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pkilgore

3,419 karma · joined June 5, 2017

I used to code for fun. Then I used to be a high-stakes patent litigator. But I hated that, so now I am an engineer. And I still code for fun.

hn_public_email@pck.email

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pkilgore··on What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
This comment contributes nothing.

There are multiple levels of licensing with multiple levels of medical clearances.

Someone on controlled ADHD medication, diabetes, or high BMI is perfectly capable of managing risk of flying as a private pilot same as boating or driving.

They probably shouldn't be airline transport pilots, but that's not really under discussion.

It seems like your goal here is to start some sort of political fight. Please go elsewhere. Grown ups are talking.

pkilgore··on How blind photographers visualize the world
Description intriguing but not much detail available at link.
pkilgore··on Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement
The "fun" part about cases like this is that we don't really know what the contours of the law are as applied to training data like this. Illegally downloading a book is an independent act of infringement (to my recollection at least). So I'm not sure that it matters if you eventually trained an LLM with it vs read for your own enjoyment. But we will see! Fair use is a possibility here but we need a court to apply the test and that will probably go up to SCOTUS eventually.
pkilgore··on Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement
Plausible is literally the standard to clear a motion to dismiss.

Plausible gets you discovery. Discovery gets you closer to the what the actual facts are.

pkilgore··on Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement
No. Fair use is an affirmative defense to infringement. If they admit to infringement or in the alternative want to argue fair use, the burden is on OpenAI to demonstrate their use falls within the relevant standard for fair use.
pkilgore··on Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement
No. Burden is on the plaintiff (Silverman) to prove infringement.
pkilgore··on The best place to drink is the emptiest bar in the city
https://youtu.be/VIi04uD8LtY

Constant elevated pressure created by ANC working to destructively interfere with an external sound waves is not perceived as sound.

But it is extra pressure on the eardrum.

pkilgore··on Unexpected downsides of UUID keys in PostgreSQL
It just orders ids based on a monotonic clock that wraps after a certain time -- it's enough to get a lot of of the performance benefit of ordered keys without directly exposing the unix wall clock time they were created (absent a dedicated attacker with the ability to create ids without you picking up on it for a timing attack, I suppose).

Whether that tradeoff makes sense probably depends.

pkilgore··on Unexpected downsides of UUID keys in PostgreSQL
COMB UUIDs can help here.
pkilgore··on Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”
Usually the first thing a Judge's clerk will do before a judge reads a brief is pull all of the authority cited for the judge to have ready-to-review along side the brief itself (if not analyzed, highlighted, summarized, etc. etc. depending on the judge).

Now, whether the judge actually reads them is debatable (I had my doubts sometimes). But you bet your ass that if the Clerk simply cannot find a case, the Judge will be informed of that.

YMMV in State courts, which can be all over the place in terms of professionalism. But you should at least assume your opponent is going to read your cases because the easiest way to beat someone in court is to point out the law you rely on is bad.

pkilgore··on Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”
In an adversarial system, you know that at the very least your opponent is checking your cases (you should also assume the Judge/clerks are too, but I never practiced enough in State courts to know how well that holds. In Federal District, it's absolutely true). Usually it's for incredibly small things, like unquoted/cited distinguishing remarks, later cases reversing the decision, and misquotes. So a whole case not existing is going to stand out like crazy.

Occam's Razor here is that this person was lazy, ignorant, careless, stupid, or any combination of those. To be intentionally fraudulent in this circumstance is the equivalent of trying to steal a gun from a cop. You're fucking with the one person in society who definitely has the training, motivation, and willingness to stop you.

pkilgore··on Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)
> you didn't make good chicken

Great, thanks for your opinion, I'll forward it to the Chef that taught me.

> It takes time and lower heat to cook through, create good flavor, and get good texture.

Got it, there's only one way to cook chicken, good to know.

> Sure you can put any food in an incinerator for 2 minutes and it's "cooked", but not really.

Searing / Incinerating, definitely no difference there, reasonable response, I stand corrected.

pkilgore··on Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)
Just FYI you can easily cook a room temp chicken breast or thigh (or lots of them) 4 minutes a side directly below a broiler on a broiler pan, letting them rest covered for 5 afterwards.

Add a minute for the genetic freak 2+ inch thick ones.

You will need to pat the moisture off them first and brush with oil.

pkilgore··on Dell goes back on WFH pledge, forces employees to come back to the office
There's a lot of fucked up shit that used to "be[] the norm". It's not really an effective or convincing argument.
pkilgore··on Dell goes back on WFH pledge, forces employees to come back to the office
FWIW, if you pay for Dell higher support tiers, it is amazing.

They once sent a tech to drive to my university which was 3 hours from the tech's home base to replace a laptop screen.

They also came to my office to do the same to replace another screen that developed a dead pixel 3.5 years into the life of the laptop.

I don't have experience with any standard warranty/support though.

pkilgore··on Ignore Microsoft’s whines about the Activision takeover. The CMA did its job
I can't really tell if this is sarcasm, but whatever rights corporations have in the UK certainly isn't established by a United States Supreme Court decision.
pkilgore··on Windows 11 KB5023778 update adds promotions to the Start menu
How outrageous!

Let me close the Apple Music window for this App I can't uninstall, and that popup that says I can't save my notes unless I have iCloud, and look past the automatically included Apple News and Apple Financed widgets in the notification panel I accidentally opened to go open a browser that defaults to showing me the shortcuts for several third party companies whose services I do not use to get on the internet to gloat about my superior choice.

/s

[For the record, all of this is bad, and I constantly wonder why my government thinks there isn't a monopoly problem here, I'm just kinda amused how much hate windows gets in particular, especially since I strongly suspect disabling this is a registry change away, which is not the case for many things I dislike about the computer I am using to type this.]

pkilgore··on Perturbation Theory
One of the few college lectures I can remember 15 years later is the day our Physical Chemistry teacher taught us this technique to approximate solutions to quantum mechanical problems.

You get done solving out a problem not only does math feel like magic, your paper looks like some kind of annotated spell.

pkilgore··on Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]
Ask a lawyer!
pkilgore··on Distributor cancelled an order and we need to move 30k bags of coffee [updated]
Reminds me of one of my favorite videos on the internet:

"F*ck you, pay me"[1]

In which Mike's lawyer makes the very good point that you should really put an attorney's fees provision in your contracts so that the purchaser pays your legal fees if you need to chase!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

pkilgore··on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]
My last two comments are a statement of black letter income tax law quoting its source in the U.S.C. (not giving them advice about anything really) and some 4th amendment snark followed by advice to someone to talk to a lawyer about their interpretation of constitutional law.

Do you not see how that is different from telling someone without qualification that something is legal/illegal?

pkilgore··on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]
Ugh, stop giving legal advice on the internet.
pkilgore··on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]
> Feel free to seek the advice of an attorney on taking the 5th on a tax form

> Feel free to seek the advice of an attorney

> seek the advice of an attorney

> an attorney

Are you an attorney?

> being asked XXXX doesn't amount to compelled admission of a crime, because XXXX isn't illegal

This is bad legal advice! Talk to a lawyer (before you talk to the IRS or any government investigatory agency), especially if it is your plan or intent to lie to the government or challenge their interpretation of a law and how it governs your behavior (the premise of OP).

Better advice: Seek tax or legal advice on HN. From anyone.

pkilgore··on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]
Well, the definition of income in the USA includes [1]:

> income means all income from whatever source derived

Then it only proceeds to except certain things. So the better question, from the perspective of tax laws are: "are there any laws in this space that takes away the IRS's very clear authority to treat crypto earnings/losses like any other income"

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/61

pkilgore··on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]
I think you're misunderstanding the limited protections of the fourth amendment with you voluntarily answering questions.

Feel free to seek the advice of an attorney on taking the 5th on a tax form, but I suspect that will cause the IRS to do the necessary investigative work to obtain a warrant for your now extremely interesting tax return!

pkilgore··on Twitter's anti-Mastodon filter evasion
You're free to leave the node. That's not censorship, it's the node owner's own free speech rights.
pkilgore··on No one wants to have kids anymore
Paywall?
pkilgore··on Discuss HN: Software Careers Post ChatGPT+
Until it can change existing code, I think we're ok.
pkilgore··on Tailwind is a leaky abstraction
There's been some criticisms of tailwind over the years now that I've largely agreed with, but this one feels a little hollow. The point isn't to abstract away CSS. And the presences of escape hatches (above all being: *just use css, it's supported, well*!), is not a downside of tailwind, but one of its biggest strengths.
pkilgore··on The genius of binary space partitioning in Doom (2019)
Also discussed / covered in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21906051
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