Hacker News Reader

fraaancison The only moat left is money?

He kind of did. He used leverage to place bets on the market.

Leverage scales in a way, because larger pools of money (corporations, groups of investors) mean larger bets.

But leverage also doesn't scale, because larger pools of money tend to make smaller bets over a larger surface of the market, since being wrong in a big way with leverage can wipe you out.

fraaancison Ask HN: Why are there no talks about Seedance 2.0 on Hacker News?

AI Fatigue. I'm a fan of AI but I've stopped clicking on stories about it because it's mostly hype, slop, fomo, and flat-out lies.

fraaancison Sizing chaos

I wonder how many layers of fabric a cutter could get through in one pass (without setting it on fire).

fraaancison Ask HN: Why is YouTube's recommendation system so bad?

YouTube's recommendation system is great... for children.

fraaancison AI is destroying open source, and it's not even good yet

In the problem is the solution. Open source maintainers start writing AGENTS.md and other files to guide those using LLMs, and future nerd sniping and elitism can be practiced in reference to the spec instead of the actual code. There can just be an agent template for maintaining or adding features to curl or projects like it.

fraaancison Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux

If you can handle Linux, you should try Reaper as a DAW. It's really great.

fraaancison Toyota "Can Barely Cover the Demand" for Its Cars

Maybe, but they also have bets placed that hydrogen fuel cells are the future, which doesn't seem very realistic either. Unrealistic in a different direction.

fraaancison Ask HN: Claude file creation/edit feature leading to worse coding performance?

I've definitely seen this in the chat interface. It loses entire methods and segments of source, and it absolutely crawls during generation. To the point where I just tell it to give me the changes and where to put them.

fraaancison Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers

It's too bad the AI can't just do the sewing.

fraaancison Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)

This is exactly the app I would've wanted when I was still trying to lose weight by tracking calories, really great idea. I paid for a calorie-tracking app that couldn't do this, I think it was MyFitnessPal, and know several people currently paying for the same type of thing.

fraaancison Ask HN: If you were to relearn math today, how would you approach it?

I kept at mathacademy for about 6-8 months and completed Foundations 1, which was mostly a review of things I'd forgotten. Once I got to Foundations 2 and started regularly failing quizzes, I had to let it go. In my opinion, the pedagogy of "learn this one method to deal with this one problem type, we'll teach you why it works later" is great for young learners and their sponge-like memory, but I'm well into middle age and my memory is shot. I failed quizzes because I forgot the rote method for the solutions, even though I mechanically understood the method and had completed several problems just like it. Taking copious notes might have helped, but there are only so many hours in the day and flipping through notes during timed quizzes is tough. Not saying don't try it, definitely do (especially if your memory's still sharp), but if you start failing, don't be too hard on yourself.

fraaancison Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

Now that I think about it, I never once got a job from a cold application. It was always on either an employee recommendation or having met a family member.

fraaancison Ask HN: If I am so smart, why I am not rich?

Second this. Getting rich is orthogonal to general intelligence, and much more aligned to how you estimate and handle risk.

fraaancison The Rust project has a burnout problem

    In a comment on another Rust-related post, the author noted that, "rust definitely skews younger than average. i don't have statistics on hand, but almost all people i know working on the project are younger than 35, and a surprising number are 17-25."  
    I've messed with Rust a bit and I like it.  I like the ideas and lack of compromise.  But good ideas and a lack of compromises are what you get from youth,  along with the arrogance of style choices that make things harder to understand.  Will Rust stick around once these folks have bigger responsibilities?

fraaancison Jobs you're applying to might not be real

I've known some corporate recruiters personally and I thought I'd heard most of the hiring horror stories. I have _never_ heard of this, and now I'm wondering how prevalent it is.

fraaancison A.I. Belongs to the Capitalists Now

Converting all matter in the universe to compute.

fraaancison 280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars

Public transit is hot garbage in 99% of cities in the US. Bus routes represent a shuttle for moving the poor, elderly, and infirm between various public assistance offices. It won't go away, but it's unlikely to ever be more than that.

fraaancison Linda Yaccarino is the new CEO of Twitter

Yeah, it is. The only glaring issue I see is that Yaccarino will definitely have to compromise by kicking some of the more radical people off the platform to get the high-dollar accounts advertising on Twitter again, which will draw fire from what is now the most visible user base. Or at the very least, reducing the "freedom of reach" I've seen Elon refer to. Otherwise, she seems to be a decent hire, catering to a lot of groups.

fraaancison It was all downhill after the Cuecat

This hole was plugged more than a year ago as they no longer use the ESP32 as a base.

fraaancison Ask HN: Books that teach you to think

"Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn.

fraaancison Ask HN: How to learn to sell?

* > I believe the key to success here will be "Cold Sales" *

100% correct.

1. Get a demo ready that you can show on a laptop. Focus on features.

2. Smile and dial. Set a meeting with the business owner or manager to show the demo.

3. Listen. The things they say (mostly objections) will guide your product development.

4. Accept rejection. You will get meetings from 10% of your calls. You will make sales on 2% of your meetings if the customer even needs the product.

Reading is a good way to forestall the heartache of actual sales, but that's it. Everything you need to know you'll learn in meetings.