Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | chermi's commentslogin

Interesting that 3 names I recognized as physicists from stat mech adjacent fields. They continue to punch above their expectations (as sampled by general dismissal of physicists in AI/ML on HN and reddit).

Some of the best software engineers I know are ex-physics PhDs… it’s one of those “can’t fake it” skillsets that also happens to have high transferability to ML/AI fields. On the other hand, I snuck through the CS major without ever multiplying a matrix.

> I snuck through the CS major without ever multiplying a matrix

I didn't, but only because I became personally interested in AI/ML at some point, so I actually had to learn it myself.

As an AI practitioner, I still couldn't explain eigenvectors or singular-value decomposition to you though.


Haha, nice bio. Seeing that font on HN is quite a shock.

Do people not like physicists?

https://xkcd.com/793/ captures the stereotype well.

Especially because those annoying dilettante know-it-all physicists are often right.

Your point about being both an investment and an expectation is important. It's a kind of perverse system. I have no idea how to solve it and I haven't heard any answer besides build more housing. I'll take that as the best answer until I hear more ideas. But even that is untenable because everyone who already owns a home blocks new builds. I don't understand why either in most cases given new development typically raises value of proximal real estate.

What? A liquid solidifying is life?

Water does not decrease its own entropy. If you can’t understand the distinction I’m making then you do not have the imagination and creativity to create new understanding.

A glass of water in a cold environment radiates away heat until it freezes, decreasing its local entropy and increasing global entropy.

> If you can’t understand the distinction I’m making then you do not have the imagination and creativity to create new understanding.

Perhaps you could explain your distinction instead of insulting people. It’s possible you have some interesting and insightful distinction but as of now you’ve not explained it nor given any examples of this “more abundant” life.


I’m not insulting you. I’m pointing out a reality. You’re reading comprehension is failing you right now.

Water does not freeze itself. That is the distinction. But myself, as a living being, can turn water into ice. And I can create an organize materials inside of my own body.

I pointed out something interesting. The least thing you could do is actually look up to see if there’s any validity or research on what I’m talking about.

By more abundant life, I’m talking about how the definition of life we have is limited, but it’s ever expanding based on the papers of the original post. I’m talking about a greater expansion of our understanding of life that’s discussed in papers that deal with entropy and life.

For instance:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-o...

But this has been a topic of conversation since the early 1900s. It’s not like I’m saying anything new.


Can you just lay down exactly what mean in your apparently genius statement that went over our silly heads. "Life is decreasing entropy". I pointed a very direct counterexample that showed your definition needed refinement at the very least. So, one last chance to educate the commoners. What do you actually mean?

You were asked to make a distinction, the opportunity to provide some specificity to your fundamentally flawed You came back with snarkiness and

Yes, intimately familiar with England's work. My physics PhD was in statistical mechanics + biophysics.

Perhaps you don't know how thermo works? Your definition at the very least should define the environment to even be worth consideration. As is, I can either take it face value. In which case it's wrong. Or I can try to get a refined definition out of you, giving you the benefit of the doubt you know what you're talking about. Your attitude and answers don't give me confidence.

This is physics. Define things. We can't read minds.


> I’m not insulting you.

At least own it. Saying someone lacks imagination and creativity and now reading comprehension is absolutely insulting.

> I pointed out something interesting. The least thing you could do is actually look up to see if there’s any validity or research on what I’m talking about.

I can’t look up anything based on your vague comment. That’s why I asked what you mean.

> For instance:

Thanks. I’ll take a look at that article.


> Saying someone lacks imagination and creativity and now reading comprehension is absolutely insulting.

I said: "You’re reading comprehension is failing you right now." The "right now" part menas that I am not saying it does not exist, just that they are not understanding what is written.

Why is it an insult to say someone lacks creativity? It was objectively true to me and it is not an insult, just a truth. Like if someone has red hair. At worst it was my opinion.

You know what an insult is? To take what I said to think that I meant that water turning to ice was life.


Great response to his repeated and polite requests for you to just say something concrete.

Where does he say this?

the Sarah Paine interviews

People are impressed by his interviews because he puts a lot of effort into researching the topic before the interview. This is a positive feedback loop.

Customer service.


Only for the most basic of requests. I have interacted with a fair share of AI front loaded customer service chat portals and they are often misleading, sending outright incorrect info (telling us that the dev team would work on it even when they weren't going to) and I almost always just want to talk to an agent. Yes, it's a good first layer to prevent people who haven't even bothered to read any FAQ or informational pages, but it's not doing real customer service work.



You cannot trust GenAI to do this job, so no, it's not doing this job


Anything that requires reasoning over data and applying experience, such as technical troubleshooting, is outside of this scope.


Nope. Nvda still getting the revenue.


Damn. I mean it's was expected I guess. Anyway, back to my Chinese esp32 since they've been better for a while anyway.


Teensy, maybe I finally use that stm bluepill I bought, I also have an unopened beagle bone black damn and orange crab


Raspbery Pi Picos are extremely capable for their price as well! It isn't like we are out of options these days.


Sounds crazy, but I just get full pi zero 2s for any little hobby projects. It’s just simpler to have everything even if I’m only blinking leds.


As far as I know, these don't have programmable IOs (PIO), though, which may make it more difficult if you want fine timing control of your GPIO, such as "bit-banging" (not really with PIO) arbitrary protocols. And they have much lower power consumption.

Fair point though, the price difference isn't much, an the Pi Zero are much more capable.


I actually have a KB2040 too from Adafruit, they snuck it in there (free) I think from when I ordered 20 of these metal gear servos


We all really should be supporting the Teensy guy.


Paul is an amazing person. Brilliant, broad skillset, and a pleasure to talk to. If he was a little less introverted he’d be the new Wozniak.


They are expensive but damn the IO is insane, I made a robot with a Teensy 4.0 and the clock speed damn base is 600Mhz


I think I know all those words but as an outsider I have no idea what you're saying :D


Just a bunch of microcontroller providers, the last one is an FPGA, I still haven't learned FPGAs yet or how to design my own PCB but on the list

edit: beagle bone black is an SBC apparently


And they officially support Rust!


Lol the second I saw the antigravity release I thought "there's no way I'm using that, they will kill it within a year". Looks like they're trying to kill it at birth.


Exactly my reaction. Every time I've used something from Google, it ends up dead in a few years. Life is too short to waste so many years learning something that is destined to die shortly


These are just extended press releases, for marketing and management layers, who don't have to use these things themselves, but can look good, when talking about it.


agree but at the same time there's not too much lock in with these IDEs these days and switching is very easy. Especially since they're all VSCode forks


Walks are magical. But also this reads partially like you got sent to a reeducation camp lol.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: