Hacker News Reader

ryanwaggoneron Diamond prices are in free fall in one key corner of the market

And yet you just respond with your own unsourced claims?

ryanwaggoneron ‘I just assumed it would happen’: the unspoken grief of childless men

Tell me why deaths of despair have jumped up 100k.

Answer: it's complicated.

https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019...

We could probably come up with a lot of things that have improved since the 80s and 90s too. That doesn't mean things are dramatically improving.

I hope you find some peace.

ryanwaggoneron ‘I just assumed it would happen’: the unspoken grief of childless men

Surely for such a counterintuitive idea, we can do better for evidence than a rambling blog post about a letter to a TV show host. The evidence for such a strong claim should be pretty strong, and given the state of the replication crisis in the relevant fields, linking to a bunch of studies doesn't mean much anymore.

ryanwaggoneron ‘I just assumed it would happen’: the unspoken grief of childless men

Do you think what people long for on their deathbed should dictate their life decisions, as opposed to how they felt and viewed their life for the thousands of days that came before?

ryanwaggoneron Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?

Can Android not block specific websites with parental controls? I know that’s possible in iOS, with Screen Time at least.

ryanwaggoneron Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?

I have an 8 year old and this sounds lovely.

ryanwaggoneron Money is pouring into AI. Skeptics say it’s a ‘grift shift’

No, you said that I changed the “actual definition” of self-driving from Level 5 to something else. I’m asking what makes Level 5 the “actual definition” and not just an arbitrary point that you’ve personally decided means self-driving?

ryanwaggoneron Mushroom pickers urged: Avoid Amazon foraging books, appear to be written by AI

This feels like another place that libraries can be valuable, as curators of content.

ryanwaggoneron Ask HN: How would you raise $600k for a boring software co?

I’m fascinated by this. Can I ask whether it’s B2B or B2C? I’m guessing with 10k paying users, your price must be on the lower end?

ryanwaggoneron Money is pouring into AI. Skeptics say it’s a ‘grift shift’

Who decided that only level 5 qualifies as "self-driving"?

ryanwaggoneron Money is pouring into AI. Skeptics say it’s a ‘grift shift’

This comment is pretty funny in the context of a world where there are currently cars driving millions of miles without human intervention in a variety of conditions. I don't think anyone cares whether it meets your personal definition of "self driving".

Reminds of the Chinese proverb: “Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it.”

ryanwaggoneron Farmers Insurance Laying Off 11% of Workforce, Citing Industry Challenges

All large insurance companies were once 240 people. Why do you think they grew to be 100x that size? Why not just keep their headcount the same and watch their margins explode as revenue goes up 10,000%?

ryanwaggoneron 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals

99.999% of corporations are way too wasteful to be complaining about a tenth of a percent on 50%+ margin.

Think of the savings of slashing that finance department staff :)

ryanwaggoneron The new science of meditation

Oh, I did, because I assumed there surely had to be more to your critique than just this list of filenames.

I only scanned a few posts, but it appears to be an old anonymous blog with disjointed musings about why the author finds mindfulness "annoying". I didn't see anything to convince me that this is worth digging into further, like for example: a really cogent argument, or some research, or any kind of background in anything remotely related, etc. So I'm still unclear on what made you conclude from this random blog that Kabat-Zinn is just peddling pseudoscience.

It honestly sounds like you're just anti-mindfulness, which isn't inherently a bad thing. I don't think we should have sacred cows, and there may be valid anti-mindfulness arguments from serious people out there. But drawing conclusions based on this particular blog makes it seem like you're not interested in figuring out what's true (ie, science) as much as finding justification to support your pre-existing position, regardless of the evidence (ie, pseudoscience).

ryanwaggoneron The new science of meditation

What? A random blog post that is nothing more than a word salad of the blogger's filenames for their notes on Kabat-Zinn's book was enough to make you conclude that he's not a real scientist and just peddling pseudoscience?

Sounds like your own standard of evidence isn't much higher than pseudoscience.

ryanwaggoneron Ask HN: Will Google kill 1Password, LastPass and others?

Is Google capable of killing anything these days, other than their own products?

ryanwaggoneron Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

Approximately no one outside of HN only wants text emails.

And the argument that anything beyond plain text is a waste and ruins everything applies to literally every single medium out there where the written word is conveyed: webpages, magazines, printed flyers, books, etc. It's laughable to think that all formatting of any kind beyond ASCII is a waste.

If it were up to HN readers, the entire world would be so ugly and boring.

ryanwaggoneron Web Scraping via JavaScript Runtime Heap Snapshots (2022)

I’d like to join the discussion if I can, I’m actively working in this area.

ryanwaggoneron Launch HN: Stellar Sleep (YC S23) – An app that helps people with insomnia

You give an "average rating" of 4.8 with "500+ five star reviews", but Apple says 4.5 with 173 total ratings, and Android says 4.3 with 205 total ratings. Which sure makes it look like your average is not 4.8, nor have you received 500+ ratings at all, let alone 500+ five star ratings.

ryanwaggoneron Modern action films fetishize the body even as they desexualize it (2021)

Now that’s creepy lol

ryanwaggoneron Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

It’s kinda horrifying that you think shaming kids is how you teach them anything.

ryanwaggoneron Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

You think that assholes are a new phenomenon? You think that a few decades ago that lady would have meekly apologized and walked away?

ryanwaggoneron Marijuana addiction: those struggling often face skepticism

They're not the same at all. Alcohol wrecks my sleep, but weed has very little negative effect.

ryanwaggoneron Block the Rich

lol at Trump being one of the top 10 billionaires. I’m skeptical he’s a net billionaire at all.

ryanwaggoneron Stay or Leave: Manager Admitted I am on PIP because quota

Everyone on blind knows what PIP means

ryanwaggoneron What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

though such operations must continue to comply with the regulations applicable to all aircraft operating in the NAS

ryanwaggoneron What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

I’d like to hear more about this, because I’m a pilot and I’ve never heard anywhere that the FAA waives their license requirements for local police? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

ryanwaggoneron B.C. government hit tweet limit amid wildfire evacuations

Yes, if they were both professionals, but they aren’t, so training can absolutely overcome the differences between them. Or do you really think no one has ever beaten a less skilled fighter who weighed 35 pounds more?

ryanwaggoneron June Inflation Drops to 3%

I’m sure you could have penned a similar screed in 2013.

ryanwaggoneron TikTok ban bill in US faces changes after ByteDance spent $100M on lobbying

Is this anything more than a slippery slope argument? Should the government have no power to regulate media entities owned by hostile foreign governments? Should Congress be allowed to take actions to stop Russia from spreading misinformation designed to destabilize the US?