HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sjfidsfkds

133 karma · joined March 28, 2021

submissionscomments
sjfidsfkds··on OpenAI O3 breakthrough high score on ARC-AGI-PUB
How do you have anecdotal opinion on this o3 model that hasn’t been publicly released yet?
sjfidsfkds··on One man’s quest to end cheating in virtual cycling
The trainers used by many people on Zwift (eg. the Wahoo Kickr) actually read out pretty accurate power numbers.

The classic Peloton is basically a mechanical device with sensors attached - and none of those sensors are a power meter. The power estimates are widely reported to be inaccurate (they exaggerate output to varying degrees). On the other hand, the Kickr precisely modulates resistance and is able to accurately estimate power. I believe the newer Peloton Bike+ has a better system that produces accurate power readings as well.

Of course, as long as the competitors are bringing their own hardware, there will be ways to fake the data. I’m just pointing out it’s possible to measure power accurately and hardware that does it is widely available.

Personally, I find power readings to be useful because they help me understand the effort of cycling in different conditions. I can compare the readings I get in my garage to those from the climb up a steep mountain road, or into a gust of wind. Measuring my training based on my power output has helped me to go have experiences that I couldn’t have before.

sjfidsfkds··on The Plumber Problem
Sure, overall you’re going to have a better experience if you can just roll with whatever happens and enjoy it (true in life and cinema).

I think that at some level, when I’m consuming fiction, in the back of my head I’m learning the “rules” of that media. That creates a set of expectations about the boundaries of what can happen. Done well, a work can make a powerful impression by breaking the rules. That only works if the audience is aware of the rules in the first place.

A lot of movies go for verisimilitude. They’re trying to look and feel real, which can make the audience identify more with the characters. When you see a movie that does a lot of things right, it can be jarring when it gets something wrong. Suddenly you might be thinking - they could afford a hundred stylists, take over city streets to film, but they couldn’t get a plumber? It can take you out of the movie. The filmmaker doesn’t want to break the rules by accident.

sjfidsfkds··on Updating our inactive account policies
The money faucet is search ads. If you aren’t an active user you aren’t clicking on search ads.
sjfidsfkds··on Updating our inactive account policies
Cost per GB of hard disk has not dropped much in the past few years, the money has to come from somewhere.
sjfidsfkds··on 'Delete Act' seeks to give Californians more power to block data tracking
My point is that only a fraction of user data collection is done for the purpose of ad targeting. So whether or not ad targeting should be banned for ethical reasons, such a ban is not a replacement for regulations of user data collection like those proposed in the article we are discussing here.
sjfidsfkds··on 'Delete Act' seeks to give Californians more power to block data tracking
Measurement of conversions (ie. did somebody make a purchase after clicking the ad) is even more economically significant than targeting, and this is where ad publishers are most afraid of losing revenue due to privacy rules. The popular commentary on this subject is pretty detached from the business. The grandparent commenter’s “ban ad targeting” proposal manages to be both too extreme while also having little effect on data collection.
sjfidsfkds··on Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
I live in a neighborhood with impacted parking that’s poorly served by the local government. People keep parking in front of my driveway and blocking me in. If I call the cops they ignore me. If I call the tow company they come and tow away the offending car. Is this bad?

Suppose someone decided my front yard is a good place to store their belongings and dropped a shed there. Should I be able to hire movers to dispose of the shed? Or the police should be my only recourse?

I share the feeling that towing companies can be abusive and that’s not right. I think a better response is to regulate the towing companies and provide remedies. For example, make abusive towing practices illegal with heavy penalties (eg. if they tow illegally, they owe you $1000 per day you lose access to your vehicle). If it’s unfair to tow a vehicle after two minutes, make that illegal.

sjfidsfkds··on Diabetes drug Mounjaro was available at $25/month, then increased to $1k/month
If this were right, you could cure your obesity by mixing the right multivitamin into your food? It seems like if fixing some nutrient deficiency were all it took, we’d have figured it out ages ago.
sjfidsfkds··on Telling it like it is
Duffy did testify against FTX’s proposal in Congress back in May: https://www.cmegroup.com/content/dam/cmegroup/media-room/spe...

It’s pretty strongly worded:

> FTX’s Proposal is glaringly deficient and poses significant risk to market stability and market participants.

Granted, he didn’t publicly call the guy a fraud. Avoiding libel lawsuits is probably a good habit for a risk manager.

sjfidsfkds··on When is short tenure a red flag?
I don’t get it. What makes it worth staying 1-2 years, but not 2-3 years? What happens at 2 years that makes you want to do the job before and not want to do it after?

If you never like your job I don’t think switching every 2 years helps. And if you are in it for the paycheck, 4 is usually optimal.

Personally, I found whether I’m having a good time depends on the team and the project. And usually one or the other changes periodically.

sjfidsfkds··on Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer
School shootings kill dozens of people per year in the US, it’s a similar magnitude risk as lightning strikes or train crashes.

Infant mortality in the US is more common and indicative of problems that affect a lot of people. Namely, inequality in access to high-quality prenatal health care, and obesity. If you’re coming to work as a software engineer in the US, you are going to get good health insurance for yourself in your family. Obesity is potentially more relevant - lots of wealthy professionals in the US are obese. Not sure how much this tends to affect people who immigrate from healthier countries.

sjfidsfkds··on Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer
I’ve encountered a bunch of people with that sort of background working that kind of job, it’s a real thing.
sjfidsfkds··on Inflation, part 1: On shelter futures
Inflation means there is too much demand in the economy compared to the supply (of goods and labor). Decreased retirement funds are one mechanism by which asset price reductions can lead to people consuming less and working more. More broadly there’s a wealth effect that determines how much people spend.
sjfidsfkds··on Elon Musk Tesla email: Remote work is no longer acceptable
Sure Bluetooth will play the audio, but the app has a bunch of other controls: choosing an episode, skipping commercials, adjusting playback speed, etc. I’ve used that and it’s a big step backward to the 2000’s. I end up wanting to go on my phone while driving.
sjfidsfkds··on Elon Musk Tesla email: Remote work is no longer acceptable
It’s kind of lame to not be able to make use of the huge catalog of apps that integrate with Android Auto and CarPlay. For example, I use a podcast app that’s on iOS and Android. It has worked seamlessly across multiple phones and cars for me, but it’s not on the Tesla. They’re making the same mistake every other automaker did of building their own boutique infotainment OS. Everyone else has figured out by now that supporting Android Auto/CarPlay is a good way of filling in all the gaps.
sjfidsfkds··on I analyzed 20k recommendations made by Jim Cramer during the last 5 years
It’s true of many good investment strategies that if you retroactively ignore the best winners (without also ignoring the worst losers) that your measure of performance drops dramatically.
sjfidsfkds··on iOS 14.6 device hacked with a zero-click iMessage exploit to install Pegasus
This sounds interesting, but there’s not enough detail for me to understand what you mean. Care to elaborate?
sjfidsfkds··on FDA head asks for investigation into Aduhelm drug approval
I’m not a fan of the guidelines myself (too carb-heavy, IMO). However I don’t think obesity and diabetes are rampant among people who eat 2000 calories and exercise 30 minutes per day.
sjfidsfkds··on Stop using your work laptop or phone for personal stuff, because I know you are
If your employer wants you to have Slack on a phone, they should buy you a phone. That’s been my situation across multiple employers for 5+ years.

I plug the same monitor and mouse into a work computer and a personal computer. This isn’t hard - you can use a single dongle with all of your inputs so you only need to swap one plug. Or you could use some kind of KVM switch.

I understand that startups may not want the expense of buying hardware for their employees, and you might not want to buy your own laptop, but if you end up building something valuable in your personal time, it’s in your interest to keep these things separate. For example, you might work on a side-project which is somehow related to your employer’s business, and eventually decide to quit and start your own company. You’ll be in a more secure legal position if you used your own device for that. You might judge that you aren’t likely do do that, but you should think through the trade-off.

The GitHub agreement sounds like an improvement, but most companies don’t use it. I’m not sure how well it protects your interests. If you’re working at odd hours because you’re receiving notifications on a personal device, while you’re also working on your side-project on a work device, would lawyers agree on what is personal and what is work?

sjfidsfkds··on What is ranked-choice voting and why is New York using it?
If I approve of two candidates, but I like one more than the other, approval voting doesn’t seem to allow me to express that preference. Do I vote for both candidates, or only the one I like the most? As a naive voter who isn’t going to research that question, will I make the right choice?
sjfidsfkds··on The lab-leak theory: inside the fight to uncover Covid-19’s origins
It’s a widely accepted fact that Iraq had a chemical weapons program before the Persian Gulf War. Iraq and the UN cooperated to dismantle that program in the early 90’s. There was disagreement about whether that effort was exhaustive. The Bush administration’s claim to justify invasion was that there was an active ongoing chemical/biological/nuclear weapons program. Some old caches of chemical weapons materials discovered after the invasion doesn’t show that Iraq had an active chemical weapons program circa 2003.

You can read more about how the intelligence community failed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_on_Pre-war_Intel...

For example, they thought that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program, and there was nothing like that in the evidence you linked to.

sjfidsfkds··on SSD makers start warning that mining products like ChiaCoin will void warranty
This is the best pro-bitcoin argument I’ve heard in a long time! One big question I have is why bitcoin specifically has the value and not other cryptocurrencies. Others provide the same technical security guarantees. Bitcoin has a lot of hash power, which is nice, but that doesn’t seem to provide much additional security compared to other major cryptos, especially if the government of China can ruin it at any time. Why not Etherium, which has a lot of additional useful features? Or some other crypto with lower fees and a higher transaction capacity? One that’s carbon-neutral? I buy that bitcoin is important (I do own some), but I don’t see why the value should go up, or that it should end up being worth a big proportion of the benefit that cryptocurrency brings to humanity.
sjfidsfkds··on Inheritance was invented as a performance hack
You just invented society!
sjfidsfkds··on Why I distrust Google Cloud more than than AWS or Azure
Wait, really? Quota are recorded by code that must be changed by pull request, not an entry in a db? That sounds like an insane waste of engineer time.
sjfidsfkds··on The Decline of Heroku
Heroku had developer mindshare 10+ years ago that could, in some alternate universe, have made it end up competitive with AWS/GCP/Azure. Heroku is probably worth a billion dollars, which is impressive, but it could have been a hundred billion. It’s worth asking why that didn’t happen.
sjfidsfkds··on A skeptic’s take on Neuralink and other consumer neurotech
I don’t think this is right. I could use my AirPods to secretly record audio, and nobody seems to mind.
sjfidsfkds··on Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images
Does it really brick the headset? I read that if one account gets banned, you can log in with another account.
sjfidsfkds··on Whistleblower: Ubiquiti Breach “Catastrophic”
You can connect the Google mesh routers together with Ethernet. I’d guess other competing products will do the same. It’s cheaper and much simpler than a full Ubiquiti setup for a few access points.
sjfidsfkds··on I tracked down my impostor
> I bet it was Reddit internal bots.

This is a compelling idea, but I think they wouldn’t be so obvious about it.