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jotux

3,048 karma · joined December 13, 2010

jotux.at.hn
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jotux··on Apple Watch Series 12
Funny, because literally every single apple product page gets posted as "news" to HN and every time I see one I think it's just apple marketing astroturfing. Especially since most of the product updates the last few years seem to fall into the, "BUT SHE'S GOT A NEW HAT" territory.
jotux··on Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
>I'd be interested to see if opponents of mass surveillance could draft good legislation to curb potential abuses

Isn't this just warrants? We have infrastructure in place, if police have reasonable suspicion a crime has occurred, they go to a judge and convince them they have enough evidence and the judge gives them a warrant. The problem is police and Flock are constantly arguing they shouldn't need a warrant to use the data, and it creates a system designed for abuse.

jotux··on Anti-AI fonts are useless and harmful
Found it awful to look at, tried to zoom out and everything on the page got larger. Seriously gross accessibility.
jotux··on Supersonic Trebuchet [video]
Not sure if you watched the video, but the chain they're using is extremely heavy. I would think the projectile would be on the order of one of the single chain links at the end of the small side.
jotux··on Supersonic Trebuchet [video]
>And what you have ended up with is something that looks like.... A whip!

Had a similar feeling come to me as I watched this video a few weeks ago. It made me really want to see someone make a whip-based trebuchet that uses a big spring like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkQZU-CBwhk

jotux··on Tell HN: In 2021, there were 4.5 jobs per job seeker vs. 2.5 job seekers/job now
This is an exceptionally small amount of data to draw any conclusion from.
jotux··on The SpaceX Sham
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6398250508112 "SpaceX makes its historic stock market debut today, set to be the largest IPO of all time with a $1.77 trillion valuation. Elon Musk, founder and CEO, anticipates becoming the world's first trillionaire. Shares will go live at $135 each, potentially surging immediately due to high demand"

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/12/business/live-news/spacex-goe... "What we covered here • SpaceX soared Friday in its blockbuster stock market debut, with shares gaining 19% after Wall Street’s biggest-ever IPO. • The rocket and AI company, which Elon Musk founded in 2002, is now valued at over $2 trillion, joining Musk’s Tesla as one of the world’s top-ten most valuable companies. • Musk, who owns nearly half the company’s stock, has now made history as the world’s first trillionaire."

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/spacex-ipo-tr... "For now, investors appear eager to overlook Musk’s politics and focus on his company.

Dan Hanson, a senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, which invested in SpaceX while it was still private said investors should think of SpaceX not just as a rocket company, but as a combination of its launch business, Starlink satellite internet network and artificial intelligence ambitions.

“This team is just getting started,” he said. “There’s a significant opportunity for them to create value as they execute.”

I suspect the vast majority of americans are getting their news from cnn, fox, nbc, abc, pbs.... And I doubt a ton of them are reading the irish times, montana skeptic, or the verge.

jotux··on License plate reader searches should require a warrant
Couldn't you make the same arguments for basically all other due process or privacy protections? I think I can accurately summarize your statement here to:

Mass Surveillance deters crime and makes the job of law enforcement easier. I'm happy to live with Mass Surveillance because I don't think the drawbacks of having it aren't that bad, there are some benefits to me, and I trust institutions to implement safeguards.

Now replace Mass Surveillance with any of the following, and I think the your argument is the same:

  - Warrantless Searches
  - Giving Police the ability to convict in the field
  - Permanent and mandatory position tracking for all citizens
  - Required public identities for all online activity
jotux··on The SpaceX Sham
It's funny how our perceptions are driven by the source of our news. I generally perceived the positive coverage in regular news as unrelenting. I know the tech news sources I read were constantly complaining about rule changes and manipulations on the part of Spacex, but run-of-the-mill national news outlets seem to be endlessly hyping the stock to the point that a few of my non tech-savvy family members were asking if they needed to buy it as soon as they went public.
jotux··on A better way to tie gym shorts (or any drawstring) [video]
Love this "auto" truckers hitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J8MuOWO0Qs

Edit: Same knot, with an explanation before showing what I knew as the classic trucker hitch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKM5gaYJWN0

jotux··on Ask HN: What home printer do you use/recommend?
I've had a Brother HL-L2340DW for 10 years now.
jotux··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
>You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect

Proximity to a crime makes you a suspect even without the phone, right?

jotux··on UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts
Everyone needs to go transparent. Secrets are lies. Sharing is caring. Privacy is theft.
jotux··on Ask HN: Are you still using a Vision Pro?
How are they for lots of text? Do your eyes fatigue at all?
jotux··on Ask HN: Are you still using a Vision Pro?
>but I instead bought USB C display glasses

How did you use these? Did you like them?

jotux··on The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies
>kind of enthusiastic about just taking stuff from those who have it, considerably more than the current understanding of private property (or even taxation) considers acceptable.

Funny how you can use that description for how AI companies used everything for training data.

jotux··on Ask HN: Is there a term for feeling sad about forced AI adoption?
How would you feel about a machinist refusing to use CNC machines and only manually machining parts?
jotux··on Ask HN: Is anyone seriously considering a career change?
>I just believe that there is going to be a MASSIVE increase in demand for high performing software professionals with experience... we just aren't seeing it right now because of the business cycle.

I'm pretty concerned for early career developers. The industry is failing them by 1) Allowing the early career devs to outsource their critical thinking to AI and 2) Actively hiring fewer early career devs because they're extracting more work from their existing develops with AI. They're failing themselves by relying too much on AI, and not developing those important long-term skills and intuitions.

For that reason I feel pretty safe in my (admittedly niche) career space, and have a similar prediction that in 5-10 years we will have created a experience gap that we can't fix. Experienced engineers with good troubleshooting and debug skills will be even more valuable.

jotux··on Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
Not defending the legitimately douchey things amazon does, but it explains it right in that article :

>In short, an Amazon listing features prices not only offered by Amazon, but by other sellers. Some of these sellers may offer the items at a lower price, but the order will not be fulfilled by Amazon and won’t be subject to Prime’s shipping discounts and faster delivery.

If you're a prime member and logged it, it will prioritize purchases fulfilled by amazon and delivered with prime delivery. If you click "Other sellers on amazon" there will sometimes be sellers that are cheaper with shipping than purchasing through prime.

jotux··on Let's talk space toilets
Some info on the new one: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/artemis-iis-toile...

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220005710/downloads/NA...

jotux··on US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional
>It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly.

If you're into home brewing or distilling, the first and only comment people completely unfamiliar with the process say is something about going blind because of methanol. It's disappointing because the process is so rich with history and really interesting problems to solve but the zeitgeist is completely poisoned by prohibition-era propaganda.

jotux··on US Burned 14 Years of Missiles in 30 Days
I rewrote the article, it's even better now:

The tomahawk entered service in 1983, in 2026 they only produced 57. DO THE MATH!

This means the military can only have (2025-1983) * 57 = 2394 Tomahawks.

But the military says they have approximately 3000-4000 tomahawks in inventory. Is it a conspiracy? How could they POSSIBLY have more than 2394 if they can ONLY MAKE 57 PER YEAR?!

prompt: rite me article about US only can make 57 tomohok missels a year but looks lik they have moar than that

jotux··on US Burned 14 Years of Missiles in 30 Days
A better article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-tomahawks-iran-war-faster-t...

>The maximum rate of production is estimated to be 2,330 per year: Three contracts from Raytheon each have a capacity of 600 and a BAE has a contract to produce up to 530 missiles per year, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which cites Pentagon budget documents.

>However, the actual procurement rate for the U.S. military is about 90 per year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Navy requested only 57 missiles for fiscal year 2026, according to Defense Department budget documents.

So the rate of production has been low because the procurement rate has been low.

jotux··on The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
>might make Karen suggest to her boss that they accept PDF files.

I'm not sure what state or country this was written in, but requiring physical copies or a fax is very likely a legal requirement.

jotux··on Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
I suspect this is some light with chronically-bad timing that gets run by tons of people every day. The camera is taking a photo with a bunch of vehicles in the frame and it's ticketing the one that had the license plate unobstructed, even if a few of the vehicles in the frame technically entered the intersection when the light was yellow.

Sometimes lights are just so poorly implemented, and drivers pass through them so often, it feels like whoever designed the intersection was actively goading drivers into running the light.

jotux··on An interactive map of Flock Cams
Maybe you could reach out to Flock directly and ask them to install cameras in your kitchen and bedroom too (for crime reduction reasons).
jotux··on Meta’s AI smart glasses and data privacy concerns
Meta needs to make a find-your-lost-dog commercial for their smart glasses ASAP.
jotux··on Bars close and hundreds lose jobs as US firm buys Brewdog in £33M deal
Tariffs, and retaliatory tariffs, have really messed up the US export market for alcohol too.
jotux··on Designing programming languages beyond AI comprehension
Template metaprogramming, move semantics, const correctness, multiple/virtual inheritance, implicit conversions, many ways to initialize variables, argument-dependent lookup, static variables/methods, SFINAE...add all of that and you'll surely make a programming language beyond all comprehension.
jotux··on US Tech Force
Left federal and my private 401k is 150% match up to 6%. Better than TSP in everything except fees, which are slightly higher. But that mattered a lot less than my pay, I was a GS-15 in a leadership role and took a role in the private sector for a 30% pay increase back into an individual contributor role. So much less work and a huge pay increase.
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