Hacker News Reader

awacson Zuckerberg's Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Protest Day

Oh the days of watching Silicon Valley and loving this crazy, but quirky but seemingly good intentioned industry to work in. Maybe this is who they always were, but either way, how many billions do these CEOs need in exchange for the good of society is the question I ask.

awacson iPhone Duo

An authentic Steve Jobs demo presentation would generate 100x more excitement than this canned, blan, nearly AI boring level cringe presentation. I'll just wait for a YouTube review where an actual human you can relate to handles it.

awacson DeepSeek announced to raise its API price tremendously

Within a year or two when "good enough" models collide with personal hardware capable of running said models, it all inevitably collapses (and Apple stands on top of the pile of rubble with a construction hat on labeled: "told ya so").

awacson Show HN: Trumpstonks – every company Trump's named, backtested vs. the S&P

You need an API. Then we can all get rich, at least for a little bit. Nice work.

awacson Ask HN: Does Claude Code remove the need for so many front-end frameworks?

I've been a rails centric developer for 10+ years and dabbled in React, but lately have felt "supercharged" in my domain, and doing side projects that are explicitly front-end React/Next.js, etc. For my primary job, I work in the enterprise where I'll use AI to assist but I'm still coding 50% there. I think you just need to resist the "letting it rip" and doing everything on its, where properly managed it's a great tool. Not to self-promote but the first ai-assisted next.js typescript project I did which was a revelation: https://flip.watch

awacson U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

Are we great yet?

awacson Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

I've been a remote engineer for about 10 years now, just over 50, enjoy programming but most of my friends have dropped off or gone crazy (trumpers) in recent years, and I never got married.

I recently took a local wheel throwing (pottery class), which was daunting at first, among a class of almost all females, younger, etc, but im 6 months in and literally just interacting with humans is one of the best parts of my week. Hobby is pretty cool too, so completely different than banging code all day.

Sometimes I don't feel like going after days of being alone and literally talking to no one, it puts you in a "zone" for sure, but then I go to the class, and you realize, at least imho, humans are social creatures. It's like food, we need that interaction or we whither and die.

awacson The Cray-1 Computer System (1977) [pdf]

I remember doing a report on this in high school in the late 80s. I'd love to do an order of magnitude comparison to a modern M4 Mac... Amazing how far we've come.

awacson My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures

I think you need to be a bit more explicit in your usage. I use Claude Code as the plugin in Cursor, to me the marriage of all the great, tastes great, less filling. You see all the changes as you normally would in VSCode / Cursor, but the Claude Code command line UI is absolutely bonkers better than the Cursor native one. They really have it dialed in beautifully in my opinion.

awacson Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2025)

That sounds like a great question lol

awacson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2024)

  Location: New York, NY, USA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, StimulusJS, Turbo, Javascript, React, Docker 
  Résumé/CV/Contact: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamfreemer/

awacson I’ve been single all my life

As we all get older we tend to scale horizontally, which is also a problem.

awacson Ask HN: Why is everybody copying layoffs?

Love him or hate him (I'm more the latter at this point) Elon showed you could trim 70% of the workforce from Twitter and it's still up and running. So with that logic, that being on the extreme side, trimming some smaller % is a no brainer to the boards of most companies now.

awacson Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in more than 4 years

I have to say, I didn't realize how strong Hydrogen powered vehicles are right now in development. That could be a legit competitor soon if they work out some of the smaller kinks and develop a fueling network. Literally zero fueling time, much less lithium in the manufacturing process and a closer feel to traditional ICE.

awacson Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in more than 4 years

There's really not much to drive sales for 2023 either. Was watching a summary of new EVs for the year and I'll give him credit on the "jet powered" roadster as very cool, but all the new exciting EVs for the average consumer are coming from GM, Ford, BMW, Toyota (with a very interesting Hydrogen powered offering which is technology I had no idea was even this developed) and a few other smaller startups.

I think Ford really is going to get traction with the F150 Lightning. That's the smartest move you could make, i.e. electrify the #1 selling vehicle with something similar and practical. That's what people want, and if you convert that demo, you basically win over the rest.

awacson Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in more than 4 years

I don't think he even cares about Ukraine one way or another. He's just trolling the U.S. gov to "own the libs" as part of his "engagement strategy" for Twitter, as ridiculous as that is. Yes, alienate the entire user base for the company you're completely leveraged on (Tesla), in exchange for people who make on average less per year than your average Tesla costs.

awacson Tesla stock falls again, toward longest losing streak in more than 4 years

I would agree on this one, but his pro-Putin / anti-American policy towards Ukraine is the context here. Plus he loves to troll the U.S. Gov (particularly the Dems) who literally made his life as a billionaire possible by funding him with billion to create Tesla when he was still basically "poor". He would be nothing without liberals who created the electric car incentive programs and EV loan programs, yet he trashes them left and right.

awacson The Twitter Files Part 2: Twitter's Secret Blacklists

Ok, let's say they did, it's a private company, 1st Amendment doesn't apply in the manner you seem to think. In fact it's the opposite, they as an entity / company have 1st Amendment rights to do as they please with content on their platform.

That being said, yes they suppressed propaganda and disinformation that could lead to bodily harm (as on J6). People like Fox News hosts pushing disinformation that could lead to people dying over COVID is easily crossover into legal territory. Why would they want that shit on their platform? Is it their fault all the disinformation comes from right wing kooks?

This argument is ridiculous. It's like Nazis complaining their propaganda was being removed from the radio and their voice was being silenced.

awacson Ask HN: How is Musk's Apple Twitter threat post not SEC violation?

You're getting distribution to a billion devices. That has some inherent value.

awacson Amazon putting a three-day pause on reviews for Rings of Power

Any comparison to House of the Dragon? I'm liking it so far (as one who liked GOT, but hated the last season like most I know).

awacson Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive

Growing up in the 80s with VHS, Betamax, Laserdiscs (if anyone recalls), and being a dj in the late 90s when the thought of a "USB stick instead of traveling with all this vinyl was an impossibility", makes this whole nostalgia tour a fun one. I think we all forget though just how poor the quality was back then, and what we've become accustomed to, with VHS being 240 lines, DVD 480p, etc. It's like reminiscing about the first iPhone and then looking at one and realizing how damn small it actually was compared to modern versions.

I started converting / collecting most of my movie collection onto a localized server years ago, and glad I did. Though I rarely watch all my old movies (a growing list of about 1000 including most of my favorite TV shows), the end game I think we all know is everything streamed, with no actual ownership of content. It's not a terrible notion, but the problem I think we've all seen is it's now turned into a corporate ownership game, and you never know where the content you're interested in watching is. One day Star Trek is on Netflix, the next Paramount, etc.

The only problem has been keeping up with resolution changes, even though I'm a firm believer in unless you're watching on something well over 100" a nice high-quality 1080P file looks just great on a large 85" tv (which I currently have).

awacson San Francisco Apartment Rents Crater Up to 31%, Most in U.S.

I'm curious what folks here feel about the serendipity factor? I've been remote for 4 years and love it (in the NY suburbs area), but there definitely isn't that "random creativity" as being in the office, as the valley has been trying desperately to analyze and recreate artificially.

awacson Nearly Half of Americans Are Lonely

The country being so politically polarized isn't helping. It's to the point where most only want to socialize with people in the same "tribe". For better or worse.

awacson CIA Targeting Linux Users With OutlawCountry Network Traffic Re-Routing Tool

Never a single leak about Russian spying or intelligence gathering techniques / apparatus. Those Russians must be so proper in granting privacy to their "citizens".

awacson Job applicants over 40 filtered out by employers

I left my former industry at 40 (now just over 3 years ago), bootcamp'd and got into dev and it was the best thing I ever did. I've been gainfully employed since the move and love my current job. I can't say it wasn't a lot of work, and yes I feel the competition of the young folks, but it is what it is.

awacson Why Land on the Moon? (1963)

It's hard to have a "moon moment" in times where there is a large population that think we never landed on the moon, and half the country believes in alternative facts.

awacson Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I have seen zero information leaked during this election that didn't have an anti-Hillary agenda, content discussion and validity aside. If there is anything critical of Trump, please share. With that being the case, it's clearly beyond a disruption agenda, and a pro-Trump agenda. Again, maybe I just haven't seen anything anti-Trump, but I've looked and found nothing.

awacson Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut'

I concur with this view. I don't necessarily think the Wikileaks are not valid, but from my point of view, Wikileaks lost all credibility being 100% anti-Hillary, with zero anti-Trump information released. Somehow I don't think the RNC would have much different internal e-mails floating around at this point.

That being said, I read the Goldman transcripts and other things that were supposed to be so damaging, and they really weren't that bad, beyond any other typical politician. Is she corrupt, absolutely. Is there a giant media conspiracy (now including SNL) against Trump? Ridiculous. He makes his own wounds.

In addition, even Mike Pence has now admitted Russia is disseminating information to Wikileaks. So we have a clear connection between Russia / Putin and Trump. I don't believe it's as far as many think with them working together, but clearly someone as thin skinned and easily manipulated as Trump would be a total win for Putin. We can talk about Hillary's collusion, Clinton Foundation corruptness and such, but how the Putin pro Trump position is not as relevant is beyond me, if not the deal breaker considering the state of Russia / American current affairs.