HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sershe

902 karma · joined April 23, 2018

I hate collectivism and javascript. Also, most of my comments are negative because I lurk for tech news; when I get sucked into political stuff and I agree with someone, I just nod silently.
submissionscomments
sershe··on Police are using AI to pull over drivers for 'suspicious' behavior
I just disconnected the antenna on my Chevy bolt and terminated it. Much more reliable :)

Although for me the concern is insurance getting data... My rate is so low based on whatever they have now, that I definitely don't see it going any lower :) perhaps I'd give them data if it was high.

sershe··on Documents add to evidence in climate deception case against ExxonMobil
Why would anyone go to jail? I know eating beef is bad for the environment and I eat beef. I wouldn't even mind if there was an externality tax I had to pay, but I don't see why anyone should be obligated to take into account every possible indirect harm their action might cause that is not regulated. Did Chevron break any specific existing rules?

Somebody could decide retroactively that you circling a parking lot to find a better spot knowing you release CO2 was unjustified and you need to be punished. These lawsuits are exactly that - arbitrary petsonalistic extortion.

sershe··on How to Build Wealth as a Career Person
This sounds too gimmicky and motivational. You need to be good at something that pays. I am not sure you need to be a cheetah specifically. Then you need to spend less than you make. I feel like this style of article is actually not conducive to that. Spending less is usually not flashy.

Basically you would do what FIRE people do, except you won't quit if your goal is wealth. In fact fire forums occasionally get a post like "hey I'm 61 I have 10m do you think I can retire?"

sershe··on Vibecoding isn't as fun as writing code by hand
vibe coding for personal projects is a power tool. If I'm creating a 4x game for fun, id like to write core logic myself, but figuring out why drop-down lists stopped opening after a unity upgrade or why the animation is glitching sometimes is something ai can do.

For work projects, if fun was the goal you wouldn't be paid to do it :)

sershe··on Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'
Ah, so the camera reporting crime in realtime is ok? Or since I should be able to tell a chasing police officer "I saw him run that way!" a camera reporting suspects movement is also ok.
sershe··on Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'
"Potential" threat? This applies symmetrically. Hundreds of millions of people are "potential" victims of crime, and privacy advocates can only provide a few dozen anecdotes, most of them less impactful than someone stealing your sandwich.

Somehow matters of degree only apply to safety (and my liberty to film whatever I want in public), but they don't apply to privacy, that's absolute.

sershe··on Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'
What if I'm sitting on my porch and waiting for the crime to be committed?

Private doorbell cameras (and most flock cameras for that matter) point at mostly, or entirely, public space. Or in case of the former also my own property.

Frankly if I sit on my porch and see thru the window across that my neighbor is beating his wife, should I need a warrant to report it? That sounds ludicrous to me.

sershe··on Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'
One thing to remember is that for most people, safety at some level of disorder becomes an overriding concern, with hardly any regard for liberty, fairness, prosperity or anything. This is how people elect Bukele, Duterte, or even to an extent Putin. Heck Seattle once voted for a Republican prosecutor, even though disorder in Seattle is nowhere near overwhelming.

The USA is right now in an equilibrium where crime is relatively low. Only a few years ago, we saw that it can... fluctuate. I grew up in Russia in the 90ies so let's put it like that, I would already be open to all kinds of ways to fight crime, if I were in a different one. Most people won't go quite as far as me, but after a couple years in a different equilibrium, even some of the ardent privacy fighters will start coming around, especially if it affects them personally. At El Salvador level of disorder, apparently "put everyone with a tattoo in cages" starts to sound like a great plan to most people.

Now consider how Flock affects this equilibrium. What is the realistic, actual risk to non-criminals from the government? UK has mass surveillance, I mean it's not ideal, but how much of a dystopia is it? And the UK, as far as I understand, doesn't have nearly as many existing legal protections, nor does it have the culture of flipping the government a bird (consider e.g. covid lockdown compliance and enforcement).

On the other hand, to me it appears that surveillance is a relatively cheap and effective way to prevent crime. Aside from being good, that also reduces demand for other solutions that have been tried around the world, and the kinds of candidates who would run on crime/disorder agenda.

sershe··on Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'
Do you have statistics for both? To me, it looks like the reduction of crime is backed by some tentative numbers, whereas even organizations explicitly dedicated to finding violations of privacy report a a small collection of anecdotes.

Not to mention that as far as I am concerned, even someone e.g. breaking into a house - not speaking of violent crime - is far more damaging and traumatizing than some random cop looking up his exes license plate and doing nothing with it. Even if the numbers of instances were comparable.

sershe··on Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'
Why not? If I see a crime being committed, should I be allowed to report it to police without a warrant? There's no difference with my private camera, it's even better cause the barrier for false/mistaken reporting is higher.
sershe··on Let's make quality the norm again
As someone doing at least 2 10-14 hour flights per year, sometimes more, I disagree. I am also quite tall. Premium economy (or, better, exit row) is a bare minimum :)
sershe··on Show HN: Share your AI Setup, Learn from others
Something is busted with the search. I tried "Godot" and "Unity" and top results for either do not mention Godot or Unity.

Thanks for the site though, still interesting see what others are using. I still prefer to code review manually, from one agent at a time :)

sershe··on DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why
I was just ordering some food on Uber eats and noticed that my bill for 50 bucks of food came to $75 or something. So I decided it was wasteful and I'll drive and pick it up myself. I wasted half an hour of my life and driving at rush hour was also stressful. That wouldn't be worth it for 25 bucks but it turned out Uber somehow has a lower price than in person so that brought it down to 21 and then in the restaurant despite it being a counter place with no sitting they pressure you to tip way more than Uber app and I kind of autoclicked it, so my savings are down to like 10 bucks for 30 minutes of stressful driving and waiting in line.

I think the delivery charge is totally worth it, especially if you order multiple meals and make any amount of money at your job. You're just paying for convenience and I'm not convinced you're getting ripped off at all. Having some dude drive around town with your burger is expensive. If anything if the allegation is he is underpaid, it should be even more expensive.

sershe··on DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why
The guy who buys organic, an obvious marketing gimmick with zero scientific evidence behind it... Sorry, couldn't resist.
sershe··on Let's make quality the norm again
Tech workers in the US are probably around 90-99 percentile wage. Take something where the quality is well known and measurable, and can be purchased for extra money. How often do you fly first class, or even pay 10-20% extra to have more legroom, early boarding or a more convenient flight times versus picking the cheapest option that you can make work?

People will demonstrably shop primarily on price no matter what... The producers respond to that.

sershe··on Show HN: Hacker News, Without AI
Heh I was thinking for a while about a similar pet project but I would remove the political/mainstream news rage bait, especially the stuff that is more or less unrelated to technology. AI news are still tech news
sershe··on Flock used >100 times to track veteran who recorded traffic stop
Should we also have separate posts for every individual case when camera helped catch someone? What's the point of continuously posting what amounts to single anecdotes without any statistical context? Should we ban every technology and shut down any government program that has small amount, but rage-bait-able form of, abuse?
sershe··on VC isn't VC anymore
I was given a very large number of very low value shares. The company was about 60 people iirc and I think the hr guy said well we won't IPO soon but when we do, these shares might be worth a lot! Companies often aim for shares to be worth 10, 20, 50 dollars at IPO! Something like that. But it's obviously just vague pep talk. They also sometimes say everyone is there to make the world a better place...

It would be a scam if they promised you 0.2% of the company but then it was diluted to 0.1%. and nobody prevents you from asking i think. Otherwise it's no more a scam than a lottery ticket commercial showing the guy who won a Ferrari.

sershe··on VC isn't VC anymore
Why is that a scam? Nobody ever promises you any specific valuation or fraction of the company. When I joined a company relatively late but well before IPO, some funny number of shares at 12 cents or whatever each did not even enter my calculation any more than "oh and they also give me a free lottery ticket". In my case depending on when one sold after IPO they would have been in the range centered around about compensating for the salary differential I think, but nobody promises you they'd ever be worth more than Monopoly money
sershe··on Corporate profits hit highest share since WWII, as worker payouts wilt
Large part of the reason is stock compensation and pass thru

https://everywheremillionaire.substack.com/p/why-the-labor-s...

https://everywheremillionaire.substack.com/p/another-reason-...

sershe··on Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
The first premise of the case is that it's to protect the children, so this doesn't make any sense - it's not people with self-regulation improving their own environment. Parents are the ones who are supposed to make sure their children have limits, in general, not just for social media. Social media/etc. makes it easy (or can make it easy) with parental controls.

Even construed more broadly, this makes no sense. All of these cases and the criticism hinge on harms of addiction, that pretty much by definition apply primarily to those with poor self-regulation. Those with proper self-regulation need them much less - so it's basically paternalism. Supposedly some people don't know what's best for them, they are "addicted" to watching cat videos. As, again, is obvious in this case, since the case is literally about children.

I, personally, like infinite scroll algo reels. I probably spend about 20 minutes a week on them, and if anything I'd prefer the algo to be more tailored / "addictive" cause it tends to over focus quickly and bore me. It sure sucks at addicting me. I don't want the state to interfere with what FB can or cannot do with the algo. If an adult gets addicted to reels, they are definitely not a victim.

sershe··on Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
Facebook has a "feeds" (or something like that) view, that is exactly your subscriptions in chronological order.

As for restricting nighttime usage and imposing daily limits, somehow my mom managed to do that (for video games) without any corporate features in the 90s, while being a single working mother. One time when I was particularly uncooperative she just went to the electrical panel and shut off the power to my room. That worked like a charm. Today, there are all kinds of parental control features instead.

However, how can you expect people to do parenting, when grown adults are apparently not even capable of basic self-regulation?

sershe··on The treasury bond mess: is this the demise of the US as a safe haven?
It's very easy to look up what the govt spends money on. All of these things are rounding errors that make good rage bait. The biggest, and some of the fastest growing, outlays are medicare and social security - money transfers from everyone else to the richest demographic in human history. In case of medicare, also mostly unproductive money transfers. I think these are deeply immoral, but I guess helping grandma doesn't make for good rage bait so it's easy for both parties to get distracted by tiny line items that, fiscally, do not matter - be it DEI, ballrooms or whatever.
sershe··on Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change
It's really understandable that this is posted on hacker news, where innovators from public healthcare startup hotspots like the UK and France gather to look with pity at their stagnating counterparts stuck with more private systems like the US, or even Netherlands or Switzerland if only Europe is considered.
sershe··on America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
If you look at the immigration numbers across the board, apparently most people disagree :) just purely by numbers other than vibes or rare scary scenarios, the living standards in the US make most other OECD countries look poor. Not even speaking of the fact that immigrants can always go back so it's even better for them. I hiked with a guy who lived between US and Canada because he liked US better but needed expensive surgeries (that were also optional, kinda) so he did the minimum in Canada to qualify. Or worked with a European who outright said after making money it would be a good idea for him to go back and (ab)use the welfare state. Americans can't do that!
sershe··on Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices
How often do you need to replace foam? Our 10 years + 2 moves old couch (that cost iirc $700-800 then) is basically good as new. I guess we don't have kids or dogs, the worst thing that happened to it is a gerbil briefly finding a way into the hollows :)
sershe··on Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices
I always wondered how my coworkers in tech (imply to) spent so much money (even without kids) and then I hear things like "you can't buy a car for less than 50k these days" or read these posts. Then you test drive a 20k used car and the only thing that is more than 10% worse about it about it is how quickly your ego goes 0 to 60 :) A good couch costs around 1k and I'm pretty sure based on extensive experience the $200 IKEA couches are quite decent.
sershe··on Supreme Court upholds broad conception of birthright citizenship
So if you follow the logic of this administration (which I don't) you can construe the illegal immigrants as an invasion. You would assume that if there was an invading army that got dispersed and the stragglers were hiding out for years after the state surrendered, like some Japanese soldiers after WW2, as the law enforcement was trying to find and remove them, the jurisdiction would not apply to them. Then, there could be a wartime state sponsored guerilla force. Then, allegedly state affiliated guerilla force infiltrating without an official conflict, like Russians in Donetsk in 2015. You have to draw a line somewhere, and in theory it could be pretty far either way
sershe··on Turns Out, There Is a Cabal of Elite Crazies Trying to Control the World
I wish there was! Remember that the alternative is that the bozos officially in charge, worldwide, are actually in charge! A scary thing to imagine.
sershe··on How many of the 170k English words do you know?
Seems too easy compared to the other tests like that I I've taken (my wife and I have a mini thing about this cause as in immigrant I'm not legally allowed to win at Scrabble but I do occasionally), I got 3 wrong and guessed maybe 3 more correctly without knowing them (vibe based i was usually between the two), getting 77k. That seems improbable... Also kinda lazy with many expert words where the longest definition is correct more often than not.
Page 1 of 34Next →