Hacker News Reader

mikhailfrancoon “Erdos problem #728 was solved more or less autonomously by AI”

Live out of a suitcase, travel the world, hang out with a wide selection of excellent mathematicians, write joint papers with many of them, when you get bored or stuck, pack the suitcase and keep moving - for your whole life.

mikhailfrancoon Starlink satellites being lowered from 550 km to 480 km

Presumably this reduces the beam footprint on the ground, hence increases the bandwidth available to individual users in dense urban environments (reduced sharing).

mikhailfrancoon Silver rises 9% to hit fresh record high

China is the world's second largest producer of silver, after Mexico and ahead of Peru.

It is introducing licensing for export of silver starting on 1 January 2026.

There is speculation that the new regulations will favor a few large companies, slow the flow of exports, and provide a mechanism for the government to impose explicit 'critical mineral' export controls on silver in the future.

mikhailfrancoon China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium

Geoneutrino surveys show the Tibetan plateau and western China are full of uranium and thorium:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoneutrino

Economic recoverable reserves are another matter, but there's plenty there.

mikhailfrancoon Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America

For peat's sake!

mikhailfrancoon The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia

The lowest value coin still in use is the Uzbek Tiyin (0.01 UZS).

So 1,200,000 Tiyins to the USD.

mikhailfrancoon What's Behind the Mysterious Ancient Wall in the Gobi Desert?

Khara Khoto appears to be on or near the extension of the 'Gobi Wall' into present day China, presumably as part of the same system.

https://cms.interestingengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

The name 'Gobi Wall' seems to refer to the section of the wall within Mongolia. Its garrisons and forts are numbered from G01 at the western end of the section, where the wall crosses the border.

https://cdn.grid.id/crop/0x0:0x0/700x0/photo/2025/05/31/land...

Khara Khoto is about 100 km WSW of G01.

mikhailfrancoon Map of Near and Middle East Oil 1965

Note Abu Musa, Greater & Lesser Tunb islands are attributed to the Emirates. These were occupied by Iran at the formation of the UAE and remain contested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seizure_of_Abu_Musa_and_the_Gr...

mikhailfrancoon Map of Near and Middle East Oil 1965

Turkey claims sectors of the field all around the island of Cyprus.

Egypt has some small hope of reversing its economic decline.

A direct pipeline from the field to Europe, via Greece and Italy is contentious.

Israel invades Gaza to claim offshore resources.

mikhailfrancoon Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

"moved from Germany to write here "

So missing the good German bread.

Doesn't say where 'here' is.

mikhailfrancoon New interpretations suggest the "heat death" hypothesis might not hold (2023)

The usual handwaving for entropy v. information/complexity is to observe that our universe goes from simple low entropy state (Big Bang) to a simple maximum entropy state (Heat Death).

Both have low information. The complexity rises and falls, peaking somewhere in the middle, as energy from the gravitational field is turned into structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weyl_curvature_hypothesis

Penrose likes zero initial Weyl curvature because it provides low entropy, but also conformal flatness, thus enabling his CCC theories.

Another consequence is that the Big Bang is not a reversed black hole (white hole). Black holes have high Weyl curvature. The Big Bang is the lowest entropy configuration, but a Black Hole is the maximum entropy configuration (just mass, spin and charges).

mikhailfrancoon Thai Air Force seals deal for Swedish Gripen jets

Westland-Augusta-Leonardo helicopter company in Yeovil.

RNAS (Royal Naval Air Station) Yeovilton in nearby Ilchester, which has also a fascinating museum of British naval aviation and an old Concorde.

[Fun fact - Yeovilton and Westlands are connected by an old Roman road: A37 Ilchester Road, Vagg Lane, Vagg Hill, Larkhill Road... ]

mikhailfrancoon Canada Gave Citizens the Right to Die. Doctors Are Struggling to Meet Demand

In an episode of the The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski narrates the seasonal migration (transhumance) of the Bakhtiari tribe of SW Iran. When they get to the raging river, an old man can't make it, so is left on the bank to die.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ztord river crossing at 14-17 mins

This is the same epic migration recorded in the classic Grass

1925 ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY FILM " GRASS " MIGRATION OF BAKHTIARI TRIBE OF PERSIA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fVftguHwFc

And the tribe moves on .....

mikhailfrancoon What's your preferred playback speed: 1x, 1.5x or 2x?

But Lex interviewed Terry!

Maybe a voice-recognizing silence-skipping adaptive rate.

mikhailfrancoon Genetic correlates of social stratification in Great Britain (2019) [pdf]

https://www.axiomofjoy.com/2019/02/19/genome_part_i.html

mikhailfrancoon Why Exercise Is a Miracle Drug

Some people exercise to get fit.

I exercise to work up a thirst.

mikhailfrancoon I drank every cocktail

There is a podcast from Sean Carroll about cocktails, if you like your mixology from a physics & philosophy guy:

Mindscape 307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCSmrdzistc

mikhailfrancoon New York’s bill banning One-Person Train Operation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_syste...

The length ranking seems to be something like:

Riyadh - 176 km

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riyadh_Metro

Dubai - 90km, first operation 2009

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_Metro

London DLR - 38 km

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

Shanghai is probably in the running as it upgrades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro#Infrastructure

mikhailfrancoon Programming Language Theory has a public relations problem

Digital monad - doing PLT in Bali?

mikhailfrancoon Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

I only read Shakespeare in C:

   Ox2b | ~0x2B

mikhailfrancoon Sailing the fjords like the Vikings yields unexpected insights

There's recent evidence from mouse DNA, sheep shit silt and pollen, that the Vikings reached the Azores some time around 800 AD:

https://www.science.org/content/article/vikings-paradise-wer...

mikhailfrancoon How the next financial crisis starts. The climate shocks that trigger turmoil

It would seem possible to create an economic index for climate change. For example, consider low lying coastal property that might be vulnerable to sea-level rise (chronic trend), storm surges and hurricane/cyclone damage (acute episodes).

Pick some basket of relevant countries/regions, then gather data on property prices and insurance rates. Have two sets of properties for each region: exposed coastal areas and 'safe' properties inland at higher elevations, perhaps sheltered from storms. The safe properties act as a control for demographics, overall economic activity and local laws/taxes (e.g. in the same US state).

Generate an index as some function over the difference of prices and rates between the two sets. The index would have regional components and some aggregate total.

Data could also be collected on actual damage and claims. These affect later rates, so they have a lagged impact on the index anyway, but it might be useful to isolate multipliers or confounding effects. There could be scaled impact values based on the total exposed property value in the region, but there would be significant non-linearities.

Of course, insurance companies have this data, and surely have internal models that incorporate local and regional indexes for risk. But it would still be useful to have public data, an agreed index methodology, and a wider geographical extent than a single company patch or country market.

Property is notoriously idiosyncratic and illiquid, so it would be hard to trade the index, or use it for hedging risk, but perhaps some prediction market could be built around the index.

mikhailfrancoon Google DeepMind team up to solve the Navier-Stokes million-dollar problem

Terence Tao briefly discusses this problem in the first chapter of his talk with Lex Fridman:

Terence Tao: Hardest Problems in Mathematics, Physics & the Future of AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #472

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUkBz-cdB-k

mikhailfrancoon Japanese Castaways of 1834: The Three Kichis

Some fascinating background about early Japanese trade with the Americas, and other wrecks on US/Canada west coast:

Japanese Shipwrecks in British Columbia, Grant Keddie

https://staff.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08...

mikhailfrancoon Why do Bedouins wear black robes in hot deserts? (1980)

In my limited experience in Arabia, the women wear black, optimized for losing heat inside, and men wear white, optimized for reflecting direct light outside - at least that was my instinctive explanation.

mikhailfrancoon How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

One report said the drone attack was sequential, not swarming. So perhaps only one remote operator per truck, with about 2-3 minutes between each drone launch, depending on how far the previous one had to go to reach its target.

mikhailfrancoon Notes on Tunisia

Support for the Palestinian cause is to be expected in an Arab country.

But perhaps the reported strength of feeling is correlated with the history of the PLO, who moved there after being expelled from Lebanon by the Israeli invasion in 1982. Israel then attacked the new PLO HQ in Tunisia in 1985.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wooden_Leg

Correlation might mean causation in a couple of directions. Did the PLO move to Tunis because Tunisians already supported them sympathetically, or do they now support the Palestinian cause more strongly because they provided refuge and were attacked by Israel? Probably both.

mikhailfrancoon Square Theory

This is not surprising at all if you know:

1. Cryptic crosswords (1920s) - the only interesting crosswords.

2. "Metaphors We Live By" Lakoff & Johnson (1980), or perhaps just "Roget's Thesaurus" (1805) long before that (synonyms, antonyms), and obviously homonyms.

3. A little bit of Category Theory, but not too much, just the amount that occurs to you after 1 & 2. An alternative entry point might be knowledge graphs (1990s).

mikhailfrancoon One hundred and one rules of effective living

  68) “The past controls the future but the present controls the past.” 
      (G.I. Gurdjieff)

I always thought that was Orwell "1984" (1948).

I know Orwell used Zamyatin "We" as an inspiration, but not seen the Gurdjieff attribution before.

P.S. Also a fan of Asian Dub Foundation's Memory War.

mikhailfrancoon Why are coffee stains darker at the edges?

Same for watercolor painting:

https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/watercolor/paper_sm...