HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

irishcule

43 karma · joined April 17, 2014

submissionscomments
irishcule··on U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war
> the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control

I never understood these kinds of arguments and they always come from those defending US military might.

Either they can do it or they cannot, if "the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it" is true, which it appears to be, then the US Military cannot control Hormuz.

irishcule··on Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B
The newest AI Agents are much more advanced that "FAQ bots", they kind of have hybrid deterministic and non-deterministic flows in how they handle customer requests, depending on the request.

Some companies set them up exactly as you describe, they handle the low effort, easy to solve issues and then escalate to a human for "bigger" things. There is still a lot of value in that process as now maybe 76% of your customer requests are solved without human intervention and the humans agents can focus on the more meatier requests.

Some companies do not though, I know of Airlines using AI Agents with full flight re-booking flows happening end to end with no human intervention and its working well.

I think AI Customer Service Agents have already moved beyond what you yourself have personally witnessed.

irishcule··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
Is this really "additional"? do you not do design docs/adrs/rfcs etc and talk about them with your team? do you take any notes or write out your design/plan in some way even for yourself?

Why can't you just pass any of those to an AI?

irishcule··on Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act: Dangerous backdoor surveillance risks remain
Where did they say you can't be "investigated without your knowledge" ?
irishcule··on Dutch spy services have restricted intelligence-sharing with the United States
Calling European countries "freeloaders" is such a one dimensional way of looking at this. Europe "outsourced" most of its defense to the US because the US wanted it that way, for soft power, influence, access to military bases and probably many other reasons.

This will become undeniably obvious when Europe stops being "freeloaders" and the US will complain about that too.

irishcule··on Half of America's Voting Machines Are Now Owned by a MAGA Oligarch
Are State elections also badly affected by gerrymandering?

I have only ever seen examples of it at the Federal Election level, so wondering if your first point is actually completely accurate. (I believe the States themselves control the "maps" but forgive my ignorance if not)

irishcule··on What Americans die from vs. what the news reports on
But the claim specifically, was that the statistics are flawed NOW with an implication that they were not flawed before.

Not sure you can do much with that in a discussion/argument when there is no proof of that provided other than a personal anecdote.

Edit: Actually maybe I misread it, they are saying its always been flawed. But still the general point of the thread still holds I think.

irishcule··on U.S. nuclear base hidden under Greenland's ice for decades
Most likely they are actually, every country will have a certain "% of GDP" threshold where once they go above that number, it makes more sense for them to spend the money in their own home grown defense industry vs buying US made weapons.

It has also certainly served US interests to keep certain European countries "down" and have them reliant on the US for their security for other reasons too.

The idea that the US decided to "subsidize" European defense for multiple decades, out of their own generosity is.... nothing short of completely laughable imo.

irishcule··on France plots tax on super-rich to rearm – and Britain could be next
People struggle to wrap their head around logic like yours because it is essentially just being pedantic.

- Before the war the Taliban controlled Afghanistan. - The US (+ Allies) invaded and conquered the country. - 20 years later the US Military has left the county. - The Taliban now controls the country again. - At no point during that 20 years was the Taliban actually "defeated" like claimed.

Whether you like it or not "Money and patience ran out" = losing the war.

There are many other "lost wars" where they were lost for the same reason. The most obvious one in this context being the Vietnam war.... which is also a popular one for people to argue that the US Military didn't lose either.

irishcule··on Joint Declaration by Ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, UK
> Sure, Russia gained some territory, resources, potential conscripts.

You just "hand wave away" gaining territory the size of the 2nd biggest country in Europe after Russia, Trillions in resources and 40 million people (a 30% increase in "Russian" population). I think you may be slightly undervaluing these things lol.

And then I just don't really understand your general point which seems to be that because you believe Russia could not successfully defeat Europe/Poland that they are not more threatening than they were 10 years ago?

- Russia will have gained a huge amount of combat experience.

- Russia will also have learned from fighting against a force using NATO equipment.

- Russia will have gained the immense wealth of Ukraine's natural resources.

- Russia will have increased their population by about 30% (+/- based on refugee point below)

- Russia will have basically doubled the size of their border with Poland (counting Belarus as part of Russia because why not)

- Russia will have added borders with 4 more European countries (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova)

- Russia has likely rooted out some of the corruption that plagued the military before/during this invasion as it would have become more apparent.

- Russia will have built up domestic production of weapons as much as they can (taking sanctions into account)

- Russia will have been emboldened by its "success" in conquering Ukraine.

- Russia will have seen how slow/scared the West was to respond to their invasion and encourage more "asymmetric" warfare in preparation for the next country (aka "the price of eggs are too high, we can't afford to save <insert country with Russian border here>)

- Russia will VERY likely have increased the amount of Ukrainian refugees to the rest of Europe by 100s of 1000s, possibly even millions. Further stretching the resources of those countries and feeding into the previous point in regards to the cost of intervening "next time".

All this, combined with a US President openly making disparaging remarks about NATO, but you think Europe should not be more worried about Russia than in 2015?

Ok...

irishcule··on The Google incentive mismatch: Problems with promotion-oriented cultures
I worked at a company with a process like that when I was an "Engineer" looking for a promotion to "Senior Engineer", at least for me it felt insulting that I had 3 years of performances reviews "exceeding expectations" and "already performing at the level of Senior Engineer" to then be told, ok now you have to do an interview and a presentation to say why you deserve to be promoted to Senior. I declined to go through the process and then left a few months later to become a Senior Engineer at a different company.
irishcule··on XVideos: The porn empire next door
It's likely because that's where "Wordle" used to be hosted before it moved to NYT
irishcule··on Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?
"most people’s leisure time consists of trite activities, steered by indulgent appetites"

Isn't this you "judging"?

irishcule··on How People Get Rich Now
"Do they really though? That's really the owners getting paid that, not all the workers. And a lot of that is really valued on the potential rather than what was actually produced to that point."

I believe the OP is talking about the owners of the startups.

irishcule··on Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?
What if it was rotated among "everyone"? I think people would be happy to do grunt work for a week (probably even a month or two) if it meant that they get all the rest of their time back to do what they want.
irishcule··on Eleven Years of Go
Ah ok, I misunderstood your comment. Glad to hear Go has had such a big impact for you.
irishcule··on Eleven Years of Go
>Go is a phenomenal language and I'm not really sure where I'd be without it, my company basically wouldn't exist, I wouldn't be solving the problems I am.

I don't want this to come across as negative but I really don't get this. Can you expand upon this if you don't mind?

What is it about Go specifically that you make claims like that? Realistically couldn't you have done everything you did in Go, in say Java or something else? (I make this as a general comment, I am not aware of the things you have actually written in Go :) )

irishcule··on Evernote just slashed 54 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce
How did you find the learning curve with notion? I found it on here a few days ago and thought it looked amazing, gave it a few days trial but now I feel like I am just wasting time with it trying to do the things that I want.

Simple things like not being able to put different colors on text in the same block or even just putting a simple table (no not a database) into a block have put me off it. Also it is difficulty (re: impossible) to copy and paste notes over from another application without it getting all messed up.

irishcule··on Ask HN: What is the salary like for programmers in Canada in 2018?
> Spoiler alert: the best setup is to hole up in a nice town in Canada working remotely for a client in the US.

Do you have experience with this? :)

irishcule··on The 20-Hour Flight Is Coming, and It May Have a Gym and Bunks
You should avoid any flights with the new 737 MAX then. I flew on it recently and I have never been so uncomfortable on a flight and I am not tall (5'9)
irishcule··on Show HN: Zenkit – Productivity app of List, Kanban, Spreadsheet and Calendar
Yes. You can see it here: http://imgur.com/a/1soW3

If you just make the browser window small it will happen.

irishcule··on Show HN: Zenkit – Productivity app of List, Kanban, Spreadsheet and Calendar
Hah "Siobhan".....are ye Irish?

Just some things I noticed quickly. Some kind of progress or status bar could be added when doing an import. I've imported a CSV I exported from Jira and it just seems to be continuously importing with no idea on the status of it (how long is left, is it even still importing or has something gone wrong?)

Also when using the select box for the "Field Type" in the field properties pop up, the list is going below my screen and I cannot see the bottom items in that list.

irishcule··on Snapchat has reportedly filed confidentially for its massive IPO
When are people expecting this IPO to happen? Early 2017?
irishcule··on Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people
I thought the point of basic income was that EVERYONE gets it? How can that be exploited?

Some will get a basic income and choose not to work and continue to live, others will choose to work (while also receiving the basis income) and will have a better lifestyle because of them choosing to work. Is this not how this work or am I wrong?

irishcule··on Debugging Node.js in Production
It's strange, nothing in the hosts file, any ping says it can't find the host http://techblog.netflix.com/, or even anyone of those check ip sites says the same. Asked some work colleagues here and in Ireland and it seems our company is blocking it, I guess through the firewall which unfortunately I can't disable.
irishcule··on Debugging Node.js in Production
Sorry if this is slightly off topic but can anyone tell me why I would not be able to access the netflix tech blog?

Every time I try to go to it I get a "Web page unavailable" despite sites like downforeveryoneorjustme.com telling me it is not down.

Not sure if its just my laptop as I am abroad at the moment in Italy and have no other computer to check the site.