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PretzelPirate

1,622 karma · joined April 20, 2015

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PretzelPirate··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
My point was that the work to make them popular was done back then. The model s is what made Tesla cool to the public and made people want electric cars. Since then there have been some improvements to the car like better FSD, but no huge technical leaps.

The things you're talking about aren't things Elon is likely spending his days on. He has teams of people marketing Tesla and working on improving starship. Do you think Elon is actually handing design himself vs sitting in a bunch of meetings and giving feedback?

If he isn't doing the hands-on work, so you think he's in 18hrs of meetings each day?

PretzelPirate··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
> So this idea that Musk just got lucky in the 7 companies he founded and he's just a bozo who happened to trip upon some new rocket designs is just insane

I don't know who's saying that. Of course he's smart, but the amount of hours he works each day is almost certainly exaggerated to maintain this "Tony Stark-like genius narrative" he needs to keep the money coming in.

Elon knows how to hire, how to raise money, and how to profit from govt subsidies. That doesn't mean he's this lone genius who works himself to death, and that's a very unlikely story.

PretzelPirate··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
Those aren't recent. Electric cars were popular 15 years ago. There are now multiple groups with reusable rockets. Elon doesn't need to work 12 hours/day on things his employees have already built.
PretzelPirate··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
Feel free to name the recent innovations. Has Tesla released a new car with an incredible range? Have US homes adopted solar using Tesla batteries and ow we don't know what to do with our excess energy?

What else has he delivered?

PretzelPirate··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
> working 12~18 hours doing one moonshot after another.

Does anyone actually beleive Musk works 12 - 18 hour days?

He hires the right people and his companies solve hard problems, but they make a few electric cars, design and build some rockets, and launch some satelites. Most of that shouldn't require much of Musk's time since he has experts working on it.

Other than designing new rockets, there doesn't seem to be many new innovations coming out of Musk-owned companies.

To me, it feels like we all think he must be doing a ton of work even though his companies don't seem to be generating much output.

PretzelPirate··on DHS is using obscure law to snoop on journalists, non-profits, unions
Company legal departments should absolutely review requests and make sure they're legal before handing over data.

If they suspect the request isn't legal, they can refuse it, and then it can be escalated to a judge.

Are you suggesting that every request should go through a judge before it gets sent to a company? That would be great, but even then, different judges interpret laws differently, so a company will still do a legal review before deciding whether or not to comply.

PretzelPirate··on Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX
It's my personal view that Elon has already shown how little he cares for protecting data of individuals based on how he ran DOGE.

If his teams will handle the data of US citizens with such disregard, he'll almost certainly treat his customers (many of whom are those same US citizens) the same.

PretzelPirate··on I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
Learn math
PretzelPirate··on Seven books I keep close because I love them
> El (an israelite deity that eventually merges with some others into the monotheistic god)

It's my understanding that both Baal and El were Canaanite deities and that the Israelite cults brought their storm god Yahweh with them to Canaan and eventually he absorbed features of the Canaanite gods.

PretzelPirate··on Show HN: Btfy – a blockchain that uses weather observations
> absurdal energy waste of standard Blockchain.

Proof of work is pretty much put of fashion. I'm not sure I'd consider it to be "standard" anymore.

PretzelPirate··on Microsoft Faces UK Probe over Copilot-Linked Price Hikes
Was this probe timed to align with Microsoft's earnings call?
PretzelPirate··on Humans haven't stopped evolving
I'm almost 40 and never wanted kids. As a kid, everyone would say things in the context of "when you have kids of your own..." and I always knew that I didn't want them.

If I lived in a world without reliable birth control, I may have ended up with kids I didn't want, but I'm lucky that I have other options.

Kids shouldn't be raised by people who don't want them, and not everyone is born with the biological drive to reproduce.

Your view that [most] people are born wanting kids may be biased from societal pressure and a historical lack of options.

PretzelPirate··on Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely
> This actually begs the question

I beleive that raises the question. I don't think it begs the question at all.

PretzelPirate··on Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors
That is charge back. Even with a credit card, your bank is the mediator between you and the merchant.
PretzelPirate··on Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors
> because it doesn't allow chargebacks

You can have chargebacks in crypto if the payment is scripted to allow chargebacks. It would be up to the merchant and the buyer on whether or not to allow that, and who would mediate the dispute.

PretzelPirate··on Show HN: I wrote a flight simulator in my own programming language
I had GH Copilot make me a new programming language (LLVM based) with a pretty unique syntax, and it was able to write games in it using SDL easily.
PretzelPirate··on Ted Turner has died
> but as a supporter of Bison

If you support Bison, why commend someone who killed them for a profit?

PretzelPirate··on Rise of the Forward Deployed Engineer
In my experience, Solutions Architects don't do the implementation, they provide guidance. FDEs actually build things alongside the customer engineers.
PretzelPirate··on Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal
> it's like people are LARPing a Fortune company CEO when they're giving their hot takes on social media

At least in large tech companies, they have mandatory social media training where they explicitly tell employees to use phrases like "my views are my own" to keep it clear whether they're speaking on behalf of their employer or not.

PretzelPirate··on U.S. banks may soon collect citizenship data from customers
I'm not who you replied to.

Banks are cracking down on PO boxes and CMRAs as the residential address for their clients. It's fine as the mailing address, but people who travel abroad full time may not have a permanent residential address.

Right now, you can choose to use a friend/family address, or you can pay a company to provide a residential address for you.

We should be able to say "I have no permanent residential address since I'm travelling, please send all mail to this CRMA.", but that isn't a supported scenario today.

This all gets complicated for full-time US travellers abroad who may spend all year outside of the country, but they still have to have domicile in some state even when they don't have a permanent address in any state.

PretzelPirate··on Ask HN: How to become better at software "engineering"?
That might be a good approach to become a better programmer, but I don't think it's good advice to become a better software engineer.
PretzelPirate··on Tesla owner uses emergency solar to trickle charge battery in desert
As someone who doesn't own an EV, I don't understand what this post is trying to tell me.

He used the panel, and later a generator from a road crew, to stop his battery from shutting down before he was able to get towed.

If I had a gas car, I would stop my car and try to find a tow truck.

It seems like an ICE owner would be in the exact same situation without the need to deploy solar panels or talk to a road crew.

The article doesn't say why he needed to keep his battery from shutting down - was it to prevent an EV-specific failure mode, or was it so he could keep running the AC?

PretzelPirate··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
It looks like you're using the Microsoft Whiteboard logo for DrawX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Whiteboard

You might want to change that to avoid legal issues.

PretzelPirate··on Where does all the milk go?
This should have included the insemination and slaughter as well. That cow didn't come from nowhere.
PretzelPirate··on A cryptography engineer's perspective on quantum computing timelines
> pretty much full rewrite

This is far from my understanding. Changing out this signature scheme is hard work, but doesn't require a rewrite of the VM.

PretzelPirate··on Artemis computer running two instances of MS outlook; they can't figure out why
I don't understand the title.

It doesn't seem like they are trying to figure out why two copies of outlook are installed, they're trying to figure out why neither is giving them access to their email.

PretzelPirate··on [dead]
Haven't we moved past using derogatory and offensive words like the one in the title?
PretzelPirate··on Blockchain Social Media
Blockchain-based social media isn't new, so what makes this special?

Is there a technical write up where we can see how consensus works and what guarantees you have that the chain history can't be rewritten?

PretzelPirate··on Jensen Huang wants to compensate engineers with AI tokens on top of salary
I already get unlimited tokens at work. I love it, but if they started calling it compensation, I'd worry about that eventually becoming taxable income.
PretzelPirate··on Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence
> I think most people expected Trump Two to be a similar shit show to Trump One

While they were being warned that his team spent 4 years planning on how to get rid of anyone who pushed back, and he wouldn't be hamstrung this time.

The people who thought 2.0 would be like 1.0 were simply choosing to beleive it despite all of the evidence suggesting otherwise.

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