Hacker News Reader

bradleyjgon Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production

I rented one for a road trip. It was nothing short of magical. Scary to give it control. And I can believe there are edge cases … but it’s real.

I’d guess that it’s going to take a while to catch up because the real world data is the moat. Maybe if someone partners with Waymo but the price point will be higher.

The thing that gives me pause about buying one is: what happens if the company loses interest? Is it like “owning” a game after the company shuts down the servers?

bradleyjgon A wave of plastic-free coffee pods and machines

It’s (attempted) countersignaling.

bradleyjgon A wave of plastic-free coffee pods and machines

Other than the fact that it does looks cool, what is simpler or better about this over a hario V60 ceramic dripper directly over a mug?

bradleyjgon The $6.3B Binance hack was pulled off in just 20 minutes

Crypto has really turned out to serve the cause of freedom. North Korea, well known libertarian paradise.

bradleyjgon AI use leads UC Berkeley math professor to see 'no point' in grading homework

What’s happening to the signal?

That’s the goose that’s laying the golden egg.

Are the people that do well on the proctored assignments firewalled off from AI going to be the best employees?

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

See also: driving electric motorcycles in the bike lane and displaying a fraudulent license plate.

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

California doesn’t have a property tax system. They have a tax on newcomers. It’s entirely corrupt.

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

There’s no reason the local government budget should increase at the same rate as the property values in the taxed area. Property taxes should generally increase at the rate of inflation not because property values increase.

However, where I live local government is wildly inefficient. So in that case property taxes should go down while property taxes go up via the expedient of competent governance. Alas.

bradleyjgon MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta

MongoDB is webscale.

bradleyjgon MongoDB CEO resigns to join Meta

Perhaps. But does anyone at all outside the c suite fail up in the same way? Fail spectacularly and get a comparable or better opportunity?

Even if it’s only 30% of CEOs and 15% of other CxOs there’s still an anomaly there to be explained.

bradleyjgon Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

I think noisy resignation is the rational move for various reasons.

But I don’t think it’s required. The director under Delaware law is not conceptualized as a proxy for the whims of a majority of the voting rights.

bradleyjgon Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

> what is even the purpose of a board in a

Delaware law requires a board.

Whether limited liability should actually be allowed at all in such a situation is a better question.

bradleyjgon White House Says Access Is a 'Privilege' in Court Filing Defending Media Ban

> because accepting this framing doesn't really seem to leave a whole lot of legal wiggle room.

No, it’s not a problem. The government can’t grant or withdraw a privilege for impermissible reasons.

bradleyjgon Pentagon says overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school

You’re comparing the current system not to the status quo ante but to a utopian fantasy that only ever existed in your imagination.

That’s a weird goalpost.

bradleyjgon Pentagon says overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school

Do you have three examples from 20 years in Afghanistan of analysts being held judicially accountable for target selection errors?

bradleyjgon If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

An aside, but tests should be that difficult. Otherwise you aren’t getting any signal at the high end. Even in the face of grade inflation that signal can be translated into grad school recommendations (in the uk case, getting all 10 might even garner a “really not bad.”)

bradleyjgon America's Driver's License Breach Is a National Security Disaster

Perhaps you’re right but how about starting with anything at all meaningful against the company itself?

They end up pay some class action lawyers $8 million dollars and we get a letter offering FREE CREDIT MONITORING!!1!

bradleyjgon A Tesla ran a stop sign and killed a man, Full Self-Driving/Autopilot was on

> there’s a second possibility worth putting on the table, and we’ll be clear that it’s a theory

100% Claude

bradleyjgon Water Behind the Watts: The Hidden Risk of Powering Data Centers

That’s 6k-10k acre-feet. Which is 1500-2500 acres of rice.

California alone has about half a million acres of rice cultivation.

But big scary numbers are big and scary.

bradleyjgon Water Behind the Watts: The Hidden Risk of Powering Data Centers

When in comes to water everything besides agriculture is a rounding error.

The only thing an article like this tells you is that the author has an ax to grind.

bradleyjgon Being ambitious and being a dad

One thing I hate about SV culture is the bullshit. Are we talking about making lots and lots of money? If so, please for the love of god just say so.

Fame? Status?

bradleyjgon Claude Opus 5

I’m waiting for like GEICO’s app to significantly improve.

I’m not expecting Chrome to because it already had virtually unlimited resources devoted to it. On the other side I’m not expecting my local water district’s to any time soon because the people in charge don’t care even if it was significantly cheaper to improve.

But in the middle is something like GEICO and that’s where I expect improvements if this thing is real.

bradleyjgon Claude Opus 5

Let’s say somehow the politics lined up and you were given huge hiring budget for your team. You went out and recruited what seemed like great talent. Weekly standups make it seem like everyone is ramped up and firing on all cylinders.

It’s great, right? But you look at what your team has actually delivered since—-and it’s just not that much more than last year.

I think that’s where a lot of us are at the micro and macro level. It seems really great from the inside and outside but we are still waiting to see the dramatic change in actual concrete software output.

bradleyjgon Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

That exact dynamic—-sharply appreciating house price, falling interest rates, no prepayment penalty—-allowed them to use the homes as an infinite piggy bank. Very convenient.

bradleyjgon Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-Shiller_index#/media/File...

If you bought at exactly the right second of the crash, houses were where they were at the peak of the late 80s bubble.

bradleyjgon Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

Yes, the finger pointing can and does go in many directions. Meanwhile the observed pattern is the boomers (actual boomers) get the golden path and every other generation doesn’t. Maybe they were uniquely virtuous and wise.

Strongly doubt the xennials will be as rich in twenty five years as 70 year olds are now.

bradleyjgon Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise

> Someone in their 60s is supposed to be doing better than someone in their 20s.

That’s an incredibly new, and probably temporary, phenomenon.

Across the vast majority of space-time the non-working elderly are poorer than their still working children and rely on them.

As late as the Greatest Generation senior discounts weren’t a sick joke.

bradleyjgon AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

You can just not plant anything. It’s not required that every inch of desert is used for irrigated cultivation.

Alfalfa is the cleanest case of a crop that would not be planted nearly as much if western water law (prior appropriation) wasn’t so colossally stupid.