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rthomas6

4,065 karma · joined July 17, 2008

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rthomas6··on Big banks explore venturing into crypto world together with joint stablecoin
I really wish someone would make a stablecoin not pegged to some currency but to a basket of goods. A CPI-coin, if you will. How would that work? Maybe similar to the programmatic way DAI works, by collateralizing other assets in a way that make DAI some desired price.

How cool would it be to have a decentralized coin that has zero percent inflation.

rthomas6··on Moody’s strips U.S. of triple-A credit rating
No, it's not the United States's military dominance that makes American debt a safe bet. It's that the Dollar is the worlds reserve currency. Other countries need to transact regularly in dollars even if the United States is not involved in the transaction. And the only way for other countries to get those dollars is through 1. A trade surplus with the US, or 2. Buying US bonds.
rthomas6··on U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter
Well I'm moving to get out of Alabama, so not everyone...
rthomas6··on U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter
You can look at per capita GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars
rthomas6··on Show HN: I built a hardware processor that runs Python
* What HDL did you use to design the processor?

* Could you share the assembly language of the processor?

* What is the benefit of designing the processor and making a Python bytecode compiler for it, vs making a bytecode compiler for an existing processor such as ARM/x86/RISCV?

rthomas6··on Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks
Eh. Google may be better than Microsoft in this regard, but this is basically what they're doing with Android. AOSP is now lacking a lot of core functionality that comes with Google Pixel phones, such as RCS messaging, emoji reactions to text messages, camera features and photo editing, voicemail transcription, crash detection. Even the keyboard is worse in AOSP.
rthomas6··on An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
More than giant corporations make IP. What about independent artists making original art?
rthomas6··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
So you don't think employers will raise wages as the cost of food increases?
rthomas6··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
I worry about this, but I started worrying about it less when I read about Purchasing Power Parity. The same stuff costs less in poorer countries.
rthomas6··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
The flaw I see is centered around this paragraph.

> How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.

Rising prices due to tariffs won't pressure the Fed to lower interest rates. It will increase inflation and worries of inflation, which will actually pressure the Fed to RAISE interest rates. A slowing economy won't stop inflation... We are likely entering into a period of "stagflation". The way out last time was very high interest rates and short term economic hardship.

rthomas6··on Ask HN: How many jobs will AI eliminate? Which ones are safe?
My personal opinion: It will be similar to how computers affected jobs.

No jobs are safe, but no skilled jobs are immediately on the chopping block either. AI will boost peoples' efficiency, such that it will take one skilled worker to do what it used to take five skilled workers to do. Law briefs, ad copy, scripting, code refactoring, engineering. Everything will use AI as a tool, but AI won't replace most people. People will instruct AIs to do sub-tasks and validate and integrate its responses. Similar to how people use computers today. Some peoples' specialized skills will be rendered obsolete, similar to what happened with secretaries, switchboard operators, elevator operators, proofreaders, etc. with computers.

I think it will change what it means to do many jobs, just like working with computers changed, for instance, accounting, or visual design. Working with specialized AI tools will become an essential part of many jobs, just like working with specialized software tools is today.

Long term, I think AI will eat further into current jobs, but I think they will be replaced with different human jobs. I think there will still be skilled careers and roles to be had, but I don't think any of us can predict what those jobs will look like.

rthomas6··on Has the decline of knowledge work begun?
In the Culture books it was AI...
rthomas6··on Has the decline of knowledge work begun?
The way I see it you only have two real choices:

1. Raise wages to match global increased productivity

2. Democratize ownership

That's it.

rthomas6··on Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
But unless you were nobility, meat wasn't available at every meal, or even every day. It cost too much. Meat for most people was a special occasion kind of thing.

Ever notice how the English words for animals have Germanic roots but the words for their meats have French roots?

Chicken -> poultry

Cow -> beef

Pig -> pork

That's because the peasantry, the ones raising the animals, spoke Old English, and the nobility, the ones eating the meat, spoke French.

rthomas6··on Tell HN: Cloudflare is blocking Pale Moon and other non-mainstream browsers
Wait, this comment made me aware of the existence of iCloud Relay. Apple built their own Tor only for Apple users? Why would they do that? Why not use Tor???
rthomas6··on Microplastics in the human brain
Well, it still tells us something. What are the upper and lower bounds of whole brain microplastic content, given that 25% variation?
rthomas6··on Journal that published faulty black plastic study removed from science index
It's not irrational to avoid exposure to unknown or poorly studied chemicals. Avoiding something for which one has no evidence in either direction is a good risk avoidance strategy. In general, when it comes to my body, I prefer a whitelist vs a blacklist approach.
rthomas6··on I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
I think this issue is a lot of why ChatGPT feels smart to me. It actually parses all the parts of what I say and tries to respond to it comprehensively. It doesn't always succeed, but it's usually better than my experience asking a multi-part question to a random real-life person in a support role.
rthomas6··on Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts
The building materials aren't what's causing housing to be unaffordable. It's single family zoning and land speculation. The best thing to do to lower housing costs is to drastically reduce single family zoning (some cities have like 90% land area zoned for detached single family houses only!) to allow for infill development of SFHs into denser housing, and to implement an unimproved land value tax to discourage profiteering on land.
rthomas6··on Battery-swap networks are preventing emergency blackouts
I wish it were standard practice to have some kind of house battery (what Tesla calls "Powerwall") for new construction homes. They could smooth out peak usage in this exact way, in addition to making individual homes more resilient to occasional power outages.
rthomas6··on Bicycle use now exceeds car use in Paris
If they are more than just a line on the road and are actually safe to use, they are probably not as empty as they seem. Because bikes take up much less space and don't tend to bunch up as much like cars, it can seem like there must be a lot less bikes than there actually are. 30 cars over the course of 5 minutes are very noticeable and seem like high traffic. 10 bikes over 5 minutes seem like almost nobody, but the bike lane would then be moving a third as much people as all the car lanes combined.
rthomas6··on My streaming fatigue got so bad I started collecting DVDs
That is why I buy the blu-rays
rthomas6··on My streaming fatigue got so bad I started collecting DVDs
Blu-rays are much better quality than streaming in the majority of cases, and 4k blu-rays are ALWAYS better quality than any streaming, hands down. If you have a home theater setup, or even an nice TV, it is very very worth it to get the blu-ray for movies you like. It seriously makes a huge difference, not only for picture quality but for sound.

The bitrate of a 4k UHD stream on Netflix is optimistically 20 Mbps max. A standard blu-ray does about 40 Mbps. A 4k UHD blu-ray is often 100+ Mbps. And you can tell.

Streaming is for watching throwaway content on a laptop or phone. Blu-rays are for watching films with a theater-like experience.

rthomas6··on Feds want to ban the Flipper Zero – Experts say it's a scapegoat
Denying communication will always be possible, you just have to be loud enough to drown everyone else out. But spoofing stuff doesn't have to be possible. You can design rf communications with various kinds of encryption that makes spoofing very difficult.
rthomas6··on I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take a personality test
People lie about what they personally did as part of a larger team. They claim to have skills and expertise they don't actually have.

I'm not saying you need a gauntlet of tests. I liked the approach mentioned elsewhere of a technical discussion about what they did. But it takes, like, an hour or two to make sure they're not BSing and that they're actually as much of an expert as they claim to be.

rthomas6··on Thanksgiving 2023 security incident
Probably so, but at least my company can't MITM and log all my traffic.
rthomas6··on Thanksgiving 2023 security incident
Not until just now I didn't. Do they not have a smartphone? A personal laptop? I'm waiting for something to build as I'm typing this right now. On a separate computer. I would never go on Hacker News on my work computer.

Why would I use a device to do personal things that they MITM everything I do on it? Privacy is too important to me to give it away like that. I'm sure all traffic on the corporate network is logged. Why open myself up for grounds for termination if my company hits hard times and wants to lay people off?

rthomas6··on Why is my LG Washing Machine using 3.6GB of data/day?
You could do it all with discrete chips on a board. No need for a computer really. Temperature -> PID controller, display -> 7 segment decoder, timer -> timer chip.

Something like a circuit board with a bunch of discretes would be how I would expect an oven from 25 years ago to look. Maybe there's a microcontroller to coordinate things, but I think you could get by without it

rthomas6··on DARPA Moves Forward on X-65: Plane with no moving control surfaces
I wish there was a forum like this for engineers. I'm really a CompE/EE masquerading as a programmer.
rthomas6··on An app can be a home-cooked meal (2020)

  for bar_vec in bar_mat:
      if bar_vec != []:
          for y in bar_vec:
              if baz(y):
                  for x in y:
                      foo(x)
Seeing it written out here, the example looks nice. In real code with more complexity, it takes longer for me to write it, and it usually takes up a lot more space than this. It bugs me how much space it takes up for something that is one idea in my head (Foo all the baz things in bar_vec).

But if there is anyone coming after me, I would write it in this style for their sake, because this style is easier to change.

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