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kokken

22 karma · joined May 19, 2021

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kokken··on The Price of Intelligence Is Falling Rapidly
Absolutely not.

The PRC has land claims against almost every bordering country, which are many in number. It does wolf warrior diplomacy, surreptitiously moves border posts, and so on.

It also pretends to abide by international treaties but when a ruling against their absurd claims in the South China Sea were refuted, they rejected the ruling.

In the age of AI it uses from the same playbook as Russia to sow discontent and create internal conflict within countries in Asia.

It captures and kills dissidents abroad.

kokken··on Private equity bought America's essential services
Because a sale for cash is a basic legal contract that predates modern society by millenia, whereas a LBO that PE uses to purchase companies is a weak spot in American Capitalism created at the intersection of:

1.Shareholder primacy. Under Delaware corporate law (which governs most large U.S. public companies), once a board decides to sell, directors have a fiduciary duty to maximize the price shareholders receive. A premium cash offer from a PE firm is hard to refuse without legal exposure.

2.Interest deductibility. The tax code lets companies deduct interest payments but not dividends, which makes debt-heavy capital structures more tax-efficient. LBOs exploit a feature of tax law that exists for many reasons unrelated to private equity.

3.Freedom of contract and limited liability. Sponsors can put a thin equity check into a holding company, have that company borrow on the target's assets, and walk away if it fails, because limited liability is the foundation of corporate law generally.

kokken··on Private equity bought America's essential services
It is not analogous because if you sell your house and the sale money is not enough to cover your mortgage you are still on the hook for what's left of the principal. A leveraged buyout is exclusively on the purchased company's books, so if the company goes to zero the PE parent company is not on the hook for a single penny.
kokken··on Why Your "AI-First" Strategy Is Probably Wrong
Hey, maybe the new feature has 100% lift and so their N is 32
kokken··on Ask HN: Hiring in the age of AI-assisted coding: what works?
You should interview for the skill that is required in the age of AI-assisted coding.

That is, looking at code that's been written by AI and see what's wrong, what's superfluous and what's missing.

For preparing the code for the interview, I would suggest prompting Claude Code using a requirements document that's purposefully a bit vague so that the AI will have to make choices when writing that code.

When you have the interviewee come over, show them the code and have them criticize those choices and edit the code manually (I know) so that they can demonstrate that they can intervene in the AI process at the correct inflection points.

kokken··on The revenge of the data scientist
I don't understand the framing of the assumption.

Was the data scientist role only about building NLP models? Are the LLms gonna build Churn prediction models? Tell the PM why stopping the A/B test halfway through is a bad idea? Push back on loony ideas of applying ML to predicting sales from user horoscopes?

Maybe the role is a bit tinier in scope than 10 years ago, but I see it as a good thing. If you looked at DS positions on job search sites the role descriptions would be all over the place, maybe now at least we'll see it consolidate.

kokken··on Ask HN: Builder.ai ($1B Microsoft-backed AI company) who's lookin at the assets?
I’m curious about the report but 30 years on the internet have honed my instincts and they say not to paste that link on my url bar
kokken··on Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
The reason why people form two lines to board the Marunouchi line in Ikebukuro is not because they prioritize seating, or going as soon as possible.

The true reason is that the line forks into two lines later on, with the final station being either Honancho or Ogikubo. The second line that form is just for the people whose destination would not be served by the incoming train.

kokken··on A viral Reddit post alleging fraud from food delivery app turned out to be AI
So a reporter used an AI detection tool that returned positive from the user provided Uber Eats internal document and that proves it’s fake? Is this article entirely bought and paid for by Uber?
kokken··on X reinstates Magdeburg attacker’s account after silently removing pro-Musk posts
This is indefensible
kokken··on Meta has sold nearly 20M Quest headsets, but retention struggles remain (2023)
I think the main issue with VR is that it is fundamentally different from both gaming consoles and computers. I bought a meta quest 3 last year specifically to play table tennis, I play it every single day until my muscles are sore. The other apps and games, impressive as they may be, are just gimmicks. You get awed for the first few hours and put the device away never to be touched again.

I would say the biggest hurdle is actually motion sickness. Every game or app that allows your avatar to move through controller usage, rather than moving around your room (such as table tennis) can not be used for longer periods of time. My wife who is prone to motion sickness can not wear the device for more than 10 minutes. Myself, who had never had motion sickness before in my life, can handle a full hour before being overwhelmed.

kokken··on A Lufthansa A350's frustrating Oakland diversion
I’m sure the industry has standards for assigning blame, but it looks to me that ATC is clearly being assholes here.

Even from this article that clearly seems to think Lufthansa is in the wrong I walked away with a feeling that ATC and small town cops are one and the same.

kokken··on Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling
The market seems to disagree with the piece. The stock was in free fall from early October and recovered a bit after the layoff announcement.

Anyone have an idea why?

kokken··on Find Legal Moves in Brass Birmingham with Datalog
mai-shogi in GitHub
kokken··on Find Legal Moves in Brass Birmingham with Datalog
That was an issue I encountered when writing the logic for Shogi so that I could build my own engine. Writing Python to express the logical dependencies was surprisingly unintuitive.

My original attempt was clunky and I rewrote the logic from scratch 2 or 3 times until I could bear look at the code and not wince.

kokken··on It took seven years but over-40s fired by HP win $18M settlement
I’ve been thinking about that move. What do you think are the main skills that a SE should refine if they want to transition to a sysadmin role?
kokken··on Japanese cyclotron has managed to create Sodium-39
Me, for one
kokken··on Ukraine marks 500 days of war by admitting it blew up Russia's bridge to Crimea
WHO’s we comrade?
kokken··on The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War Is Headed
Useful idiot or paid troll? That’s what any reasonable person will wonder when reading this diatribe divorced from reality
kokken··on Ask HN: Is Slack Down for You?
With times such as these, you should probably make sure you weren’t made “redundant” first. Although as another poster said before me, there is a spike in the number of reports.
kokken··on Sanctions Imposed on Japan (1987)
The US is a villainous country indeed. Reading stuff like this with the benefit of hindsight makes me take another look at what sort of lies I've been fed about Chinese economical practices. Maybe, just maybe, the US is yet again the bad guy?
kokken··on China suspends issuing visas in Japan and South Korea
This article is strange. It says the Chinese Embassy has stopped issuing short-term visas in Japan, but a visa is not required for Japanese passport holders when going to China. Also, the discriminatory measures China says Japan is applying against Chinese travelers apply to ALL inbound travelers, including those Japanese coming home. Everyone must present a negative pcr test taken up to 72h prior to departure. How exactly has China retaliated against Japan?
kokken··on 2023 Chevy Bolt EV is still the best value EV in America, by far
This is just an ad.
kokken··on Bad government policy is fueling the infant formula shortage
Chinese tooling engineers are highly paid
kokken··on We are no longer a serious people
I thought the most interesting part of the text was unrelated to the war: "American society(...) can only understand the world as projections of the country’s own domestic neuroses. (...) Who is the PoC? Who is the Nazi?"

I've recently realized how much of the discourse around the word HAS to be trapped within terms the Americans can understand. Every experience that is not translated to Americana is 'confusing' or 'irrelevant'. Much like the Author himself points, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party has no idea what to say about a victory of an extremist group against the American Military-Industrial complex to the loss of minorities who themselves hate or dislike American progressivism.

kokken··on Netflix announces Space X documentary on civilian mission into orbit
If you don't believe you have an ideology, you just don't know what ideology means. Your original comment is very ideological in itself.