Hacker News Reader

mf_tombon OpenAI Jalapeño: Better than Nvidia Blackwell

"Baking in" a model into a chip is a bad idea because chips take 2 years to tape out and then you're stuck doing inference on llama 3 in 2026 when fable/sol are available. Every accelerator is a tradeoff between flexibility and performance and GPUs are already pareto-optimal

mf_tombon Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

You're right, it's impossible to blind subjects. Researchers can be blinded by having one limb be the control and the other be the test. This design has become more popular recently and it's definitely a small improvement.

mf_tombon Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

This is par for the course with exercise science. It's mostly fake. No blinding, small sample sizes, researchers with agenda, low duration, low funding etc. The good news is that doing almost anything works.

mf_tombon Non-Zero-Sum Games

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/self-reported-t...

Pretty clear trend: low-trust societies have low gdp and high-trust societies have high gdp, regardless of resource distribution. Africa/South America are resource rich, japan/iceland are resource poor.

mf_tombon Visiting Us

This is just totally untrue, Epic is fine as a Dev. I have many friends who work there, none of them work more than 40 hours a week and they all make ~200k with 5 yoe. Great for Madison WI. Tech stack does suck, however.

mf_tombon Goodbye, Rust. I wish you success but I'm back to C++ (sorry, it is a rant)

Actually, it's already happening, without being widely used https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary#Idioms_an...

mf_tombon Goodbye, Rust. I wish you success but I'm back to C++ (sorry, it is a rant)

Those special cases are useful or the natural result of speakers coming from other languages. If esperanto were used widely for many years, it would also develop special cases over time. In 200 years, it would be as irregular as english, as it borrowed words and phrases from other languages.

mf_tombon OpenXLA Is Available Now

Can someone explain to me why they created yet another IR instead of building an MLIR dialect? Especially since they’re targeting MLIR byte code.

mf_tombon Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

Marketing does influence behavior. However, reward loops don't need marketing, just like heroin doesn't need marketing. I've sank 100s of hours into idle games that look like a spreadsheet and have 0 marketing budget.

mf_tombon Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

In 2022, it would be stupid to make a game that doesn't have some sort of battle pass and dopamine-drip progression system. Way fewer people would play your game and gamers would complain without them. People genuinely enjoy these systems, just like they genuinely enjoy reality TV over a documentary or TikTok over long-form Youtube videos. It's an obvious trend that won't be fixed if we misunderstand the issue and assume that people don't want these things and they're being pushed by advertising.

mf_tombon Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties

It's conspiratorial to assume that advertising and marketing is responsible for the status quo, rather than it being reflective of the genuine preferences of consumers to have new toys. Consumer preference has rewarded lowest-common-denominator dopamine trains in basically every facet of modern life. See the gaming industry with microtransactions/lootboxes, or entertainment with the move towards short-form content.

mf_tombon Lead exposure in last century shrunk IQ scores of half of Americans: study

Sugar is bad, but it's only one part of the picture:

"Evidence-informed dietary priorities include increased fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable oils, yogurt, and minimally processed whole grains; and fewer red meats, processed (e.g., sodium-preserved) meats, and foods rich in refined grains, starch, added sugars, salt, and trans fat."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814348/

mf_tombon Ask HN: What are your new years resolutions?

Thanks friend! For both lifts, I work up to a top single around RPE 8 (difficult, but with no grinding or form breakdown), and then use that number to determine my 1 rep max for that particular day. Then I do volume based on the Prilepin chart. I find this works very well because it adapts to the stress of life.

mf_tombon Ask HN: What are your new years resolutions?

475lbs Deadlift and 185lbs Press

Convert what I'm learning into content so that others may benefit.

mf_tombon Dopamine Fasting: A Maladaptive Fad (2020)

The referenced Huberman podcast is pretty thorough (from my lay-perspective) and covers most of the nuance that you mention.

mf_tombon Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

Most unions try to act in solidarity with labor in general, through organizations like the IWW and the AFL-CIO. Police unions aren't labor unions, as the role of police in society is to enforce the current capital distribution. This is counter to the goals of the rest of the labor movement, and there's currently a push to boot the IUPA from the AFL-CIO.

mf_tombon The global fertility rate is falling

What could possibly be more self-centered than forcing someone to exist without their consent as a retirement plan?

mf_tombon The global fertility rate is falling

Potential children don't exist. They cannot be harmed by not existing. They can, however, be harmed by being brought into existence. This is true even if life is "worth living" or "generally good" or "mostly pleasurable". Depression and nihilism has nothing to do with it, and my ancestors also don't exist anymore, so why would I care about their opinions?

mf_tombon Getting to “Philosophy”

There are still plenty of open questions. No one has just "figured out" confirmation and dealing with evidence. In fact, the way a lot science is done is incorrect and journals could learn a lot from Bayesian Epistemologists.

mf_tombon The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people

In order to make any progress, you have to understand the ideas that come before you, lest you make the same mistakes. It's the same in STEM. That being said, the idea that there's no new philosophy is ludicrous. I recommend David Lewis as a very original, modern philosopher.