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ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics

well at first blush, looks like he re-invented graph rewriting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_rewriting - on cursory examination, he did not seem to mention that what he was doing with term rewriting was in any way equivalent to this very well known material at all. Maybe I missed this .. also, it is known that you can define some turning equivalence properties to such graph representations, for example : https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09406 - so therefore you could also assume that this model can compute any computable function. And so, hence, it would seem valid to assume that a physics model can run on such a substrate.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved (1991)

Very sound advise. I know a number of people who regularly took psychedelics/smoked a ton of weed in the 90's and who could now be regarded as casualties. Maybe some form of psychosis would have happened to these people anyway, but IMO psychedelics is not a "one size fits all" type thing. Many people do clearly get something out of taking psychedelics, but other people with genetics tending on the psychotic end of the spectrum clearly should not, in my opinion. Also I think we have survivor bias in many of these conversations on HN - in that people who are in a bad place are not positing on hacker news. Those people are surviving and trying to get their shit together.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Our soil is dying! - We and our governments need to act!

Vananda Shiva IS an ecofeminist. I think it highly relevant. Clearly all people are capable of being activists. But in this case, she happens to make an explicit point of her movement being woman led. This is especially relevant in the cultural context of her movement in India.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Does anyone else question USB-C as an “improvement”?

Well, yes. Fully at questioning stage. Ports on back of two winX laptops (as opposed to the side) - seems to run USB-C to display adapter just fine. But plug and actual USB cable into it - results vary. Ports on the side - run USB things just fine ... Am I right in thinking the operation of the usb port got overloaded - in that usbCPort != otherUSBCPort - bleugh.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Ethernet's Emergence from Xerox PARC

The question has to be asked - was the last time you copied a paper document (as opposed to printing one out - and maybe not even that :) )? Even the fed-ex kinkos (as major user of such machines) are closing down because people don't promote things with paper anymore. PARC has for years been trying hard to get Xerox to the right place with this - there are many things Xerox should do based on PARC work, like hybrid/functional object printing (which actually uses the mechanical service industry type infrastucture they have setup already). And Xerox is moving in the direction of services around servicing (CareAR, etc). Now the former head of PARC (Steve Hoover) is CTO of Xerox, there is a possibility they might actually do something.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Hyper-realistic digital humans in Unity

It's been my opinion for a while that the $150/mo seat fee, from not all of their users, isn't covering their burn rate, and that they are loosing market share in money marking projects to Unreal. Ideally they would like proper percentages, but since they lack a compelling advantage, they must price lower relative to Unreal. Feel free to prove me wrong with actual numbers (but: 1800 employees in SF ...) @ av, 200k/employee, I make that 360m/yr just on salary :) So, anyhow, I completely agree with this post. And, looking for cashflow and better rendering tech, they buy Weta .... maybe they will pull this off .. but maybe not, also.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Unity is buying Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for $1.6B

The are competing with Epic, which has a huge presence in the VFX industry - including Unreal being used on the real-time VFX for the Mandalorian. Weta was using Unreal at one time, as well. This is likely a more strategic move to a) obtain more studio tech to integrate with Unreal to make sure they do not loose the "high ground", b)obtain people in the loop who really know about high end rendering engine tech, in which they are behind Unreal and c) make sure Weta stays well away from Epic.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

Architectural. A sea change from thinking about client-server web and game like applications where you are explicitly synchronizing state - to AR and VR objects/functions "running persistently" in the metaverse/cloud, and "updated" from control logic - ie application is responsible for the "semantics" of what happens, while the metaverse handles presence, shared interactions, and rendering.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate

Not correct to my understanding, and somewhat out of date information.

I do suggest looking at the natural beekeeping literature, for example :

https://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org/natural-bee-husbandry

this source frequently documents populations of wild/feral, multi-year, mite resistant, hives.

And also - there are plenty of beekeepers around, including myself, with multi-year treatment free hives of bees.

However, mite resistant bees in commercial style un-insulated frame based langstroth hives - not so much.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Ancient bees found in Blenheim palace estate

I believe this to be an incorrect statement.

Evolution in insects is working on a much tighter time-frame, for example: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-evidence-peppe...

Also there are plenty of "beekeepers" who believe in shorter time frame adaptions, and are providing evolutionary cradles for such, e.g. https://www.apisarborea.org/

And of course many stories with anecdotal evidence from communities of bees in protected watersheds evolving (or perhaps activating prior) varroa mite resistant traits.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: What 3°C of global warming looks like

Not everywhere. On the western slopes of places like the santa cruz mountains, we mostly get a thermal sea breeze that keeps things cool during summer (our so called "natural air conditioner"). This also does a very good job of keeping the air clean, as we ocean air from the NW. You just have to be sufficiently hot inland to generate such a breeze, and things are generally stable. We do of course get some smokey days when the prevailing wind is offshore, and had more smoke during the CZU fires, which were right here - but otherwise pretty good.

ByersReason | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: I'm making like 0 friends at college, how to fix it?

If you are introverted (not saying you are), or just having difficulty connecting to people the way to go is to do some sort of shared goal directed activity that you can talk about with said other people. Join a club, or take up an activity - learn to do something that can serve as a topic of conversation. Most places where people do something like social like rowing or dancing have well developed programs for converting beginners into participating members of the community - start with beginner lessons in whatever it is. Don't be afraid to try a number of things before you find something that "fits". You don't have to be perfect at something in order to enjoy doing it with other people (who may also be imperfect at it).
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