gfaregan's comments

gfaregan | 1 year ago | on: IF Comp 2024

IF Comp 2024 has started! Everyone is encouraged to play and rate the amazing games!

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

I think your social standing has a lot more to do with money than behavior. If you're rich and live in a van you're interesting, otherwise you're just homeless. If your gig is a successful business you're independent, if it's Uber you're barely surviving.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011)

Why would sealing a balloon framed house be dangerous? I know that you need blocking to help stop a fire from spreading between floors.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Shoshana Zuboff: ‘Privacy has been extinguished. It is now a zombie’

> Today tech companies “are becoming much more reluctant to patent their discoveries, because they don’t want the public to know exactly what they’re doing.

I want to know what they're doing...

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Common Hall-effect sensor myths (2022)

Do you have any references or diagrams for the system?

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: New Sony Walkman music player

I had a Sansa clip of some type and it lasted about as long as the cheap $5 mp3 player I bought next. These days I find it more convenient to use my phone. You can play mp3s just fine on a phone.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Zeno’s paradox

Zeno also knew that arrows arrive at their target in finite time. That's why it is a paradox.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: We’ve filed a lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion

If something is useful, it will be used and developed. I certainly can't see where all this is going, but I doubt the resistance will be more than a speed bump.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Dwarf Fortress has sold half a million copies

Things have a price when the buyer and seller agree on a price. If only the seller thinks it's worth more than 50k, it's not really worth more than 50k.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: I have reached Vim nirvana

I'm not sure if it's much of a productivity gain, but the way I have it set up it is really easy to navigate quickly and precisely through buffers, folds, characters, etc. And it always works once I've installed my config files without any further messing around.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2023?

I think that generative AI will keep getting significantly better. All the folks who keep saying it's not that good (which it isn't now I suppose) will start to sound like the folks who claimed that a computer could never become the go champion. The main issue raised is that it generates untrue things, which will be mitigated by some statistical/learned estimate on truthiness.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: How to write unmantainable code (2015)

Ten levels of C++ templates and typedefs are a pretty good way of proving how smart you are and making the code completely opaque.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Waymo expands its rider-only territories

Or if the shareholders had any say in it, they could pay a dividend and let the market decide.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Ten Minute Physics

Classical and continuum mechanics are hundreds of years old. A surprising amount of the numerics is pretty old too.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?

Here are a couple interactive fiction games with complex magic systems:

- Suveh Nux by David Fisher

- The Wand by Arthur DiBianca

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?

I can see a couple of obstacles:

Complex simulation based mechanics are much harder to implement than more basic fighting mechanics.

Puzzles require more work and hand crafting than creating new monsters to kill.

The whole project is probably more work, harder to scale, and has an unproven audience.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Bicycles Have Evolved. Have We?

You don't see too many recumbent bikes around despite their being awesome. Do you have any thoughts on recumbent bikes vs trikes?

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: The great junk transfer is coming

I keep an old hand brace in my toolbox and it's amazing. It doesn't need a cord or a battery and you can get a lot of torque out of it.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Serious mathematics books that can replace a good teacher?

To add to this, I would really suggest that you get some perspective before you create a long list of tasks/books. Stillwell is not a popular science book but covers modern branches of mathematics. You could easily take a course in college and still have no idea what the point is at the end if your teacher is bad enough. You might also want to ask/search on math stack exchange rather than HN.

gfaregan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Serious mathematics books that can replace a good teacher?

I liked that book. It uses differentials to give simple explanations of various derivatives, which seems to be frowned upon these days. You can download the book for free if I'm not mistaken. I once recommended it to a calculus class I was TAing for, though I don't think they were very impressed.