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chinchilla2020

971 karma · joined March 16, 2021

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chinchilla2020··on California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters
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chinchilla2020··on California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters
It has been a gradual change.

> already maximally happened since decades ago

We just laid off ~4000 employees and are replacing them with hiring in India. Your notion that it already happened decades ago is wrong.

chinchilla2020··on Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
> That's a fact

Great evidence. Add "full stop." to really drive the point home

chinchilla2020··on Revisiting Knuth's "Premature Optimization" Paper
There is more to it than that.

1. Decide if optimization is even necessary.

2. Then optimize the slowest path

chinchilla2020··on Revisiting Knuth's "Premature Optimization" Paper
another commonly misinterpreted one is the `shouting fire in a crowded theatre` quote.

In it's original context it means the opposite of how people use it today.

chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
If AI can do anything, why can't I just prompt "Here is sudo access to my laptop, please do all my work for me, respond to emails, manage my household budget, and manage my meetings".

I've tried everything. I have four AI agents. They still have an accuracy rate of about 50%.

chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
High karma in an internet community is not something I respect automatically. Pewdiepie and every other little online personality have tons of followers and likes.

tptacek has always come across arrogant, juvenile, opinionated, and difficult to work with.

chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
As I said in another post. The article is pure rhetoric. It provides no actual numbers, measurements, or examples.

It's just "AI did stuff really good for me" as the proof that AI works

chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
and builder.ai just filed for bankruptcy after a billion dollar valuation. Timely.
chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
Agreed.

The article provides zero measurement, zero examples, zero numbers.

It's pure conjecture with no data or experiment to back it up. Unfortunately conjecture rises to the top on hackernews. A well built study on LLM effectiveness would fall off the front page quickly.

chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
The article provides no solid evidence that "AI is working" for the author.

At the end of the day this article is nothing but another piece of conjecture on hackernews.

Actually assessing the usefulness of AI would require measurements and controls. Nothing has been proven or disproven here

chinchilla2020··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
The reason I remain in the "skeptical" camp is because I am experiencing the same thing you are - I keep oscillating between being impressed, then disappointed.

Ultimately the thing that impresses me is that LLMs have replaced google search. The thing that disappoints me is that their code is often convincing but wrong.

Coming from a hard-engineering background, anything that is unreliable is categorized as bad. If you come from the move-fast-break-things world of tech, then your tolerance for mistakes is probably a lot higher.

chinchilla2020··on I'm starting a social club to solve the male loneliness epidemic
They sort of exist and do have women in them - but there are tons of tons of men you can meet with.

Sports clubs are full of friends you can make. I'm close with alot of guys that I train with.

Try tennis, or lifting, or running, or golf. Do NOT go to DnD meetups and other low effort stuff. Exertion is what forms bonds.

chinchilla2020··on The Who Cares Era
> Large companies sometimes love to preach "intrapreneurial" spirit, encourage the individual will & ownership, all while refusing to acknowledge the constraints & impositions of corporate hierarchy, the lack of freedom, that the large organizational structure imposes.

Eloquently put. This is what drives me nuts about Brian Chesky. He wants employees to take ownership - but doesn't give them any ownership.

If I worked for BNB and was aggressively pursuing a new idea, I could still be laid off any second because of his ego. That isn't ownership.

chinchilla2020··on Reinvent the Wheel
I've read some literature on this decompiling and reverse engineering work. It always blows my mind that there is a community of experts in it, toiling in science. Yet the academic and learning communities do not know anything about it. It's like an underground CS topic.
chinchilla2020··on From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."
That's actually his personality based on my knowledge of interactions with him. He is sort of a workaholic robot.
chinchilla2020··on The Gang Has a Mid-Life Crisis
> old dorm room with paint chips on the walls

> Mark Zuckerberg

This guy doesn't know much about Mark Zuckerberg

chinchilla2020··on A single line of code cost $8000
"A single line of code caused <BUG>"

Yes, a single line of code is in the stack trace every time a bug happens. Why does every headline have to push this clickbait?

All errors occur at a single line in the program - and every single line is interconnected to the rest of the program, so it's an irrelevant statement.

chinchilla2020··on Are people bad at their jobs or are the jobs just bad?
> Also this push to measure everything means that anything that can’t be measured isn’t valued.

Never thought I'd see an intelligent point made on hackernews, but there it is. You are absolutely correct. This really hit home for me.

chinchilla2020··on Reading texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension [pdf]
can't wait for the javascript error when I try to switch gears on the touchscreen of my future car!
chinchilla2020··on Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
People on hackernews think tech is the whole economy.
chinchilla2020··on Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
It's never going back to the level of the pandemic again. It might improve... but those days are over forever. They were hiring people as SWEs who could hardly read and write.
chinchilla2020··on Amazon tells employees to return to office five days a week
This is definitely not true universally.

The highest earners I know are self-employed or own small businesses and were 'alone' for most of their career. This includes a craftsman who owns small machine shops for boat parts, a high-end coach and a hairstylist who provides staffing for modeling/concerts. Absolutely none of them are 'office' personnel.

I do enjoy the social aspect of the office but I find that motivation comes from within.

chinchilla2020··on The rich history of ham radio culture
Technical hobbyists also have a genuine interest in technical work.

Contrast this with the flood of new college graduates who have minimal interest in engineering, yet want the high salaries that tech was famous for (until recently).

chinchilla2020··on Panic at the Job Market
Top reps at Caterpillar, Komatsu, and John Deere actually do make that much. I used to work in that industry.

Most people here are in tech and have no idea how heavily incentivized industrial sales is. Selling a fleet of D10 dozers to an excavation operation and selling a maintenance agreement is going to net caterpillar $1.7mm a dozer multiplied by number of dozers. They aren't paying someone 60k a year and free kombucha for managing those sorts of accounts.

These are the TOP folks though. I don't think most entry level college grads are going to making that any time size.

chinchilla2020··on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
fascinating how Swedes are so concerned about the small number of crimes committed by the US and want the US to withdraw.

Yet they remain steadfastly silent on the crimes committed by Russia and China.

Should the US withdraw from geopolitics and allow those other two to fill the vacuum?

Like Julian Assange himself - I suspect many Russia supporters are hiding in plain sight.

chinchilla2020··on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
Ok not SF. SF is a major outlier. That city is truly a homeless apocalypse
chinchilla2020··on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
It sounds like a definition/data-collection issue.

What are we calling 'unsheltered' versus 'homeless'?

America is full of oddballs who live #vanlife or couch surf or bounce between motels. Is that what we are calling 'unsheltered'?

> Every time I've seen statistics comparing, they disagree with your anecdote.

We both know the Churchill saying. Hard to parse the statistics you provided but what I am talking about is bona-fide homeless on the street that you walk past in the city. Not some Barista who is technically not on a lease but lives at her boyfriends house.

chinchilla2020··on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
Chelsea Manning leaded a bunch of random diplomatic cables and medical information on the families of servicemembers.

How does any of that constitute a 'war crime'?

Please, name the war crimes that Chelsea Manning exposed.

chinchilla2020··on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
> The armies of homeless in American cities don’t exist across the Atlantic.

Are you assuming nobody here has lived or visited the EU or UK?

There are tons of homeless in London, Berlin, and Paris. It is equivalent to the worst American cities.

London is definitely a better city for the super rich though. It is essentially a butler economy - most residents are involved in the industries that cater to super rich foreigners.

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