Hacker News Reader

blaston Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon

To me too. But life without parole seemed weird as well.

blaston UK's hardware talent is being wasted

Hopefully we'll at least get something new out of it, like punk rock the last time.

blaston Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

Can you explain further? Sounds important but I don't understand.

blaston 41% of Employers Worldwide Say They'll Reduce Staff by 2030 Due to AI

Once I read your comment I could feel that quality (something uncanny valley about his "empathy") in those videos, which I hadn't picked up on before you pointed it out.

blaston 41% of Employers Worldwide Say They'll Reduce Staff by 2030 Due to AI

This is unrelated but I just wanted to thank you for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41901622 as it's too late to reply there.

You put your finger on something really interesting there!

blaston The Origins of Wokeness

I appreciate your story and feel for "A" and the women who adopted her. But I think we need to get beyond this idea that there are only two sides and you have to pick one or the other. I don't see why I can't agree with you and also agree with PG. I didn't feel any hate in his article and I imagine he would support the people who have been helping "A", i.e. you and your wife and her adoptive mothers.

> There are many other details, but I don’t want to bore you with the horrors. To summarize, this story shattered my naivety

I have had similar experiences and understand you.

blaston The Origins of Wokeness

You're right, but I don't think he's interested in the term. He's interested in the social phenomenon that (briefly) appropriated the term before the other side started using it as a negative.

blaston The Origins of Wokeness

The current norm is that it mustn't be said, even in a discussion of that class of words.

blaston The Origins of Wokeness

https://paulgraham.com/say.html

OP is basically an update of that after 20 years

blaston The Origins of Wokeness

They have much in common.

blaston Employees are bypassing HR, sharing on LinkedIn

This feels like a PR hit for "the 34-year-old with more than 80,000 followers"

blaston SQL nulls are weird

Having that is much better than not having it, but man is it verbose and confusing.

blaston Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model

The comment you're replying to was a joke.

blaston NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker

This is the funniest comment of its type that I've ever seen.

blaston On the nature of computing science (1984)

What does "materiality" mean here?

blaston OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment

From the article:

"The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year."

That's a conflict of interest when it comes to objective reporting.

blaston The Google Willow Thing

Damn he's funny.

For 20 years I’ve been trying to teach the world how to fish in Hilbert space, but (sigh) I suppose I’ll just hand out some more fish.

blaston What we know about CEO shooting suspect

Some criminals want to get caught.

blaston Why it took a long time to build that tiny link preview on Wikipedia (2018)

I find them intrusive, as well as dishonest. They give off a "poor little us" mom-and-pop-shop vibe, which must be very misleading to people who don't know how well funded they are.

blaston Air Canada to remove free carry-on from basic economy

It's the sizers that aren't accurate. Most roller bags fit in the bins.

Airlines don't enforce the sizer limits, do they? I can't remember the last time I saw this happen.

blaston An oral history of "We Built This City," the worst song of all time (2016)

Dylan's gospel albums are classics. Documentaries have been made about how good they are. IIRC "Shot of Love" is one of Dylan's favorites of his own records.

Many fans rejected them at the time because of the culture shock of his religious pivot, but that reaction was about the content, not the music, and has long faded. Nowadays it's understood that the sudden-fan-alienation-move is a Dylan thing, just like when he went electric at Newport in the first place.

I'm not gonna argue that "Man gave names to all the animals" is one of Dylan's finest, but I'd be interested to know which specific tracks you think are terrible, because those records are full of great songs, and so are some of the outtakes.

If you want awful Dylan I think you're a few years too early–Empire Burlesque anyone?

blaston Dramatic drop in marijuana use among U.S. youth over a decade

It is likely an important issue because of the downstream consequences of such a severe trauma.

blaston California is torn between clashing Anglo traditions?

Agreed about the others but wouldn't the Okies be part of the Scots-Irish strain he covers?

blaston David Lynch Interview Project

I'm not sure how similar these are but this reminds me of the Soft White Underbelly series of interviews: https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly/videos

blaston Crokinole

Curlinole would be easier to say...

blaston The richest people borrow against their stock (2021)

> At that point your stocks (and other assets like houses) have their cost-basis adjusted to the current price.

Is this a special provision that kicks in only on death (and not before)? How long has that been in place?

blaston Meteorologists, please stop the fearmongering (2019)

They're TV personalities. What else are they going to do?

blaston Is population density the reason Americans can't discuss politics?

> If it really was population density, it would be easy to discuss politics in urban NYC and very difficult/ rare in rural Wyoming.

This assumes that the effects of population density are continuously distributed, but what if the national discourse is affected by population density in a way that shows up across the entire country?

blaston On programming and poetry

Poets don't favor "readability"—at least not good poets. They're optimizing for something else altogether.

blaston Why does man print "gimme gimme gimme" at 00:30? (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzoXQKumgCw