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thearn4

2,983 karma · joined October 4, 2013

Mathematician, Software & Research Engineer

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristanhearn

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thearn4··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
In a similair boat with my 11 y/o. My observations leave me still optimistic that what comes out the other side is generally positive, despite a lot of reasonable dread that a lot of us also (justifiably) feel about the current era surrounding generative models.
thearn4··on Truncated SVD (2023)
A bit of a blast from my PhD studies past, I used to think a lot about the SVD and application to discrete integral operators.

FWIW, on the author's footnote: if anyone is interested truncated SVD and applications to low-rank approximations to convolutions, here's a very outdated paper of mine on exactly that! :)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01689...

thearn4··on Can AI design circuit boards yet?
I've gone through this same workflow and had success all the way through DRC ruleset passing with JLCPCB-based settings, ordering, fab, and use. Board was ordered with PCBA (they did assembly of the stock components) and I did SMD for just the oddball module/ICs they don't stock. Works exactly to design.

My boards are for hobby use and are ridiculously simple though compared to anything professional (breakout boards for specific components in FPV drone video transmission subsystems). That's probably an important detail. I think its like anything else in AI right now. It can do it 90% of the time but that 10% can be really rough and if its a task you can't do or verify yourself, you won't know the difference.

thearn4··on I hate soldering
I became significantly better at electronics soldering by learning to do glasswork (stain glass fixturing, etc). It wasn't intentional and it isn't even the same solder chemistry, but having to do broad asthetics on large pieces meant I "got it" better for the small scale electronics connections.
thearn4··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
Good old fashioned machine learning (GOFML?) Using mixes of different sensor data from industrial 3d printing processes to production quality. Not as fashionable as LLMs at the moment but there's new innovations to make in the space, so it's honest work.
thearn4··on If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
Yeah I had the same question. I suppose you could put the project+plan text into the commit message?
thearn4··on Tell HN: Happy Thanksgiving
12 years here, agree that this is one of the best communities still active. Thank you HN team!
thearn4··on I used o3 to profile myself from my saved Pocket links
I feel seen

> Your profile reads like a 'Hacker News Bingo' card: NASA, PhD, Python, 'Ask HN' about cheating, and a strong opinion on Reddit's community. The only thing missing is a post about your custom ergonomic keyboard made from recycled space shuttle parts.

thearn4··on An autostereogram ("Magic Eye") solver
I worked on this about a decade ago, but just updated it in order to learn to use Gradio and HF as a platform. Enjoy!
thearn4··on OpenAI Codex hands-on review
I end up asking the same question when experimenting with tools like Cursor. When it can one-shot a small feature, it works like magic. When it struggles, and the context gets poisoned and I have to roll back commits and retry part of the way through something, it hits a point where it was probably easier for me to just write it. Or maybe template it and have it finish it. Or vice versa. I guess the point being that best practices have yet to truly be established, but totally hands-off uses have not worked well for me so far.
thearn4··on I got fooled by AI-for-science hype–here's what it taught me
Another reason why the idea of AI agents for science hasn't made much sense to me. Research is an extremely collaborative set of activities. How good would a researcher be who is very good at literature review, but never actually talks to anyone, goes to any conferences, etc?
thearn4··on Show HN: I modeled the Voynich Manuscript with SBERT to test for structure
Voynich is one of my favorite unsolved puzzles. This approach looks fascinating, so thanks for sharing your work here!
thearn4··on Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education
You and I have matching stories, unfortunately. I've made a point of sending my sons to public school for this reason. Now, of course this also means that I shopped for a district that aligned with my expectations. But would never want a repeat of my own experience.

I think being accountable for your work to a person who isn't in your family is actually an important thing to learn. It also turns out, parents aren't really qualified to be teachers just because they believe that they are.

thearn4··on Many Americans think NASA should prioritize asteroid hunting instead of moon
This is still how the aeronautics portion of NASA operates. Though since it is the direct successor to NACA, I think its unsurprising.
thearn4··on Fourier analysis may help to quickly train more accurate neural networks
In my area, every controls engineer says "we can just use a PID".

99% of the time it seems they're not wrong, despite control engineering being a pretty large area of research.

thearn4··on EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment
I'm thinking about what I've read on social media (twitter, reddit, etc) about the event. The posts getting the most engagement/traction are convinced this is larger than Chernobyl. However, relevant authorities do not seem to agree with this.

But I have no environmental sciences credentials to speak of.

thearn4··on EPA orders Norfolk Southern to conduct all cleanup actions related to derailment
I'm finding it difficult to find objective assessments of the impact of what has happened in East Palestine. It seems like there are interests in dismissing the impacts entirely, but there are others that seems to want to overstate the impacts significantly. Does anyone else feel this way?
thearn4··on US Marines defeat DARPA robot by hiding under a cardboard box
Interestingly, ChatGPT seems capable of predicting this approach:

https://imgur.com/a/okzZz7D

thearn4··on Ask HN: Google spam filter getting worse?
I absolutely had this issue most of last year, but the Gmail spam filter seems to be catching things more effectively for me in the last two months.
thearn4··on My MacBook Pro had over 10k USD in repairs
My 2011 MBA needed a new battery a few years ago, but still works amazingly well as a daily-driver computer for my wife
thearn4··on Hospital exec says employees are walking off the job
> But the majority of harmful errors happen in handing over patient care from one provider to another

I've heard this claim before, but this seems like a communication problem more than anything else. Keeping insane work schedules as a means to address it seems really suspect to me.

thearn4··on U.S. Sees Ongoing Spike in Gun, Ammo Sales: 'I've Never Seen Anything Like It'
> Don't bullets also "expire" after a certain period of time?

Modern powder and primers (and thus an assembled ammunition cartridge) easily last decades, almost indefinitely if stored well.

thearn4··on Baltimore Museum of Art will host an exhibition curated by the museum's guards
My dad used to be a security guard at the Cleveland Museum of Art. What's funny is that often guests would ask him and the other guards about specific pieces or artists as if he was a subject matter expert (although he has always been an art enthusiast, he doesn't have a professional art background). Eventually, he started doing his own background reading, because he really enjoyed these conversations.

After years of viewing exhibits (both permanent and temporary), many on the non-curator staff do end up with a substantially deep view of the art that they protect. This exhibit should be really fascinating.

thearn4··on Why Build Toys
I think this is related to why I got into stain glass window making as a pandemic hobby. As everything I was working on felt ephemeral and physically disconnecting, it was refreshing to take on something both creative and tangible.
thearn4··on Show HN: I made a new kind of Bible app
Congrats on launching. I'm not Christian, but this does remind me a bit of the Sefaria project, which aims to bring together a library of Jewish texts for scholarship, and has a great mobile app. This project also seems to have a deep scholarly focus, so it might be worth having a look at as well for some ideas.

https://www.sefaria.org/

thearn4··on How many flies are in my apartment?
Great read!

In comparison, I have to wonder why the "intelligence estimates" were so bad/severe over estimates.

thearn4··on The Fourier transform is a neural network
I've come to internalize the Fourier transform as a type of sparse matrix algorithm. I.e. something that implements a particular matrix-vector product without requiring explicit construction of said matrix.
thearn4··on Living microbes, possibly 100M years old, pulled from beneath the sea (2020)
Maybe life originated during the habitable epoch in the very early, very small universe and spread from there?

https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613

thearn4··on Radio Garden – Explore live radio by rotating the globe
It's interesting how few streaming stations there are in eastern Asia.
thearn4··on US admits 'failing' on testing, says Fauci
I live in Cleveland, and it sounds like they're considering the drive-thru testing approach as a possibility. Hoping this ramps up this month.
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