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spIrr

685 karma · joined November 14, 2010

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spIrr··on Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents
> limited by the number of activated parameters

not sure I got it?

Separately, the frontier labs are kinda pushing us into that behaviour by releasing models with ever-larger context windows.

spIrr··on Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents
As a hobbyist, I find it difficult to figure out how to make Claude stick with some repeating things I want it to do after every major action, like re-evaluate the completeness of tests, update the documentation, etc. And CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md definitely did NOT help there, sadly.
spIrr··on Vercel's CEO offers to cover expenses of 'Jmail'
Yes, because accounts payable are valued at recognized revenue, and aren't being revalued at cost when written off.
spIrr··on Ask HN: Is ChatGPT Experiencing a Degradation?
Update: Seems to be an error with 5.1 Pro threads (existing and new inferences). 5.1 Thinking seems to work.
spIrr··on Search tool that only returns content created before ChatGPT's public release
Thank you. Didn't know that and was, until now, considering paying for a Kagi subscription.
spIrr··on Busy Bar
This feels like something one could easily procrastinate with (customizable, developer-friendly...).
spIrr··on iPhones will soon be able to stream live video on 911 calls
I'm curious about how this will work on the receiving end - is that part of the infrastructure also provided by Apple or is there a common capability by 911 dispatch software to support incoming video?
spIrr··on Datacenter Processors for AI is already 78% of Nvidia's Revenue
When I was a financial auditor, one of the tests on revenue we did was a concentration test, since having a large portion of your revenue coming from a few customers is a risk to business continuity. Wonder how Nvidia folks are thinking of mitigations for that.
spIrr··on Silencing the Alarm on Aspartame and Cancer
“ Does aspartame cause cancer? There’s a small chance that the answer is yes – but probably only if you consume 50 Diet Cokes every day from birth until death – and even then, we don’t have any evidence that this cancer would lead to premature death. At consumption levels equivalent to the ADIs set by the FDA and other organizations – let alone at lower, more typical intake levels – we have no more reason to suspect aspartame as a carcinogenic threat than we have for suspecting carcinogenicity from chewing with your mouth open or wearing flip-flops in wintertime.”
spIrr··on Career levels, designation, momentum, etc. (2018)
If you like this, I can only recommend Will Larson’s (the author of the blog post) book called “An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management” published by Stripe Press. It a collection of very tactical things of how to think about engineering careers and managing others.
spIrr··on Moral Competence
This is really insightful - thanks for sharing that path! And good for you for not sticking to the sunk cost fallacy through the pivots.
spIrr··on Google Finance Finally Updated
I would give Koyfin a try - was just recently advertised on a podcast I listen to, and looks interesting.
spIrr··on Companies from the YC Winter 2018 Batch
My team uses Evernote Premium, which shares collaboration features with Business, I believe, and it feels like any sort of collaboration is really an afterthought, for example:

* the complete note gets locked when someone simply places a cursor anywhere in the note, just like in the days of carbon/master copies and check-in/check-outs.

* work chat is meaningless, I have hardly seen anyone use it beyond the automatically-generated messaged when you share a note

* notes shared with you are ONLY accessible from the work chat, there is no menu item to access a list of notes that have been shared with me.

spIrr··on TransferWise announces $280M investment
… and bakeries, my god. I haven't seen a single bakery that accepts cards (EC or credit). Wanna buy €30 worth of cake to bring to work for your birthday? Nope, cash only.
spIrr··on Steve Singh will become Docker’s new CEO
What did you mean?
spIrr··on Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
Two books that can help understand it in more detail:

. The Mom Test - good and bad questions for customer discovery

. Competing Against Luck - introduces the concept of "jobs to be done" - people are hiring your product for a specific job they need to get done

spIrr··on Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
This, and sales concentration is a real risk as well. If you have few big customers and even one of them churns, the impact this will have on you is certainly going to be material.
spIrr··on Scaling Financial Reporting at Airbnb
On a second look, I don't seem to understand the flow of your accounting entries:

Booking date (I understand that on that day, the booking is confirmed, but the guest's payment method has not yet been charged)

  Dt Receivables from guests 100

    Cr Future host payout 90 (Problematic: how can you pre-recognise a liability on your balance sheet? Unless this is an off-balance sheet account...)

    Cr Deferred income 10 (Problematic: deferred revenue arises when you receive a pre-payment from customers and have a standing obligation to them to render the services)
Payment made by guest

  Dt Cash 100

    Cr Receivable 100
Check-in date

  Dt Deferred revenue 10

  Dt ??? ??? (seems to be missing to balance the double-entry)

    Cr Payable 90
To me, the natural way to do this would be:

Booking date - no accounting entries, no effect on books. You did not render a service to the customer yet, nor fulfil or incur any obligations yet.

Payment received from guest - you received a prepayment for future services to be rendered, so now have a liability to the customer to fulfil this obligation, i.e., deferred revenue.

  Dr Cash 100

    Cr Deferred revenue 10

    Cr Payables to host 90 (unsure about this one, as this goes into the whole gross vs. net revenue recognition discussion for marketplace-type businesses)
Day after check-in - recognising the revenue on one single day might work now, but it's only a makeshift solution - what if your customer stays for a longer period of time, or between two accounting periods, and this becomes material? By definition, you recognise revenues proportionally, but I get that the cost vs. benefit of doing this now might be unfavourable.

  Dr Deferred revenue 10

    Cr Revenue 10
spIrr··on Scaling Financial Reporting at Airbnb
Alice, do you recognise guest receivables the day a booking is made, not the day after check-in ("services rendered")? If that's true, not sure if this is correct, i.e., this event doesn't seem to meet the asset recognition criteria... My intuition would tell me Dt Accounts receivable - Cr Revenue on the day after check-in.
spIrr··on LibreTaxi – A free and open source alternative to Uber and Lyft
I'll post a comment from ProductHunt, which might give a bit more context to where the founder sees this going, and why cash rides make sense under certain circumstances he designed the app for:

[…] I have gone to the founder's blog and it provides a better understanding of where he sees it going: Uber (and similar apps) will never reach many remote villages, cities and regions around the world (and don't have to), but technology could greatly help the local communities in solving their transportation problems that are as "simple" as getting from point A to point B with no other feasible options available.

For more details, here's the founder's blog on this: https://medium.com/@romanpushkin/how-i-made-uber-like-app-in...

spIrr··on All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware
From 00:50 to 01:10, why is the car driving in the left lane, when the right lane is clearly not turning? It's strange to see this behaviour as someone living in Germany, where you are supposed to, by default, drive in the right lane if you are not overtaking another car or there is a traffic jam...

EDIT: also, did it turn into the wrong lane at 2:25-2:30? is this a security risk?

spIrr··on Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting
Good points. The new IFRS 15 tries to deal with those issues, and defines principles of performance obligations, un-bundling etc., which should be helpful in this case.

I'm sure the Big 4s have issued Q&As and position papers to their audit clients already on the adoption of IFRS 15, but this is going to be a nightmare to implement...

spIrr··on Oracle whistleblower suit raises questions over cloud accounting
It's actually wrong to book revenues until one has satisfied the performance obligations to the customers, i.e., until the services have been provided. It means that I can't book revenues for 10 years ahead under no circumstances.

It is possible though to have something called "deferred revenues" in case the customer has pre-paid for those years (i.e., transferred the cash for the 10 years), but those are not revenues (not on the P&L), but a liability to the customer to satisfy the performance obligations (on the balance sheet), and this will be gradually released (apportioned) to actual revenues over the course of the remaining years.

spIrr··on LessAccounting, the Startup That Challenged QuickBooks, Sold
I've seen their prospectus on FE International, and was surprised by some numbers. Interesting to listen to the founder's reflection now.
spIrr··on Watsi Lands $1.5M Donation From Humble Bundle
Does this raise a concern of people stopping donating to Watsi directly, since many, many treatments will be funded from this one donation and no unfunded treatments will be available?
spIrr··on Hövding – Airbag for cyclists
Why doesn't it deploy over one's back?
spIrr··on A new lightweight lift cable will let buildings soar ever upward
Promo page for the new technology (called "Ultrarope"): http://download.kone.com/ultrarope/index.htm
spIrr··on Share your weekend/part-time startup (December 2012)
Great topic! Don't have a startup by myself, but am looking for some inspiration for 2013 :)
spIrr··on Ask HN: How does one make a profitable side project with $1k in savings?
This is a great post, itsprofitbaron. Thank you!

I will follow your advice and build something i am interested in (and expand my programming knowledge). Good luck with your ventures!

spIrr··on Ask HN: How can I make $50k per year working full-time from my laptop?
I am working at a Big4 company and thinking about having a side income, eventually full time. I am able to code tweak some php/rails/html/css.

Have you ever thought about starting out with niche sites for your/our industry? Please leave your email somewhere, i think we should talk; i have some thoughts floating around (niche websites for CPAs/ACCA members). Let me know if you're interested.

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