Hacker News Reader

Ajay-pon Amazon lobbyists to be barred from European parliament

I got a better one. It was the lobbyists who fought for five years to enact the World Trade Center 9/11 Health Compensation Fund. It took FIVE years for congress to make that happen and no one was lobbying on behalf of the first responders.

Ajay-pon Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025

When Uber/Lyft are surging it incentivise more drivers to go to the surge area.

Or.. it incentivizes drivers to create surge conditions so they can make more money.

https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-drivers-artificially-tr...

Ajay-pon Wendy's will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025

I think this is an act of desperation and will completely fail. Customers will see the higher prices during certain times and just not go there. These kinds of games are insulting to consumers and represent very narrow, bean counter mentality.

Ajay-pon Gemini and Google's Culture

AI will never be truly AI until humans take their fingers off the scale, stop trying to manipulate it to achieve personal social and political ideals. Until then you must leave room for doubt that there is a human tipping the scales and the result is not to be trusted.

Ajay-pon Gemini and Google's Culture

Nate Silver, in another tweet, labeled it “the politics of the median member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.”

That has to be the quote of the year and it is IMO a very accurate description of the people making too many decisions at Google.

Ajay-pon Ending the Ivy League's Tax Dodge

Harvard's endowment of $35 BILLION.

Yearly tuition is $54,000 for a combined cost, without discounts, scholarships, etc. of $216,000 give or take for a four-year undergraduate degree.

Harvard's endowment could give full rides to 162,037 students.

The fact they don't and instead sit on this mountain of cash is a problem IMO. I understand part of that is to insure the schools longevity but how many billions do you really need in this regard?

I think some number of those endowments should be taxed but I would prefer to see Harvard giving out full rides to many, many more people, or heavily invested in community colleges.

Ajay-pon The Best Time to Post on HackerNews

Tangentially related.. When I was at uni I got very bored one summer and started making a spreadsheet of when certain people posted to a message board I frequented. This started with 3 people then became 15. It was very interesting to then plot that because I could make educated guesses about their sleeping habits, when they were at work etc. especially given what they wrote.

I could then make inferences as to their geographical location and other identifying attributes just based on when they were active on this message board. Regrettably I am a data nerd and would love to see such an analysis done on Hckrnews, etc. but I doubt it would be of interest to most others.

Ajay-pon Google cut a deal with Reddit for AI training data

Does Reddit really block all search engines, or do "all" search engines abide by No Spiders? If it's freely available it's ripe for scraping, no matter what Reddit may say.

Ajay-pon Google cut a deal with Reddit for AI training data

I don't understand why they chose Reddit, was 4Chan not willing? Seriously though, why not use the comment and discussion sections of Wikipedia and other sites that are not drowning in social insanity.

Ajay-pon Expanding Our Partnership with Google

So too did their response to raising the API price.

Ajay-pon Yale will again require standardized test scores for admission

A lot of introspection needs to be done to determine why these decisions were made.

These decisions were purely political and social in nature, and it will happen again as soon as there is another opportunity. University administrators, under political and a little bit of social pressure, ignored science and data in pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The bulk of Ivy League schools have determined that some groups of people cannot make it without help, and it is up to those universities to correct this wrong by reducing as many roadblocks and responsibilities as possible.

I doubt there will be any introspection because many of the people who made these disastrous decisions are still in power and will likely be so for some time.

Ajay-pon Yale will again require standardized test scores for admission

That.. did not last long. In my opinion it was a disastrous thing to even attempt. There is really no way to judge a random person's ability to learn, or even address the act of learning, without a standardized test. The ACT and SAT will always need work as culture changes, but throwing it out in search of restorative justice is extremely unwise.

Ajay-pon Google to pause Gemini image generation of people after issues

That is not artificial intelligence, that is deliberate mucking with the software to achieve a desired outcome. Google is utterly untrustworthy in this regard.

Ajay-pon The world of Yakuza fan magazines (2009)

Related, "Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan" by by Jake Adelstein is absolutely fascinating. So too is the drama produced by HBO based on the book, but I am partial to the book. Adelstein becomes friendly with the Yakuza and comes to understand them. Very eye opening.

Ajay-pon How San Francisco staged a comeback

Twin Peaks Tavern is located at 401 Castro St.

Ajay-pon How San Francisco staged a comeback

Yes, many I say. When you see the poverty, malcontent, and crime right before your eyes every day on the streets of your city, it is a problem. Atlanta does not have the level of open lawlessness than San Francisco does. Atlanta has its problems but it's a nice place to live for anyone. San Francisco is only a place to live for the wealthy, everyone else is crushed by the insanity.

Ajay-pon The quietest places in the loudest cities

During the pandemic, my wife and I spent a lot of time on Facetime with her sister in Los Angeles. I remember how loud it was for her, people yelling, fire crackers, music, vehicles, a near constant noise cloud outside. It differed so remarkably with our home, which was very quiet, that I took note.

Ajay-pon His Best Friend Was a 250-Pound Warthog. One Day, It Decided to Kill Him

I have mixed feelings about this. It is a wild animal that is capable of killing, while never known to be capable of total domesticated, as a dog or a cat would. Treating an animal like that as if it were your dog, or your cat, is taking a risk. Tigers or lions, warthogs or venomous snakes, it is nature.

Ajay-pon Nuclear Plant Could Bring 1,600 Jobs to Kemmerer, Wyoming

It does not say in the article but from looking at the project website, this plant is 5-10 years at minimum from completion and permitting, that's if there are no regulatory or environmental challenges. Given the onerous and lengthy process I am not optimistic this will ever come to fruition.

https://www.terrapower.com/natrium-project-update/

Ajay-pon Skip Microsoft Acct. Sign-In in Win 11 Home? It Skips Protecting Your Data Key

I have made a claim before which I shall make again: Windows 11 should be considered malware, it is the worst product Microsoft has ever produced. I hope the experience gets even worse so that more people will abandon Windows for better OS's.

Ajay-pon Kat Von D wins trial over unlicensed use of Miles Davis photo for tattoo

I think copyright on photos should be significantly shorter, more like 10 - 15 years. The current length is much too long.

Ajay-pon Microsoft Teams went down around the world for over eight hours

How could you tell? Teams is awful and fails to work almost every time.

Ajay-pon Alabama executes Kenneth Smith using untested method of nitrogen gas

Is death ever not barbaric? Death is death, and this man earned the right to be put to death.

Ajay-pon Kenneth Smith 'struggled for life' for 22 mins in Alabama nitrogen gas execution

Why not use helium or a gas that we know will absolutely cease function immediately? I am generally in favor of the death penalty and death is rarely without pain, or suffering, but no one has come back from the dead to tell us so we don't really know. Really we should allow the condemned to choose the method, and that method should include several pathways.

Ajay-pon IRS Free File is now available for the 2024 filing season

To pop up Intuit, makers of Turbo Tax. Lower income people are still more likely to go to a tax preparer service than to attempt to file their own. The idea of doing your own taxes is a middle class and up ideal, or those who are more likely to have the education and training to do their own taxes.

Ajay-pon The White House has a pharmacy – and it was a mess, a new investigation found

Imagine if someone really had narcotics in the White House and was discovered, the punishment would be severe and also very embarrassing.

Ajay-pon Man Allegedly Raped in Jail After AI Wrongly IDs Him as Suspect Despite Alibi

Yes.

Ajay-pon Responses to unicycling

The amount of ignorance and pure aggression against road cyclists in America is rising to the level of a hate crime, IMHO. Mostly male, it seems, drivers are not willing to accept that not only must they share the road with cyclists, they must do so in a safe manner. The number of memes and comments promoting violence against cyclists must seem to only come from the most ignorant of society.

Ajay-pon US government opens 22M acres of federal lands to solar

It appears to also be a legal argument that has been used to stop solar development, endangered species, but also NIMBYism.

https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/us-largest-solar-farm-is-scra...

Ajay-pon US government opens 22M acres of federal lands to solar

I have long thought there must be a reason why vast, empty plots of sun drenched land were not covered in solar panels. Half of Nevada could become the nation's power plant.