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ushtaritk421

126 karma · joined September 25, 2021

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ushtaritk421··on Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash
I've used Airbnb probably 4x/year for the last 10 years, and I've never run into the problem described. How is it that I'm avoiding this without trying?
ushtaritk421··on My university uses prompt injection to catch cheaters
Expecting a kid to run a mile in Physical Education class rather than call Uber is not denying technical progress, nor is it hurting their ability to call Uber later when it is appropriate.
ushtaritk421··on Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass
Many parents of preteens and young teens that I know simply do not allow their childrend to use social media on their own devices. Doesn't sound like that bad a solution.
ushtaritk421··on Iran is likely jamming Starlink
Yes, as an American I think that all forms of government that are not liberal democracy basically are illegitimate. We can have relationships of convenience with other governments, but it should be known by such governments somewhere in the back of their minds that we would prefer to see them replaced by a liberal democracy.

The Iranian state has not shown itself to be one that is very convenient for us to temporarily overlook its flaws, and the people it governs frequently show that they would prefer a different form of government (otherwise, why not let them vote in fair elections?). It should be a no brainer that Americans and their government should be on the side of the people, not the theocracy.

ushtaritk421··on When the CIA got away with building a heart attack gun
I hear they even have a gun that makes a big hole in you that makes you die
ushtaritk421··on Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants
I think there’s a couple justifiable reasons to have legacy admissions. One, help the poor, smart kids meet the rich kids. Together, they can get more done than separately.

Second, I think the legacy folks see their relationship with the university as multigenerational and therefore they donate more. These donations benefit more than just themselves.

ushtaritk421··on Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf (2022)
Cool project, but on a practical level it seems like a lot of trouble just to avoid paying for premium
ushtaritk421··on Hey, wait – is employee performance Gaussian distributed?
This is indeed a crazy idea (your words, not mine). Why should a foreign worker who can do a job in the US that pays 2,3,4x what they make at home be forced to languish underpaid because of where they were born? And why should the US economy be denied their talent to protect inherited privilege of an American worker who can't compete?
ushtaritk421··on Web scraping with GPT-4o: powerful but expensive
I would be very interested in this.
ushtaritk421··on Alain Delon has died
I had an elementary teacher in the early ‘90s who did the same. I don’t remember any of us thinking it odd at the time.
ushtaritk421··on Greenwich schools to ban most cellphones, Apple Watches, Fitbits and more
Dumb phone turned off and in backpack would serve fine for this scenario.
ushtaritk421··on Why are Japanese developers not undergoing mass layoffs?
In the US you can be fired with 0 notice or severance, regardless of tenure in most states.
ushtaritk421··on Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders
All increases in the number of people doing work and creating things can increase GDP per capita (especially if you count the increase in the income of the person who immigrated, as you should). Inexpensive Indian IT guy makes IT cheaper, which is good for everyone except those who directly compete (and even for them it's not really that bad). This makes it so more things that are complementary to IT can be done. Broad-based benefit that outweighs a narrowly-experienced cost.
ushtaritk421··on Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores
Presumably these people applied for the jobs in question. I think it isn't for you to decide that their chosen job is pointless.
ushtaritk421··on Fired Americans Say Indian Firm Gave Their Jobs to H-1B Visa Holders
I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. If anything, we should change the law to encourage much more high-skill immigration
ushtaritk421··on Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Bernie Madoff did die in prison, so there’s that.
ushtaritk421··on Airbnb's Devastating Effect on Canadian Housing
Immigration is the natural effect of people moving to where the market price of labor “demands” they move. Doesn’t seem that artificial.
ushtaritk421··on Copyright is not a moral right, it's a monetization strategy
The fact that Disney fights viciously for the extension of copyright periods goes against your assumption.
ushtaritk421··on I Hacked the Magic Mouse
I bought a Logitech
ushtaritk421··on Excel will allow certain auto data conversions to be turned off
Can’t believe it has taken this long to add these features
ushtaritk421··on South Korea has jailed a man for using AI to create sexual images of children
I don’t think I have a strong opinion on whether computer generated CSAM increases or decreases actual child abuse (could see it going either way or even different ways depending on the time scale).

That aside, sometimes we have laws that exist not just for their direct good or bad effects but because they exclude someone we think should be excluded. And if you’re picking people to exclude, people who constitutionally want to rape your kids doesn’t seem like the worst choice.

ushtaritk421··on The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression
It’s big companies but it’s also (mostly?) the nice retired insurance agents and school teachers who like their quiet neighborhood and the fact that the house they bought 30 years ago can be sold for 4x its inflation-adjusted purchase price when they’re ready.
ushtaritk421··on Mexican cartels are fifth-largest employers in the country, study finds
Seems completely beside the point to be honest. Like they come from here and cause a small fraction of the mischief they are purported to cause there.
ushtaritk421··on We Investigated Roblox: Your Kid’s Favorite Game Is Exploiting Them
How much does Roblox exploit the kids if they instead go and play outside?
ushtaritk421··on AI intensifies fight against ‘paper mills’ that churn out fake research
Right, but an org that accepts fake papers (now easily generated) gets outed easily and ignored by everyone.

Legitimate orgs with real review processes presumably sniff out the fake papers easily with their current procedures and don't publish them.

And I guess if AI gets good enough that an expert reviewer learns something novel by reading it then it deserves to get published.

ushtaritk421··on AI intensifies fight against ‘paper mills’ that churn out fake research
Feels like AI makes the fight against paper mills easier. A group could submit AI-generated papers to different places and create a public index based on how successful they are at getting their nonsense papers accepted.
ushtaritk421··on Ask HN: Is it just me or GPT-4's quality has significantly deteriorated lately?
Maybe the problem is analogous to what Orwell describes here:

"Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought."

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

ushtaritk421··on Colorado districts built up a supply of Chromebooks. Some are nearing their end
This seems like very poor planning.
ushtaritk421··on Google dusts off the Google+ playbook to fight ChatGPT
Prose writing used to be a fairly honest signal that someone smart spent time writing it for you. Now it's not, so we will invent another signal that someone smart spent time on you.
ushtaritk421··on Google dusts off the Google+ playbook to fight ChatGPT
As soon as people figure out teachers are using this, schools will either ban it or come up with another useless but time-consuming task to signal to parents that the teacher cares individually about their child enough to do the time-consuming task.
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