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filoleg

7,155 karma · joined January 12, 2017

SWE in big tech
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filoleg··on Don't be fooled–LLMs don't reason
You are almost there in terms of getting their point, so I will explain.

Birds existed since forever ago in nature, and they fly by flapping their wings. Then planes got invented, and they fly using a very different mechanism (that doesn't involve flapping wings).

The point made by the grandparent comment: saying "LLMs don't actually reason, because the underlying mechanism they use is different from how humans reason" feels about the same as "planes don't actually fly, because the underlying mechanism they use is different from how birds fly".

filoleg··on Automatic Transmission – a data-privacy study of connected vehicles
The grandparent comment doesn't talk about anything Tesla (the company) says. They are sharing findings from independent researchers.
filoleg··on ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026
> most HN people have an extremely narrow view of what constitutes "tech" (= web commerce and adware)

The grandparent literally said "it would pack more punch if ASML wasn't the only go-to example European company accomplishing something in tech."

Do you consider ASML to be a web-commerce or adware business? If yes, then I am not sure you could be helped.

If not, then how is this relevant to the discussion?

filoleg··on Plunging test scores are a slow-moving catastrophe
Yeah, I am genuinely confused how the grandparent comment just glossed over it.

I believe that both COVID and LLMs are disrupting educational metrics. But in terms of which one did more short-term scale damage (i.e, within 4 years), I would wager it was COVID.

filoleg··on Fujitsu launches made-in-Japan next-generation CPU FUJITSU-MONAKA
Do you mind elaborating?

This is the first time ever I am hearing of Fujitsu being involved in any bribing/lobbying controversy in the US (whether as a victim or an offender), and I doubt I am the only user in this thread in this position.

Unless it is a very well-known controversy, I feel like there is a need for extra context here. I am not even asking for anything of the "proof beyond any reasonable doubt" nature, I simply want to understand what you are trying to reference.

filoleg··on New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore
Yep, and that is also an explicit requirement for interviewers at every company I worked at.

I had to do interview training myself at one of them, and the guidelines were fairly specific and clear about this. We neither knew about the immigration status of the candidate nor were we allowed to ask/note/talk about it at all. Same as with age/marital status/etc.

filoleg··on New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore
> Or the local going rate for qualified personel were higher than you were willing to pay (which per def is true, if you had to bring in foreign work?).

Nope, immigration fees/lawyer expenses are simply just a negligible cost in the grand scheme of things.

When you hire someone earning $350k+ in annual TC, an extra $10-20k one-time cost of immigration-related expenses is a nothingburger for big tech companies.

Along the same line of reasoning: relocation expenses for candidates within the US. Big tech companies don't stress over a one-time $10k relocation package cost (for a candidate that passed the interviews and accepted the offer, but just happened to be from another state).

filoleg··on New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore
I think that both you and the grandparent comment are correct at the same time. It feels like there is a strong dichotomy between how H1B visa is treated across different realms of tech.

I have been working in big tech for a decade, and have a few friends working in the more technical financial firms (think more TwoSigma/HRT/Citadel, not JPM/GS), and my experience matches yours. Every H1B I knew at the companies I worked at was absolutely not hired as a cost-cutting measure. It was just simply difficult to find people who could qualify. And god knows we tried, I remember my team interviewing roughly 50 people just to fill a position of just a baseline decent dev (not a rockstar math olympics winner with multiple groundbreaking publications; though that would've been nice). And absolutely none of them were underpaid either, they were on the exact same comp range for the level, with plenty of them topping out the range. In fact, they actually ended up costing more to the employer than a local would, due to having to deal with immigration lawyers/filing fees/etc. (all while being paid the same as everyone else).

Meanwhile, I have a lot of acquaintances from undergrad working as devs at tech consultancy firms and more "general/traditional finance" companies. The stories I hear from them about H1B at their workplaces are pretty much exactly what the grandparent comment describes, and even worse.

filoleg··on I resigned from Anthropic today
Unless he has an actual plan for effective global enforcement of his proposed policy, this is all just posturing at best, and a transfer of power to adversarial foreign states (that have no such moral qualms and worries around superintelligent AI) at worst.
filoleg··on Muse: Meta's personal AI agent, features and capabilities
> Immigration agencies are absolutely monitoring social media when people cross borders, apply for visas, etc. There's nothing hypothetical or future about this at all.

The hypothetical part was not about them being able to do it, but about them caring to do anything with that information.

My mother is pretty much locked-in on fb/whatsapp/instagram. She travels internationally rather frequently, including to more "questionable" countries (where she just happens to have relatives that she wants to visit). She has never faced any issues related to her usage of meta products (or social media in general).

It boggles my mind how there are actual adults on HN, who straight up fail to comprehend that telling a normal person (e.g., my mom, who is imo in the majority of the kind of people using social media) something like "you shouldn't be doing it, because muh gubernment surveillance and unencrypted comms and you are being watched by the feds" is gonna just make you sound crazy.

And why wouldn't it? She has never faced any issues, and she has been actively using whatsapp+ig all the time, for over a decade. And the same holds true for everyone she knows as well. Not once did she face any issues ever, despite traveling multiple times a year every year, including to some countries that are on pretty adversarial terms with the US (we are talking "sanctioned" type of adversarial).

The thing is, she faces none of the hypothetical issues that could come from her usage of those services. Neither do any of the people she ever talked to, and that's the overwhelming majority of the users of those services. You are more than welcome to claim that she might not be educated or aware enough to understand the issues at hand (and it is at least partially true). I am just baffled and disappointed by how there is such a large contingent of HN users who straight up cannot even comprehend the mindset and experiences of an average adult user.

filoleg··on U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
> the reason why the 4 is tolerated but the 8 got axed is that 4 is a honeypot and 8 wasn't

That's certainly a take.

My personal take is that 4chan actually complies with the US laws, specifically the ones around promptly removing+reporting any illegal content that the US cares about (e.g., terrorism threats/CSAM/etc.), and 8chan doesn't.

Out of curiosity, what makes you consider 4chan to be a honeypot, as opposed to it just being a platform that simply complies with the relevant laws?

I will admit, I've spent barely a few minutes on 8 in my lifetime, so I am not equipped to judge the nuance of their situation much. With 4 though, it's been an on-and-off thing for me over the past ~15 years.

filoleg··on Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card
> Well you can get it only in some kind of machines, and you need to pay it cash. Also you need to use cash to charge it

Totally forgot about that aspect, you are 100% correct.

I remember traveling with my friend who had a physical card, and more than once we had to reroute to a nearby kiosk and wait in line, so he could recharge the balance on the card. Apple Wallet felt more convenient, because recharging it was as simple as picking the amount to recharge and hitting "submit."

filoleg··on Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card
Thanks for bringing this up, I actually had no idea it was simply disabled, and assumed it was simply not included at all (for whichever miniscule savings it would bring).

Your explanation makes more sense, because it is definitely cheaper/easier to just disable (but include) that hardware to avoid licensing fees (as opposed to having an additional factory manufacturing line just to produce the SKUs that physically exclude that hardware).

filoleg··on Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card
I heard from friends that physical Suica cards tend to be difficult to obtain these days at times, but digital one isn't at all.

Took me roughly a minute to create one within Apple Wallet ahead of my trip, and that was it. Didn't need to install any apps or register on any websites, because creating a Suica card is natively supported in the wallet app.

Idk how the situation is like with Suica card on Android though, outside of the fact that unless the phone was purchased in Japan, it will typically lack the necessary hardware for it (which isn't a concern with iPhones, because all regional versions include it).

filoleg··on Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card
Maybe I am just plainly wrong or encountered some specific stations, but this does not feel true from my experience.

During my last visit to London (in 2025), it felt noticeably slower than even NYC subway tap-to-pay.

Suica is a whole other beast that isn't even in the same category of speed. It genuinely feels sub-200ms instantaneous.

filoleg··on Twitter Viewer – View Twitter Without Account
Just to clarify, what do you mean by "without revealing my personal phone number"?

Did you use a voip number (e.g., Google Voice/Twilio/etc.) instead? Or somehow no number at all? Or a secondary (real) phone number, and Twitter somehow determined it wasn't your primary personal phone number?

Not pushing back against what you said, just trying to understand what factually happened.

filoleg··on Sydney Marathon medal mistakenly depicts Munich stadium
They basically embed company names directly into team names.

Here is a couple of examples: Fukuoka Softbank Hawks and Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.

filoleg··on Fixing a bricked Framework laptop
> this is true for every laptop vendor

Are there any reports out there of macbook OTA updates causing laptops to become entirely unbootable with no recovery options (and, in case it actually happened, Apple refusing to fix/replace affected laptops at no extra cost)?

I am yet to hear of it being a thing, and I would love to be proven wrong.

filoleg··on Fairphone is now officially available in the United States
> dongle makes it impossible to charge the phone or connect it to any other device while using audio

I feel like you missed the part where the parent comment said "[...] and there's even passthrough options for when you need to charge".

filoleg··on On non-rooted Android 17, ADB uninstall of system apps fails
> Why don't we export some better culture to Europe then?

Because there is way more impact potential of doing so from within the US than from Europe.

Also, because moving to another country with the primary intent to "export culture" is not something (I suspect) most people are interested in (I know I am not). Overall, it feels like a weird proposal. And I expect most of the residents of those countries to treat you with both suspicion and bewilderment, if you told them that this was your reason for moving to their country (and rightfully so, in my opinion).

filoleg··on Waymo in Dallas
Good for you, and I fully respect other people making choices like that. I don't believe that you should be forced into a situation that makes you use waymo despite your wishes, and I believe that you should be able to opt out (in case you want to).

Back to the topic, why should I not be allowed a choice of having a subsidized/free waymo that prioritizes me and my neighbors (given I would be participating in this fully out of my own volition)?

If I am allowed to make that choice, do you believe that poors should have access to the same service and be allowed to make the same choices as non-poors in that regard? If no, then why not?

filoleg··on Waymo in Dallas
> Translation: Poors are allowed to exercise their freedom of movement iff they stay in a huge corpo's good graces.

Would it placate you, if we did it for non-poors instead then?

I am a non-poor, and I would like a free/subsidized waymo with priority mode set for sharing with my neighbors. My belief is that it would help the poors more than me, but if doing so is oppressive or freedom-restricting or smth like that, I would gladly take that burden off their hands.

filoleg··on The Dunning-Kruger effect may just be a data artefact (2020)
Imo it would be more accurate to say that topic experts overestimate how much the average person knows about it.
filoleg··on Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy
holy, that's quite a lot.

Even the strongest energy drink I've ever seen sold retail in the US had "only" 300mg of caffeine. And it came with plenty of signage on the packaging, indicating very prominently how high the caffeine levels were. I usually drink 200mg a day total (sometimes, but rarely, crossing into the 300mg territory), and you were totally correct, there is absolutely no way to not notice when that 300mg comes from a single drink.

In no world would I expect a random caffeinated drink at Panera to go above that.

filoleg··on Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy
Did you have those jagerbombs in Belgium to begin with or while on the way to Belgium?
filoleg··on Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy
Fair point, but yeah, it is still quite a crazy amount, esp in terms of alcohol, even for someone like me. And I am saying this as someone with very strong alcohol tolerance, not as a (likely) smaller 18 year old woman with way less tolerance.
filoleg··on Dubious research tied to Red Bull has shaped energy drink policy
I am with you here, especially given that the examples listed in the article were basically:

* Some young man downed 6 beers and "several" energy drinks, then dove into a lake, and subsequently died. His mother said that he grew up near a lake and a was a good swimmer, so their conclusion was to blame energy drinks.

* An 18 year old woman downed 10 jagerbombs (a mix of jagermeister liquor and an energy drink) and subsequently had multiple cardiac arrests. The conclusion, again, was that it happened due to some unique properties of energy drinks, and not the fact that she consumed an equivalent of 10 energy drinks+10 shots of hard liquor in a short timespan. Too much of almost anything is bad, and I have no idea what other outcome was expected here after consuming crazy amounts of liquor and caffeine like this.

* A 17 year old man died from alcohol poisoning after mixing alcohol and energy drinks (unspecified amounts of each), and that's somehow the fault of energy drinks instead of alcohol.

I am just baffled that they couldn't find more convincing examples, given how they claimed it was such a serious and prevalent issue.

filoleg··on The iPhone Upgrade Program is being replaced by Apple Upgrade
> Pay $32/mo (so $770 total) to use an iPhone for two years and then give it back to Apple.

At the end of your device lease term, you have an option to buy out your leased device. With the buy out cost being equal to the device sticker price minus the amount you had already paid on your lease.

This seems pretty fair to me tbh.

filoleg··on How the Elite See Rome
I am of the same opinion.

Just doing the napkin math on it, it doesn't come out to be a crazy number, and the bang per buck (in terms of how much it benefits the students) was great.

Another similar event that my school did was reserving GA Aquarium for students for an evening+overnight. That one was even better imo, as I love GA Aquarium a ton. And being allowed to stay overnight to sleep in your own sleeping bag right next to sharks and other animals passing you by was soothing and awesome.

filoleg··on NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings
If you are hesitant to mention it in the comments, please consider at least putting it in your profile bio. This sounds like a genuinely useful tool that I would personally want to use myself.
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