HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

calciphus

1,257 karma · joined August 9, 2011

Sr Staff Product Manager
submissionscomments
calciphus··on Apple Pay Later: What Are the Crazy Ones Up To?
I'm not sure the requirement of "can purchase Apple products at retail" quite aligns with "expanding credit to the unbanked". Premium luxury goods as a barrier to entry (especially when one is ineligible for carrier subsidies because they are unbanked) is a pretty high bar to clear.
calciphus··on Backblaze Product and Pricing Updates
That's a complex question. Often for companies there's a "we are not cash flow positive by design as we are spending investor dollars to grow" vs "we are not profitable because the cost of serving our customers is more than they will pay"

This statement implies the former, not the latter.

calciphus··on Oldest Known Animation, a 5200 Year-Old Iranian Ceramic Vessel
A similar concept - cave paintings were possibly animated by the movement of fire as a light source:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ice-age-artist...

calciphus··on Planetary defense test deflected an asteroid but unleashed a boulder swarm
Humans are like mammalian cockroaches. Some will make it.
calciphus··on Ask HN: Stubhub buying their own tickets under fake names?
Many artists, venues, and ticketing companies prohibit transferring to resale sites but allow "fan to fan" transfers. You transfer the ticket to Stubhub via a reasonable but generic sounding email, then they transfer it to the final buyer later.

The domains help Stubhub obscure that they are involved

calciphus··on Sex workers worry that Threads could kill their business
> seem to want is being presented in-your-face at all crowded places

You have described every modern marketing and sales organization. Why is this industry any different than alcohol, fashion, vehicles, banking...

calciphus··on Targeted attack on our management with the Triangulation Trojan
Pricing in the exploit market is value based, not cost based.

You can sell an iOS exploit for more because the people you're targeting with it are generally wealthier.

calciphus··on Tone: Cross platform audio tagger and metadata editor
Check out Whisper, it is surprisingly good and several of the output formats include time codes, works with multiple languages.

https://github.com/openai/whisper

calciphus··on Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work
More useful == cheaper. Centralize your profits to a major metropolitan area (where your executives and maybe board live) then use global labor markets to suppress the wages of your employees.
calciphus··on Teacher failed kid for essay because an AI-detection tool flagged his work
Teachers are very good at spotting when a paper was not written by a student. Any student they've worked with and graded works from they can identify. When someone changes tone, pattern, word choice, and grammer all at once? It's usually not because of a flash of academic inspiration.

The problem is that accusing a student of cheating (especially in the US) comes with a risk of lawsuit by parents and being forced to "prove it". If it's not clear-cut plagerism but a new novel work, that claim doesn't hold up.

I think the future of this is milti-fold. Don't try and identify AI papers (as you say, a cat and mouse game), just try to identify if the author is the same author as previous works. Students over their academic careers produce many works, enough to identify them. Secondarily, emphasize more short form writing in class, where research is done ahead of time but papers are composed in real time. Last, especially for younger students, emphasize (and grade) the process, not the outcome as much. Show your sources, outline, etc long before you turn in a paper. The value of having ai write it drops if you have to show your work.

calciphus··on Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?
I have a small Bluetooth media control. Volume, play / pause, and track controls work even if I've not got the music app up, or if I need to pause something to hop on a call. Not having to find my music app because my wife calls me from the other room is really handy.
calciphus··on GM plans to phase out Apple CarPlay in EVs, with Google's help
Apple does restrict access to much of their platform for only Apple-based access. There's exactly one company stopping Google or anyone else from building a compatible car system that runs for both Android and ios, and that's Apple. The use of private APIs and preventing competitors from using them, to secure another market (car infotainment systems) certainly should run afoul of anticompetitive laws in spirit, even if it doesn't to the army of lobbyists and lawyers the most valuable company in the world can muster.

By comparison, nothing (not even Google) is stopping Apple from producing CarPlay for Android. All the APIs are there. They could even distribute it in the Play store.

Compare the PhoneLink capabilities between iPhone and Android, vs the macOS integration Apple offers iOS.

calciphus··on Microsoft Designer
Wait I'm genuinely curious: what's wrong with Calculator?
calciphus··on Cabel Sasser: Untitled Goose Game rejected from the Mac App Store twice
Only because Mac is the only place in the Apple ecosystem you still own your device. Everywhere else it would be "our loss".
calciphus··on SEC Charges Terraform and CEO Do Kwon with Defrauding Investors InCrypto Schemes
Thank you, I was deeply confused for a moment.

I almost had to click through to the article!

calciphus··on Electrify America “fries” EVs at charging stations
Turn signals, windshield wipers, media controls, cruise control, follow distance...all have physical controls.

Lots of other weird stuff is touch screen only, like re-aiming the A/C vents or taking the headlights off of auto-mode, but the main stuff does.

calciphus··on Coinbase’s chief product officer will leave with a $105M payday
He joined around a year ago, it is now worth 72% less than when he joined.

Possibly part of the reason to depart? A $70M comp cut and little hope of it recovering seems a good reason

calciphus··on Ask HN: What RSS Reader do you use in 2022?
I don't know about ios, but on Android there's a program called "Palabre" that lets you log into feedly. I like the interface, precache + readability features much more.
calciphus··on Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims
I pay for a lifetime license on adguard, on Android. It is vanishing rare to see ads and the audit logs show how often and which apps are having their telemetry and other trackers blocked. It blocks a lot of Google stuff.

That's the reason I stay with android. The Apple version of the app (which has to come through the app store) is not allowed to block anything for Apple apps or services. This they exempt themselves from user control.

calciphus··on Mercedes locks faster acceleration behind a $1,200 annual paywall
It is a one-time $2000 upgrade on my car. Dunno about others, but the subscription being a "for the life of the vehicle" purchase seems like the lousy part of this deal.
calciphus··on Tesla Is Recalling 40k Cars in Its 17th Recall of the Year
My experience in getting a Tesla repair vs. getting a Honda recall repair:

Tesla: made an appointment on the app at a time that worked for me (about a week out). Drove in, parked the car, walked away in under 5 minutes. App notifies me I've got a $100 per ride Uber credit to get back to work/home. Repair is completed in about 5 hours, I get a call and notification that the work is done.

Honda: airbag recall - the dealership can't tell me when it'll be finished, offers to buy my car because "it's not safe anymore anyways", high pressure sales tactics while I wait to drop off / sign in. Repair takes two days, no loaner vehicle or drop-off shuttle. Three weeks after I pick up my car the airbag light starts flashing intermittently. I bring the car back, they tell me it'll be $2300 to "investigate" and could take a few days. If they find it was due to the recall repair work I might not be charged, but if there's any hint it was something else I'll need to pay for that repair (in addition to the investigation).

calciphus··on Ask HN: Why are there not more Apple-quality products?
It's why you can't install the same app that worked on your iPhone 8 when you bought it, today. It's the reason you can't install one that worked two years ago unless the developer is constantly keeping up with Apple's mercurial and inscrutable os-level API changes. Apple breaks APIs regularly and you're left hoping a dev wants to do free work to keep it working for people who already bought it.

Edit: clarity

calciphus··on iPhone 14 Pro comes with dual-frequency GPS
It's not just the pixel 6, it goes clear back to the pixel 4, galaxy s20, and many more.

A totally excellent list of supported and tested devices is at the latter part of this article.

https://barbeau.medium.com/tl-dr-dual-frequency-gnss-on-andr...

calciphus··on An autonomous car in SF blocked a fire truck responding to an emergency
Some really fascinating studies have shown that your perception of time doesn't actually slow down in moments of heightened intensity, however the detail of the memory (when reflected on later) is higher than for a non-traumatic experience.

An interesting summary of how they studied this if you're curious:

https://www.livescience.com/2117-time-slow-emergencies.html

calciphus··on Poll: Are you going to leave Twitter after Musk's acquisition?
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Musk himself claims that the only curtailment is "what is prohibited by law". This isn't some tweet dragged from his history, either. It's from two days ago, and is on this topic.

calciphus··on Poll: Are you going to leave Twitter after Musk's acquisition?
The challenge seems to be that 1-3 in your list are highly subjective.

1. Requires a common definition of spamming. If a bot is posting headlines for the NYT on their official account is that spam? A person really eagerly replying to everyone about their favorite band? Someone trying really hard to sell you their diet pills? Musk seems to think all these are equally OK (except maybe the nyt bot).

2. Musk has been sanctioned by the SEC for illegal stock manipulation based on his tweets. He argues he should be able to. Who decides?

3. What about calling a British citizen a pedofile because you're angry he didn't like your idea? In the UK that's a crime (libel laws are different than the US, and I'm certainly no expert) but simply hiding it to UK citizens doesn't actually comply with the laws. Jurisdiction isn't clear cut.

The examples I gave are reasons why a self-described "free speech absolutist" probably isn't going to be adequately equipped to tackle these issues.

Content moderation at scale - leaving out political content or opinions - requires proactive decisions that are often murky at best. And many can have consequences for the platform, especially with both sides of the American political system attacking Section 230 and seeking to hold those platforms responsible for the content of their users.

calciphus··on Poll: Are you going to leave Twitter after Musk's acquisition?
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/15/elon-musk-demonstrates-h...

Namely I think he vastly underestimates how complex content moderation at scale is.

calciphus··on Apple’s Universal Control
Shared clipboard in an age of 2FA is amazing.

For the windows and Android users (of which I am one), the first party "your phone" app in windows 10/11 gives you this along with a lot of other amazing features (running your phone apps on desktop, access to photos and sms, notifications, calling and answering through your computer).

calciphus··on Supreme Court will decide whether web designer has right to turn away gay couple
This case like many others isn't about private individuals - it's about a business (even a business of one) - whereby someone receives all manner of structure supported by the institutions around them in return for abiding by the laws that bind such entities.

Declaring oneself a business comes with protections for the individual in exchange for agreeing to serve society at large. Refusing to do so is failing to uphold the obligations one agreed to.

calciphus··on Ask HN: New web service idea that you would pay for?
I'm curious about this. What if you could pay for a stack overflow bounty? I'm sure there's folks who would happily earn a side hustle answering questions there at $50-$100/ea
← PreviousPage 3 of 16Next →