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kbos87

3,898 karma · joined February 12, 2017

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kbos87··on Apple's smart home camera reportedly won't record video
Fair, I won't comment on whether or not a camera adds any value to this use case specifically. I can imagine a lot of other ways that a camera could be useful. Today I only plug in a google home camera when I'm gone for extended periods of time (e.g., on vacation) because my partner and I don't want a camera pointing into our living space at all times.

This seems to be the first instance I can think of where a vendor is trying to take a middle road of extracting more value from a camera while also having a more conservative view on privacy. We'll need to see exactly what that means in practice, but I'm glad someone is finally broaching the question.

kbos87··on Apple's smart home camera reportedly won't record video
It takes real effort and tuning to get it right today, but it's getting easier!
kbos87··on Apple's smart home camera reportedly won't record video
I live in a 1700sqft space - not small, but not large. I have ~15 separate banks of overhead lights that were built into my builder grade condo when I bought it, and probably 20 light fixtures (lamps, accent lights, etc) I've added myself. If you are even remotely interested in design, decor or lighting it's easy to end up with a similar number of lights in an average sized space. When I walk through the door, the scene sets itself perfectly based on the time of day. If I didn't have that automation, I'd probably end up turning on the nearest 1-2 lights out of convenience. It's a huge quality of life improvement. Today it takes some up front effort to get it set up, but it's getting easier and easier and more people will realize the benefit.
kbos87··on Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
I don’t disagree, but effective enforcement of the law as it is written has to play a role. There is a kernel of truth behind the broken windows theory of policing. When it’s widely known that the law can’t be reliably enforced, crime escalates, and quality of life deteriorates.
kbos87··on Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
I hate that this has to be an all or nothing conversation. There is a path where technology can deliver benefits without significant harm to individual privacy.

San Francisco has turned the tide on smash and grab crime through license plate readers and drone response. New Hampshire requires law enforcement agencies to delete unflagged license plate data within three minutes of collection. These two conditions can exist at the same time, in the same place, if we don’t allow the narrative to be pulled toward either extreme. Unfortunately that’s very tough to accomplish in today’s political climate in the US.

kbos87··on Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?
Similar take here - I only find value in skills as a way to repeatably carry out tasks that are specific to my workflow; any skills I've seen shared broadly don't seem to add much value beyond what the model itself can already handle.

At work I'll occasionally repurpose a skill that someone else has shared as a starting point, but those skills are already somewhat customized to the environment I operate in.

I have all of my skills maintain a single table in a markdown file with a description of each skill, when it last ran, exceptions it encountered, and when it was last edited.

kbos87··on The AI Hater's Manifesto
This piece is so incredibly lazy. It's essentially an inventory of grievances the author has heard, each one poorly articulated and poorly supported. It aims to get points for completeness so it's lengthy, though every argument (even the valid ones!) are an inch deep. It ironically would have benefitted from a simple critique by the Claude of two years ago.
kbos87··on The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"
Corey laid out this line of thinking on a July 1 episode of the Galaxy Brain podcast. It was a good listen and I generally think he has some interesting points, but I also can't help but think that he does himself a disservice by having such a consistently negative bias toward AI and tech in general.

Most of the time he comes off as an objective thinker, but those are really discounted by moments where his own dogma leads him down a path of making weakly supported points that seem like they come more from a place of anger.

kbos87··on CarPlay Is Additive
I currently have a Tesla (no CarPlay) and a Volvo EV with a reasonably good CarPlay implementation. I was in the same position as the writer until I experienced great in-vehicle software that I think only Tesla & Rivian can currently offer.

I don't miss CarPlay one bit, and I think a lot of people are brainwashed into thinking it's the only viable option because they've never been exposed to an auto manufacturer who actually knows how to build software ;) The level of software-hardware integration you experience in a Rivian or Tesla is something that CarPlay just can't compete with.

Personally I also don't want Tesla or Rivian to add CarPlay, because the reality is that it's not only additive. If Tesla & Rivian don't continue to nudge their buyers toward their native in-vehicle software CarPlay will continue to dominate simply because people will default to using what they are comfortable with. That will inevitably drive decisions by Tesla & Rivian about where and how they should invest in the in-vehicle experience.

If you want CarPlay, there are plenty of legacy auto manufacturers out there who can give it to you.

kbos87··on OpenAI ad partner now selling ChatGPT ad placements based on “prompt relevance”
What a sad path to see such a bright star going down. I guess it’s not a huge surprise, but it really does paint a bleak picture of technology to see how narrow the range of likely outcomes is. Doesn’t matter if you built the foundation for the future and cured cancer - the most likely outcome is being back to optimizing for engagement and revenue.
kbos87··on Thoughts and feelings around Claude Design
> "To Figma: I can see a world where this post does numbers in the Figma internal Slack. If that’s the case and you’re reading this from Figma: this wouldn’t have happened if you hired me last year when I was interviewing. Your loss, big dawg."

What a counterproductive way to end an otherwise good set of points. Gives the appearance of bitterness and a desire for vengeance.

kbos87··on ChatGPT for Excel
From time to time I've tried using ChatGPT for financial modeling, and I have to say my experiences don't inspire much confidence.

Just this past week I used it to generate a simple model of a few different scenarios related to an investment property I own.

The first problem I ran into is that it was unable to output a downloadable XLS file. Not a huge deal - it suggested generating CSV tables I could copy/paste into a spreadsheet. The outputs it gave me included commas in a handful of numbers over 1,000 (but not all of them!) which of course shifted cells around when brought into Google Sheets. We pivoted our approach to TSV and solved this problem. Big deal? No. Seemingly basic oversight? Absolutely.

This is where the real fun began. Once I started to scrutinize and understand the model it built, I found incorrect references buried all over the place, some of which would have been extremely hard to spot. Here's my actual exchange with ChatGPT:

- - - - - - - - - -

> Can you check the reference in cell F3? It looks like it's calling back to the wrong cell on the inputs tab. Are there similarly incorrect references elsewhere?

> Yes, F3 is incorrect, and there are multiple other incorrect references elsewhere: (It listed about 30 bulleted incorrect references)

Bottom line - - Many formulas point to the wrong Inputs row because of the blank lines - The Sell + Condo section also has a structural design problem, not just bad references.

The cleanest fix is for me to regenerate the entire AnnualModel TSV with: - all references corrected - all 15 years included - the condo scenario modeled properly with a separate housing asset column

- - - - - - - - - -

This was me asking about the exact output I had just received (not something I had made any changes to or reworked.)

There are plenty of domains where I have enough faith and error tolerance to use ChatGPT all day, but this just sends a chill down my spine. How many users are really going to proof every single formula? And if I need to scrutinize to that level of detail, what's the point in the first place?

kbos87··on Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job
It’s an allegation, and the names of alleged perpetrators of crimes are rarely protected like this. Certainly feels like special treatment.
kbos87··on Layoffs at Block
All this is is evidence that Jack Dorsey had no idea what half the employees at Block were doing before he decided to do layoffs. May he know no peace, wherever he goes.
kbos87··on Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling
...but many people in positions where they can start a war or cause some other highly visible event of any sort probably will start turning to Polymarket to make money in the course of their work
kbos87··on Common misunderstandings about large software companies
As a technology company scales up, making great software becomes one of a hundred things the company needs to do right in order to survive and grow. Doesn’t mean it isn’t absolutely essential, but so is having a strong GTM machine, finance competency, operational rigor, HR, and a long list of other essential functions.

It’s only the tech industry where the voice and ego of small companies hold outsized share of voice and love to claim the contrary.

kbos87··on How to Attend Meetings
There's so much content and so many opinions on "meetings" that are polarized and come from a very narrow viewpoint. This particular POV seems reasonably critical of meetings but also recognizing that they are often warranted and can be carried out effectively.

I was happy to see "rallying the troops" as an acceptable reason to have a big meeting, because in my opinion it can be a good reason for a big meeting to exist (even though I'm sure many people disagree.)

kbos87··on DoGE "cut muscle, not fat"; 26K experts rehired after brutal cuts
The willingness to think you understand and can have an informed opinion on something neither you nor I nor a twentysomething engineer from Tesla know anything about is just as tiresome.

I’m only arguing that there are complex reasons why some of these programs exist and it requires experience and perspective to uncover that and make informed decisions.

kbos87··on DoGE "cut muscle, not fat"; 26K experts rehired after brutal cuts
If you are arguing that DOGE didn’t have massive power and cause irreparable damage you aren’t a serious person.
kbos87··on DoGE "cut muscle, not fat"; 26K experts rehired after brutal cuts
I’m ok with age being used as a partial proxy for experience when we’re talking about highly specialized roles with massive implications like the ones that DOGE staffers were dropped into.
kbos87··on Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies
This is an excellent parallel.
kbos87··on Is Sora the beginning of the end for OpenAI?
I think a lot of them actually do. It's easy to see TikTok users as mindless consumers, but the more you consume the more you develop a taste for unique content. Over the past few years the content that seems to truly do well at a global scale very often has markers of authenticity. Once something becomes easy to produce it becomes commonplace and you become sick of it quickly.
kbos87··on 60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds
I'd say I am asked this question at about half of the restaurants I eat at in the US (in the northeast.)
kbos87··on Is Sora the beginning of the end for OpenAI?
I could see Sora having a significant negative impact on short form video products like TikTok if they don’t quickly and accurately find a way to categorize its use. A steady stream of AI generated video content hurts the value prop of short form video in more than one way… It quickly desensitizes you and takes the surprise out that drives consumption of a lot of content. It also of course leaves you feeling like you can’t trust anything you see.
kbos87··on We Found a Hidden Camera in the Bathroom of Our Airbnb
Of course, everyone comes from their own particular point of view and/or bias.

I'm a host. The POV I see this from is that of someone who pays close attention to the market and the changing perception of short term rentals. I've read far enough beyond the headlines to know that these accusations are very often not what they seem, and that this narrative is being blown way out of proportion considering how infrequently it actually happens.

The POV a sub-segment of NYT readers see this from is one of being righteous about short-term rentals (in theory at least.)

The POV of writers and editors at NYT is to respond to their readers' preferences.

kbos87··on We Found a Hidden Camera in the Bathroom of Our Airbnb
As an Airbnb host I can just as quickly tell you stories of exploitative guests who are chronic abusers of the system, attempting to get refunds by threatening narratives like this that they know have the potential to get sympathy and traction with Airbnb or on social media. In almost all of these cases it ends up being one persons' word vs. another. An accusation is far from proof, but hosts most often stand to lose.
kbos87··on We Found a Hidden Camera in the Bathroom of Our Airbnb
There's a market in selling fear to people around products & services that aren't favored by a certain faction of NYT's readers.
kbos87··on Organize your Slack channels by "How Often", not "What"
It definitely depends on the nature of your work, but the notion of having a channel I need to check hourly makes me ill. If I’m needed I should get a notification, and if I’m involved in an active discussion, I’m there. Otherwise I’ll catch up on a daily basis.
kbos87··on Demand for human radiologists is at an all-time high
This is like saying that self-driving cars won't ever become a thing because someone behind the wheel needs to be to blame. The article cites AI systems that the FDA already has cleared to operate without a physicians' validation.
kbos87··on Bosch Unveils New Brake Technology
Non-blinding headlights already exist. Modern projection headlights can map where the light ends up on the road to illuminate your path while avoiding oncoming traffic. It just isn't widely adopted (in the US at least) as of yet.
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