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kjcharles

763 karma · joined January 11, 2015

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kjcharles··on Am I Being Gaslit by AI?
How do you quantify capability though? In coding or math there's an easy way to validate the output. That makes it easy to judge capability. But for many cognitive tasks the output is either subjective, not quantifiable, or requires deterministic results. No validation can tell you if an essay is good. Or if an argument will be persuasive to a specific audience. Or that the statistics an LLM pulled from a data source are accurate.

So how does an LLM learn to outperform humans when its output in a large number of tasks can't be validated? These sorts of tasks are a large part of cognitive work and intelligence to me.

kjcharles··on What's the end game for Ghost newsletter sign-up spam?
Hey InboxReads creator here. I've been facing the same problem with other newsletters submitted to the site so I think you're right that spammers are scraping directories.

I've added a bunch of mitigations but found that they're faking the referrer when subscribing to newsletters and not even going through the site anymore.

Captchas do solve it though!

But I'm just as baffled at their endgame as you are.

kjcharles··on Dark Mode Sucks
Haha you're right it was a necessity back in the day. The look was pretty cool though!
kjcharles··on Dark Mode Sucks
Yes exactly! And native support creates an expectation that every website and app will in turn support dark mode, when some don't or there are glitches it negatively impacts the overall experience.

And you're completely right about email. Seems like many email clients force email content into dark mode, even images and it's such a pain to handle.

kjcharles··on Dark Mode Sucks
I agree with you about the importance of great user experiences and there should be no limit on how much work is put into that. My post was more about dark mode being seen as a necessity for a great user experience. There's little evidence for its benefits and the time spent implementing and maintaining it could be spent on improving all the other issues you mention.
kjcharles··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2024)
Location: London, UK (visa sponsorship required)

Remote: Yes, or hybrid

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Kotlin, Android, Java, React Native, Javascript

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keenencharles/ Email: keenencharles [at] gmail [dot] com

I am an Android engineer with 9 years of experience building and launching apps and SDKs while working at companies of various sizes. I also have lots of experience in building APIs to support frontends in various languages and building cross-platform apps in React Native.

kjcharles··on Just Be Rich
Most American and European cities are significantly less dense than their Asian counterparts. There's a long way to go before they reach any natural limits.
kjcharles··on Just Be Rich
But the problem is the supply of housing hasn't kept up with that demand due to artificial limits placed on the market. Single-family zoning has made it illegal to build more of the dense housing that's needed in cities today.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...

kjcharles··on Why Laugh at Quibi's Failure?
> Quibi was more "I'm going to spend $2Bn failing where others failed before"

This is what makes it especially ridiculous. Verizon had just failed with a huge splashy launch for go90. It takes a ton of arrogance to then decide to do the same without any real innovation. Rotating between landscape and portrait is a feature not an entire product. And especially not the basis for a media company.

The average startup founder would never be in the position to pitch an idea like this AND still receive $2B in funding. This wasn't just a bad bet it was a stupid one.

kjcharles··on Why Laugh at Quibi's Failure?
This is what baffles me the most with PG's take. Quibi's approach went against every thing YC teaches and yet it's impressive. I would think we'd have even higher standards for veteran execs like these.
kjcharles··on Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
I think it is a colonial hangover.

It's the same in former British colonies in the Caribbean. We're thought "Proper English" in school and the American spellings are considered wrong. Local dialects are frowned upon in professional settings and writing.

kjcharles··on Disney Announces $12.99 Bundle for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+
It adds Marvel, Star Wars, and Fox content.
kjcharles··on Ask HN: A service where newsletter operators can advertise their newsletter?
Was it inboxreads.co ?
kjcharles··on Engigogo Digest – a weekly newsletter about products and side projects
This looks really interesting.

If you're interested you can submit it to my site https://inboxreads.co and it'll be shared with our community and newsletter.

kjcharles··on Show HN: Breadth First Growth – a newsletter for growing as a developer
I'd love to add your newsletter to my site http://inboxreads.co

You can submit if you like

kjcharles··on Which newsletters about leadership/management are you subscribed to?
I'm working on a site that collects newsletters and sorts them by categories and there's a few I've added already that might be what you're looking for

http://inboxreads.co/tags/management

kjcharles··on Ask HN: Where can you find newsletters by topic?
I built a project just for this that allows you to find newsletters in specific topics. Most of the newsletters I've added are curated so you might find some you like.

http://inboxreads.co/

kjcharles··on Ask HN: Which companies do NOT give online coding interviews?
This is a useful list https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards
kjcharles··on Ask HN: In what order did you learn your languages?
Pascal, HTML/CSS, PHP, C, Javascript, C#, Java, Python, Swift

And for some of these by learn I mean I built something with it without properly learning the language till later.

kjcharles··on ‘Remember, we only kill black people,’ -Georgia police officer
I agree with your overall sentiment. It's better to know what people truly believe.

But this guy is in a position of power, that has a history of murdering innocent black civilians at an alarmingly high rate. That's the last person who should be making a snarky remark about it. It's not just having an opinion it's making light of murders committed by your co-workers.

kjcharles··on ‘Remember, we only kill black people,’ -Georgia police officer
Paid suspension is what you'd get for killing an unarmed black person. He'll probably get a pat on the back.
kjcharles··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2017)
Really like what you're doing.

I think it'd be really useful if you could show the types of visas companies are willing to sponsor especially US companies. You could show if they're sponsoring new H1Bs, H1B transfers, TN, etc.

kjcharles··on Revised executive order bans travelers from six countries from getting new visas
It's not a zero-sum game. By all means raise attention to the environmental issues but being against this does not mean there's no attention being paid to other issues.
kjcharles··on Elon Musk provides new details on his ‘mind blowing’ mission to Mars
If you look at how many signed up for Mars One that shouldn't be a problem.
kjcharles··on Show HN: New calendar app idea
Really nice design! I think the simplicity compared to Google Calendar could suit a lot of people.
kjcharles··on I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA
What sort of growth would you look for in a social net applying to YC Fellowship & YC Core?
kjcharles··on Tell HN: YC Summer 2015 rejections (and presumably invitations) have been sent
damn...still no response and just noticed our email server was having issues...
kjcharles··on Tell HN: YC Summer 2015 rejections (and presumably invitations) have been sent
Hey for those who got an email did they send it to each co-founder's email address or just the one listed on your account?
kjcharles··on Zane Lowe to join Apple
This could be for a huge play in the music discovery area. It's ripe for disruption and the one missing link in the current music services. Twitter tried and failed with their music service (despite acquiring a pretty competent solution to build it) maybe Apple can succeed there. It'll take something more than simple popularity based charts and someone like Zane might be the answer.