Hacker News Reader

version_fiveon “I want to use this tactically vs. GOOG/AAPL” (2022)

I'd expect there's some corporate-speak maximum that happens in middle management, and upper and lower people would use it less, with the curve being flatter for more bureaucratic companies.

version_fiveon America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

   I work on projects that would get 8-9 figure investments if we were doing this in APEC

Are the apac equivalents of those projects generating returns commensurate with the extra investment? Or is it a strategic choice that they typically focus more on advanced manufacturing while the US focuses more on software? I'm just wondering what the right way to think about this is.

version_fiveon enron :: discover the power of WHY (2001)

Sgitr is a great book and gives a real appreciation of how Ernon could have happened and will happen again. The perfect storm of hands off management and belief that ideas are more important than execution, plus the usual greed and slippery slope of covering small frauds with increasingly bigger ones. Other than Skilling and Fastow, they weren't all bad guys, I hope I'm never caught in a situation like that.

Also interesting is that sgitr is almost identical to "Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou (sp?) about Theranos. Most of the same elements were present in that fraud.

version_fiveon enron :: discover the power of WHY (2001)

Enron was cooking the books and collapsed because it was a criminal fraud. The power outages and whatnot were the fault of California regulators, every energy company did the same thing because it's what the poorly written laws said they could do. And regulation arbitrage was one of Enron's few legal profitable endeavors.

version_fiveon Ex-Finance developers mock McKinsey's monitoring metrics

What is the problem with criticism "mba thinking"? It's a legit complaint against the kind of naive "efficiency" analyses and measures that happen, and is completely justified. I have an MBA, I certainly don't find it offensive, I think the criticism is apt.

The usual art student tropes are more offensive because they are about people in a chosen degree being dumb (incidentally, when I did engineering all the hardcore "haha artsies are so dumb" engineers failed out after first year). That's not the same as criticizing a specific flaw in their education. If there's some big blind spot the average sociology degree leaves, that should be fair game.

version_fiveon Ex-Finance developers mock McKinsey's monitoring metrics

That would be way better than why they actually are. It's a bunch of pretentious sycophantic kids who target empty "leadership" types with advice that sounds smart if you don't think to hard but has extremely good production values. There's a reason they exist but it has absolutely nothing to do with bringing anything of value other than reputation and knowing their audience. Actually bringing outside info from competitors would be cool but way too tangible for them.

version_fiveon That travel deal you found online may be a one-way ticket to misery

https://archive.md/tpqui

At this point basically any third party booking should be considered a scam. Even if the booking company is "legit", you're still a second class citizen with the hotel or whatever you booked and subject to no help, arbitrary fees, no points, etc.

It's just as much scamming on the side of the hotels - they accept third party booking but misrepresent that they treat you the same.

version_fiveon [dead]

Seems like a candid conversation got taken out of context. I get that it was insensitive, but it seems like they were having a private conversation about the value of a judgement in a potential lawsuit or settlement. If this was a public conversation or release it would be wildly inappropriate. In private it's just some people that are not very sensitive. Should they have prefaced every sentence in the discussion with a disclaimer about what a tragedy it is, etc?

I'm generally the first to jump on law enforcement for misbehavior, and I'm sure the guy that killed her will be treated way more leniently than a civilian. I think this is a little blown out of proportion though, and focusing on the interpretation of the words "limited value".

version_fiveon Who and What Was a Knocker-Upper?

It's rousers all the way down

version_fiveon 5: And Done: No One Wants to Schmooze After Work

Depends on the job. My first job out of university was mostly older people (mid 30s+) and there was no socializing. It sucked for me, in a new city with few friends, I would have been happy to go out for beers or whatever. A later job, many of us were single, new in the city, and had lots of after work social time. Now personally I'd still be happy to go for beers after work but I have a family so it's not really possible and I've become the lame older person. Anyway, all that to say, it's good to work with some people at a similar life stage so then you can be social or not without worry.

version_fiveon New Lyft Feature Allows Women to Match Rides with Other Women

Discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37488588

version_fiveon Ask HN: Adventurous IT Jobs

Consulting you get to go and work in different places. Not as glamorous as Antarctica but it still has some variety. Look for a place that does short contracts, the danger is working at Accenture or something and being embedded for 2 years at a client in some really boring place.

version_fiveon A Comprehensive Guide for Building Rag-Based LLM Applications

FWIW, having written a simple RAG system from "scratch" (meaning not using frameworks or api calls), it's not more complicated than doing it this way with langchain etc.

This post is mostly about plumbing. It's probably the right way to do it if it needs to be scaled. But for learning, it obscures what is essentially simple stuff going on behind the scenes.

version_fiveon As a Doctor, Mother and Head of CDC I Recommend You Get the Latest Covid Booster

I hope you can get the help you need

version_fiveon Hutter Prize for compressing human knowledge

How do you know it's compressed? Someone who can recite one of these probably knows interpretations, back stories, related information that help them memorize it. The "storage" required to the recital may be larger than the text itself, it we can even think in those terms.

version_fiveon As a Doctor, Mother and Head of CDC I Recommend You Get the Latest Covid Booster

Did you arrive in a time machine from 2021? We all got covid shots and boosters and then covid. They didn't do anything and the only think people can come up with is to keep getting shots. It's not contrarian. Doing something over and over again that doesn't work is crazy. By this point everyone's had so much of this rammed down their throats that they can make a judgement themselves. Don't talk down to someone who has made a different judgement than you, that's supported by overwhelming evidence and experience.

version_fiveon Hutter Prize for compressing human knowledge

Yeah it makes no sense to say it's inspired by intelligence and then require lossless which is definitionally rote work and not intelligent.

version_fiveon Unity issues statement clarifying their policy

I've just peripherally following this, I've never used unity or anything that uses it. I'm just wondering why they handled this so badly. Was it deliberate, like "take the bandaid off" or were they just out to lunch?

Aren't there pr firms you can hire to help with this, and focus group and whatnot so you don't have to enrage the internet and then issue "clarifications". I'm always amazed when big companies are so bush league. Hire a consultant to help if you're not sure, they've probably lost millions in goodwill over this.

Edit: to clarify, I'm not really talking about the policy change, more the way they announced it, received all kinds of criticism, then "clarified". There may for example be a business reason why they are ok with pissing off some customers, but why not get the messaging right the first time?

version_fiveon Google lays off hundreds on recruiting team

O(1) for that guy that just fired everyone during a zoom meeting.

version_fiveon Google has a new tool to outsmart authoritarian internet censorship

They want a monopoly on it?

version_fiveon [dead]

It's funny, I think the denial is on the other side, the Stockholm syndrome hysterics that never want to let go of whatever psychological thing happened to them during covid. Yes there's a new respiratory virus, it's not a reason for us all to act crazy forever, but it's garnered this insane "following" of people who now want the world to revolve around it. Time to move on.

Edit: I'm not trying to convince anybody, I know there's a group that's to far gone for that that really needs proper mental health support. My comment was really just a reaction to accusing the normals of "denial", which is a bit much.

version_fiveon A DIY near-IR spectrometer

My first thought as well. People tend to misunderstand why things cost what they do, for stuff like this it isn't the raw components.

version_fiveon Exllamav2: Inference library for running LLMs locally on consumer-class GPUs

This should be in the headline (the 2.5 bit part), without the qualifier the result means nothing.

version_fiveon The way that Jensen Huang runs Nvidia: 40 direct reports, no 1:1s

That's how most companies work, if that frequently, with difficulties handled by exception. Only in big tech is that the focus of the "work" and do you have managers who spend their time on it, leading to the "professional meeting attenders" mentioned elsewhere.

version_fiveon The way that Jensen Huang runs Nvidia: 40 direct reports, no 1:1s

All of that sounds like something that could happen annually.

version_fiveon Lyft’s new feature lets women and non-binary riders request driver’s gender

I don't see a problem with it, the real issue is going to be men "identifying" as women to get female drivers. Or drivers "identifying" as women. The whole thing doesn't make much sense if people are allowed to pick their sex.

version_fiveon Unity’s pay per install is unworkable

It must be specific to that subreddit then? I tried another one that worked. Anyway, like twitter requiring login changes it from somewhere I rarely visit to something I don't think about anymore.

version_fiveon Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

That only happened for a few months in 2021. Since then theh haven't stopped anyone from getting it.

version_fiveon France Orders Apple iPhone 12 Sales Halted over Radiation

https://archive.md/PSd5i

This is to do with SAR limits that are based on heating. The order makes sense, it has nothing to do with "cell phones cause cancer" type nonsense.

version_fiveon American Colleges Embrace California’s DEI Model

The "low hanging fruit" in DIE is AI scanning for thoughtcrime violations. There are already tools for "inclusive language" and other ridiculous infractions. I'm not optimistic on AI helping us get over this.