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ummonk commented on Not all Chess960 positions are equally complex   arxiv.org/abs/2512.14319... · Posted by u/MaysonL
ummonk · 13 days ago
They’ve defined memorization complexity as having to memorize the best out of almost equally good moves (as opposed to being able to play the best move without memorization because it is so obvious.

In reality it’s almost the other way around. Because white usually has several good moves at every point, they can just memorize one of them, while black needs to memorize how they’ll respond to every good move white could make.

ummonk commented on Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology   theconversation.com/europ... · Posted by u/DyslexicAtheist
wolvoleo · 15 days ago
In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude. "US big tech is so entrenched we'll never get away". "European cloud will never be good enough". "There's nothing like Microsoft 365". At my work they don't even want to think about alternatives.

I think they hope that MAGA will just blow over somehow. I don't see that happening.

ummonk · 15 days ago
It’s amazing how complacent and weak-willed the European populace and political leaders are. Quite the contrast to Canada.
ummonk commented on Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books   torrentfreak.com/nvidia-c... · Posted by u/antonmks
Arnt · 19 days ago
It can also violate other laws and rules that are not relevant to copyright. Perhaps I should have digressed into listing that? I chose not to.
ummonk · 18 days ago
Performing rights are part of copyright law and thus directly relevant to copyright. Stop dissembling.
ummonk commented on Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?    · Posted by u/terabytest
wewewedxfgdf · 19 days ago
You fundamentally misunderstand AI assisted coding if you think it does the work for you, or that it gets it right, or that it can be trusted to complete a job.

It is an assistant not a team mate.

If you think that getting it wrong, or bugs, or misunderstandings, or lost code, or misdirections, are AI "failing", then yes you will fail to understand or see the value.

The point is that a good AI assisted developer steers through these things and has the skill to make great software from the chaotic ingredients that AI brings to the table.

And this is why articles like this one "just don't get it", because they are expecting the AI to do their job for them and holding it to the standards of a team mate. It does not work that way.

ummonk · 19 days ago
What is the actual value of using agentic LLMs (rather than just LLM-powered autocomplete in your IDE) if it requires this much supervision and handholding? When is it actually faster / more effective?
ummonk commented on A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)   longnow.org/ideas/the-260... · Posted by u/mkmk
krisoft · 19 days ago
> If you have a blog post with a few more technical details, it may be a nice submission for HN.

Oh. That is very kind of you. I do have many more pictures and details. I will try to collect them together, and will publish it once it is done. But can’t promise that it will happen soon. So i will answer your questions here in the meantime.

> How is it painted?

The shapes are recessed and the recesses are filled with black nail polish. The excess nail polish was then scraped off from the flat upper surfaces leaving it only in the recesses.

It was very fiddly, and i don’t necessarily recommend this method for anyone. I have since learned how to enamel by melting glass powders onto the metal surface which is both easier and gives a better result. That is how i would do it today. (On my instagram the last reel i posted is showing that process, even though with a different design.)

> Is it laser cut or by hand?

A third and a fourth option. The planet side is machined on a cnc. First I etched the orbits with a v-bit, then cut the planets with a 0.8mm flat endmill, then cut the hole, and finally cut the outline. After that i etched the initials side chemically. As a resist i used self-adhesive vinyl which i cut with a plotter.

To be honest. I wouldn’t recommend this process either. It was super finicky, slow, and error prone. Today i would just etch and cut the metal with a fiber laser. In fact i bought a fiber laser because i got sick of the chemical etching and mechanical machining during this project. :)

> Did you designed it? How did you do the calculations?

I did design it! I’m very proud of it. The initials side was designed in inkscape while the planet side was generated with a python script. The script used the super handy skyfield python library for the calculations. (Which in turn uses the planetary ephemeris files published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.)

> Does Saturn have rings?

No ring of Saturn unfortunately. But it would be a cool idea!

> Where is the cutoff? (No Neptune/Uranus/Fobos/Deimos/...)

Unfortunately I don’t have a real good principled answer to this. Because of the machining I had a hard limit on the smallest details I could put on the metal. I did know that i wanted to put the Gallilean moons on there because their short periods meant that they provide good basis for the minutes and hours part of the date. I did know that i also wanted one of the gas giants to provide a “slow hand” to the clock to show the years, and to hopefully stretch out the period before the next time the solar system is in a similar position to very far into the future. And i wanted the inner planets and the Moon so people and future alien minds will recognise it as the solar system. Everything else was just futzing around with the script and finding a good compromise between not making it too large to wear and not making it too crowded either.

> Have you tried to give a different size to each planet?

I did, but it looked uneven and too haphazard to my eyes. Not saying it is impossible to make it neat with different planet sizes but I liked the diagram simplicity of keeping all the planets one size and the moons an other smaller size.

> I showed the video to my older daughter that is interested in astronomy and she likes it.

Oh thank you! That is lovely!

ummonk · 19 days ago
Out of curiosity were the positions (especially of the Galilean moons) actual simultaneous positions, or positions as seen from Earth, given the ~40 light-minutes distance between the Earth and Jupiter?
ummonk commented on A 26,000-year astronomical monument hidden in plain sight (2019)   longnow.org/ideas/the-260... · Posted by u/mkmk
ummonk · 19 days ago
Many Hindus celebrated Malay Sankranti a week ago. It was originally meant to coincide with winter solstice but because the Hindu dates are based on the position of the Sun against the background stars (as viewed from the Earth), precession over the last ~1700 years has driven it out of sync with the tropical calendar.
ummonk commented on Europe could 'weaponize' $10T of US assets over Greenland   bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/saubeidl
ummonk · 19 days ago
"Could". Of course they'll drag their feet once again because they're appeasing cowards, unlike Canadians.
ummonk commented on GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source   blog.greg.technology/2025... · Posted by u/evakhoury
dgacmu · 25 days ago
I agree with you, but I do think we have a bit of a problem in which an open source creator makes something and then suddenly finds themselves accidentally having created a load-bearing component that is not only used by a lot of people and companies, but where people are demanding that bugs be fixed, etc., and we lack great models for helping transition it from "I do this for fun, might fix the bug if I ever feel like it" to " I respect that this has become a critical dependency and we will find a way to make it someone's job to make it more like a product".

I gather that the open source maintainers who have found themselves in this situation sometimes get very unhappy about it, and I can see why -- it's not like they woke up one day and suddenly had a critical component on their hands, it kind of evolved over time and after a while they're like "uhoh, I don't think this is what I signed up for"

ummonk · 25 days ago
I think expecting to get paid to fix bugs, add features, etc. to one’s open source code is much more reasonable and there should be marketplace infrastructure that makes this much easier to do (compared to the current system where developers have to apply for corporate grants for long running projects).
ummonk commented on GitHub should charge everyone $1 more per month to fund open source   blog.greg.technology/2025... · Posted by u/evakhoury
ummonk · 25 days ago
If you willingly choose to make source code publicly available under an open source license you can’t then act all shocked that people don’t have to pay you for using that code. If you wanted to be guaranteed an income whenever your code gets used, you should have chosen a different license.

u/ummonk

KarmaCake day12431March 24, 2016
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