HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ericksoa

24 karma · joined October 21, 2008

submissionscomments
ericksoa··on Nvidia NemoClaw
I am just flattered that at 53, I am still early career!
ericksoa··on Video game union workers rally against $55B private acquisition of EA
This. Working at EA punching out the next version of Madden, featuring roster updates, UI changes, and tinkering with a few settings isn't exactly work designing the new Unreal engine.

Your average Java CRUDster could probably do a lot of that work. Gamedev isn't the black art it used to be.

ericksoa··on Video game union workers rally against $55B private acquisition of EA
Sometimes layoffs are designed to give air cover for execs that want to get rid of "networks of detractors" who are causing problems, like how in a game company there might be a network of influential luddites who oppose use of LLMs over ideological reasons, even if the use case is good.

IMO those are virtuous layoffs, sometimes you need to clear your company culture of troublemakers who are getting in the way of company strategy.

ericksoa··on The Tiny Teams Playbook
"software development is a team sport"

I have heard people state this like it is obviously true. Not so sure.

ericksoa··on "Fuck You" Companies
I tried my best to make a startup that was a "fuck you" to Workday (orgspace.io, RIP).

Unfortunately, HR execs said "fuck you" back in no uncertain terms.

ericksoa··on A critical look at MCP
You either do it, or someone wraps you with one using browser_use or similar.
ericksoa··on Jon Pretty wins in court against sexual harassment claims by Scala community
Have you seen the movie "mean girls"?

People of all genders do this all the time, group up and rat-fuck the reputation of someone they don't like for all sorts of reasons, not all of them particularly good.

Throw in a bit of bandwagoning during the height of #metoo when we decided that having a bad date where the wrong kind of wine was ordered with Asis Ansari or having a jokey boob photo from 30 years ago with Al Franken was somehow worthy of Thou Shalt Never Work Again, and I can totally understand how all this went down.

ericksoa··on The Tyranny of the Marginal User
100%. When I play video games, I am Marl. Not going into menus or whatever to set things up, just using it to specifically not use my brain.
ericksoa··on AI isn’t good enough
When I see VCs make this argument, all I hear is "oh shit, we're late to the party" and doing something like this as a desperate attempt to bring valuations down.
ericksoa··on NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
You know what is more controversial than letting robot cars drive around? Trying to make a new train line literally anywhere in the US.

You are better off buying a bunch of robot cars, tying them together with a rope, and starting a company to run hacker trains on city streets and charge money.

In fact, in SF, if the protestors were clever, they'd just get together tie a bunch of cars together and create their own train. What are they going to do, arrest you?

ericksoa··on NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
Charlottesville might have thoughts on this
ericksoa··on NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
By this logic, we should go back to manual deploys since CD lets... aghast... computers deploy our most important software to prod
ericksoa··on What I learned after managing a small team for 2 years
The guy seems pretty earnest about this, seems like it is literally his first blog post.

It would not shock me in the least if people work in an org where they say they are "going agile", takes them through training where some Scrum Salesman conflates agile with scrum, leading to observations like "agile doesn't deal with change fast enough"

Honestly, we need a new word for it at this point.

ericksoa··on ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K
This. I like a lot of the game, but something feels off with movement.
ericksoa··on Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out
Question: unless you are an anti-AI advocate, why does this matter? Why are we raising pitchforks over this? We routinely sign terms that allow product managers to analyze how we use a product and even use data for aggregation of trends.

Yes, an opt out would be nice, but what bad outcome for anyone personally comes of this?

ericksoa··on FCC fines robocaller a record $300M after blocking billions of their scam calls
This. 99/100 calls I get are someone trying to sell me something worthless.
ericksoa··on Show HN: I spent 2 years building a personal finance simulator
Biggest problem with the pricing is that you are selling an expensive tool to cheap bastards that tend to be in your ICP.

Idea: sell this with a course to idiots and call it "how to be nerd rich", and then create the OnlyFans of Finance by letting said idiots subscribe for 5 dollars a month + streaming fee to the kinds of nerds you are marketing this to now.

I offer you this amazing plan at a 0 basis point equity stake. Deal?

ericksoa··on Use GPT to gate your pull requests for security issues
More of an experiment, but thinking as the AI gets better, and assuming Open AI isn't reading things from the API itself, could be used to vet for security or give other kinds of stylistic feedback...

... once the AI gets better, might even offer some refactoring tips in its response.

ericksoa··on Ask HN: Why don't we pay stackoverflow or medium?
I'd pay for stackoverflow if it wasn't for the "but aktually, instead of $thingINeed, you should use my $shittyOpenSourceProjectWith5Downloads" low quality crap.

I pay for content where quality is high. Stackoverflow is hit or miss, Medium is mostly garbage. Substack hits well, I pay for a ton of those and prefer that authors get paid well to do what they do.

ericksoa··on How I Run a Company with ADHD
1.) Adderall. 2.) See 1.
ericksoa··on ThoughtWorks has been sold to private equity
Professional services isn't a complex business model. The likely outcome now is what it has always been:

- Do you bill? Cool. You're good - Do you sell? Cool. You're good

If you do neither of those things, you've likely been under pressure anyway, as the business model of PS companies is to minimize operations and reduce the ratio between ops and professional services on an ongoing basis.

New owners will not likely change that dynamic. Based on what is known, the new owners are buying for growth, which means you cut costs that should be cut and use the savings to fund initiatives that lead to growth, such as expanded offerings that allow you to reach new customers and grow the company faster.

ericksoa··on Jerry Brown strips cell phones from California state employees
Now if we could simultaneously make him governor of Illinois and do the same thing. Over here we are about to donate 2% of everyone's pay to one of the most corrupt state governments in the world, without any meaningful cuts at all.
ericksoa··on Lady Java Video Marks Exact Point Where Geek Culture Jumped The Shark
This makes me really want to make my daughter study to become an Oracle programmer (wpps, I mean Java programmer)
ericksoa··on ATT to NYC: No iPhone for you...
Someone should try to buy an equally expensive non-iPhone. If online fraud is the problem, it should apply to all expensive/high demand products, not just the iPhone.
ericksoa··on New Bailout Plan - $700B to go to Startups. YC on steroids.
True, but isn't the combination of money, IQ, and courage to take a risk the world's only known universal hammer?
ericksoa··on New Bailout Plan - $700B to go to Startups. YC on steroids.
So it is more of a scale issue then? I will admit, the 700B is arbitrary - an attempt to make it as inclusive as possible and match the magic 700B that is the number de jour. Perhaps you do 1/10th the numbers, do some of the things you talk about, and reach a similar result by funding the really good ideas to a greater degree - or spreading the program over a longer timescale.

The basic idea is to bridge the gap between fundable ideas and funding. There are a ton of people with ideas who are locked behind desks, but who see not a lot more left to lose.