walkerbrown's comments

On: 0-click deanonymization attack targeting Signal, D...

[walkerbrown]

Nice work OP, and congrats on HN front-page. Keep publishing or it never happened!

On: English learners can now practice speaking on Goog...

[walkerbrown]

Improved transcription accuracy from non-native English I bet.

On: How I think about debt

[walkerbrown]

No snark, but posting with genuine concern for any homebuyers who didn’t experience the pain of 2008, please read and grok this: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underwater.asp

On: Paris cycling numbers double in one year thanks to...

[walkerbrown]

I’m in favor of cycling infrastructure in the US, but it’s important to remember that the latitude of the Netherlands (like most of the European cycling cities) is north of the entire continental US.

I’m in decent shape, but will sweat at a resting heart rate in a Southern US summer.

On: The Ur Programming Language Family

[walkerbrown]

Yes, I was definitely expecting cuneiform and base 60 literals.

[all2 → walkerbrown]

I want this now. Bonus points if it's a vector language and is as terse as K.

On: Don Knuth plays with ChatGPT

[walkerbrown]

I thought the failure was interesting too, enough to try on GPT-4. It succeeds with the same prompt.

On: Oxide and the Chamber of Mysteries [video]

[walkerbrown]

Thanks for the links Bryan!

May I suggest a small teaser trailer post to the old “On the Metal” feed? I’m still subscribed there, but wasn’t aware of the new channels.

Those were some incredible interviews! I’ve listened to a few of the episodes twice.

[bcantrill → walkerbrown]

So glad you enjoyed "On the Metal"! Your suggestion is a great one, and we'll work on this over the next few weeks; stay tuned, and in the meantime, enjoy the "Oxide and Friends" back catalog!

[guiambros → bcantrill]

Second that! I was a big fan of "On the Metal", and was bummed when it ended. Stumbled upon "Oxide and Friends" almost by chance, and was happy to discover it kept the same style (and even better, with more voices).

You made my commute a lot more enjoyable. Still going through the old catalog -- the episode about NeXT and Objective-C (S1E8 July 5, 2021 [1]) was excellent.

Keep up the great work Bryan!

[1] https://pca.st/ydtxspr6

On: The human cost of neurotechnology failure

[walkerbrown]

Perhaps mandate a trigger? In the event of bankruptcy, implanted medical device firmware and hardware designs enter the public domain.

Patients’ interests should take precedence over creditors and investors.

On: Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl's ...

[walkerbrown]

> will eventually be shown to be superior to the current standard of care, in which case it would become the standard of care

How does this overturning occur? Do care providers agitate for change? Or is it typically a response to headstrong patients and families?

[Someone → walkerbrown]

It starts with researchers convincing their ethical review board that they should be given the opportunity to experiment with the different approach.

That’s why new procedures almost always are done on patients who are as good as dead (gene editing to change one’s hair color won’t soon get past ethical review, for example, but if gene editing gets used in mainstream medicine, enough data may be collected to make a review board say it’s acceptable to give it a try)

The first experiments typically only prove the medicine or procedure works. Long term survival of the patient the exception. From there, it’s step by step towards treating healthier and healthier patients.

If it turns out the approach is better for the typical patient, patient groups (who may even have paid for part of the research) start lobbying for its use. If the new procedure is both better and cheaper, insurers also will lobby for it.

On: U.S. is considering a radical rethinking of the do...

[walkerbrown]

> disintermediates the entire payment sector

Unfortunately, the recent proposal specifically reassures commercial banks that any US CBDC will be intermediated (right on page 2) [1]. Board of Governors can't risk jeopardizing their speaking fees.

Individual FedAccounts via USPS locations is the way to go for the underbanked [2]. But, disappointingly, this is not that.

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/money-and-... [2] https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3192162