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tithe

1,091 karma · joined February 13, 2024

Student.

Start now and keep moving, the future is promised to no one.

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tithe··on How Golden Is Silence, Actually?
> Without the pressure to speak amongst others, it became clear that I often said things out of anxiety

I can't go probably 100 words without saying something stupid or flat out contradictory. I'll think back to the conversation, realize I don't actually think or believe what I said, and wonder just what possessed me to say that and how many people I've alienated with words that I don't even believe or hold to be true!

Silence is one way to avoid making those mistakes, but that's me avoiding the problem, not actually solving it (and it would be nice to speak all the time in truth, with coherence, and consistent with what I believe), despite not having much to say in the first place, unless:

- to clear misunderstanding / requests ("Excuse me, but I think this is my seat.")

- to prevent harm / danger ("Look out!")

- civics / politeness ("Excuse me", "Good morning", "I'm fine, thank you.")

tithe··on AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy
Henry Petroski in "To Engineer is Human" has a chapter about the advent of the calculator during the slide rule era, and that calculators (and later computers) eroded a structural engineer's "feel for the numbers", caused engineers to pursue work on the fringe of their abilities, and perhaps more seriously, limited their ability to verify the correctness of the computer's work (this was the era where, for the first time, a machine could perform orders of magnitude calculations more quickly than humans could). He outlines the collapse of the Hartford Civic Center [1] as a case study in when blindly trusting computer output goes wrong (and by sheer luck, no one was killed).

It feels like the example was cherry-picked, but the combination of "less accurate" and "more confident" made me immediately think of this disaster. I truly worry that it's going to take civilian deaths / liability before the proper use / place of these new technologies is adopted, but we could probably start with 1) not in safety critical systems, and 2) don't replace your specialists / experts with algorithms.

[1] https://www.engr.psu.edu/ae/thesis/failures/MKP/failures/fai...

tithe··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?
How about professions that require licensing to practice (civil engineering, accounting, insurance, actuarial science, law, medicine, pharmacy, nursing), or work in the government sector (defense, military, municipal/state/federal agencies)?
tithe··on Boring tech is mature, not old
Play video games while waiting to build 200 MB of JavaScript for a contact form!
tithe··on Simulating water over terrain
I like that analogy, rules are pipes through which behavior flows.
tithe··on I conditioned myself to fail
Agreed, building something is just the first step.

One of the marketing struggles I've had is just getting people to care. I did have a bit of an "If you build it, they will come" attitude because I had confidence in the quality of the work...but even that seems to be irrelevant if you can't get people interested.

As an introvert by nature (extrovert by necessity), I wonder what I'm missing that others seems to grasp innately, because the consequences are fatal for an entrepreneur if you can't convince others to at least try the thing you're offering.

tithe··on Is there a benefit to scratching that itch? Yes and no, says new study
Just be careful if you believe the itch is the result of something you might be allergic to (e.g., food, or bug bites).

I had several bites from fire ants and ran them under hot water from the bath, which seemed to trigger (or accelerate) a full-body reaction (anaphylaxis?) and a harrowing trip to the emergency room!

tithe··on Crystal Ball Trading Game
> Seth Klarman, in Margin of Safety...

May I ask where / how you came about your copy? I've seen it mentioned several times but have found it difficult to locate. (For example, the used copy on Amazon is selling for $2000!)

tithe··on The Eleven Laws of Showrunning [pdf]
I prefer his "brass tacks" writing style, but it's also interesting to compare the versions (Grillo-Marxuach is a screenwriter, after all).
tithe··on The Eleven Laws of Showrunning [pdf]
Since the link above is for the "nice version", here's the link to the more colorful, not-so-nice version: https://okbjgm.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/5/0/31506003/11_laws_o...
tithe··on Nintendo Files Suit for Infringement of Patent Rights Against Pocketpair, Inc
Indeed Japan does: https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/d0100
tithe··on Ask HN: How do you develop and cultivate your critical thinking?
Interesting! What kind of history class was it, that would include studying logical fallacies?

The application to real life is the most important step, I think. I guess that makes me a pragmatist.

tithe··on Ask HN: I don't want to be a Software Engineer any more. What else could I do?
Personally, I enjoy detail-oriented activies, so software suits me just fine. But if I was going to switch to something else, I'd ask myself "What other detail-oriented industries could I thrive in?"

* Restaurant / hotel management (specifically, the atmosphere and ambience of a space)

* Architecture / architectural engineering

* Real estate development / planning

* Movie set dressing (!)

tithe··on The Pentium as a Navajo Weaving
That's some serious...multithreading!

(I applaud others for resisting such cringe, but I just couldn't help myself.)

tithe··on Ask HN: Can tech interviews show whether you learned programming at a young age?
Why not just "So, how long have you been programming for?"

I'd interpret this question as "Does this person think I'm experienced enough for the work?" over explicitly wanting to know whether I began at a young age.

tithe··on Show HN: Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
How about this one?

   "What do you call the number of times that one number can be divided by another?" A) Dividend, B) Divisor, C) Quotient.
And a minor UX nitpick: please wrap the input element inside of a <label> tag, it makes it much easier to interact with form elements (in that I can click on the text to mark the element):

      <label class="answer">
        <input type="radio" name="q4" value="wrong" /> Condensation
      </label>
tithe··on Starliner Is Such a Disaster That Boeing May Cancel the Entire Project
To bypass the Bloomberg paywall in Chrome, add a dot after the TLD: https://www.bloomberg.com./news/articles/2024-08-25/boeing-c...
tithe··on Why is a Guillotine blade diagonal?
One colloquial term for the guillotine was (is?) "le rasoir national" = "the national razor."

Other colorful terms include "the regretful climb", "the silence mill", "Capet's necktie", "the patriotic shortener", "half-moon", "timbers of justice", and "Charlot's rocking-chair".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine#Names_for_the_guill...

tithe··on Show HN: Give us your rawest feedback
OK, I didn't mean to sound harsh, that statement just seemed out of place.

Taking another look at this, here's what I see:

> As AI capability continues to advance, it'll consistently and increasingly outperform traditional human analysis in both speed and accuracy.

> Our Orchid hybrid model combines neural networks, quantitative models, and language models to leverage both numerical and textual information, enabling smarter, faster algorithmic decision-making with significantly less human supervision.

> Here's a couple use cases: ...

> Simulating the past twelve months, our implementation of Orchid outperformed the S&P 500 by over 10%.

These four statements tell me the problem/opportunity, your solution to that opportunity, how that solution might be relevant / useful to me, and proof that your solution works.

This is your value proposition, and what I need to know about Orchid as a potential customer / user. I'd consolidate these four statements and put them at the top of the page. The jokes can come later (but I'd still tone down the sarcasm).

tithe··on Show HN: Give us your rawest feedback
The sarcasm is heavily working against you here.

- Misspelling as "alll"

- Drop the "Oh, ..."

- "not exactly sure what these so-called ‘schools’ do, but I think if they keep working hard they’ll be famous one day."

- "~enslaved~ employed 300 extraterrestrial space giraffes to speed up our math stuff"

> The sorta freedom you only get in Afghanistan these days.

Is this supposed to be a joke? Freedoms in Afghanistan have significantly declined since the Taliban took power in 2021.

I stopped reading after this.

tithe··on Ask HN: Computer Science or Business admin in 2024?
If your country allows it, why not consider both? Or a major in CS with a minor in Business Administration/Finance?

> ...a CS degree...will probably lose value.

I wouldn't bet on that. Computers aren't going anywhere, and just in the past 15 years, we've seen entire industries created around smartphones, cloud computing, streaming, VR, IoT, SaaS, and AI. Pick which wave you want to surf! A technical and/or a business background would be useful here.

> I'm not confident that 4 years from now the field will be what it is now.

That I would bet on.

And by the way, just because you major (or don't major) in something doesn't mean you've locked yourself into (or out of) that activity. When I switched from music performance to computer science, I had the feeling that I had turned my back on my music, that I couldn't now excel in it...which was nonsense! It wasn't until I realized, that just because I don't major in something doesn't mean I still can't do that thing well, was I able to embrace the decision to choose CS.

Best of luck in your decision.

tithe··on Show HN: Stock Exchange of Creators
This sounds interesting, but I'm seeing the following when I visit the site:

   404: NOT_FOUND
   Code: DEPLOYMENT_NOT_FOUND
tithe··on Ask HN: Roast My Landing Page Design and Copy
Regarding the post on X, it looks like you've also posted the last 4 digits of the customer's card number and card type.

https://x.com/craciun_07/status/1820204407780164044

And is there any risk with exposing the Stripe payment intent ID like that?

Is the screenshot even necessary? The message body says everything just fine.

tithe··on Show HN: Nickelback Ipsum – yes, it is what you think it is
That may be so, but I'd fussed about revealing the source code of the backend to the public Internet!
tithe··on Show HN: Nickelback Ipsum – yes, it is what you think it is
With JS disabled, when trying to generate the paragraphs I get a "Symfony\...\MethodNotAllowedHttpException - The POST method is not supported for route /. Supported methods: GET, HEAD. " (with a very detailed stack trace).
tithe··on Interval parsing grammars for file format parsing (2023)
I was writing an indexer (ca. 2018), and I don't recall encountering opaque blobs, but parsing the ZIP file and XML (with a small C XPath scanner) was straightforward.

But indexing PDFs, now there's a fun one.

tithe··on The surveilled society: Who is watching you and how
This was in New York City.

There absolutely should be some kind of notice, or at least an opting-in (where the "opt-in" is not the act of simply getting into a cab).

It's irritating a vital service like this becomes an "all or nothing" deal, where I can't selectively opt-out of some shady practice and still use the fundamental service.

tithe··on The surveilled society: Who is watching you and how
We could add taxis to that list that use the Curb ride hailing system, with their "passenger information monitors" located in the rear of the taxi.

https://www.gocurb.com/terms

tithe··on Interval parsing grammars for file format parsing (2023)
DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX Microsoft Office files are actually ZIP archives (which the paper addresses). You can append a ".zip" extension onto the end of them and explore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

tithe··on [dead]
> Dynamic response generation for employer-specific questions

> Tone and style matching to fit company culture

> Keyword optimization for improved application relevance

Can't say I'm thrilled to see AI being used like this.

What are the long-term implications of making a tool like this publicly available? What first-stage "job CAPTCHAs" await applicants to distinguish them from bots? Rate-limited background checks from an accredited third party, like id.me?

Will companies even care that this is now the state of the recruitment landscape? And if not, without a deep professional network and personal relationships, how will you be able to cut through the noise?

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