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mcnnowak

79 karma · joined April 7, 2015

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mcnnowak··on Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?
Try playing Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder (or any number of other systems.) Pathfinder is super deep and complex.

There's also an entire community of people who play Table Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs) solo and use the outcomes of their play reports to blog or write fiction.

Also, the tooling around these games is very interesting if you want to build an app: Crafting calculator? Generative hexcrawl maps? Random tables? Statistics tools for dice rolls?

mcnnowak··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Wealth tax will just create an industry around hiding wealth for the rich
mcnnowak··on Steam Machine
I'm really disappointed that the new controller takes AA batteries though.
mcnnowak··on FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies
What's to stop someone putting some Terms of Service clause on their site, or creating a license which guarantees the site owners ownership of any content generated by scraping their site?

Like some sort of legal honeypot trap.

mcnnowak··on Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
Any tips or "get your foot in the door" advice on how someone currently in a CS career, but interested in biology could make this career transition? As a simple CS-minded person, I don't see any LeetCode for synthetic biology sites :)
mcnnowak··on Tesla Cybertruck Pricing and Specs
> Prices assume ... est. gas savings of $3,600 over 3 years.

Seems shady

mcnnowak··on Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)
As someone with limited counter space, cleaning while you cook is essential for saving time while cooking.
mcnnowak··on Pinball is booming in America
You can slap the buttons hard to get the table to wobble a bit, you can tap the cabinet with your wrists, you can grab the table tightly and move a leg or a hip in the opposite direction while keeping your body rigid, you can even slide the whole table if you're feeling desperate and want to burn a warning.

It's a super physical game if you're taking risky shots and having to recover from bad situations constantly, and the pros make it look like they're barely nudging at all by taking safe shots and making minor corrections with nudges.

mcnnowak··on Run Llama 13B with a 6GB graphics card
I've always wondered if we could get a "good enough" general model, then add plugins for shortcomings.

E.g., Can this model solve math problems? ~%50 of the time. Can this model identify math problems? ~99.9% of the time. Ok, then divert math questions to the math plugin and mathematical-problem-language-parser which has ~99.9% accuracy on supported math problems.

I know it's a stopgap, but it seems like it'd make these models super useful on certain tasks quicker.

mcnnowak··on Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?
Generally my advice when people ask me is as follows:

1. In the beginning, going to the gym is the hardest part. Incentive: if you go to the gym consistently for a while you are rewarded with no more post workout muscle soreness, and easy newbie gains.

2. Do compound lifts if you can (squat, bench, deadlift (warning deadlifts are not for everyone, and may not be all that beneficial), pullups/pulldowns.) Add a bit of weight or reps each week. Aim for 3-6 sets. No one will care if you start with an empty bar. If you add reps, if you get up to around 10-12, add weight instead. These number are flexible and there is no right answer.

3. For accessory exercises or things that target single muscles: try a bunch of stuff and try new stuff often. If you don't like it, don't do it. If you like it, work it into your routine. These are generally fun but unnecessary until you hit a plateau/wall in another lift and do some research on what you want to do to get past that plateau/wall.

4. Good form is more important than adding weight. Don't hurt yourself.

5/Bonus. Try watching some cringey YouTube fitness influencers and see if they're doing anything that looks fun and try that.

Also follow the golden rule: clean up and put your damn weights back.

mcnnowak··on Top Programming Languages 2022
The Apache ecosystem is fairly Java-heavy, Android, etc..
mcnnowak··on Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?
A VR game where you take a snapshot or ghost of yourself performing some movement or throwing an item, which then repeats itself in the world. Then you can make more snapshots and string them together to create a Factorio-like game which uses the snapshot of those movements to assemble products.

E.g., ghost 1: pick up ore, throw ore -> ghost 2: catch ore, crush ore, throw crushed ore -> ghost 3: put ore into furnace -> ghost 4: pick up metal bar, throw metal bar, etc..

Then the player is running around building interactable buildings with produced resources and that oh so satisfying factory spaghetti starts forming.

mcnnowak··on Lessons learned from running Apache Airflow at scale
I'm also interested in this topic, but can't find anything other than "Top 10 things you should STOP doing as a data engineer" etc. content-mill, clickbait on Medium and other sites.
mcnnowak··on Ask HN: How does your company do Project and Portfolio Management?
Managing a product line or group of products and being able to record the specifications or different attributes for each SKU or product.

Pretty much a record of origin for compare/contrast/historical data/being able to link back to the definitive "thing".

mcnnowak··on Microsoft gaming chief calls for industry-wide game preservation
"We want to keep old games available so we can keep making money off them."
mcnnowak··on Modern Data Practice and the SQL Tradition
Sounds pretty dismissive. AI and Big Data are buzzwords that shouldn't be used very often. Data Science is about creating solutions that are right for the size of your data, and the questions being asked of it.

A C++ program with a couple megs on the heap is appropriate, just as an ETL pipeline is appropriate for gigabytes to terabytes.

mcnnowak··on The Free Stack – Running Your Application for Free on AWS
Why is everyone so concerned with $20/mo? If you're running a business, this should be the least of your concerns. Building on AWS means easy scaling for the future.

Who wants to redesign their entire project if it takes off?

mcnnowak··on Aristo – A system that reads, learns, and reasons about science
Question: What is the meaning of life?

Aristo's Answer: As of now, no other life in universe other than earth.

Confidence: 52.29%

mcnnowak··on Humble Book Bundle: Data Science
Note: The default donation split gives most of the money to O'Reilly and Humble Bundle, not Code for America.
mcnnowak··on Ask HN: Monetizing newsletter with 2M and 1M members
Maybe sneak an Amazon Affiliate link to some book that isn't on your site.
mcnnowak··on More than 10k problems fixed through 'Improve Detroit' app
This would be a lot more powerful if they posted an 'after' picture as well. Good to see all that data though.
mcnnowak··on Ask HN: What tech blogs, podcasts do you follow outside of HN?
How has no one mentioned the Joe Rogan Experience yet? Edit: ... because it isn't a tech podcast. It's too early to read carefully. But seriously sometimes he has scientists and stuff on. The Aubrey de Grey one is pretty good.