HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ekms

66 karma · joined April 25, 2017

submissionscomments
ekms··on The worst job interview I ever had
I've done a couple bay area startup interviews where the interviewer specifically asks for 'personally / family' related anecdotes. With the explanation that they view their company as a literal family and want to make sure candidates would fit in. So I'm inclined to believe OP's description and understanding of the question
ekms··on PhD Timeline
I think the perception of America was just as critical, or even moreso, during the GWB presidencies and iraq war. (I imagine nixon and the vietnam war were thought of similarly). There's a tendency for people to have some historical amnesia and think of trump as qualitatively different somehow. But I can assure you that GWB was truly reviled especially in northern europe metro areas, and Americans was viewed then similarly to how it's viewed now.
ekms··on Startup Winter: Hacker News Lost Its Faith
I stopped reading hn regularly a couple years ago just because the top-voted comments were so reliably negative cynical takes. And not just for articles related to startups.
ekms··on Feds arrest telehealth execs for overprescribing Adderall
I guess they take it for the same reason you do. The effects aren't really different in people with ADHD vs people without [0]

> I cannot tell you how much literature there is trying to convince you that Adderall will not help healthy people, nor how consistently college students disprove every word of it every finals season. That makes “only give Adderall to people with ADHD” a moral judgment, not a medical one. Adderall doesn’t “cure” the “disease” of ADHD, at least not in the same way penicillin cures syphilis. Adderall will give everyone better concentration, and we’ve judged that it’s okay for people with terrible concentration to use it to overcome their handicap

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...

ekms··on Mindfulness interventions for teens decrease mindfulness, study finds
I dont think the original series of guided meditations from the headspace founder was aimed at productivity. From what I remember, it's a pretty typical breath- and bodyscan-centered vipassana style. I can't comment on any of the subsequent instructors or lessons though, haven't tried them
ekms··on Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years
I mean, he does like a good rant lol. But this seems like a bad take. The witness came out ~8 years ago, and Braid came out ~8 years before that. Braid Anniversary is launching next week, he's actively developing his language and next game (occasionally streams). "he's just resting on his laurels now" I think is clearly wrong
ekms··on Humane AI – Pico Laser Projection – AI Twist on an Old Scam (2023)
?
ekms··on Humane AI – Pico Laser Projection – AI Twist on an Old Scam (2023)
I assume when people talk about Jobs bulshitting they’re more so referencing the earlier Lisa or NeXT eras
ekms··on Use Your Potions and Scrolls
Did you watch any of lifecoach's slay the spire streams? He has some very impressive win rates/streaks and is I think much more conservative with potion use than most players.
ekms··on Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home
23% > 20% which means if someone goes into the field of computer programming they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman than if they are a man. "remain in the field" is used as a proxy for success.

You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear to be true

ekms··on Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Hm, not sure why people are downvoting this ^ Here's a source: https://www.wired.com/story/ftx-bankruptcy-bitcoin-value/
ekms··on Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Did you get paid back yet? From what I read the ftx estate claimed to be able to make all claimants whole
ekms··on GPT-4V(ision) Unsuitable for Clinical Care and Education: An Evaluation
Wish we'd get more articles from actual practitioners using generative AI to do things. Nearly all the articles you see on the subject are on the level of existential threats or press releases, or dunking on mistakes made by LLMs. I'd really rather hear a detailed writeup from professional people who used generative AI to accomplish something. The only such article I've run across in the wild is this one [0] from jetbrains. Anyway, if anyone has any article suggestions like this please share!

https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2023/10/16/ai-graphics-at-je...

ekms··on Sora: Creating video from text
You do know that video wasnt like... state of the art video generation a year ago? It's an intentionally silly meme video
ekms··on Memory and new controls for ChatGPT
Is it better at those types of things than copilot? Or even just conventional boilerplate IDE plugins?
ekms··on Vision Pro teardown part 2: What’s the display resolution?
Some people have much worse vision? Makes sense that people would perceive visual clarity differently
ekms··on 'Stupid,' 'shameful:' Tech workers on Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's rant
> implying that wasn't the case always on twitter?
ekms··on Apple Vision Pro review
I think parent comment was maybe trolling a bit with a memoji comparison lol. Hard to say though
ekms··on Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling
woah. it's been years since ive seen a penny arcade comic. didnt realize it was still around!
ekms··on OpenAI board stands firm in face of staff revolt over Sam Altman's ouster
Pretty sure most employees would take the side of whatever seems likely to increases the value of their equity the most. Not sure if it's much of a signal either way on whether he 'did something wrong' or not
ekms··on OpenAI investors try to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing
Yeah the abrupt vibe shift on HN with regards to altman is pretty odd. Suddenly he's a Jobs-esque product visionary?
ekms··on I think I need to go lie down
For the recent Galactic puzzle hunt competition [0] there was a problem that involved generating 5x5 star battle [1] grids that had a number of unique solutions in the range of [1, 14]. We initially tried to get chatGPT to write a python script to do this, and couldn't get it to produce anything functional. Conceptually it's not a hard problem, and can be solved in ~50 lines of python or so. Interestingly, chatGPT can describe in natural language the basic approach that you should use (DFS with backtracking). Anyway, here's one prompt I used for the generation portion. Is there something one can do to make LLMs more likely to produce functional code output?

```

Write a python iterator to generate all 5x5 grids of integers that obey the following criteria: 1. the grid contains only numbers 1-5 inclusive 2. each number is included at least once 3. Each number 1-5 forms a continuous connecting region within the grid where two cells are considered connected if they share an edge.

For example the following would be a valid grid subject to these rules: [[1,5,3,3,3], [1,5,3,3,3], [1,5,3,3,3], [1,5,3,3,4], [1,5,2,3,3]]

But the following would not be a valid grid because the `1` in the top right corner is not connected to the 1s along the left edge: [[1,5,3,3,1], [1,5,3,3,3], [1,5,3,3,3], [1,5,3,3,4], [1,5,2,3,3]]

```

[0] https://2023.galacticpuzzlehunt.com/game/ [1] https://www.puzzle-star-battle.com/

ekms··on Improving deep sleep may prevent dementia, study finds
I find being in caffeine withdrawal definitely makes falling sleep easier. But in steady state being on or off caffeine seems to be about the same?

It's hard to say though! Sleep onset is one of those things that's very strongly affected by placebo/nocebo effects (i.e. the person in this thread who says drinking caffeine /permanently/ worsened his sleep even after discontinuation .. )

For those of you in this thread who know you're slow metabolizers... is the effect on sleep obvious in a way that's distinguishable from nocebo? Or is it pretty subtle?

ekms··on The false positive rate of AI detectors and its effect on freelance writers
AI writing tends to be bland and repetitive. So if this encourages people to not write like an AI then that's a win
ekms··on Startup CTO's Handbook
What are you quoting? I don't see that sentence anywhere in parent's linked twitter thread
ekms··on Google employees say AI researcher did not resign, despite what exec claims
Yeah... there've been something like 5 top posts on hn in the past week about this incident. It's ridiculous
ekms··on A man who went on a hike and never stopped
I suspect it might have been taken out of context. The tone of Eb's reply made it sound like the reporter was perhaps trying to put words into his mouth to get some evocative quote about conservation or something, and instead got the exasperated response "If I want to buy an airplane and fill it full of a thousand gallons of fifty-dollar-a-gallon fuel, and I got the money to do it, goddamn it, leave me alone!"
ekms··on How to Sleep
I've also had persistent sleep problems over the years. Tried pretty much every behavioral approach (including the ones you've listed), as well as melatonin, marijuana, anti-histamines.

Those things maybe helped to an extent, but they contributed to an overall attitude that sleep was something I could _induce_ if only I did the right things, took the right pills, exercised at the right times, avoided the wrong things.

The thing that really seemed to begin to improve my sleep pattern was meditation. Gradually I've become more comfortable with not falling asleep quickly, which has the funny effect of often allowing the mind to fall sleep quicker. I still follow the conventional behavioral advice, but I think reframing my attitude towards sleep via meditation/mindfulness was really the most important step for me.