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throwaway150

1,086 karma · joined March 1, 2025

My two and a half cents!
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throwaway150··on Amazon cuts 16k jobs
Another article about this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2ywzxlxnlo

> In-office work is now mandatory five-days a week, making Amazon one of the only major tech companies to require its employees to be in the office full-time.

With this kind of employee hostile policies and threat of job cut, how does it manage to be the A of FANG (or as they call it, MANGA)? But apparently people still want to get a job there? The pay is a little less than other companies in the same league. So pay can't be the reason. Or is it? Honestly want to know what it is that make IT people get a job there?

throwaway150··on Heathrow scraps liquid container limit
> An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless

Do you know that the 100 ml liquids gets scanned in the Heathrow airport? Many times they used to do a secondary scan too after the primary scan. I recall this very well because many times I was made to wait longer after my carry on arrived because they wanted to put the liquids through a secondary scan.

throwaway150··on Heathrow scraps liquid container limit
UK uses the metric system. Why would anyone expect UK to follow the imperial system in $CURRENT_YEAR?
throwaway150··on A flawed paper in management science has been cited more than 6k times
I don't think being human is inherently bad. But you have to draw the line to consider someone as "bad" somewhere, right? If you don't draw a line, then nobody in the world is a bad person. So my question is where exactly is that line?

You guys are saying that drink driving does not make someone a bad person. Ok. Let's say I grant you that. Where do you draw the line for someone being a bad person?

I mean with this line of reasoning you can "explain way" every bad deed and then nobody is a bad person. So do you guys consider someone to be actually a bad person and what did they have to do to cross that line where you can't explain away their bad deed anymore and you really consider them to be bad?

throwaway150··on A flawed paper in management science has been cited more than 6k times
> I’ve been in the car with some drunk drivers, some dangerous drivers, who could easily have killed people: that’s a bad thing to do, but I wouldn’t say these were bad people.

If this isn't bad people, then who can ever be called bad people? The word "bad" loses its meaning if you explain away every bad deed by such people as something else. Putting other people's lives at risk by deciding to drive when you are drunk sounds like very bad people to me.

> They’re living in a world in which doing the bad thing–covering up error, refusing to admit they don’t have the evidence to back up their conclusions–is easy, whereas doing the good thing is hard.

I don't understand this line of reasoning. So if people do bad things because they know they can get away with it, they aren't bad people? How does this make sense?

> As researchers they’ve been trained to never back down, to dodge all criticism.

Exactly the opposite is taught. These people are deciding not to back down and admit wrong doing out of their own accord. Not because of some "training".

throwaway150··on Palantir has no place in UK public services
I know UK is ok with surveillance in public places because there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces. But are they really tolerant of surveillance in non-public places?
throwaway150··on I don't write code anymore – I sculpt it
Is this post "sculpted" too? It certainly looks suspiciously so. It feels disrespectful to expect people to read something you could not be bothered to write yourself.
throwaway150··on Namecheap sued a YC founder personally after shutting down her startup's domain
I don't know man. I'm not very good with whataboutism. I don't trust myself answering such profound questions. I can answer X but the next moment I can poke holes at my answer X. Then I answer NOT X and then two minutes later I can poke holes at NOT X too.

I just shared the relevant threads I could find in my previous comment. Hoping it would throw more light on the situation. If you have an opinion about what Namecheap should do in these cases, do enlighten us!

throwaway150··on XHTML Club
> You're like the other guy who jumped into a thread without following the context. Technical people know better than to do that. But I'm not here to teach people how to follow a thread.

Can you stop being so antagonistic already? I have been following this whole thread since afternoon. We both began commenting on this post at about the same time. I regret to say that I have wasted my whole afternoon and evening on this thread. So regrettably I have been following the context very closely actually.

Most of your subsequent comments make sense but they also keep moving the goalpost which is frustrating. I mean it is easy to be correct if you constantly keep moving the goalpost. But we must go back to where this nuisance began. It began at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743683 when you said:

> There is no HTML5.

Do you admit that your orginal claim "There is no HTML5." was incorrect? If you don't admit that do you also think HTML 4.01 standard has stopped existing? What about C89? Has that also stopped existing? Just because there are newer standards and living standards, it doesn't mean that the old standards have stopped existing.

throwaway150··on XHTML Club
Don't move the goalposts and take this as an opportunity to learn from the feedback you are receiving from several people here. Perhaps learn to be more accurate in what you say and if you fail to be accurate (which happens to everyone, we are all humans), admit it gracefully, and move on.

Your original claim was:

> There is no HTML5.

Clearly false because it exists: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/introduction.html#is-...

Then you move the goalpost.

> Please point to any current edition of the HTML standard that is titled HTML5 published by WHATWG or the W3C.

But who said anything about "current edition"? Only you did. The fact that the current edition is not HTML 5 does not mean that the HTML 5 standard has stopped existing!

throwaway150··on Namecheap sued a YC founder personally after shutting down her startup's domain
As with most of these stories, the defendant presents only half the story. The other half which you can see in the comments is that the defendant lost a trademark infringement suit in India. So the court has ordered Namecheap.com to block their domain in India. Namecheap gave them an opportunity to geofence their domain so that their domain is resolvable everywhere except in India. The defendant failed to comply. So Namecheap.com did a blanket block.

Then there's also the thing that the DNS record for their company points to this individual (not the company). So then this individual gets the lawsuit. I wouldn't be sure that Namecheap is at fault here.

To read the other half of the story -

https://nitter.net/loganflatt/status/2014805148611076530#m

> Basically, you need to rebrand due to trademark infringement but you haven't done it.

https://nitter.net/pkj__m/status/2014888969989980167#m

> courts are asking you to stop serving thejuggernaut.com for people located in India. And I am able to open it just fine while sitting in Delhi... Is there some context missing here? Seems more like a case of compliance than bullying.

https://nitter.net/pkj__m/status/2014896455002255705#m

> arent these things you should take up with the court and get them to rule in your favor? End of the day the court ordered geoblock in India and that's all that matters

https://nitter.net/namecheapceo123/status/201489917915212236...

> Shameless lies by her. Read 22.

> 22. Defendant No. 4 - NameCheap, Inc. is directed to disclose the details of the Registrant of the Defendants' domain name and is directed to block the domain name 'www.thejuggernaut.com' till the next date.

I am all for outrage against big corporates but what do we expect from Namecheap here? Do we want Namecheap to defy a direct court order?

throwaway150··on XHTML Club
> In this sense, while the html itself doesn't have control flow, it is an integral part of control flow in the larger system

That's correct but I don't see what it has got to do with the question of whether HTML is a programming language or not.

Strings do not have control flow but strings are integral part of larger programs that have control flow. So what? That doesn't make strings any closer to being programming languages.

throwaway150··on XHTML Club
It does not? HTML 4.01 is not XML. So not XHTML. What's the confusion?
throwaway150··on XHTML Club
I'm not sure we can call your parent comment pedantic. They're just being correct. Is it pedantic to say that fish is not a fruit? It's just correct to do so.

If anything, it is the act of stretching the definition of "programming language" so much that it includes HTML as a programming language that we should call pedantic.

throwaway150··on Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account
Sorry, I didn't mean questionable. I meant unverified and I updated my comment soon before you posted yours. But looks like my "unverified" complaint was wrong too? Do you know if the seller guidelines doc is published somewhere? I tried searching but I see multiple results and cannot tell which one of them is the actual deal. Curious to find out what kind of guidelines they officially recommend. Could be a great resource for the community.

Is this the one? https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...

throwaway150··on Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account
> I haven't had my account shutdown,

You have been lucky so far, but there is no guarantee that luck will not run out tomorrow. The algorithms making these decisions are not open to review. They are opaque, and there is no way to know when something in your account might be flagged as suspicious.

> but some tips that could help.

I know you are trying to help, so thank you for that. So don't take this personally when I say this. I'm just frustrated with how things have turned out.

It is absurd that we have reached a point where people must rely on unofficial and unverified tips just to possibly avoid losing access to their source of income. It seems incredibly unhealthy for a market this important to be governed in this way.

throwaway150··on Tell HN: Amazon has deactivated my seller account
*smh*

Every time I hear a story like this (and there's one like every month) I wonder how we ended up here. The internet was meant to be this place where anyone could set up a website, run a business, and reach customers directly. Instead it has turned into a collection of walled gardens, where your existence and livelihood depend on the whims of an opaque algorithm.

Luckily in my country Amazon does not have the level of market control it has in the US and some other places. People still walk or drive to local shops and when they order something for delivery they usually do so from their websites.

But reading many of these HN threads gives the impression that in the US and elsewhere Amazon controls a huge share of the market. If it functions as such a powerful exchange for both merchants and buyers, should there not be regulation to prevent injustices like this?

throwaway150··on Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy
> Kagi is too small and niche to have a proprietary dataset across its users large enough to make targeted advertising generate more revenue than subscriptions.

All of this is true. But I don't understand why you are contesting @dsr_'s comment that Kagi is a counterexample. Both are true. Kagi is too small. Yes. And Kagi is a counterexample to your original "I think ads will inevitably roll out across all tiers" claim. You said nothing about being too big or too small in that claim. So @dsr_'s comment that Kagi is a counterexample is very much on point.

throwaway150··on Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy
Yes, I don't understand it either. I think the opposite is true. If AGI happens and it becomes immensely successful, it would be the best medium to deliver ads and at the same time our jobs wouldn't be safe.

Perhaps the people who like that quote can elaborate why that quote makes sense and why they like it?

throwaway150··on Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy
Yes, but it is still a valid counterexample to:

> I think ads will inevitably roll out across all tiers

throwaway150··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
The problem with https://ooh.directory/ is that nobody can tell what gets added and what doesn't. Submissions go through an opaque review process and a lot of good submissions don't make it. If you search for your favorite bloggers there, chances are that they're missing from there.
throwaway150··on STFU
You have to understand though that this is X (rip twitter) we are talking about and from the verified account, the 14k follower count, it is evident that this person either is or is trying to be a tech "influencer". Posting controversial rage-baits is pretty much the pattern every influencer follows today to stir up discussion, increase their visibility, and get more followers.

> I don't think he cares about being polite.

If you're polite, debate civilly, say reasonable things and act like a normal person, you are a nobody on X. Nobody will see your tweet. Nobody will engage with it. You might as well have not said anything.

throwaway150··on All my new code will be closed-source from now on
> Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity.

I read that. That statement is technically true but I don't like that they put a negative connotation around it. Apologies if they didn't intend it like that.

But I'll say that there is nothing wrong with charity. Some devs will do open source with hope to monetize. Some will do it for charity. Both are equally valid motivations.

throwaway150··on All my new code will be closed-source from now on
I don't mean to trivialize the OP's experience. This is definitely a very important matter and serious issue in the industry. So forgive me for raising a much smaller, side point.

> I've contributed millions of lines of carefully written OSS code over the past decade

I have never tracked my own output, but I would be surprised if I have written even a single million lines of code, let alone several.

Out of curiosity, is this common? Have people here actually written millions of lines of code themselves? Even assuming two million lines over thirty years, that still averages to around 180 lines per day, every day. It is doable but it is a very high level of sustained output.

I am not doubting the OP. Just noting that this represents an extraordinary amount of coding by any measure.

throwaway150··on Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
This is exactly the problem. I don't know if any other sector of business runs on as much as fad as ours does.
throwaway150··on Start your meetings at 5 minutes past
I don't know about others but if I'm gonna have 3 meetings in a day, I'd take them back-to-back anyday. Then the rest of my day is available for focus work.
throwaway150··on Google broke my heart
With the way these multi-trillion dollar companies operate today and how the support staff act like corporate drones, I have no hope that attaching PGP signatures would lead to any different outcome. The response from the support would probably be going to like, "PGP what?"
throwaway150··on Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans
> I simply extrapolated your stated position by applying it to another, relatable, situation.

The extrapolation led to something I didn't imply. If you're making the extrapolation to add a point in addition to what I said, I'm sure that'd have been very welcome if you hadn't posed it in a combative manner that comes across as a 'take down' of my comment.

Going back to where it all began:

> Using an LLM to generate a post with the implication it is the author's own thoughts is the quintessential definition of intellectual laziness.

Extrapolation, yes. But non sequitur because my comment not even remotely implied generating a whole post using LLM. So your extrapolation stands well on its own. I just don't see the need to pose it as a sort of "take down" on my comment.

What I find really funny is that in reality like you, I detest LLM-based plagiarism too. So we must be in agreement? Yet you manage to find disagreements where there are none and be combative about it. Well done, sir!

> And you might want to review same after originally authoring

I have. I've found nothing in the guidelines that forbid me from expressing my frustrations over the abundant supply of trite comments. Nothing there forbids me from begging the HN overlords to discourage trite comments about LLM-written text. They already discourage comments about tangential issues like website format, name collisions, back-button issues. They might as well discourage comments about LLM-written text. That was my request. The HN overlords may not pay heed to my request and that's fine. But after reading the guidelines, I don't see why I cannot make the request I've in my mind.

throwaway150··on Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans
> By that logic, if I hand a s/w engineering team a PostIt note saying "add feature X", then all they are doing is "revise and refine" the solution I made, not generating a solution.

Way to stretch my comment and make it mean something I didn't mean! You have gone from me talking about just "revising and refining a post" to someone generating whole software features using LLM.

First, I wasn't talking about generating whole software features. Second, pretending as if I implied anything like that even remotely is a disingenuous and frankly a bad-faith style of debating.

You are looking for some sort of disagreement when there is none. I detest LLM-based plagiarism too. So really confused why you've to come here and look for disagreements when there is none and be combative, no less? If this is your style of debating, I refuse to engage further.

Next time, you might want to review the HN guidelines and be less combative: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.

throwaway150··on Nerd: A language for LLMs, not humans
> Using an LLM to generate a post

You are talking about an entirely different situation that I purposely avoided in my comment.

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