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thomashobohm

219 karma · joined April 6, 2020

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thomashobohm··on Agnes Callard’s theory of the uni-context
If Agnes Callard tried to read Heidegger, her head would explode.
thomashobohm··on I wrote 5000 lines of assembly because I was angry
Let me fix this for you: "I asked Claude to write 5000 lines of assembly because I was angry"
thomashobohm··on Anthropic Is Preparing for IPO and We Should Be Worried
Many Vanguard index funds use sampling, in fact. It's more complicated than you think.
thomashobohm··on Regression: malware reminder on every read still causes subagent refusals
Thanks man I'll just use the $600k we had lying around.
thomashobohm··on Regression: malware reminder on every read still causes subagent refusals
Appreciate the advice but this is Claude Managed Agents, so one can’t simply write one’s own harness.
thomashobohm··on Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
I think it's sort of strange to refer to comparative advantage, which is taught in every "Introduction to Macroeconomics" class/textbook in existence, as an "arcane" part of economics.
thomashobohm··on US video game sales have record quarter as consumers stay at home
I think your source for the "game dev side" is odd-it's from 2009, a recession with markedly different characteristics than this one-and says nothing about the claim you've made about people losing jobs right now. Usually video game sales track the market, this time they're not doing that, which makes this more interesting. Do you have any links indicating that game developers have been losing jobs at an absurd pace?I haven't been able to find any.
thomashobohm··on The iPad's new cursor and keyboard
They probably meant out of the platforms Apple competes with. Presumably I could find a platform with, say, 12 users and only 1 non-native app, and if that app followed native UI guidelines I could say it has 100% native UI adoption and thus the “highest” out of every platform ever, but that is a useless statement.
thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
Both iPhone SEs have retina displays?
thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
You're wrong, I owned an XPS 13 before my MacBook and the power supply was small and well designed.
thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
I'm not going to engage in some arcane debate about the particularities of random windows laptops vs. apple ones. The fact is that there are comparable windows laptops at this point when it comes to "bezels and ports," in particular, but also when it comes to most things that make a laptop nice to use.
thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
Presumably the vast majority of people are not going to want to scale their 13-inch display so that everything is significantly harder to read for the sake of increased screen real estate. But I'm glad that the MacBook works well for your specific use case.

I currently work on a MacBook Pro 13 and I switched from a XPS 13 with a 4k display. They're largely comparable, and the only difference I notice or care about is the OS. It seems that is how it is for most people.

thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
That's not really accurate; a similarly specced XPS 13 is several hundred dollars cheaper than my laptop. But Apple is certainly winning the touchpad game, you're right about that.
thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
Yeah, but almost nobody opts for the super high resolution display because the screen is so small that the difference is basically unnoticeable. A similar configuration to my laptop is several hundred dollars cheaper, and that's a not insignificant difference.

Edit: I owned both.

thomashobohm··on Linux touchpad like a MacBook Pro, May 2020 update
Have you seen any Windows laptops in the past five years? Many Windows ultrabooks rival Apple's in terms of "ports and bezels." The XPS 13, for example, has significantly thinner bezels than the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on, at a much more reasonable price.
thomashobohm··on Ask HN: How to Study Mathematics?
In terms of aptitude testing, going through some books like "How to Prove It" and working on rigorous proofs-based material (perhaps an introductory analysis book with lots of diagrams) will be helpful. As will brushing up on geometry-lots of people memorize a lot of geometry in middle school/high school, do well in their class, and forget it. Geometric concepts continue to appear throughout math and having a deep grasp of them is super helpful for your first "rigorous" math classes, where the secret to finishing a proof often lies in visualizing or drawing it correctly.
thomashobohm··on Ask HN: How to Study Mathematics?
This depends super heavily on the math courses you’ve already taken.
thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
Sure, sorry!
thomashobohm··on There are many SARS-CoV-2 strains with gene deletions
The ability to downvote isn't correlated with anything besides the frequency of your posts/comments.
thomashobohm··on Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
If you want to study applied math and go into the workforce, then my point still stands, going to Princeton vs. Michigan simply doesn't matter. If you want to go to graduate school, it's unclear if it matters all that much. Princeton tends to draw the most talented young mathematicians in the world, and has for decades. Presumably if a student of that caliber went to Michigan, they would do just as well, because Michigan also has talented mathematicians who do good research and can write good letters of recommendation for graduate school.
thomashobohm··on Explainable Deep Learning: A Field Guide for the Uninitiated
I think it should be obvious why there's no mention-in fact, you said it yourself-"these new routing algorithms are not yet widely used" but are a "promising avenue of research." The purpose of the paper as stated is to help people explain how commonly used deep learning tools work to laymxn, and including an aside about some niche subfield of deep learning research doesn't align with that goal (regardless of how interesting you personally think it is).
thomashobohm··on Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education
Once you're at that level, the differences are marginal. It matters if you want to go to graduate school, I suppose, but we're talking about people who just want to get a degree and go into the workforce here. For them, Princeton vs. Michigan won't matter a bit if they're studying to become an engineer.
thomashobohm··on There are many SARS-CoV-2 strains with gene deletions
they think it's fake, basically
thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
This isn't your term paper-you don't need to cite your sources. But, if you're going to, at least try to do it correctly (the parentheses go inside the sentence, the period goes outside the parentheses).

Regardless, it's this line: "Approximately 15% of the real money supply, or about $5,000 for every man, woman and child in the USA, had it been handed to them directly" that I was referring to. That calculation does not reflect what the M2 number actually means. You already have a definition of M2, so I'm sure you can figure out where you went wrong yourself if you just stare at that for a little bit longer.

thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
They only keep certain parts secret so market actors don’t make decisions based on what the Fed is thinking about doing. Obviously if people knew the Fed was thinking about raising interest rates, for example, it would affect their decisions (and the market as a whole) negatively. This is something any business or economics undergrad learns in an introductory banking class; since you are evidently unfamiliar with the Fed’s system (as opposed to the Swedish one), you may find it helpful to consult an American money and banking textbook.

From your own link, verbatim:

"Items considered in closed session include primarily

- Bank and bank holding company supervisory matters, discussions of which generally disclose information from bank examination reports or commercial and financial information obtained in confidence by the Board - Monetary policy and other matters whose premature release could be used in financial speculation - Personnel matters."

Not very nebulous, eh?

thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
FOMC Meeting Minutes: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcminutes202...

Fed Audited Financial Statements: https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/audited-annual-fi...

I’m sorry that your Swedish central bank is classified, since, based on your worldview, there are presumably a bunch of Swedish economists working there behind closed doors to screw you over.

thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
Totally agree! I just don’t want people to get the wrong impression-easy to think that the takeaway is “inflation is always good for young people.”
thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
Please, this isn’t Soviet Russia, economists disagree about practically everything, so the whole argument that the profession has a serious groupthink problem is unconvincing to me. The reason why economists mostly agree on this particular topic-the way the Fed operates-is because it’s exceedingly transparent, theoretically (not to mention mathematically) simple, and empirically verifiable.
thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
I don’t understand how your quote from Ben Bernanke is relevant. Where in the quote does Bernanke say that we’ve fully eliminated volatility? And how is he representative of “most economists?”

I’ve said in other parts of the thread that economists can, in fact, be wrong sometimes. I just find the people making completely unjustifiable assertions about the economy, while simultaneously castigating the economics profession as some cabal of out-of-touch elites who can’t be trusted, unconvincing, when I know that the vast majority of economists are simply researchers trying to understand the world and how to improve it.

thomashobohm··on Federal Reserve balance sheet trends
I'm not sure what your point is? The comment I was replying to said "we know this is always true" I said, actually, economists aren't really sure about that issue. If your concern is that economists aren't good at making certain predictions, then guess what, we agree. Economists are also acutely aware of this fact and most of the ones involved in actual economic research are careful not to overstate the implications of their models.

Regardless, I simply have to laugh at your comment. The "finance bro says economists are all morons who would be traders if they actually knew anything" trope is pretty great!

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