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Simon_O_Rourke

2,354 karma · joined December 21, 2021

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Simon_O_Rourke··on Ask HN: What software subscriptions are worth paying for?
Sublime (contribution rather than subscription)

Excalidraw

ChatGpt

ExpressVPN

Simon_O_Rourke··on I watched Gemini CLI hallucinate and delete my files
> Claude Sonnet 4 is ridiculously chirpy -- no matter what happens, it likes to start with "Perfect!" or "You're absolutely right!" and everything! seems to end! with an exclamation point!

Exactly my issue with it too. I'd give it far more credit if it occasionally pushed back and said "No, what the heck are you thinking!! Don't do that!"

Simon_O_Rourke··on I'm betting against AI agents, despite building them
Don't tell management about this, as they're all betting the house on AI agents next year.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”
Very scummy behavior from Hyatt hotels. I'd always check out the negative reviews of hotels before booking, and this might have caught it
Simon_O_Rourke··on Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from stratosphere, dies in Italy
There's a concept I read about before called micromorts, where activities are given a danger rating something like the expected number of fatalities per million events.

So riding a motorbike 100 miles is 8 micromorts.

Hang-gliding is 9 micromorts.

Base jumping is 430 micromorts.

And summiting Everest is 37,000 micromorts.

Incidentally, of those - I know of two guys who died either on Everest or at base camp there over the past 15 years. First guy fell on the descent, and the second guy developed health issues at altitude (apparently related to an Israeli team immediately prior stealing their oxygen bottles).

Simon_O_Rourke··on Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from stratosphere, dies in Italy
Not that I doubt the reports, but how could anyone possibly make that call?
Simon_O_Rourke··on BBC Gaza documentary narrated by Hamas breached accuracy guideline
Ahhh now, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Just because the kid doing the narration happened to have close family in a military organization somehow negates the ideas presented in the piece?

Always be reframing the narrative to focus on chickens*t issues like this to distract from Israeli tanks machine gunning starving people waiting for food aid.

Simon_O_Rourke··on I solved the century-old mystery of a shipwreck survivor
Yeah, but that guy was well insulated with blubber.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and XAI Granted Up to $200M from Defense Department
And a drop in the ocean what those companies are losing too on an annual basis.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Lost Chapter of Automate the Boring Stuff: Audio, Video, and Webcams in Python
Love it, that's where I direct all our new hires who want to pick up the basics of Python. I'll be reading this chapter myself this weekend too.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Preliminary report into Air India crash released
> It's difficult to conclude anything other than murder-suicide.

The balance of probability might tend to support that hypothesis. However I'm wondering if it was just something involuntary. My ex for instance who learned to drive on a stick shift would randomly stall the engine after a few weeks driving an automatic.

Simon_O_Rourke··on MCP-B: A Protocol for AI Browser Automation
How can you figure out that percentage? The commit logs?
Simon_O_Rourke··on Linda Yaccarino is leaving X
Crashing isn't the totality of unsupported code. I previously worked in a company where a goodly proportion of the back end product team was let go, and their system stayed running for two plus years without a single fix or update going in.
Simon_O_Rourke··on My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
> lets just make sure we never need to work together

Seeing as how you seem to prefer to let everyone else steal a march on you in interviews in the interest of "fairness", that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

Simon_O_Rourke··on The first time I was almost fired from Apple
I hear being unfortunate enough to be in an elevator with Steve Jobs was enough to get you fired from Apple back in the day.
Simon_O_Rourke··on July 5, 1687: When Newton explained why you don't float away
In fairness, he only explained why a vast vast majority of people don't float away. He didn't adequately explain edge cases like Joseph of Cupertino - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Cupertino
Simon_O_Rourke··on My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
How is it unethical? Say you ask whoever what's being asked and they say you need to sort a string in place and then discuss how a random forest gets trained... You still need to answer those questions AND know enough to answer the follow up questions. If you're no good you'll be still found out. It just means you'll have a head start over someone without those kinds of contacts. So what level of utilizing your professional network crosses a line? Does a recommendation cross a line because I know for a fact that internal recommendations are moved to the head of the queue in most companies.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Being too ambitious is a clever form of self-sabotage
There's the flip side to it too... I'm just waiting for an overly ambitious non-technical colleague in what should be a technical management role to overreach in terms of role and promotion.
Simon_O_Rourke··on My open source project was relicensed by a YC company [license updated]
Doing whatever it takes to get the foot in the door may be encouraged, but only to a point and I think out and out cheating is probably crossing a line... As would murder, arson etc. etc.

If cheating means asking someone in the company you're interviewing for a peek at what will be asked then great. In my book that's using leverage.

Reviewing previously posted interview tests is probably recommended.

Hooking up a copilot to answer interview questions for you in real time is probably less so.

Simon_O_Rourke··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)
Super simple, but an AI powered greenhouse. Arduino with a humidity, temp, soil moisture hat, logging in MySQL, semantic to layer with growing info, AI front end.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Dubai Reality Check: An Indian VC's Year of Truth
The reason I'd highlighted Chinese telcos particularly, was an experience of my ex-wife who worked with a well known Western telecoms provider. She was out in the middle east (not Dubai though) to pitch for some 5G backbone business a while back.

Anyway, when she flew in, there were a couple of Chinese guys in arrivals who were pointing a camera her direction and seemingly taking her photo. No biggie, she thought, and just thought it some weird coincidence.

However, the next morning she left her room early to use the hotel gym, but doubled back upon forgetting her headphones and spotted the same Chinese guys outside her hotel room door trying to jam something in the lock.

Simon_O_Rourke··on Dubai Reality Check: An Indian VC's Year of Truth
> what business partners want in a deal is enhancing prestige, aligning with family business values, and offering something genuinely unique in a market where exclusivity matters.

There must be some awfully corrupt shenanigans selling stuff out there so. No wonder the Chinese telcos run all Dubai's backbone infra, those guys are old hands at liberally distributing "incentives" to patriarchal organizations to get their way.

Simon_O_Rourke··on Why does Kars4Kids sends most of its money to one town in New Jersey? (2023)
That's true but it sucks, it's just a massive scam masquerading as religion. If there's any legislation to tax the bejesus (pun intended) out of any and all religious groups I'm all for it. It'll pay for all those future wars said groups are always fond of advocating for.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I
Bret Devereaux does touch on an interesting concept though in his articles on this nitpick... That movie goers are so acclimated to seeing how "movie Roman" armies fight, that showing them a more historically accurate battle scene would be highly jarring to the point of being novelty.

I'm hoping the days where movies show the Romans forming testudo, moving up to fur clad enemies and then breaking up to do one on one gladiator style individual battles are gone.

Simon_O_Rourke··on Puerto Rico's Solar Microgrids Beat Blackout
Is this more of a battery cost issue - if you owned a battery that charged off the grid and discharged during blackout periods then that might just about cover you if you budget for the expected outage duration.... And assuming you can afford said battery in the first place.
Simon_O_Rourke··on The probability of a hash collision (2022)
I've had the privilege (?) of experiencing one in the wild only once. Was hashing a few columns to create a hash key for a dimensional table in snowflake and two wholy different rows clashed.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Python can run Mojo now
Many thanks for the update on this particular aspect of it. That rules it out of any production deployment until 2026 so.
Simon_O_Rourke··on U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites
That's an all around bad move for the US. Getting dragged into an Israeli war and probably having to carry the can for the next few years alone after getting into a mess not of our own making (well directly anyway).

This is going to hit gas prices, the markets and US security considerations all in order to help keep the current Israeli leadership out of Israeli prisons. Bad move.

Simon_O_Rourke··on Yes I Will Read Ulysses Yes
No, for the love of God don't try Finnegan's Wake. Take the 25 bucks you would have used to buy it online and do something better with it, like burning it in the trash can, or buying a North Korean memecoin with it.
Simon_O_Rourke··on Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices
That's doubly suspicious, so they can, by that statement readily hand over your imprecise other-than-personal messages at an individual level to the Israelis.
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