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sandwichukulele

180 karma · joined February 19, 2024

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sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: How to find problem worth solving today?
One approach I like to consider, a Gedankenexperiment, is thinking about your local square mile and how were X number of dollars spent in this region on Y time frame, perhaps today, last year, this decade and their why. The square mile isn't a hard metric, it can be bigger if you're more rural or smaller if urban but one question I think is how were a million dollars moved in this region and how quickly? Who is spending money and why? Can these costs be improved and so on. It helps going on google maps and scouting out your area for businesses and figuring out how they stay afloat and their why. If you want to integrate AI into the mix, you can bounce ideas off GPT-4 to play as devil advocate to see if the movement here makes sense and how it might play out in the future.
sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: What are problems only Windows, macOS, or Linux has?
given that this is a laptop, and because usually whatever task that can done on Linux can done to some degree on either macOS (docker) and windows (WSL), I put aside my own personal grievances with the platforms and focus on one thing: battery life and for this macOS wins. But to focus again with only problems (and ignoring the obvious advantages of the platform) I've had is

windows: none, you can nitpick at the defaults with regards to telemetry as others mention but with the group policy editor and registry, almost anything can be adjusted

macOS: lack of software compared to windows, especially CUDA

Linux: lukewarm hardware and software support, it is never as good as windows

sandwichukulele··on What's up with ChatGPT's new sexy persona?
> That 2019 Unesco report came with a call-to-action. “The world needs to pay much closer attention to how, when and whether AI technologies are gendered and, crucially, who is gendering them,” Saniye Gülser Corat, Unesco’s director for gender equality, said.

I read the article but they don't provide actionable solutions to this problem. What is the world specifically supposed to do after paying attention? They mention that

> Big tech has paid some lip service to this and has started offering more masculine voice options with their voice assistants. Still [...]

paying attention isn't enough, realistically, what is the plan to really address these issues?

sandwichukulele··on Nearly a quarter of UK five-to-seven-year-olds now have their own smartphone
> Over half of children under 13 used social media, contrary to most of the big platforms' rules, and many admitted to lying to gain access to new apps and services.

> Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta which owns WhatsApp and Instagram, has previously suggested that he favours requiring app-stores to check the ages of users.

this is the first time I heard about this and I agree with this angle. App-stores charge a fee to act as a middleman. They handle distribution, payment, and offer account authentication, it would be good if they also handled age verification in a way that can't easily be circumvented (i.e. lying as mentioned in the article) rather than handing the hot potato to app developers to deal with.

sandwichukulele··on Microsoft sacrificing long-term reputation for short-term profits
> Microsoft needs to learn some patience

I read thru the article and I felt a lot of it resonating with Google as well

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks?
> What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks?

Trade it in. At the time of M1 release, I traded in my Intel MacBook Pro at the Apple store for a M1 mac mini.

sandwichukulele··on Artificial intelligence hitting labour forces like a "tsunami" – IMF Chief
> Artificial intelligence is likely to impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs around the world in the next two years, Georgieva told an event in Zurich.

I read the article but they never explained how. How will AI impact jobs in the next two years? I've seen TikToks of people going to the Wendy's drive thru that has AI chat but there's still a human in the loop to babysit it. But even then, the results are lukewarm. What kind of jobs will really be impacted and how?

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Have your search results gotten worse recently?
My search experience has been the same always, just fine. I exclusively use Google and will switch my default search to Google even if it isn't (such as on raspberry pi OS where the default is DDG). To get anything of value, I have always first looked towards physical books and I spend most of my time at the public library. If I want the news, I turn to the physical printed editions of the newspaper that are updated each day at the library. For example, my last Google search a few minutes ago I looked for the iPhone 7 MSRP and release date and had no issues getting this information from google. I am left confused about these posts because they lack specific examples to better understand where you're coming from. I've always seen the comments about how people do site:reddit.com but I've never felt the need to do so either
sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: ChatGPT has become unusably slow – just me or others too?
I have not had issues with speed since the initial release of GPT-4 way back in March 2023. I am located near NYC so perhaps location has some sway
sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Recruiters Ghosting
I believe you and that's why I asked. I also think it's unfair how common ghosting is when it cost so little to reply.

> Dev rels have done driven bans and caused monetary losses before.

Do you have any specific examples?

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: How to not get steamrolled by OpenAI?
> So how do you know that any idea built on top of OpenAI is future-proof and actually adds value

one idea is to not build in a way that you depend on OpenAI. You should build on top of their offering in a way that it is interchangeable with other providers, especially offline local solutions which is something OpenAI being an API first company will not have a strong offering for and where you can demonstrate your value.

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Recruiters Ghosting
> The potential harm to the business is massive.

how massive? does that mass have a dollar value and a time frame?

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: A HN like site for small businesses?
> but more on things that small businesses consider important topics?

could you elaborate on some of those topics?

there's plenty of subreddits like r/ecommerce and so on for specific niches (see people doing say dropshipping) off the top of my head, I can think of day by day busy work that might not interest the venture capital focused HN audience but highly important for small businesses like discussing the occassional news in regards to accounting software like quickbooks or payrolls, setting up printers, running ad campaigns and so on but I feel like these kind of discussions are counter productive by creating more capable competition among small businesses against each other. It's the information asymmetry that gives a small businesses an edge to remain relevant before big players, an edge that we sometimes see erased when popularized on free open platforms where small business owners advertise some strategy and then hordes of copy cats following that diminish the value of the strategy in the first place and why I don't see a HN equivalent existing today.

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Why do you think OpenAI forbids changing email addresses?
> So, why do you suppose this is?

this is my personal assumption, observing the golden rule like the other commentor mentioned, this most likely isn't something nefarious but most likely a low priority that they will work at a later. They're busy trying to keep the spotlight in this cutthroat hype cycle and I think it's safe to assume they're busy pushing new models like we saw gpt-4o than low hanging fruit QoL features that might even risk breaking things. You mention how they "flat-out" refuse to answer the question but I think it's reasonable to think that after yesterday's announcement they're swamped with messages to focus on this right now.

sandwichukulele··on Chatbots tell people what they want to hear
> because then you stop being a customer?

I agree with you! Which is why I ask this, what can stop someone from falling into this loop in the first place? The article talks about agents getting easier to build but is there any solutions to this problem?

sandwichukulele··on Chatbots tell people what they want to hear
> "Given AI-based systems are becoming easier to build, there are going to be opportunities for malicious actors to leverage AIs to make a more polarized society," Xiao said. "Creating agents that always present opinions from the other side is the most obvious intervention, but we found they don't work."

While this is focused with researching topics, chatbots are used for more beyond that as we see with the growing popularity of platforms like character.ai. What's the alternative for people who have no one else to talk to? A lot of the people using chatbots in the first place is because they have no friends, this is their last resort but as we see, this might be making the problem worse.

sandwichukulele··on Why does 30 feel like a deadline?
Besides "career expectations" what else about 30 feels like a deadline? On the other days you feel like "an absolute fucking failure," failure with regards to what? (assumption and guesses: with regards to your timeline progress in building a family? getting married? owning a home? having kids? travelling? perhaps going back to school? is this all exclusively about how many zeroes you are getting in your paycheck?) Please tell us OP!
sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Why do you use Apple products?
I use Apple products because they are complements to my other devices. I have a mac mini as well but that doesn't stop me from having other windows and Linux workstations. I do have an iPhone SE that I like very much and the Air pods Pro gen 2 that I love. Really I use Apple products because I don't want to think about if something will be of good enough quality or not. I'm not picky and don't care for perfection, I sometimes just want something that "just werks" and when it comes to my phone and earbuds and a budget desktop (the base model mac mini), Apple does it wonderfully.
sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: What nonfiction books do you keep rereading?
Energy Systems: A Very Short Introduction by Nick Jenkins (2019) Oxford University Press.

I am very interested in figuring out how to reduce the cost of energy and given my background is only in CS and Economics, I frequently have to reference texts like this until I have a better understanding to move beyond

sandwichukulele··on Hacking the immune system could slow ageing — here’s how
> But translating this knowledge into the clinic will be challenging.

> Don’t expect an elixir of youth any time soon, says Florian — by definition, ageing research takes a long time. “But there is such great potential for translation.”

how long before we might see such treatment in humans?

> here's how

I read the article, I have not read the papers linked, but from just the article, the only applicable "how" listed was

> up if you smoke and down if you exercise.

sandwichukulele··on How to teach writing research papers
> How long does this take? Longer than you might expect! Each sentence can take several minutes, so one paragraph can take over half an hour. The reason for limiting this to 1–2 paragraphs is to bound the time of the whole activity to 45–60 minutes. Beyond that, everyone is exhausted.

> Yes, working one paragraph at a time is slow progress. You’re better off doing this a while before a deadline rather than at the very end.

so how long does it take to finish one paper in general? how many N hours total?

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Modern Networking Resources
> My ASK HN: Any advice on finding modern resources that keep everything that can serve as an introduction to networking?

The CompTIA Network+ book 8th edition (2022). These books aren't just for preparing for the CompTIA exams (that's a side benefit if you decide you want to get a cert later) but really are great to read on their own and learn everything you didn't know you needed while being curated. Good for those students who don't have a CS degree like you explained why the other books aren't suitable. Your local public library will usually have one on the shelf, check it out! Select the chapters you want to teach and skip the others. If you want something even more introductory, you can look at the CompTIA A+ book 11th edition (2023), skip the IT specific and focus on just Chapters 18-21 (Chapter 18 Essentials of Networking, Ch 19 Local Area Networking, Ch 20 Wireless Networking, Ch 21 The Internet) as reference for something even more basic but still well structured. This book is especially tailored for those just starting out and more than suitable for a highschool audience.

sandwichukulele··on What's the heck with the April server bill
> how do I keep the project alive?

besides the current costs, what other metrics factor in? (i.e. how many hours have you spent working on this project)

>good DAU count

what is that count

>This project is also available to buy

if you were to put a price on your project, what would be the minimum amount you would sell for?

sandwichukulele··on Hertfordshire Residents Speak Out Against Google's Data Centre
> Residents living next to Google's £790million data centre claim it is making them ill, ruining their lives

I finished reading the article. Is there any studies that explain this claim? that to live next to a data center causes illness? at another line the article explains

> But locals say they are moving as a result and have complained construction noise is keeping them awake and that the project is ruining once pleasant views.

is the illness specific then to data centers or the usual NIMBY disturbances as a result of any large scale construction project?

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: How do you develop and maintain a good note-taking habit?
> Are there any resources you recommend for effective note-taking?

personally, the best resource for me is GPT-4. It's my second brain, a rubber duck, living notes that benefit from being over-written especially since they recently added memories. I write as much as I can on paper and pencil, I look it over and I "chat" with GPT-4, keeping different chat conversations for different topics and later I can ask it things like "it's been a while, summarize everything from the beginning and give me suggestions for where to continue" and things like that.

sandwichukulele··on Major Study Finds 15 Factors Linked to Early Dementia Risk
could you explain what the Bredesen Protocol is?
sandwichukulele··on Why significant numbers of US PhD students rely on donated and discounted food
> "I was always one unanticipated expense away from not being able to finish my degree."

I finished the article but I am left struggling to understand what happens afterwards. Do these struggling students finish their degrees and have improved food security afterwards?

sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Best Relief for Body Aches?
Personally I found a heating pad to really help for body aches.
sandwichukulele··on Ask HN: Anyone interested in cofounding a startup together?
Could you share a bit about your background? What do you do for work or what have you studied? I looked at your taggerapp and it's interesting, what was your workflow like while building this?
sandwichukulele··on How to Become a Better Developer?
>join some Discord servers

Any discord server suggestions?

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