Hacker News Reader

c0mon Prediction markets can tell the future. Why is the US so afraid of them?

I would like to test whether prediction markets are worse than they were during zero-interest land. The incentive to create sophisticated models to get low percentage points of edge is much lower today than it was before. Why risk time and effort trying to predict the 2024 election for a few pp of edge when you can… just buy a 1y tbill instead? Sure there are probably better ways to express an opinion on these types of things too. Options that favour a team red or team blue win come to mind, but no matter what you’re still competing with 5% yield.

I think this is solvable by having some kind of betting token that itself accrues interest over time to reduce the opportunity cost but if regulators already don’t like prediction markets boy they especially wouldn’t like that.

c0mon “Our paying customers need X, when will you fix it?”

Just as calling the maintainer's offer extortion is not correct, I think it's also to call the email a threat is not correct. It's at worst entitled and slightly aggressive in the part that we saw.

It's pretty shocking that someone in the industry so long thinks that OSS maintainers owe him anything though, or that he didn't think to simply fork his own version - he must know this is an option. He's probably read the MIT license at some point in his career - has he never stopped to think about what to provide something 'as-is' means? His position suggests that he has the resources available to do a lot of things that were far less embarrassing than asking someone who owes him nothing to make his job easier.

c0mon “Our paying customers need X, when will you fix it?”

From the IBM employee's perspective it should seem reasonable that if he's asking for specifics that take time to figure out and for answers to questions while not contributing anything to the project, that he should pay for those answers in a timely fashion for his benefit. He's treating the Github like a support page so I don't see anything wrong with the maintainer offering a support contract in response to that. It would be beneficial to both parties.

If the maintainer said "I'm not releasing this until you grant me a support contract", maybe that would be extortion. Until then, he's simply getting the service he pays for.

c0mon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2023)

I've spent the last two years very successfully trading and I am interested in a career where I need to think like this. I've written a comprehensive blog on what I did in lieu of a CV, as it's more interesting and tells you more about who I am and how I think.

I'm expanding my skillset from just programming and trading to include generative AI, currently making a mentoring companion to language learning. I've got strong soft skills from years working in care. I'm seeking junior trading roles or internships, or a similar career where risk is thought about a lot.

  Location: Ireland
  Remote: No preference
  Willing to relocate: Anywhere in the world, UK + Irish citizenship
  Technologies: Python w/ Jupyter notebooks and dataviz libraries, ChatGPT, C#
  Résumé/CV: https://medium.com/@c0m/learning-the-business-of-risk-a1d69dda915a
  Email: hn [AT] omaolain [DOT] com

c0mon [dead]

Docket if you want to see what the lawyer comes up with after the deadline passes https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63107798/mata-v-avianca...

c0mon 'Mississippi miracle': Kids' reading scores have soared in Deep South states

This is a centuries-long debate with both of the two methods I mentioned being centuries old. Who are these grifters you are talking about? What is this new style you are talking about?

This comment reads like ChatGPT being asked to be contrarian for contrarian's sake.

c0mon Ozempic drug supresses desire to smoke, drink and more?

Why would a $1k/month drug increase costs more compared to the status quo of expensive bariatric surgeries and complicated heart failure/joint issues/osteoarthritis/sleep apnea etc. cases that arise from obesity? Massively reducing obesity rates seems like a good thing from the POV of an insurer.

c0mon AI ‘Cheating’ Is More Bewildering Than Professors Imagined

- Prewrite essay with ChatGPT

- Spend 15 minutes writing an essay structure in Google Docs (with the essay you already have, also maybe this step could be done for you by ChatGPT)

- Gradually rewrite the essay you've already got in front of you, which can look like a normal writing process

Congratulations, you have now not only got a legit looking edit history, but also you've rewritten what ChatGPT spat out, thwarting other potential methods of detection.

c0mon US Senator Uses ChatGPT for Opening Remarks at a Hearing on AI

Sean Hannity also promised the same in 2009, though is yet to follow through with it. I wonder why.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hannity-offers-to-be-wate_n_1...

c0mon JPMorgan Chase and Co tracks employees to dystopian extents

Monitoring of workplace comms is fine and legal, ditto for access logs; (taking this post at face value) monitoring of facial expressions, undisclosed webcam and microphone monitoring at home, abusing access to workers’ personal phones, and feeding all this in to a black box for a score that your manager basically pinky swears to not use as part of your review is not okay.

c0mon Asus UK PR believes it is ‘legal to buy positive reviews’

I suspect the CSA’s new ‘rip-off tip-off’ campaign would be interested in this!

https://ripoff-tipoff.campaign.gov.uk/

c0mon Companies hide negative news with unrelated press releases alongside SEC filings

All politicians and companies do this type of thing. Here's [1] a particularly egregious example from 9/11, where a UK government advisor sent out a memo at advising "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury".

Judging from the tone, the writer was elated. She sent the email shortly after the second plane hit.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/oct/09/uk.past

c0mon The core problem with hamburger menus

Wow, I didn't realise this was a risk picking up steam. Can only imagine how frustrating the internet was for screen reader users in 2020, which probably spurred this campaign on.

Info for the underinformed: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-...

https://www.whoisaccessible.com/guidelines/largest-web-acces...

c0mon A Michigan school district has banned students from carrying backpacks

It's probably also the mental health [1], less intimacy with their peers (imo reflected in [2] teen sex plummeting), less face time with peers in general in part due to increased homework loads (if you went to school in the 90s, your kid is prob doing 2x the hw you did) [3] which is of dubious effectiveness anyway [4].

I'm not saying it's not the guns. But I am saying that the US is the only developed country with the problem on this scale and it's a probably a far deeper cultural issue than just access to weaponry.

Forcing students to wear clear bags is ridiculous security theatre to the particular detriment of students with needs from (possibly undiagnosed) scoliosis etc. Thank God that there are no winter coats which could easily hide a pistol and several mags or a knife! All this policy achieves is scaring people.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/amer...

2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/04/28/teenag...

3: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/20/the-way-u...

4: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/homewo...

c0mon Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

Totally agree so I installed SwiftKey. It worked great for years and I’ve been super happy! Then in the last year, SwiftKey has been randomly crashing so while I type I swap between the SwiftKey and normal keyboard unwillingly several times per message. The built-in keyboard seems absolutely determined to believe that the word 'fuck' does not exist.

c0mon UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

It’s concerning to think of some sort of major constitutional crisis taking place during wartime due to disagreement between PM and King. I’m a little baffled that this has never been framed as a national security issue, at least it hasn’t been a popular narrative in my lifetime.

At the same time, whatever government opens that particular Pandora’s box is in for a hell of a ride, so I understand why.

I'm obviously an abolitionist but I would be much less worried about this if the powers matched the role. I'm sure HN could empathise better than most websites that giving a supposed read-only user unused, powerful permissions is probably not the best idea.

c0mon UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

> The [monarch] doesn’t really have any power in practice

Entirely untrue. The monarch has a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. There have been many cases of the Queen getting carveouts, influencing laws, and vetting bills. There is no law forbidding the monarch from not granting Royal Assent. This notion that the British monarch has no power is an absolute farce.

There’s also the whole concept of King’s Consent, wherein the King gets to vet every single bill for affect the crown's own prerogatives or interests, and negotiate secretly with the government to change the contents of that bill. The Guardian articles detail this process as well. If you seriously believe the King has no power in practice I have a bridge to sell you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Consent

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-l...

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbied-fo...

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/queen-secretly-l...

https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jul/28/revealed-queen-v...

c0mon Git bundles of Eaglercraft repositories disabled due to DMCA takedown

If you have a bad lock on your door, is it still criminal if I bypass it with lockpicking tools and distribute them, telling everyone how to exploit your specific lock? FWIW I disagree with anti-circumvention laws as they exist in the DMCA, but it seems like a straightforward passage to interpret.

The devil’s advocate argument that I can come up with for it is that it allows developers incapable of adding sufficient protection to have their work have protection of the law, rather than code.

c0mon Tesla tries to get owners to give up ‘unlimited free Supercharging for life’

Negative spin? The editorialising of it is reasonably nuanced, even going so far as to point out that customers “[might not] have to trade in [their] older Model S or Model X vehicle when taking this offer”, and calling the offer ‘interesting’.

Really hard to see this as anything other than at worst neutral.

c0mon Nvidia RTX Remix Runtime Open Source Available Now

Hell, even CSGO is running on DX9.

c0mon Suing to protect right of incarcerated people to receive physical mail

Are you confusing the term 'prisoner' with 'criminal'? Prisoner is used to refer to people waiting for trial frequently, and dictionaries seem to support this definition.

c0mon Show HN: Using GPT-3 and Whisper to save doctors’ time

I trust a scribe because they are a person with years of specialised training and experience who can be held accountable.

> in any case, HIPAA will protect you

It protects you insofar as it disincentives honest actors from doing sketchy things with your data. It's punishment for orgs, not protection for patients, like how laws against murder punishes the murderer rather than protecting the victim.

The best thing a patient can do to protect their privacy is to be actively avoid of medical practitioners that, for example, use tools like this which send your private medical consultation transcripts to God-knows-where.

c0mon Why did 250k Britons die sooner than expected?

Where injuries are, to use a morbid phrase, ‘incompatible with life’, a paramedic can declare them dead, but a doctor needs to issue the certificate with the cause of death.

c0mon ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks

Neither is Wikipedia. While some vandalism might be obvious, more nefarious edits might not be. It's still an extremely useful tool.

c0mon Kickstarter shuts down campaign for Unstable Diffusion amid changing guidelines

> Using a telephoto to peer into someones window is also illegal as they typically have an expectation of privacy.

In the US, in NY at least, they do not. A case about exactly this (telephoto lens photography through someone else's window, later displayed as art) didn't survive a motion to dismiss. This was upheld on appeal. Foster v Svenson (2015).

c0mon Stanford's “Elimination of Harmful Language” Initiative

In America, barely any (2%) of the Latino population identify with it, yet it gets pushed anyway. In fact, 40% are actively bothered by it. Forcing use of it is such a bizarre hill to die on.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017d-81be-dee4-a5ff-efbe7...

c0mon Twitter applies 7-day suspension to half a dozen journalists

https://xkcd.com/1357/

I wonder if the people who thought this xkcd was the ultimate rebuttal against those who think that these platforms should be more neutral are rethinking their stance on having a few very wealthy, very powerful people control major speech dissemination platforms.

c0mon SEC Charges Samuel Bankman-Fried with Defrauding Investors in FTX [pdf]

The SEC's complaint. It's a brutal read if you're Sam:

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2022/comp-pr2022-2...

c0mon Binance temporarily suspends USDC withdrawals

They automatically convert most stablecoins (though very notably not Tether) into BUSD upon depositing. Then if you withdraw some USDP/TUSD/USDC/maybe some others I'm not remembering, they'll subtract it from your BUSD balance.

FTX did something similar, though they just auto-converted them to and from fiat USD (again, notably, not applying this policy to Tether).

c0mon Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

Maybe this will be fine when the technology is there, but it's very obvious that doing this change today -- especially when it's being lobbied to be applied to cargo planes first (historically much older former passenger planes w/o modern creature comforts) -- is going only going to increase deaths by pilot error.