HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

ericsoderstrom

558 karma · joined November 25, 2017

submissionscomments
ericsoderstrom··on Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode
I do think it's still true in my experience that someone with the the capabilities to build useful things on their own tend to not stay very long at these giant companies, unless for specific visa reasons
ericsoderstrom··on YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down
Looks like youtube premium just gives you no ads and allows for video downloads. Which you already can get using ublock and youtube-dl if you're watching from a computer. People who are big fans of youtube premium is it because you're using youtube mostly on mobile device, or is there some other advantage here I'm missing?
ericsoderstrom··on Microsoft's AI Bing also generated factual errors at launch
What are they supposed to do then?
ericsoderstrom··on AI Joins Hunt for ET: Study Finds 8 Potential Alien Signals
wait what. I just read neuromancer and don't see how that applies? Were rio/wintermute ever involved in detecting an alien signal?
ericsoderstrom··on Can GPT pass the bar exam?
twist: these posts are written by chatGPT
ericsoderstrom··on Why do new cars look like wet putty?
it is
ericsoderstrom··on Kraken lays off 30% of staff
precede?
ericsoderstrom··on A Twitter Off Ramp: A Tutorial for Getting on Mastodon
Personally I've used it more in the past week than ever before. And if Elon's tweets are to be believed, DAU is also at an all-time high. So i guess the answer is: if people are in fact leaving twitter, more are joining
ericsoderstrom··on Ask HN: Am I the only one tired of seeing DALL·E /Stable Diffusion posts?
Why was copilot a fiasco? This [0] hn thread from two months ago is filled with predominantly positive reviews

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31825742

ericsoderstrom··on Nepal's Kusunda language has no words for "yes" or "no"
English is missing some seemingly basic answer words too, which are present in other languages. Like no single word for unambiguously answering a negative question.

E.g. Q: Aren't you finished yet?

Answering 'yes' or 'no' would be ambiguous

ericsoderstrom··on U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%
Yes, because inflation is already the first derivative of cost.

So the 'rate of increase' of inflation is the second derivative. And to say that the second derivative is decreasing is another way of saying the third derivative is negative

ericsoderstrom··on $3B in Bitcoin was sold in a last-ditch attempt to save UST from collapse
20% APY for staking UST
ericsoderstrom··on I hate what video games have become
I think it is a problem though when a game's revenue mostly comes from cosmetics, as it shifts the developer incentives away from "developing a game that lots of people want to buy and play" to "making the type of game that lends itself well to lots of cosmetic micro transactions". These are often pretty different types of games and it would be sad if the former were entirely replaced by the latter.
ericsoderstrom··on Ubisoft’s first NFT plans make no sense
Nope. There are some distributed blockchain file storage systems, but by and large NFTs don't use them.
ericsoderstrom··on MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch
Think you misunderstood the parent comment. Full screen doesn't somehow add pixels into a bezel
ericsoderstrom··on John Carmack on Hiring
I think the interesting addition is his point that adding some amount of literal randomness to stages of the process would be a good thing, if the culture around interviewing could change to accept it
ericsoderstrom··on Robert Sapolsky on Depression (2009)
Isn't that marketing?
ericsoderstrom··on $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved
If someone pays you in cash, do you really look up the serial numbers of all the bills you receive?
ericsoderstrom··on A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco
(hint: it's a joke)
ericsoderstrom··on Hawai'i could be 2nd state to legalize psychedelic mushrooms
Does anyone know what conclusions (if any) could be drawn from the psychedelic studies of the 60's? The wikipedia page on the harvard study [0] is pretty light on details. Though it looks like the study only lasted 2 or 3 years before being shut down.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Psilocybin_Project#:~:....

ericsoderstrom··on The Therac-25 Incident
This was (is?) used as a case study in MIT's system's engineering course (6.033)
ericsoderstrom··on New MacBook Pro models to feature magsafe, no touch bar and more ports: analyst
The USB C connection on my laptop loosened over time. To the point that the cable now just falls out unless I keep the laptop completely still. Having a magnet in there to keep the cable in place would be nice. No reason you couldn't use a magnet with a USB-C connection though, best of both worlds and whatnot
ericsoderstrom··on Early clinical trial shows anti-depressant prevents hospitalization from Covid
With so many studies being done on covid (by basically every lab in the world capable of doing so), the self selection biases are especially strong. That is, every study that confirms some statistically significant effect (often with a small sample size) will be published, and all of the corresponding studies which confirm the null hypothesis are buried. So you get a flood of seemingly compelling early evidence for covid effects or treatments, most of which will turn out to be false
ericsoderstrom··on Tips for a Better Life
Yeah, that one was weird. If you follow the link it leads to this [0] lecture about why you should exercise your 5th amendment right to remain silent if being interrogated by authorities. Which seems like more sensible advice than "DON'T TALK TO COPS", though still out of place on a list of general everyday life tips

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

ericsoderstrom··on Show HN: Write-Only Interface for Twitter
I think it's more like an oncologist who avoids smoking for health reasons being on the board of a cigarette company.
ericsoderstrom··on Show HN: Write-Only Interface for Twitter
> Imagine writing a blog but everyone suggesting to you that you have to consume other people’s blogs in order to contribute your own

It would be pretty weird to write a blog, but never read others. Especially if you avoided reading blogs because you thought it was bad for your mental health. Why make more of a bad thing?

ericsoderstrom··on Reddit Claims 52M Daily Users, Revealing a Key Figure for Social-Media Platforms
Huh, there's no difference for me. How do you tell if you're using the redesigned UI or not?

[edit] If I open reddit in incognito then I can see the redesign, otherwise I can't. Maybe I opted out of the redesign at some point? Can't see anything about it in settings though

ericsoderstrom··on Technical phone screen superforecasters
I wonder how much of this comes down to problem selection, rather than effectiveness of the interviewer? Interviewers usually stick to a couple of problems, so their predictive power might depend primarily on the problem set.

I've been going through some technical phone screens lately, and am pretty surprised by how bad the questions are that some people choose. Questions that I wouldn't think would provide any signal whatsoever for hiring

ericsoderstrom··on Casio F-91W: The strangely ubiquitous watch (2011)
"US officials view f-91w wearers with suspicion"? Better keep an eye on this guy then:

https://i.redd.it/5o061ntl2m651.jpg

https://i.redd.it/b4j5fzl4d6f41.jpg

ericsoderstrom··on ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies
From the HN guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

I think these examples you cited are pretty clearly off topic

Page 1 of 5Next →