objectified their children into possessions. These are groups who, culturally, do not want their children to have agency over their own lives, nevermind devices, nor do they want their young adults to develop essential skills to live their lives as independent adults. They never have. And they never did themselves,

Really sounds like a frustrated person that projects his own problems on the rest of the world. And totally not relevant to the debate about the impact of social media on teenagers.

kmitzon Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds

This is a terrible idea. Screen time hinders the development of fundamental skills, including language and social interaction, especially for children of these ages.

France have already moved to ban screens from places with children under 3. Other countries (including UK, Australia) are also setting strong limits on screen use for kids under 5. This is for a reason.

Products like this are driven by business interests, not good will. Good parenting with screen control is the best way to have a fulfilled and happy child. Protect your children, keep them away from screens while they are under 5 and guide them carefully when you introduce screen time.

kmitzon Rules, Not Renewables, Might Explain the Iberian Blackout

I think you are mixing up different concepts.

Power impacts frequency, reactive power impacts voltage. It doesn't make sense to "cut power when frequency drops".

kmitzon Diffusion models explained simply

Thanks, I was looking for an article like this, with a focus on the differences between generative AI techniques. My guess is that since LLMs and image generation became mainstream at the same time, most people don't have the slightest idea they are based on fundamentally different technologies.

kmitzon Whistleblower: DOGE Siphoned NLRB Case Data

I hope not. It would be such a disappointment.

kmitzon Whistleblower: DOGE Siphoned NLRB Case Data

The faq says rankings can be affected by automated moderation. I'd appreciate to have this clarified by a mod if one happens to read my words. Thanks

How are stories ranked?

The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.

Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.

kmitzon Whistleblower: DOGE Siphoned NLRB Case Data

How come this article has disappeared from HN front page ? Posted 2 hours ago and with 649 points

kmitzon Tell HN: Upgrade your Metabase installation

Thanks for the heads up ! Without your message I'd probably have found out in a couple months :)

kmitzon Balancing “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” vs. “Release early and often”

Well depending on the size of your codebase, npm dependencies and Angular APIs used, it might or might not be a big deal. You can have a rough estimate of the complexity by running 'ng update'. Yes major releases come at a rapid pace and it is hard to always be on the latest version. We update regularly once we are 2-3 major versions behind and usually it's not so awful.

kmitzon Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

I was wondering the same thing, especially with https

kmitzon Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster

It'd be interesting to know why load time hasn't improved.

In the comments I mostly see "because of js and adtech", but is there a factual analysis somewhere ? How much is due to the recent massive deployment of https and related latency ? Is it a problem of latency or bandwidth ? What type of contents is causing most of the waiting time ? Images, css, js ? Just wondering

kmitzon Tell HN: Latest Windows security update is locking all our computers

Thanks for the explanation. We bought the laptops from Dell, and after reading your message this is what I found on their website :

"All computers that Dell currently ships are Modern Standby compliant and the above applies. A registry key that Dell leaves in a neutral state controls this behavior, neither prohibiting nor enforcing encryption. Windows interprets this as approval to encrypt." https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/fr-fr/000124361/bitlocker...

So for the end-user bitlocker is enabled by default. It is obscure enough that our team missed that they had to backup something before using their computers.

kmitzon Tell HN: Latest Windows security update is locking all our computers

I confirm this was enabled by default. The laptop were shipped from Dell with Pro versions of Windows. The end-users did not go through bitlocker setup process and therefore were not aware that they had to backup their security key.

kmitzon Tell HN: Latest Windows security update is locking all our computers

Thanks. I've never heard of these. I understand that's some computer fleet management solution. I guess that's not something enabled by default, so probably not an option for us.

kmitzon CNIL makes Google Analytics almost illegal in France

Speaking of adapting the product, the article explicitely states : "Is it possible to set the Google Analytics tool so that personal data is not transferred outside the European Union?"

"No."

So right now it is practically impossible to use Google Analytics in a legal way in France.

kmitzon DevOps is a failure

Author claim is more about how to make people work together on deployment. Rather than a rant on devops tools.

You can do simple things with modern devops tools. You can go off rails with simple scripts. It's not the tooling, it's about engineering maturity and the requirements of what you're building.

kmitzon DevOps is a failure

Yes. I was confused reading this article because author seems to miss an important point. Devops culture is about "you build it, you run it". Not having a dedicated devops team that tries to make developers do things. I Read a book lately on that topic : Team topologies. It explains this concept pretty well

kmitzon It takes $420k per year to run Lichess

Based on datacenter names they seem to be hosted by french provider OVH, not google nor aws

kmitzon Google Alternatives

Excellent

kmitzon Bitcoin's energy consumption 'equals that of Switzerland'

Relevant info is at the end of the article :

"The electricity used for Bitcoin produces about 22 megatons of CO2 annually, a study in the scientific journal Joule estimated. That is as much as Kansas City in the US."

Bitcoin = Kansas City

kmitzon The Baseline Costs of JavaScript Frameworks

It doesn't mention framework versions..

kmitzon What is the revenue generation model for DuckDuckGo?

Yes, I'm also curious about these "hidden trackers". Couldn't find any info on what he meant by that.

kmitzon How Futures Trading Changed Bitcoin Prices

I totally agree. Current pattern is very similar to the four-five previous bubbles, which the author doesn't seem to take into consideration or even be aware of.

Besides, futures trading has existed a long time on chinese platforms before CME and CBOE joined the party.

It really is a waste of time to speculate why bitcoin price is going up or down on such timescale.

kmitzon Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

Firefox has a serious performance issue. The difference with Chrome is really noticeable after only a few minutes of browsing. Less responsive, huge memory comsumption.

Try d3.js for instance, the rendering speed is horribly slow on Firefox.

I won't be switching to Firefox unless its performances get closer to Chrome's.

As a developper I wish I could contribute to make a better Firefox, but I'm pretty sure the technical level is too high for me.

kmitzon Modern Microprocessors: A 90 Minute Guide

Very good overview, thanks a lot for this article