Hacker News Reader

oldstrangerson Chicago independently abolishes subminimum wage for tipped workers

Everyone talking about getting rid of tipping is weird to me. I enjoy tipping... It's a privilege to have someone waiting on me, and I want them to know I appreciate it.

EDIT: These replies are wild. Everyone should be able to make a guaranteed living wage (at minimum). Of those in the service industry, I enjoy being able to show my appreciation with a tip. Pretty simple.

oldstrangerson Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’

Even then it's very advisable to go out into the wilderness with a trained professional.

oldstrangerson U.S. Department of Defense Launches All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Website

Oh cool they made it on Geocities.

oldstrangerson U.S. Department of Defense Launches All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Website

The easiest way to know it's not a foreign adversary is the fact that the US isn't claiming it to be. If it were actually foreign tech, the US would be beating the war drums 24/7 and using this opportunity to double their defense budget.

oldstrangerson The new science of meditation

Thank you!

oldstrangerson The new science of meditation

I have a similar thought experiment where I try to imagine the true essence of 'nothingness', down to even the removal of the 'idea' of nothingness and even the thought that I'm trying to imagine something. It's a weird feeling.

oldstrangerson The new science of meditation

I've always sort of intuitively done this since I was a kid (https://zchry.org/words/questioning-my-quantum-leap-an-ongoi...). I have zero experience with meditation in the traditional sense but I'm really interested in going down that path next as I try to broaden my scope.

oldstrangerson Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties

Wonder if they've looked at Vitamin D considering there's an association with living at high-altitude and Vitamin D deficiency.

oldstrangerson Feynman's Messenger Lectures (1964)

The bongos scene was one that stood out to me for sure.

oldstrangerson Feynman's Messenger Lectures (1964)

Fair enough. One of the best minds on the project.

oldstrangerson Feynman's Messenger Lectures (1964)

Unrelated but surprised by how little attention Feynman got in Oppenheimer given how enormous his stature would eventually become. Arguably the best mind on the project.

edit: *one of the best minds on the project.

oldstrangerson Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://zchry.org/words

oldstrangerson Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI

My fear isn't that I'll be replaced, it's the technology becoming so good that it'll be kept far out of reach of the common person. I genuinely believe OpenAI knows what a GPT 5+ type world looks like, and they're probably having a lot of debate on how best to monetize it. They could practically charge anything in the world for it assuming it still undercuts the cost of hiring a human. One Nvidia super cluster running a local instance of GPT 5 at $250k a year doing the work of 30 humans.

oldstrangerson Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2023)

  Location: Houston, Tx
  Remote: Flexible
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Wordpress, Webflow, HTML/CSS/JS
  Résumé/CV: https://zchry.org 
  Email: https://zchry.org 
  
  Looking for: Product Designer, Brand Designer, Web Designer, or UI/UX roles.

oldstrangerson How to Do Great Work

That's irrelevant obviously but Chrome pushing a bunch of 'not secure' warnings at me isn't ideal.

oldstrangerson How to Do Great Work

Can we get Paul an SSL cert?

oldstrangerson DMT, Derealization, and Depersonalization

"those with a fragile grasp on reality"

If anything, the most at risk are those that have a greater understanding of reality and the superficiality of it all. You can't go through a door if you don't know its there. So in that sense, if you haven't explored the existential depths of your own consciousness, you're much less likely to get lost.

I've spent entirely too much time in my head, and I've put a lot of systems in place to help me reconnect, but I certainly know better than to test those systems too thoroughly.

oldstrangerson A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression

It's not exercise (outside the hiking) but ... camping is amazing and a great start if you're not inclined to do much. Limited responsibilities, and the responsibilities you do have (cooking, staying warm, not dying) help sort of reset some biological imperative that gets lost when you're entirely too comfortable at home on the couch.

Any form of cycling really clears my head. The sensory stimulation, the forced focus, the sense of freedom, it's wonderful.

oldstrangerson Eight-mile frieze of Ice Age beasts found in Amazon rainforest (2020)

"probably made around 11,800 to 12,600 years ago"

Interesting timeline if you're entertained by the 'lost civilization' / cataclysm discourse.

oldstrangerson Goodbye, San Francisco

He says he rides a bike, takes public transit, etc. Just don't think I'd write off a location based on a 4 mile commute but I realize its drastically different realities here.

oldstrangerson Goodbye, San Francisco

"dense, central area and not in a single family house that’s 4 miles from downtown."

This is kind of funny to me considering I'd guess for the majority of America, 4 miles is remarkably close.

oldstrangerson Alphabet selling Google Domains assets to Squarespace

Wow, I really can't trust and rely on Google for anything can I? This is absurd. I have so many domains I'll have to move over.

The UX at Squarespace is just terrible and I want nothing to do with it.

oldstrangerson /r/startrek/ migrates to lemmy

If your entire market fit is on providing a platform for communities that are inherently platform agnostic, then you're probably wise to keep those communities as happy as possible. Reddit ultimately does nothing unique, it's a bulletin board link aggregator.

oldstrangerson Show HN: FFmpeg UI

It does indeed!

oldstrangerson Show HN: FFmpeg UI

Nothing has come close to https://handbrake.fr/ for me.

oldstrangerson The concurrence of three climatic events

Slow moving relative to your sense of time, sure. Extremely fast moving on a planetary timeline.

oldstrangerson SoftBank-backed pizza startup shuts down after raising $445M

If any VC firms want to hire me to vet investment ideas I'm available. "No, do not give the pizza startup $445 million." Simple.

oldstrangerson Reddit.com appears to be having an outage

Daily reminder that no one has any idea what they're doing. Twitter failing, Reddit being murdered. Improvisational Business Comedy.

oldstrangerson ChatGPT Changed How I Write Software

Thank you!

oldstrangerson ChatGPT Changed How I Write Software

I've gotten pretty good at getting ChatGPT to do what I want. I wrote about it here, https://zchry.org/words/building-a-brand-identity-with-code, but that's probably still light on details for you.

There really isn't any magic bullet I don't think, every case is unique and involves a lot of trial and error. The original prompt was something as simple as "You're going to help me build a plugin for figma that draws Lissajous Curves". It starts with telling you how to setup the Figma plugin folder structure (which Figma makes super easy), installing all the dependencies / npm etc. From there, it was just a lot of going back and forth with ChatGPT fixing the bugs until it compiled cleanly (files we worked with: code.ts, manifest.json, tsconfig.json, ui.html), then going through the bugs that would be thrown in the app console when you actually ran the plugin.

Eventually though, everything worked great and Figma even approved the plugin to be published publicly.

My best piece of advice is that when I feel really far off where I want to be, I just start over from scratch and rework my prompts to more accurately guide ChatGPT in what I want.

And lastly, now that I have a basic "baseline" of how I want ChatGPT to help me with these plugins, I give it all that information up front and try it keep it in that predefined scope.