Hacker News Reader

csbrookson Star Citizen Raised $148M from Fans, and Now It’s Raising Concerns

I don't think that's totally accurate. That $140M could be considered preorders, basically.

csbrookson Remote Work Terminology – what you should know

Reminds me of the term Euphemism Treadmill: http://www.odlt.org/ballast/euphemism_treadmill.html

csbrookson Peter Thiel Insider Picked to Oversee Trump’s Defense Department Transition

Truly an amazing million dollar investment on Thiel's part. The Trump presidency is his next unicorn.

Looking forward to America becoming a kleptocracy just like Putin's Russia, with Thiel and friends leading the charge.

csbrookson Facebook's Zuckerberg discloses steps to fight fake news

There is some repercussion: if you have any sense at all, when someone on your feed consistently keeps sharing this garbage, you stop paying any attention to what they share.

csbrookson The Few Things I Own

"Here is a list of the 10 thoughts I kept in my head, after throwing all the others out."

csbrookson Microsoft and Bank of America collaborate with Azure Blockchain as a Service

When they rolled out ECoin in Mr Robot, I thought it was a stretch...

csbrookson The most notable luminaries of our time are wrong to fear AI

To me, it seems to refute the argument in the article: that AI has to have some kind of "will" in order to be dangerous. Because AI doesn't "desire" to take over the world, it can't harm us. I believe The paperclip example shows that isn't the case.

csbrookson The most notable luminaries of our time are wrong to fear AI

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

"...a paperclip maximizer is an artificial general intelligence (AGI) whose goal is to maximize the number of paperclips in its collection... It would innovate better and better techniques to maximize the number of paperclips. At some point, it might convert most of the matter in the solar system into paperclips."

Also:

"Some goals apparently serve as a proxy or measure of human welfare, so that maximizing towards these goals seems to also lead to benefit for humanity. Yet even these would produce similar outcomes unless the full complement of human values is the goal. For example, an AGI whose terminal value is to increase the number of smiles, as a proxy for human happiness, could work towards that goal by reconfiguring all human faces to produce smiles, or tiling the solar system with smiley faces (Yudkowsky 2008)."

csbrookson What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?

Anecdote: My brother-in-law has worked at the same factory for 20 years now. Their efficiency has probably increased 10x in that time. They are producing more than they used to, with a lot less workers.

csbrookson Lyft and Uber to Halt Operations in Austin After Voters Reject Proposal

When you say you "work on the Prop 1 campaign", do you mean you were paid, or volunteered?

Maybe "every petition is backed by money", but never this much, or so blatantly from a single source. That's what bothered me about it. That, and the dishonest way some ads spun it so that it looked like Prop 1 was actually something you should vote for if you WANT more regulation for Uber and Lyft. Yuck.

csbrookson Lyft and Uber to Halt Operations in Austin After Voters Reject Proposal

They basically turned it into "here's the legislation we wrote, if you don't pass it, we're leaving immediately", and then spammed everyone with text messages, INCREDIBLE amounts of junk mail, and door-to-door canvasing. They turned a lot of people off, big time. (Where's the story about that?)

I'm really hopeful some competitor can show up and eat their lunch, before they come slinking back. The way they behaved turned me from a fan into someone who actively distrusts them.

csbrookson Kik's side of yesterday's story

I think hearing from a reasonable person is better than just getting a Cease & Desist letter.

csbrookson Cancer-fighting viruses win approval

Reminds me of the start of the movie I am Legend...

csbrookson The TV antenna is making a comeback

This is a joke, right? :)

Commercials, same as radio.

csbrookson You don’t have what it takes

"Right now, you’re one of three people at a startup when you should be one of 200 people at a mid-sized company"

I think this assumes that people are basically static, with a bunch of fixed personality traits that define them for life. I don't think that's true.

And there's a whole lot of steps between 3-person startup and 200-person company. No need to jump to extremes.

csbrookson Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)

It feels like since we evolved under conditions of sleeping for a third of our lives, there are probably lots of other biological mechanisms that depend on sleep happening to work.

csbrookson Show HN: A Hand-Drawn QR Code Alternative

All the snarky and negative comments on anything that gets created here is really turning me off. Been using HN for a long time, but it might be time to move on.

csbrookson How Primedice was exploited for $1M in Bitcoin

I think they just mean, if you have 10,000 customers, it's not surprising if someone hits the 1 in 10,000 odds. You could say that person was "lucky", though they have no greater chance than anyone else of hitting those odds again.

csbrookson “We got geeks”: Inside Google's ugly war against the homeless in LA

This is sickening. Google's private security has no right to tell anyone what to do on a public sidewalk.

csbrookson Why are American schools slowing down so many bright children?

Do you have any evidence that this is the case, besides your gut feeling?

I'm a gen-X'er, and people used to say this about us. But I don't think it was ever really true; every generation just wants to believe the next generation has it easy, for some reason.

csbrookson What Dads' Play Does for Kids

I have three sons. Don't expect to keep them out of the emergency room forever, if you haven't been there already. :)

csbrookson NSA whistleblower warns of surveillance state

"Binney doesn’t see much distinction between the Bush and Obama administrations when it comes to intelligence policy."

This has been such a disappointment for me. I had such high hopes for Obama. :(

csbrookson Goodbye Marco

Interesting point.

I wonder if one reason for the difference in language is that chemotherapy is so brutal that it ends up feeling like a "battle". Plus maybe that there's a chance of "winning", which isn't there with Alzheimer's or with ALS.

(I'm not justifying the correctness of the word, just speculating on the cause.)

csbrookson Facebook raises minimum pay for contractors to $15 per hour

Good for them! I like it.

csbrookson Algolia (YC W14) raises a $18.3M Series A

I love Algolia. Used it as a core part of a project I worked on. Very slick.

csbrookson Snowden Sees Some Victories, from a Distance

Are you holding Snowden responsible for the New York Times' failure to properly redact documents?

csbrookson Ask HN: Am I missing out by not being in sillicon valley?

I've been in Austin for 8 years or so. Like it a lot. Plenty of tech companies and jobs.

csbrookson A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

This part struck home to me:

'Many developers who try to achieve the retro aesthetic overlook how much magnification is going on, resulting in not one, but several different resolutions at once. Not only can this be unsightly, but it’s “showing its strings,”which defeats the purpose of limiting your resolution in the first place.'

For some reason I find that really jarring.

csbrookson Warrantless airport seizure of laptop “cannot be justified,” judge rules

If that was the absolute top priority of this country, what would America look like?

csbrookson Warrantless airport seizure of laptop “cannot be justified,” judge rules

Yes, invading everyone's privacy and illegally searching them will catch more bad guys. I don't think anyone's arguing it won't. The point is, it's not worth the loss of freedom and privacy.

The purpose of America is not to make cops' jobs as easy as possible.