Hacker News Reader

01284a7eon Jobless tech workers are being left out of San Francisco's AI boom

"A group of more than four dozen laid-off workers gathered at 11 a.m. on a Monday to hike Mount Tamalpais, a majestic peak overlooking the San Francisco Bay. They descended the mostly deserted trail in groups of about a dozen, led by Basem Istanbouli, a former Google employee sporting a bucket hat and a pair of toe shoes."

I'd rather hike than sling JavaScript for a bunch of finance goofs, but that's just me.

01284a7eon So I guess everyone uses LLMs to think now

When as an industry you are collectively doing a trillion in CapEx every year, you are just going to do your best to brainwash the living hell out of everyone to adopt your crap because you really want your money back. Everyone (and their agency and their ability to think even) be damned. The consequences for society? Whatever. There's money you need to make. It's all about the Benjamins, baby. And so, all day long spam, spam, spam. All we do here at Hacker News is talk about these companies. Even worse in other sides of the Internet, there are practical death cults that have formed around all this. It's madness.

01284a7eon Nurses Sound Alarm as 'Uber for Nursing' Apps Push to Deregulate Healthcare

"The Sleaze"... indeed you are.

01284a7eon Digital minimalism

What would happen if you self-hosted something? Prison?

01284a7eon US tech stocks see sharp falls over AI cost fears

"AI results from search engines don't generate the click-through revenue that search ads did."

Photo of Google leadership regarding this issue: https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/037/873/We'...

01284a7eon DoorDash to Acquire Instacart

I can hate for you then.

01284a7eon The End of Rationing

"Build me a high speed railway. Make no mistakes."

Now that SaaS CRUD apps can be built in 10 minutes, we can maybe do something more worthwhile, no? So much wasted effort has gone into this field already, in my opinion.

01284a7eon An ESPN producer who quit because of sports gambling

I'm not misinterpreting anything. It takes away from the point, and their point is a strong one in my opinion.

01284a7eon An ESPN producer who quit because of sports gambling

"I expect that almost nobody reading Hacker News has a gambling problem"

Here's an unforced error.

01284a7eon Thinking will become a hobby

You have "Burning Man" in your job experience (per your resume shared on your profile).

01284a7eon Thinking will become a hobby

Everyone is always so negative. Cheer up a bit. The "bicycle of the mind" is now the "dirtbike of the mind"... have fun, pop a wheelie.

01284a7eon NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect

Why stop at mayors? How about legislators... city, state, and federal, hell, what about governors and presidents?

01284a7eon I wish you the best in the Offline

A lot of the people referenced in this post were in Developer Relations (or something adjacent). That's all going away [1], and going offline is the (over)-reaction to what is undoubtedly career-ending.

1: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTvrz-4iXT-

01284a7eon I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

The "lack of knowledge is an unambiguous net negative even to the powers that be".

I think it's far more ambiguous and less measured of a net negative, than it is a clear, measured net positive for the "powers that be" if we define them as the wealthy.

You can take a very clear, measured look at wealth distribution over the past 50 years.

01284a7eon I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

Destruction? It's by design:

"One man gathers what another man spills."

01284a7eon “Math 2.0” will need to value mathematical progress more holistically

Don't quote Nassim Taleb, unless it's to be an arrogant dick.

-- Me

01284a7eon Spending on AI Is Becoming Almost Impossible for Businesses to Budget

Did anyone ever do a software project before AI? You can predict costs far better than you can with people.

Yeah, that guy you hired to write the prototype went on a 2 month bender and created 0 usable code. Did you budget for that? Oh, okay. The strategies to deal with spending on tokens are nothing compared to the overhead of managing actual people and their outputs.

01284a7eon OpenAI safety leader quits, warning AI company's culture is 'broken'

Working in safety at OpenAI or Anthropic is zeroth world problems.

01284a7eon AI Makes Me Sad

> I think I could have been a pretty formidable startup founder had I been born five or ten years earlier.

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago

I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas,

On a great big clipper ship,

Going from this land here to that,

In a sailor's suit and cap,

Away from the big city

Where a man can not be free

Of all of the evils of this town,

And of himself, and those around.

- The Velvet Underground, "Heroin"

01284a7eon Tells of a Slop UI

Cloudflare is slopped out these days. Tons of people uncoordinated, all flailing around. Vibe flailing, I suppose.

01284a7eon Unsealed Briefs in Authors’ Case v. Microsoft/OpenAI

And at least a few poorly educated folks in positions of insignificance, like myself.

01284a7eon There's no point at which turning your brain off will work

"What reason is there for the company to employ the meat proxy?" Maybe some form of liability, accountability...

New concept: the AI patsy

01284a7eon Intelligence per Watt: Measuring Intelligence Efficiency of Local AI

This is annoying but, can you point me to where to get started with local models? A repo, website, something?

01284a7eon Let's make quality the norm again

Sidebar: Don't video games have ever growing competition with existing games?

I decided not to buy games until I beat the ones I already have. I am now stuck on NES games and will probably be stuck for the rest of my life.

01284a7eon I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

I interpret it similarly, I think - in that you can't totally predict what's going to be the thing that really bites you in the ass.

01284a7eon I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

"The problems with which the universe can confront any society are, for practical purposes, infinite in number and endless in variety." - Joseph Tainter

AI will really aid the universe in generating more problems. Maybe it's not a supervirus, but hell, maybe it is.

01284a7eon iPhone Duo

Just Klarna (or shall we say, "Apple Upgrade" [1] now) it. You need to consume. Not want, need.

1: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/07/apple-upgrade-launche...