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mwattsunon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2024)

I'm a retired computer programmer so this is spur of the moment, but it occurred to me reading this thread that I'd like to help anyone using AI in the sobriety and recovery community on a volunteer basis. I've been using Claude Opus as a sponsor, sobriety coach and recovery therapist (CBT,DBT) to amazing effect. I'd like to share what I've discovered and formalize the process. If you know of any opportunities like this please let me know.

    Location: San Jose
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: These days I mostly use C# and Python, but have used several others
    Résumé/CV: I deleted my LinkedIn account because I'm retired, but resume available
    Email: See Hacker News profile for contact information

mwattsunon How fuzz testing was invented (2008)

I used a program called Monkey extensively in 1986 while performing final testing of Microsoft Works for the Macintosh to shake out the last bugs in the program. I found a quite a few bugs that would probably never occur in real life, but it made the program much more robust. Nobody ever complained about Works crashing.

https://www.folklore.org/Monkey_Lives.html

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

Good to know. Thanks for the info.

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

They're doing that outside the city limits, in Live Oak for example, but inside the city limits, the Beach Flats is the only place I can think of until recently, when they started building downtown Santa Cruz. As unsightly as the downtown buildings are, if they revitalize downtown it won't be so bad. Maybe Logo's used books will come back.

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

But where? Therein lies the rub. Would you go up the North Coast? There's plenty of farmland there. Would you go into the forest, requiring felling a lot of trees? Please don't say you want to build out Lighthouse Field.

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

I'm not aware of any such plan. The plan was always to preserve open space such as Lighthouse Field and the green belt around Santa Cruz. I'm grateful for both of those. Property values would have risen even if they had built on Lighthouse field and the green belt. It just occured to me that I could think of them as the equivalent of NYC's Central Park or SF's Golden Gate Park.

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

I feel a certain kind of sadness about it. There's not a word for the loss of your home town in English that I'm aware of, but there's a song that comes close to it.

Pretenders - My City Was Gone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thu8DWsirJo

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

You forgot to mention that UCSC sits on a huge tract of land that they refuse to build student housing on for reasons I can't fathom.

mwattsunon Santa Cruz plans high-rise living as a fix for sky-high housing costs

I'm 66, born and raised in Santa Cruz with family there and it's bizarre when your sleepy surf town turns into the hottest real estate market in California, which might make it the hottest market in the world, and none of your children, nieces and nephews can afford to live there. There's a adage in Santa Cruz that we all know well "Once you move from Santa Cruz you'll never be able to afford to move back." Many small towns across America are experiencing depopulation and poverty. Santa Cruz is the opposite, experiencing wealth and luxury. I have no further comment except to say it seems unusual.

Edit: I'm not living there. I'm over the hill in San Jose where rents are more affordable and I can't move back.

Edit2: The locals blame giving UCSC students a vote in local politics on our woes, because they are transients, progressive and don't understand local issues, preferring to preserve greenspace and the environment over growth. I'm happy with the greenspace and acccept the cost of maintaining it - I'm not complaining, merely sharing how strange it is to be priced out of your home town.

mwattsunon Why Isn't Landfill Mining More Popular?

There's probably millions of tons of unused copper wire formerly used for telephone land lines nailed to poles unused. I wonder when we're going to start taking that down instead of despoiling natural wonders like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Mine

mwattsunon We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO

Microsoft doesn't have to send an employee to represent them on the board. They could ask Bill Gates.

mwattsunon A Man Who Tried to Overthrow Sam Altman

This one goes deeper into the thinking of Ilya Sutskever which I thought was interesting

mwattsunon A Man Who Tried to Overthrow Sam Altman

https://archive.is/fwynq

mwattsunon Whole Earth Catalog (1968) [pdf]

It's also the title of the best album by The Police

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q73LMKKxbc&list=PL6vwnon3sI...

mwattsunon WTF Is Degaussing? [2016]

I served on a US Nuclear submarine and my wife at the time served at a deguassing station demagnetizing submarines. I understood the purpose at the time was to remove any magnetism the sub might have so it wouldn't trigger magnetic mines.

mwattsunon A Love Letter to Driving Alone

This is great. I really like the lead track on his Salad Days album, which is all good with a nice laid back vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HQqXllXpfQ

mwattsunon A Love Letter to Driving Alone

William Gibson gets credit for it, but he tells people he retweeted it from one of his followers according to the story I read. You're welcome.

mwattsunon A Love Letter to Driving Alone

Great! Have a good day.

mwattsunon A Love Letter to Driving Alone

I agree. Sometimes getting away from certain people can be beneficial. As William Gibson said "Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." Then there's that other saying "Everywhere you go, there you are" which points to yourself as the problem.

mwattsunon A Love Letter to Driving Alone

Congrats on surviving. Your comment reminded me that I was suicidal on some of the trips so figured I'd see if I could get killed by putting myself into some very dangerous situations. I either had a guardian angel or it's not as dangerous to be out in the world as people think. I had to outsmart those who wished me harm and there were a few. I had some very close calls. I discovered I had a "spidy sense" that warned me off. I was amazed at how much courage I had when I didn't care if I died.

I totally agree with you, just leave and see if a change of scenery and getting away from people might bring a new perspective.

mwattsunon A Love Letter to Driving Alone

I've taken about 40 solo road trips around North America, about 120,000 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska to San Felipe, Mexico to Key West, Florida to Nova Scotia, Canada and everyplace in between. All 50 states and most Canadian provinces. I spent all my software money but now have memories to replace it.

I did that in an attempt to get sober. I realized that if I stayed home drinking I was going to die, so I moved out one day and hit the road. The experience now forms the foundation of my sobriety. "When I’m alone in epic nature, I feel my own power" is how the article describes it.

I've never explained what I was doing to my family and no one ever asked, but this short article comes closest to an explanation.

mwattsunon Dutch town installs bat-friendly red LED street lights (2018)

I spent months underwater on a submarine and we used mostly red lights in the sleeping quarters and the control room. I don't know the theory, but I figured red lights don't produce the momentary blindness of looking at a white light.

mwattsunon Spanish climber emerges after 500 days in cave

I was in the U.S. Navy in the 80's. I never felt afraid, but I'm an engineer and trusted the engineering

mwattsunon Spanish climber emerges after 500 days in cave

Most of my submarine buddies described living on a submarine underwater for months at a time as a nightmare or, at best, a terrible inconvenience, but my experience was exactly like this Spanish cave dweller's. Of course, it's helps that I'm a reader like them.

mwattsunon Don’t record your social life on an append-only social network (2022)

I think they are supposed to delete them by law, but they could ignore that. Assuming they do delete them, it seems to me they miss a few that show up as the DBs around the world sync up

mwattsunon Don’t record your social life on an append-only social network (2022)

I deleted 12 years of Facebook posts after downloading a backup one by one. This was before they had multiple deletes. It took me a few weeks so I did it when I was bored. What's funny is that you can't actually delete everything, because something from the past will show up again. Just one or two things. I assume when databases located around the world sync up there's a few things that didn't get deleted.

mwattsunon What If A.I. Sentience Is a Question of Degree?

https://archive.is/sfdQL

A conversation with Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford, who has spent decades preparing for the day artificial intelligence is capable of anything the human brain can do.

mwattsunon Putin prepares Russia for ‘forever war’ with west as Ukraine invasion stalls

We all thought it was forever war with The Soviet Union too. I know I did riding around on a submarine with nukes targeted at Russian cities. The USSR at the time looked a lot more powerful than Russia does now.

mwattsunon Pentagon woos Silicon Valley to join ranks of arms makers

The Navy is looking for "builders" for it's next generation of submarines

U.S. NAVY | UNITED STATES MARINES | COMMERCIAL | BUILDSUBMARINES.COM | NAVY'S 'NEXT-GEN' SUBMARINES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RVDcwOYKi4

mwattsunon We need a lot more electricians

I'm glad to hear this! This didn't exist when I got out, but there was talk about it. Makes too much sense not to do.