Hacker News Reader

ninjinxoon Can a corporation be pardoned?

In Australia, if a company fails to nominate a speeding fine for a company car - either refusing or not maintaining records - then the fine is multiplied compared to that for an individual.

ninjinxoon Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative

An N100 minipc or second-hand Dell Optiplex doesn't cost too much more than a rasp-Pi ($100-200), has a lot more power, and will only pull about 10W idle.

My optiplex shows as 8.191 kwh last month -> 11w average.

ninjinxoon Well-known paradox of R-squared is still buggin me

If voters are split 60-40 on an issue, that doesn't mean that the odds are 60-40.

You should instead be asking, what are the odds that that X voters could change their vote.

ninjinxoon NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

But is it still piracy if you compress them and serve only a likeness of the original?

ninjinxoon The Fill and Flush deplaning method

Better off watching CGP Grey's video "The Better Boarding Method Airlines Won't Use" which has more discussion of the topic, more simulations, and puts forward better methods that are either faster or allow families to remain grouped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo

This is basically https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0733 but differs to the paper in that it doesn't consider: alternating odd-and-even row disembarkment, which would give passengers more aisle space to potentially speed-up luggage handling.

ninjinxoon What's causing Australia's frozen chip shortage and how long will it last?

I really appreciated this joke.

For the non-Australians, we don't really say parmigiana either, it's parmi or parma and there's a lot of playful debate over the naming.

ninjinxoon BlackCat claims they hacked Reddit and will leak the data

If I were the hacker, I'd edit maxwellhill to have email address ghislainemaxwell@gmail.com just for the shitstorm it'd create, context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29838084

Aside from that, email addresses to usernames might be valuable - you could identify high-value targets from finance, crypto, or luxury item subs.

Or you could just make lists of people who post on specific subs for targeted harrassment.

ninjinxoon When did SVB insiders begin to realize they were in trouble?

I'll ask the dumb question - he'd already taken his money out, what financial advantage is he meant to have then gained by encouraging others to do the same?

ninjinxoon UK high street banks are quarantining from crypto

Yep, and if they're willing to limit deposits, they're liable to limit withdrawals too.

ninjinxoon What if regular exercise is the best cognitive exercise?

What if sleep is the best cognitive exercise?

ninjinxoon So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018)

To be fair, Valve were sued into enacting their return policy by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), and no longer offer flash sales because of it.

Linux support is nice though.

ninjinxoon So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018)

No, dota has a paid subscription ($5 p/m) which gates gameplay features, many of which would be really useful for newer players - ingame coaching, item suggestions, hero pick suggestions, death summary, live gameplay tips, avoid player list, ranked mmr double downs that can be used after drafting phase, exclusive modes, and live spectating (free users have to use discord streaming or spectate with 2 minutes delay).

ninjinxoon So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018)

You mean the company that pioneered:

Microtransactions, real money loot-boxes, gambling, NFT marketplace, battlepasses

doesn't milk it's users?

Dota used to have $35 "arcanas", a high quality skin for a single hero which were released intermittently - but that wasn't enough money, they're now placed $200+ deep in the yearly battlepass. If you played any of their games, you'd realise they're one of greediest in the business.

ninjinxoon Galactic-Scale Energy (2011)

It's not profound to say that sustained (infinite) growth is unsustainable, but it is of interest when it's within a conceivable timeframe.

It's not worth reading however, because the author whimsically extrapolates energy usage starting from 230 years before the invention of the lightbulb to get their exponential growth argument which doesn't hold at all for modern data.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?end=2...

ninjinxoon DeepMind: A Generalist Agent

What is an ant to man, and what is man to a god; what's the difference between an AGI and an (AIG) AI God?

The more someone believes in the dangers of ai-alignment, the less faith they should have that it can be solved.

ninjinxoon Think of a Number. How Do Math Magicians Know What It Is?

Oh whoops, good pickup; I'd like to say I tried to simplify it for the explanation and brevity, but I completely overloooked that 1xn = n.

ninjinxoon Think of a Number. How Do Math Magicians Know What It Is?

Since Peter is given the product of the two numbers, he should instantly know the pair if both numbers are prime, but since he doesn't it rules out pairs like (7x11) = 77 and (2x53) = 106.

Sandy knows the sum and has now been told that Peter doesn't know the pair. If the sum had been 6, the following pairs are possible: (1+5) (3+3) (4+2), Peter has just ruled out (1x5) and (3x3), so Sandy would be able to narrow it down to (1,5) if the sum had been 6.

So when she tells Peter she can't narrow it down, it tells him that the pair isn't (4,2) either (among many others).

And if Peter's number were 8: (1x8) or (2x4) he'd be able to solve it, but he doesn't so Sandy then knows that (1,8) isn't the solution either.

ninjinxoon Think of a Number. How Do Math Magicians Know What It Is?

Reminds me of this problem:

Two numbers are chosen randomly, both are positive integers smaller than 100. Sandy is told the sum of the numbers, while Peter is told the product of the numbers.

Then, this dialog occurs between Sandy and Peter:

Peter: I don't know the numbers.