Hacker News Reader

smugmaon Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

That is true but in Meta’s case, it is tightly managed by him. I remember a decade ago a friend was a mid-level manager and would have exec reviews to Zuck, who could absorb information very quickly and redirect feedback to align with his product strategy.

He is a very hands CEO, not one who is relying on experts to run things for him.

In contrast, I’ve heard that Elon has a very good senior management team and they sort of know how to show him shiny things that he can say he’s very hands on about while they focus on what they need to do.

smugmaon Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears

If you read Internal Tech Emails (on X), you’ll see that he was the driving force behind the key acquisitions (successes as well as failures such as Snap).

smugmaon How we built Bluey’s world

Which I found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43816546

smugmaon Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

The problem Tao speaks of is his funding, not pro or anti Israel demonstrations.

The US is coupling student politics to academic research funding. Is that done in Germany or other parts of Europe or Australia?

smugmaon Tom Lehrer has died

Songs are never owned by labels, only recordings.

The songs aka compositions/lyrics may be controlled by publishers

smugmaon -2000 Lines of code (2004)

1. The site is called folklore.org. You’re sort of saying the site is true to its name.

2. It’s a direct recollection from someone who was there, not an unnamed “my cousin’s best friend” or literal folklore that is passed down by oral tradition. Andy knew Bill and was there. There is no clear motivation to tell a fictional story when there were so many real ones.

3. The specifics line up very well with what we know about Bill Atkinson and some his wizardry needed to make the Mac work.

Given this, it’s much easier to assume that your assertion is what is made up.

smugmaon Unhappy Meals (2007)

first paragraph states the opposite:

I was surprised to see Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, two giants of food advocacy, take a clear stance in favor of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, since the two have previously been critical of these controversial foods. The film, which purports to explore “the good, the bad and the ugly of genetic engineering,” is unusual in that it’s unabashedly pro-GMO, using science to debunk the myth that GMOs are harmful and portraying the activists who oppose them as the food-world equivalent of flat-earthers.

smugmaon From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

dre@apple.com got some interesting emails and iMessages after Apple acquired Beats.

smugmaon Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

Full 80 page court transcript:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

smugmaon Video footage appears to contradict Israeli account of Gaza medic killings

Question is, why?

Yes, but why?

Is this a cabal of Jews trying to hide the truth? (no, it is not).

Or is it that the atrocity isn’t highly relevant to discuss on a hacker news thread, and also hard to have people follow HN Guidelines? (Much more likely explanation)

smugmaon Video footage appears to contradict Israeli account of Gaza medic killings

BBC, Guardian, and NYT have all reported on this footage.

smugmaon It's five grand a day to miss our S3 exit

What’s HE? High energy physics?

smugmaon The average college student today

I took AP CS freshman year (30+ years ago), spent the rest of high school learning UNIX, becoming a sysadmin, putzing around with computers. I did spend a summer taking the Berkeley course teaching SICP, but I regret it. I recommend saving that for when you’re a freshman. There will be plenty of time for the theory.

Bulking up on math in HS is smart. I took AP Calculus and then went to community college to take more calculus.

smugmaon SpaceX Urges FCC to Block Globalstar's Cellular Satellite Plans

What are the chances that the FCC doesn’t listen to Elon?

smugmaon Anthropic raises $3.5B at $61.5B valuation

Counter-point: for “cloud”, there’s an oligopoly of AWS, GCP, and Azure that maybe make up 80%.

And still there is plenty of space for those closely related, such as Cloudflare.

smugmaon Show HN: I got laid off from Meta and created a minor hit on Steam

Have you considered porting to mobile? Looks like it could do well, either independent or part of something like Apple Arcade or Netflix Games.

smugmaon After layoffs, Meta rewards top executives with a substantial bonus increase

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14421535/amp/YouT...

Aside: Mr. Beast claims to have lost tens of millions on the (Amazon) show Beast Games.

smugmaon Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

Spotify was born as a response to piracy. Why do you say their catalog was pirated?

smugmaon My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

I think you meant to use e.g. (for example) rather than i.e. (in other words)

smugmaon Nintendo Switch 2

Why do people by a Switch? Mario (Kart), Zelda, and Pokémon.

Those three franchises represent a huge percent of sales. 70%?

smugmaon US will ban cancer-linked Red Dye No. 3 in cereal and other foods

Cheetos, skittles, Froot Loops, Gatorade, salsa, salad dressing

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Would a Cheeto by any other color taste as savory?”

smugmaon Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

That doesn’t seem shady. If you park in a meter, it may cost $3/hr. If you forget to pay the meter, the ticket may be $100. It needs to be more or it never makes sense to feed the meter.

smugmaon Always go to the funeral (2005)

So much humanity in this. Thank you for sharing and for advocating.

smugmaon Company claims 1k% price hike drove it from VMware to open source rival

Apple[1], for example, has performance based RSU’s for its executives. RSU’s vest over 3-4 years and the number granted is dependent on Apple’s performance relative to the S&P.

Stock prices theoretically have future cash flows built in but markets are inefficient. In this case, if Broadcom starts losing customers in 2027 and revenue declines 5%, it would get hammered in the market at that point in time, punished much more than the 5% drop.

[1] From Apple’s SEC filing:

The value received by our named executive officers in 2022 from long-term equity incentives reflects exceptional stock price performance over the applicable vesting periods. As a result, for the applicable performance periods, performance-based RSUs vested at 200% of target for our named executive officers based on Apple’s TSR relative to other companies in the S&P 500 (“Relative TSR”), which was at: • the 96th percentile for performance-based RSUs held by Ms. Adams, Mr. Maestri, and Mr. Williams, and • the 99th percentile for performance-based RSUs held by Ms. O’Brien.

Mr. Cook was granted an equity award with 75% performance-based vesting and 25% time-based vesting

smugmaon Company claims 1k% price hike drove it from VMware to open source rival

The article talks about 10 times the price. If that’s true the equivalent percent would be 1100%. So 1000% is a lower, rounded estimate; presumably 10X is also an estimate.

smugmaon Americans see their savings vanish in Synapse fintech crisis