HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

tfigueroa

349 karma · joined March 20, 2013

submissionscomments
tfigueroa··on ADHD, autism or complex trauma? [pdf]
No, it’s why I commented: you have authority over people, and you don’t seem to be seeking understanding, because of your own experience with the disorder.

In some areas and circumstances, your response can be problematic. You didn’t say what you do besides mentally rolling your eyes, but as an example: management ignoring an employee sharing a recognized disorder and requesting reasonable accommodation is the basic premise for a lawsuit.

I’m not saying this is happening here, but this is the kind of scenario management needs to be aware of and prepared for, specifically.

More generally, I would hope managers would be empathetic, but I also understand that this is rarely to never on the job description.

Edit: I see in another part of the thread that you seem to know all this, so nevermind. But I’ll leave this for others to understand that there is a responsibility, here.

tfigueroa··on ADHD, autism or complex trauma? [pdf]
Perhaps you should not be a manager beyond rote supervisory responsibilities if you cannot understand this aspect of people.
tfigueroa··on You can defeat the Dream Devourer from Chrono Trigger using an int overflow
100%, really a fantastic soundtrack - still gives me chills.

Thank you for sharing this - here’s what I’ve had on my playlist recently: https://youtu.be/zWeGxKsPXZ4

tfigueroa··on Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route
Hideo Kojima intensifies
tfigueroa··on One Oakland police officer made $490k in overtime
This is the system. I was a juror in a trial against Oakland where they were found to have been doing this - well over a decade ago. Oakland’s police department in particular has been in disarray for a very long time.

Employees in any profession are going to test boundaries and see what they can get away with. There was a similar report of a BART employee racking up incredible overtime as well.

It’s ultimately whatever the system permits.

tfigueroa··on Resetting Xbox
Corporations don’t need to, no. But they are systems, and it’s a beginner mistake to assume changing one part is going to affect the whole in some simple, predictable, logical way.
tfigueroa··on Rumor: Disney to Remove Star Wars Sequel Trilogy from Timeline
Precisely. RoS turned TLJ into a mistake. A different sequel could have paid things off. Maybe.
tfigueroa··on Metal Gear Solid 2's source code has been leaked on 4chan
It’s, what, 25 years old? There have been many sequels, prequels, remastering. The economic benefits of this IP are largely exhausted; that it is now leaked to the commons isn’t an alarming thing.
tfigueroa··on Gene Hackman has died
I have to go with The Birdcage. Just a silly movie, with Hackman playing a rather timeless portrayal of a politician. The meandering story about “purple mountains” always gets me for some reason.
tfigueroa··on DOGE will use AI to assess the responses of federal workers
Now imagine how the administration might deport 20 million “illegal aliens”, as they’ve promised.
tfigueroa··on "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
Many would be adjacent to the new ruler. The startup shutters but the VP of Engineering is already starting something new with his old reports.
tfigueroa··on When Not to Obey Orders (2019)
The point still stands that the choice of response should be appropriate, and there are several choices between inaction and deployment of the military.
tfigueroa··on Married Women Could Be Stopped from Voting Under Save Act
I don’t disagree, but man, a lot of “this will not happen” is happening.
tfigueroa··on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
Precisely. There’s no wisdom in the approach. “I’ll try refactoring - that’s a good trick!” is a poor approach.

You can try it, but the consequences of a poor refactoring? Look to the planned economies and five year plans.

The government is not a codebase; that mistakes its artifacts for its process. And the importance of process - in politics, in government - cannot be overstated.

tfigueroa··on ADHD Didn't Break Me–My Parents Did
What you have here is essentially a tragedy.

I totally sympathize with the author as someone who is (probably) neurodivergent but had accommodating parents. Being given space to better understand myself and my value was integral to my success and in being ok being different.

But as a dad to a neurodivergent kid, I impose structure - sometimes to discomfort, never intentionally to pain - because structure is imposed upon us all. I mean, if I could stop time, that would fix most of the issues with my kid’s ADHD. Same if I could make less the impositions of having to do chores, or to eat, sleep, bathe. But there is no easy escape from those things. So, I impose, despite not wanting to, because the imposition is coming anyway.

tfigueroa··on The new visa fees for foreign artists are out. This is not good
I used to book Japanese bands for FanimeCon/MusicFest (happening today, coincidentally). It’s frustrating for a single event, as the overhead eats into (already meager) revenue. The net result is a high-pass filter where you either have to be bigger than “indie”, go on a multi-show tour, or just eat the loss and do it for the love of the art.

It’s a shame because the cross-cultural connection is very special. Every artist I brought over was floored - sometimes brought to tears - that people from across the Pacific loved their art.

tfigueroa··on The new visa fees for foreign artists are out. This is not good
Not meaningfully. It’s already expensive to get over the border and line up a tour, so international artists are already far more disadvantaged.
tfigueroa··on How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater
Exactly. The problem is the excessive water extraction, not the technology making it cheaper.
tfigueroa··on [dead]
The decision was already in the hands of the people.

We don’t - didn’t - need to elect people to implement our preference.

Stepping away from a politically-charged question is still a politicized decision.

tfigueroa··on Show HN: WebSession, a Secure Replacement for Cookies
I thought I was misreading this. It seems onerous to keep track of every nonce, even scoped to a given session. Maybe I’m missing something.
tfigueroa··on Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?
It was a random (and facetious and probably bad) idea to include a bullet point that would elicit a “wait, what?” response from anyone who would read it. My resume highlights, as an academic achievement, that a professor once suspected me of illegal research.

If someone brings it up, I’ll know they read through my resume. If they don’t bring it up, it may mean nothing. The former is a green flag, to me.

I’d suggest something more innocuous sounding, though. “Level 3 pencil twirler” or something that would elicit some conversation.

tfigueroa··on Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?
> Seems like a lot of unicorn hunting out there, right now.

Agreed, and I feel this is happening across job families - JDs seem much more domain-specific, especially around ML/AI. I don’t remember it being like this. Yes, there is absolutely a distinction between someone working Eng in payments vs infra vs ML, but I remember those being nice-to-haves, not requisites.

tfigueroa··on Ask HN: How's your job search going in this current economy?
Pretty bad. I’ve got a lot of experience as an IC, manager, and leader, and it doesn’t seem to matter; companies seem much more picky (“you were great but we want someone with more tenure in <specific variant of field>”) or wedded to cargo cult methods (the leetcode places).

I haven’t extensively tapped my network for referrals, but I get a bad vibe from those, too. I’ve hit up about six folks and they all came back empty - no opportunities, even though they’d like to work with me again.

The only success I’ve heard is from folks grinding it out and playing the numbers game. It’s an employer’s market.

Edit: some data: Seven months, dozens of applications, four interviews. Two interviews were from applications, one from a recruiter cold-call, and one from networking. Applications to interview was about 4 months. Three were EM positions, one was senior engineer. Got through all rounds and was rejected at the end.

Fun fact: I have a canary in my resume that will normally raise a clarifying question during an interview. One of ~20 interviewers caught it. Hard to put effort into a resume when few people seem to read it.

tfigueroa··on Charted: 50 Years of Music Industry Revenues, by Format
Mostly correct. Radio, satellite, and internet all pay different kinds of royalties at different levels (or used to, last I checked). I believe radio only pays the songwriters/publishers, whereas [streamer] might’ve also paid the performers.

This is also different than how individual companies - say Spotify - pay for content via direct deals.

I’m also confused because Pandora is ad-supported and generated ~1B per year, but the numbers here are low. But that may be captured in some other metric.

tfigueroa··on Fructose is the main culprit of the obesity epidemic: study
Stephan Guyenet has written at length on the topic and it makes sense to me: the “why” is multifaceted, due to things like availability, palatability, etc. And these changes - like adding sugar - are probably due to marketplace evolution and forces that shape food production.
tfigueroa··on Japanese tea commercial actress created by AI, is it the scandal-free future
Reducing controversy could reduce costs. Plus I’m sure Disney would be happy to have fully generated and manipulable actors protected under copyright for decades upon decades. Essentially zero risk of actors making “bad” choices, especially “aging” or “getting fat”, or “retiring”.
tfigueroa··on Japanese tea commercial actress created by AI, is it the scandal-free future
Not to get all “orientalism” but celebrity scandal is a pretty big deal in Japan and South Korea. It can kill a career quite easy, for (by US standards) innocuous things. Smoking pot, spicy selfies, having a significant other - it’s not uncommon.

Japan at least is also fairly receptive to artificial spokespeople, like mascots and avatars. Maybe there’s simply higher demand for this, and turning to AI is a good strategy. (I’m personally bothered by it.)

tfigueroa··on Patlabor 2, the Movie: realistic portrayal of modern aerial combat
One of my favorite movies. This scene is thrilling, and the montage of the military occupying the country gives me chills.
tfigueroa··on Goodbye, Ozempic
I’d have to do some digging, but these observations are largely moot. The “differences in lifestyle” meme is accurate but incredibly imprecise; hunter-gatherer societies are vastly different than say present-day America, so there’s little practical information to glean from studying these differences. Unless, of course, we want to change to those lifestyles wholesale.
tfigueroa··on Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
Same; I saw an interview with Steve Jobs in the 80s or 90s where he used it. I was surprised.
Page 1 of 3Next →