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mtgentry

965 karma · joined May 13, 2011

http://masongentry.com
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mtgentry··on More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math
This may be true but nobody trusts your employer. The shadiest drips downward too, with the mob-like way they treated Dr. Buckmaster.
mtgentry··on Ask HN: Burned out from tech, what else is there?
I'm transitioning to being a carpenter of sorts. I think it has a lot in common with design/dev. My dad is a contractor, he's lousy at marketing but manages to stay busy. He likes to say "All I do is pick up the phone when people call, and it's more than my competition does".
mtgentry··on Berkshire Hathaway Announces Leadership Appointments [pdf]
In a world of Chamaths, be a Buffet
mtgentry··on AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B
Notion is more than I need. 99% of the time I just need to write something down for later.
mtgentry··on AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B
As an Evernote user, Bending Spoons has been iterating fast over the past couple years to improve the product. It’s much better than it used to be.
mtgentry··on Engineer restores pay phones for free public use
I usually agree, but it's fairly high up, the bulb is probably non standard, and it's not clear how to get the top off. Just slightly more work than I'm willing to put in.
mtgentry··on Engineer restores pay phones for free public use
There’s probably a vast difference btwn what the state says it costs the maintain them, and what it costs this guy. Really wish there were more opportunities for the public to do stuff like this. There’s been a light out in the alley near me for years and the city won’t fix it. I’d happily do it myself if it was allowed.
mtgentry··on New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer
Solve this problem and LA traffic will get much better
mtgentry··on Trump's Tariffs Wipe Out over $6T on Wall Street in Epic Two-Day Rout
Yep, he’s doing to other countries what he’s done to contractors, plumbers, and other tradesmen for years.
mtgentry··on A filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark's self-image
One nice thing about being on the spectrum is that you can spot morally sketchy situations more clearly—or at least more clearly than most normies. I once walked out of a pitch meeting where we were trying to land a client that completely clashed with a solid, well-paying client we already had. I couldn’t believe no one else saw the huge conflict of interest. No one batted an eyelash.
mtgentry··on Ask HN: Small Ideas vs. Big Ideas?
Hit a single first before trying for a home run.
mtgentry··on Oklch in CSS: why we moved from RGB and HSL (2024)
The gamut is much wider
mtgentry··on Bacteria (and their metabolites) and depression
Yeah might be worth regularly eating foods like kimchee or kefir. Or high quality yogurt. It seems to help with my psoriasis which is related to inflammation.
mtgentry··on I made $100K from a dick joke
Last year, I accidentally canceled a return request after realizing I was being scammed by the seller. eBay refused to refund my money because the request had been canceled, even though the return address provided by the seller was fake. I wrote letters to two state consumer protection agencies and that worked. I eventually got my money back.
mtgentry··on Don't Get Distracted (2017)
It’s wild how little The-Bad-Thing even gets mentioned in work settings, if at all.
mtgentry··on Computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku
What are the licensing implications of this? If I’m Google, I’d be pissed that my software is being used without a human there looking at the ads.
mtgentry··on FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions
Reminds me of text messages from the DNC. I gave my phone number to Obama in ‘08 and have been endlessly pestered ever since.
mtgentry··on I mapped almost every USA traffic death in the 21st century
I live in Los Angeles, and anytime there’s a hit and run on the news, they nearly always use footage OF the footage. That is, the news cameraman will simply film the screen of the computer or TV playing back the footage. It drives me crazy that they never use the source material.
mtgentry··on One in four US households likely exceed new soil lead guidance levels
My backyard was full of broken glass, metal, and plastic, buried about a foot deep. The previous owners had buried lots of trash in random holes they dug all over the yard. I spent the past few months sifting it all out and putting back the “good” soil. Now, I wonder if I should have just thrown it all away.
mtgentry··on Show HN: A free site to explore and discover 6k plants
Would be cool to sort by ‘community’ too. If you get really deep into native planting, folks recommend you get plants native to your geographic area. California has lots of these communities for example: https://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/communities
mtgentry··on Show HN: A free site to explore and discover 6k plants
Yeah I’d love this too. I live in SoCal and I’m doing my yard with native plants. Some things I’m having trouble finding: 1) plants that bloom in seasons other than spring 2) plants that aren’t native but can work in my climate 3) plants that will do ok in clay soil 4) plants with a small footprint for a small yard. AI has helped a lot but it would still be helpful to have filters like these.
mtgentry··on Ask HN: I am the software guy and marketing is hell for me
Checkout 30X500
mtgentry··on Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states
I second this, FreeTaxUSA is great.
mtgentry··on Using ChatGPT to fix annoying Safari UI issue on macOS
Yeah if ChatGPT helps me solve a hard problem I always tell it thanks.
mtgentry··on Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
To get a sense of how gorgeous Riso prints are, check this out: https://youtu.be/1rfwKuXIhcE?si=oQdBpkCFUs7aSaCH
mtgentry··on Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]
Scott E Page - The Model thinker. He talks about school size rather than class size, my mistake. He says “Failure to take sample size into account and inferring causality from outliers can lead to incorrect policy actions. For this reason, Howard Wainer refers to the formula for the standard deviation of the mean the “most dangerous equation in the world.” For example, in the 1990s the Gates Foundation and other nonprofits advocated breaking up schools into smaller schools based on evidence that the best schools were small. To see the flawed reasoning, imagine that schools come in two sizes—small schools with 100 students and large schools with 1,600 students—and that student scores at both types of schools are drawn from the same distribution with a mean score of 100 and a standard deviation of 80. At small schools, the standard deviation of the mean equals 8 (the standard deviation of the student scores, 80, divided by 10, the square root of the number of students). At large schools, the standard deviation of the mean equals 2. If we assign the label “high-performing” to schools with means above 110 and the label “exceptional” to schools with means above 120, then only small schools will meet either threshold. For the small schools, an average score of 110 is 1.25 standard deviations above the mean; such events occur about 10% of the time. A mean score of 120 is 2.5 standard deviations above the mean; an event of that size should occur about once in 150 schools. When we do these same calculations for large schools, we find that the “high-performing” threshold lies five standard deviations above the mean and the “exceptional” threshold lies ten standard deviations above the mean. Such events would, in practice, never occur. Thus, the fact that the very best schools are small is not evidence that smaller schools perform better. The very best schools will be small even if size has no effect solely because of the square root rules.”
mtgentry··on Sal Khan: How AI could save (not destroy) education [video]
The “small classes are better” idea has been disproven. You may be right about one-on-one tutoring though.
mtgentry··on How Thomas Edison Tricked the Press into Believing He’d Invented the Light Bulb
Firstly, this is an opinion piece not an article. Secondly, I've never encountered such an inadequate summation of such a notable accomplishment.

If the author holds such admiration for earlier forms of flight, I'd be interested to know how many times he's traveled in a hot air balloon relative to airplane flights.

mtgentry··on Perils of not being attractive or athletic in middle school
Is being interested in computers in middle school still seen as uncool, given how mainstream tech has become?
mtgentry··on SEC asked Coinbase to halt trading in everything except bitcoin, CEO says
Hate to take the SEC’s side, but once Coinbase started trading DOGE, they lost the moral high ground.
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