US has begun ‘major combat operations’ in Iran after Israel launches strikes

New strikes hit Tehran – as it happened | US-Israel war on Iran | The Guardian

This blog is closed

https://stacker.news/items/1444488

Guidelines for Papers, Theses, Posters and Talks - Jan von Delft (2002)

Guidelines for Papers, Theses, Posters and Talks - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Once in a while, one stumbles on a random blog post. With a ton of valuable information. If you're in academia, this one might be useful. > Below we offer numerous guidlines, hints, suggestions and strong(!) opinions on how to effectively communicate the results of your research. Communicating your results effectively is an invaluable part of doing science, and one that requires considerable effort and experience. Of course, communication is ultimately a very personal matter; accordingly, personal styles differ widely and you may disagree with some points below. But even if you do, the guidelines will at least encourage you to think of a good reason why you disagree, thereby serving their original purpose yet again, namely to > _encourage you to devote a lot of thought to communicating science effectively._ > Implementing some of these suggestions may require huge amounts of time and effort. Nevertheless, don't shirk these! Just as in a market economy, > _only polished products sell well !_ > The reader of your paper or the audience of your talk (=customer, buyer) expects and deserves to see only the final, optimized product (the history of its development seldom interests them). If your product is too far from perfect, they'll rapidly stop paying attention. This matches very well the thinking of my last advisor... However, this sometimes led to breaking the known adage saying "perfect is the enemy of good"... once too often, we did not ship because the product did not reach the standards he set for himself. Academics would probably benefit from doing an internship in a company where one has stricter deadlines on when to ship. https://stacker.news/items/1441953

How AI helps break the cost barrier to COBOL modernization | Claude

Claude

How AI helps break the cost barrier to COBOL modernization | Claude

The economics of COBOL modernization have shifted. AI makes the economics work by automating what used to require armies of consultants.

Related (but focused on the stock aspect of it all): https://stacker.news/items/1440907/r/south_korea_ln > COBOL is everywhere. It handles an estimated 95% of ATM transactions in the US. Hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL run in production every day, powering critical systems in finance, airlines, and government. I'd be interested in getting similar numbers on Fortran (or cpp) in the context of legacy physics code... > Despite that, the number of people who understand it shrinks every year. > The developers who built these systems retired years ago, and the institutional knowledge they carried left with them. Production code has been modified repeatedly over decades, but the documentation hasn't kept up. Meanwhile, we aren't exactly minting replacements—COBOL is taught at only a handful of universities, and finding engineers who can read it gets harder every quarter. Yeah, I was the only one willing to use Fortran in the group I worked at previously. Young people don't like those old codes. I'm happy I've joined a group now where the number of Fortran devs is a bit higher, still. > COBOL modernization differs fundamentally from typical legacy code refactoring. You aren’t just updating familiar code to use better patterns, you’re reverse engineering business logic from systems built when Nixon was president. You’re untangling dependencies that evolved over decades, and translating institutional knowledge that now exists only in the code itself. Rhaaa, I find #AISlop patterns everywhre now. > Modernizing a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows. This resulted in large timelines and high costs that few were willing to take on. > AI changes this. > These tools can: - Map dependencies across thousands of lines of code - Document workflows that nobody remembers - Identify risks that would take human analysts months to surface - Provide teams with the deep insights they need to make informed decisions > With AI, teams can modernize their COBOL codebase in quarters instead of years. I'll let you read the rest of the article if you're interested in more specifics. >

The Code Modernization Playbook

Learn how leading organizations drive down technical debt and accelerate codebase transformation with our Code Modernization Playbook.

I'd be happy to find a similar playbook for my old legacy FORTRAN code. Not to rewrite it in a different language, but to get rid of all the spaghetti-code... Even without playbook, if there is one thing LLMs are good at, it's refactoring code. I'm just too chicken to let it do it more aggressively without my oversight... https://stacker.news/items/1441289

How AI helps break the cost barrier to COBOL modernization | Claude

Claude

How AI helps break the cost barrier to COBOL modernization | Claude

The economics of COBOL modernization have shifted. AI makes the economics work by automating what used to require armies of consultants.

Related (but focused on the stock aspect of it all): https://stacker.news/items/1440907/r/south_korea_ln > COBOL is everywhere. It handles an estimated 95% of ATM transactions in the US. Hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL run in production every day, powering critical systems in finance, airlines, and government. I'd be interested in getting similar numbers on Fortran (or cpp) in the context of legacy physics code... > Despite that, the number of people who understand it shrinks every year. > The developers who built these systems retired years ago, and the institutional knowledge they carried left with them. Production code has been modified repeatedly over decades, but the documentation hasn't kept up. Meanwhile, we aren't exactly minting replacements—COBOL is taught at only a handful of universities, and finding engineers who can read it gets harder every quarter. Yeah, I was the only one willing to use Fortran in the group I worked at previously. Young people don't like those old codes. I'm happy I've joined a group now where the number of Fortran devs is a bit higher, still. > COBOL modernization differs fundamentally from typical legacy code refactoring. You aren’t just updating familiar code to use better patterns, you’re reverse engineering business logic from systems built when Nixon was president. You’re untangling dependencies that evolved over decades, and translating institutional knowledge that now exists only in the code itself. Rhaaa, I find #AISlop patterns everywhre now. > Modernizing a COBOL system once required armies of consultants spending years mapping workflows. This resulted in large timelines and high costs that few were willing to take on. > AI changes this. > These tools can: - Map dependencies across thousands of lines of code - Document workflows that nobody remembers - Identify risks that would take human analysts months to surface - Provide teams with the deep insights they need to make informed decisions > With AI, teams can modernize their COBOL codebase in quarters instead of years. I'll let you read the rest of the article if you're interested in more specifics. >

The Code Modernization Playbook

Learn how leading organizations drive down technical debt and accelerate codebase transformation with our Code Modernization Playbook.

I'd be happy to find a similar playbook for my old legacy FORTRAN code. Not to rewrite it in a different language, but to get rid of all the spaghetti-code... https://stacker.news/items/1441289

The Darkest Web: Inside the internet’s most hidden corners to save kids Pretty well-made documentary, but hard watch. https://stacker.news/items/1437796

Mathematicians issue a major challenge to AI—show us your work

Scientific American

Mathematicians issue a major challenge to AI—show us your work

Frustrated by the AI industry’s claims of proving math results without offering transparency, a team of leading academics has proposed a better way

Cfr what I mentioned here: https://stacker.news/items/1433533/r/south_korea_ln?commentId=1433541 > But none of these tests were controlled experiments. Olympiad problems aren’t research questions. And LLMs seem to have a tendency to find existing, forgotten proofs deep in the mathematical literature and to present them as original. One of Axiom Math’s recent proofs, for example, turned out to be a misrepresented literature search result. > And some math results that have come from tech companies have raised eyebrows among academics for other reasons, says Daniel Spielman, a professor at Yale University and one of the experts behind the new challenge. “Almost all of the papers you see about people using LLMs are written by people at the companies that are producing the LLMs,” Spielman says. “It comes across as a bit of an advertisement.” > First Proof is an attempt to clear the smoke. To set the exam, 11 mathematical luminaries—including one Fields Medal winner—contributed math problems that had arisen in their research. The experts also uploaded proofs of the solutions but encrypted them. The answers will decrypt just before midnight on February 13. I haven't seen articles yet about the outcome, but I guess it'll be there soon enough with this Feb 13th deadline. https://stacker.news/items/1433704

Kristian Blummenfelt Appears to Have Recorded the Highest VO2 Max Ever

Triathlon Magazine

Kristian Blummenfelt Appears to Have Recorded the Highest VO2 Max Ever - Triathlon Magazine

What appears to be the first-ever triple-digit VO2 max underscores the physiological engine behind one of triathlon's most dominant careers.

> Kristian Blummenfelt of Norway, Olympic gold medallist triathlete and Ironman world champion, has now also become the first human to break the mythical 100 barrier in VO2 Max testing, registering an official measurement of 101.1 ml/kg/min!!!! > This means at the apex of it's aerobic capacity, Kristian's body effectively utilises 101.1 millilitres of oxygen, per kilogram of bodyweight, per minute of activity! For my predominantly strength orientated brethren who may not fully appreciate how batshit CRAZY this is, trust me when I tell you this is otherworldly stuff! > For perspective, the average professional footballer's (soccer) VO2 MAX score is usually around 55ml/kg/min. So this guy basically has TWICE the engine of the average pro footballer!! > The highest my VO2 Max was ever officially measured was 62ml/kg/min back when I was a competitive boxer in my early 20's, but I hadn't been training in months when I took the test. I later did a sub-maximal test which estimated my max at 67ml/kg/min, and at that point I honestly felt so fit that I was bouncing out of my skin. > At 101.1 I can't even conceive in mind how fit this guy feels! > In lay terms what this basically means is it's virtually impossible for this guy to get completely exhausted! Stay Strong (and fit). Context by Paul McIlroy. https://stacker.news/items/1424650

Murray Gell-Mann talks about Richard Feynman If you've ever read any of Feynman's (not-technical, mostly autobiographical) books, you won't be too surprised about some of the claims made by Murray Gell-Mann here. It's refreshing to hear someone talk about Feynman, other than Feynman talk about himself, yet as claimed by YT's first comment: > Ironically this interview turns out to be yet another great anecdote about Feynman. This is the first video I've ever seen on YT where the comment section is HN-discussion level-worthy (incidentally, it's a [HN thread section on alleged physical abuse by Feynman](

FBI files on Richard Feynman | Hacker News

that brought me to this YT video)... Still, I'll keep recommending Feynman's books, he's just a delightful storyteller (and you can get to know quite a lot about the Manhattan project reading him). https://stacker.news/items/1418364

PlebQR testimony from @Calle

X (formerly Twitter)

calle (@callebtc) on X

You simply don't know how good PlebQR is. I've been basically living on Bitcoin for the past couple of weeks and purchasing food, drinks, clothes, ...

> You simply don't know how good PlebQR is. I've been basically living on Bitcoin for the past couple of weeks and purchasing food, drinks, clothes, tickets with the sats I earn by shitposting on Nostr. Everyone knows how good a shitposter @Calle is~~ For context, check this post by @catoshi a while back: https://stacker.news/items/835356/r/south_korea_ln https://stacker.news/items/1414366

Schrödinger’s Pedophilia: The Cat Is Out Of The Bag (Box) (2022)

Forbes

Schrödinger’s Pedophilia: The Cat Is Out Of The Bag (Box)

According to a December 2021 report from the Irish Times, the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger was a pedophile.

One example from the article (few more inside) > Ithi Junger. British astrophysicist John Gribbin reported in his 2013 biography Erwin Schrödinger and the Quantum Revolution that, at the age of 39, Schrödinger became enamored of 14-year-old Ithi, whom he was tutoring in math. “As well as the maths, the lessons included ‘a fair amount of petting and cuddling’ [as Schrödinger stated in his diary] and Schrödinger soon convinced himself that he was in love with Ithi.” There is no evidence that things went beyond “petting and cuddling” when Ithi was 14, but before he died in 1961 Schrödinger admitted that he’d impregnated her when she was 17. Her abortion left her sterile. And the author's conclusion: > Meanwhile, I’m still dealing with my shock about Erwin Schrödinger. For me right now, he exists in two states of being at once. In other words, Erwin Schrödinger has become Schrödinger’s Cat. He is both a beacon of scientific light and a monster. Both/and, not yet either/or. That being said, some behavior is just too putrid to tolerate. As the revelations about his behavior continue to curdle inside of me, one of those views will take precedence. Very soon, I suspect, I will say, “He’s dead to me.” I do not agree with this conclusion. For me, he can both be a scientific light and a monster. In the same way, I can still very much enjoy the artistic genius of Kevin Spacey, despite him getting cancelled a few years back for raping a boy. What do you think? Is a genius dead to you on all fronts once they did something awful? (I may have shared a similar article here in the past, but I couldn't find it.) https://stacker.news/items/1413211

Travel Retail Norway introduces BTC payments for Click & Collect upon arrival

TRBusiness – Travel retail news, duty free news and business data

Travel Retail Norway introduces bitcoin payments for Click & Collect upon arrival

Travel Retail Norway (TRN) has introduced bitcoin payments for customers using Click & Collect upon arrival at Oslo Airport, marking the first step...

> The payment solution is provided by Satoshi Consult, which TRN states has developed ‘a secure and user-friendly system tailored to Norwegian regulations’. > Customers can simple place their order via Click & Collect at www.tax-free.no. Upon pickup at Oslo Airport, the customer needs to selects bitcoin as the payment method. > Next, a QR code is generated, and the customer confirms payment via their own bitcoin wallet that supports the Lightning Network. The amount is displayed in NOK (Norwegian Kroner) and settled in real time. A receipt is issued as usual. > This option currently applies only to Click & Collect upon arrival at Oslo, though TRN says it’s considering expanding to other stores and payment formats. https://stacker.news/items/1354999

prediction markets aren't just gambling I kinda get his point, most of the participants on prediction markets are in essence just gambling, yet, I do believe that it _in theory_, it can be more than that. I think I've only once joined one of the sports markets on Predyx, as I do believe I'm truly just betting there. But when I put some money on the impeachment of the former Korean president or the prosecution of his wife, I felt like I was doing so by adding knowledge to the market. So, the ones that put money on the sports markets, do you feel like you are gambling? Or financializing some of your knowledge? If it is gambling, do you agree with CZ that prediction markets are just gambling? If it is financializing, do you think it is fair to equate it with insider trading, akin to Pelosi making money playing the stock market as a politician based on knowledge not available to the general public? https://stacker.news/items/1349855

Trump Got His Hair Done - impersonation by godfreycomic One of the better Trump impersonations... too many awful ones, especially by late-night comedians. Ended up clicking through to this skit, too: https://stacker.news/items/1348787

Sperm racing in LA: Inside the first-of-its-kind race The script writer must have had fun with some of the (obvious) play-on-words. Surpised I never heard of this before... https://stacker.news/items/1328536

Hash-based Signature Schemes for Bitcoin (Blockstream research) https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/2203.pdf > Abstract > Hash-based signature schemes offer a promising post-quantum alternative for Bitcoin, as their security relies solely on hash function assumptions similar to those already underpinning Bitcoin’s design. We provide a comprehensive overview of these schemes, from basic primitives to SPHINCS+ and its variants, and investigate parameter selection tailored to Bitcoin’s specific requirements. By applying recent optimizations such as SPHINCS+C, TL-WOTS-TW, and PORS+FP, and by reducing the allowed number of signatures per public key, we achieve significant size improvements over the standardized SPHINCS+ (SLHDSA). We provide public scripts for reproducibility and discuss limitations regarding key derivation, multi-signatures, and threshold signatures. Also:

X (formerly Twitter)

Jonas Nick (@n1ckler) on X

We just published "Hash-based signatures for Bitcoin," a new analysis of post-quantum schemes by @kudinov_mikhail and myself at @blksresearch. Thi...

@Kudinov or @Nick on SN for an ELI5? https://stacker.news/items/1323185

Draft BIP: Non-monetary UTXO cleanup (“The Cat”) and related materials.

GitHub

GitHub - ostromcode/The-Cat: Draft BIP: Non-monetary UTXO cleanup (“The Cat”) and related materials.

Draft BIP: Non-monetary UTXO cleanup (“The Cat”) and related materials. - ostromcode/The-Cat

> It documents a soft-fork consensus change and new spending rules intended to remove an existing, snapshot-based set of non-monetary UTXOs (NMUs) created by protocols such as Ordinals and Stamps, by making those UTXOs permanently unspendable and eligible for removal from the UTXO set. So, basically, confiscating UTXOs I disagree with? Are we still talking about Bitcoin? Maybe this is not even worth sharing or discussing... https://stacker.news/items/1317611

3Blue1Brown : "Recruiting, both for myself and for other companies"

Recruiting, both for myself and for other companies (potentially yours)

I have two small requests, both of which I’ll elaborate on further down in this post.

3Blue1Brown is hiring: both mathematical and non-mathematical positions. Look through the post for more details. https://stacker.news/items/1307749

"we are not enron" says nvidia I've kinda cut out the AI news in terms of company valuation, stock market, etc, as I've made up my mind it's all VC bullshit. So, stumbling on this Coffeezilla piece brought me a bit up to date on what seems to be going on at the moment, at a more nuanced level. Maybe CZ is all wrong (he has been before, and this is for sure not his field of expertise), but I usually give him the benefit of the doubt when it's about spotting scams and grifts. So, do you think Nvidia is like Enron? Or more like Cisco? https://stacker.news/items/1294743

Bailey, Lubka, Klipsten, Held, Saylor, etc - good or bad for Bitcoin? What's your take on the David Baileys, Steven Lubkas, Cory Klipstens, Dan Helds, Saylors, etc, of the online Bitcoin scene? To me, they seem like people who just care about playing the Wall Street game on top of Bitcoin. I probably shouldn’t call them grifters/scammers; that’s too harsh when you compare them with some of the actual ones (if you know, you know), because they aren’t committing any crime (that we know of). To me, they just have too much of a fiat mindset that is incompatible with what I think Bitcoin is trying to achieve. Or maybe they are just mirrors of what we'd all become in case we were running the companies they are? My first instinct is to judge them harshly, so I'd be happy to have someone giving me some counterweight to my knee-jerk reaction, to help me judge them more generously. Feel free to comment if you think they don't belong on the same list. Reading myself, this sounds like a Bitcoin maxi purity test. Well, I wrote it, so I should just post it now. https://stacker.news/items/1285259

S. Korea logs world's longest commute, which studies say may fuel loneliness

The Korea Herald

S. Korea logs world's longest commute, which studies say may fuel loneliness

Lee Han-soo, 34, spends nearly 2 1/2 hours a day traveling between his home near Namhansanseong Station on Subway Line No. 8 and his job at an IT f...

> Lee Han-soo, 34, spends nearly 2 1/2 hours a day traveling between his home near Namhansanseong Station on Subway Line No. 8 and his job at an IT firm near Hongik University Station on Subway Line No. 2 in Seoul. > “Although I’m used to it now, I’m completely drained by the time I get home,” he said. “I just grab something to eat and go straight to bed.” > For many South Koreans, Lee’s routine is far from unusual — it may even be typical. > A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters found that South Korea recorded the longest average daily travel time among 43 countries surveyed, at 1 hour and 48 minutes. > The global average was 1 hour and 8 minutes, meaning South Koreans, on average, spend an additional 40 minutes of their daily life commuting. A few years back, I commuted about 1 hour in the morning and 1h30 minutes in the evening, so a total of about 2h30 minutes. +/- 30 minutes, depending on traffic. This was with my 2-year-old son at the time. I got used to it, and my son didn't know any better, so he didn't complain. But now that I've moved near my workplace, commuting 2 minutes every day, I can't imagine ever going back to that old regime. And my now 6-year-old would probably also not agree so easily anymore. So, how long do you commute to work? https://stacker.news/items/1285261