Hacker News Reader

tinycombinatoron The six dumbest ideas in computer security (2005)

Manipulating a remote computer to give yourself access you shouldn't have can be cool if that computer was used in phone scam centers, holding the private data of countless elderly victims. Using that access to disrupt said scam business could be incredibly cool (and funny).

It could be technically illegal, and would fall under vigilante justice. But we're not talking about legality here, we're talking about "cool": vigilantes are usually seen as "cool" especially when done from a sense of personal justice. Again, not talking about legal or societal justice.

tinycombinatoron The Right Kind of Stubborn

And how would you know if something is actually "great" or important enough to never quit? That your efforts aren't better spent elsewhere?

tinycombinatoron Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

Sure, for the beneficiaries.

tinycombinatoron People who don't want to learn how to program can always find a reason not to

I got into programming through making small games. It was very much a means to an end, a solution oriented path. I personally can't imagine trying to learn programming now in a similar manner to high school math courses, where problems are presented so abstractly. If I can't see a reachable and tangible end product in sight, it tanks my motivation to learn.

tinycombinatoron Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

I always have situations like these in the back of my mind when people try to justify their salaries, their self worth, by arguing they bring value to the world and those who make less don't.

(Not saying everyone doesn't genuinely contribute to the world, but moreso a propagation of a toxic, externally-based-worth mindset.)

tinycombinatoron Neorg – organize your life in Neovim

I tried clicking on "Usage Modules" but it seems like it's not in there yet. The documentation seems to be an incomplete item on their roadmap: "Develop and ship a Neorg landing page with documentation, presumably with docasaurus."

https://github.com/nvim-neorg/neorg/blob/main/ROADMAP.md

tinycombinatoron Show HN: A user-friendly UI for viewing and editing Markdown files

At first, I thought this was another repo called Marker, also a markdown editor: https://github.com/fabiocolacio/Marker

tinycombinatoron Breaking down tasks

I find that this attitude is also great for life in general.

tinycombinatoron The adult consequences of being bullied in childhood

Could you elaborate on "demoralization campaign" and the "psychological warfare" happening?

tinycombinatoron How to hire low experience, high potential people

The comparison may be superficial, but this article really reminds me of the times when I wrote essays for college admissions (not in a good way).

tinycombinatoron Things I Learnt in 2023

I loved having spam with kimchi stew too. Growing up, I didn't even realize spam was a brand.

tinycombinatoron Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

The point I gleamed from the article was not that city driving was an easy problem, but rather that freeway driving has unique issues when it comes to reliability and safety. Simply stopping the car could be an acceptable minimal risk condition for a crowd of cyclists and pedestrians, but that's no longer the case in a freeway. On top of having to deal with sensing range + on-board offline decision making + truck stopping distances, having no safe fallback like "just brake" seems like a pretty difficult problem.

There's also the "interesting events + training" argument in the article, which I'd love to see points for or against.

tinycombinatoron AI and Trust

Humans are more than capable of distrust, but I think manipulating people to erroneously trust something is still a threat as long as scams exist.

I think a significant factor of individual trust is someone's technical knowledge of how their systems or tools work, shown by how some software engineers actively limit their children's exposure to tech versus a lot of mothers letting the internet babysit their kids. Apparently we can't rely on that knowledge being widespread (yet).

tinycombinatoron Omegle 2009-2023

There's definitely a bunch of crazy unmoderated stuff going down in those places, but it does seem more underground and out of the way unless you specifically look for it.

Actually, I'd guess that it's probably easier for people to find themselves in such weird spaces today. There's a lot of resources and guides out there, and if you want to, you can most likely find them.

tinycombinatoron Window-swap – open a new window somewhere in the world

At first, I thought this would be an app that opens a new browser window on another random user's computer somewhere in the world.

tinycombinatoron Conversation with Zuckerberg, this time we talked as photorealistic avatars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_Fridman

Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist, podcaster, and writer. He is an artificial intelligence researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast, a podcast and YouTube series.

tinycombinatoron “X” Didn’t Pay Severance. Now It’s Facing 2,200 Cases – and Big Fees

Using X/Twitter to catch up and interact with the numerous friends, artists, and other communities there doesn't mean you support wage theft and withholding severance. It's hard to break away from such a populated platform, especially if most of the people you care about go to different platforms or don't share the same motivation to move.

tinycombinatoron OTOY vs. Moore

yeah, the ceo matches up

tinycombinatoron Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

I don't think it's as simple as having 100% play vs 100% work. There's got to be some optimum balance here that we're clearly not satisfying, with our flawed notion that 100% work is the best route. It's possible for people to have a satisfying social life while also doing very well in school, and it's also possible for a loner to have a depressing life while failing at school.

tinycombinatoron Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis

Intense academic competition and lack of unstructured playtime would seem to go hand-in-hand, no?

tinycombinatoron Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student

The article does shoot some shots at "Richy Rich" characters, but I think it's mainly to convince/uplift the reader to stop comparing their own success with other people's success if their upbringings never made it a fair comparison in the first place.

Your worldly achievements and accomplishments in code should not be compared to a version of you who indeed had a secret pile of cash or someone funding them and never had to sacrifice things for their art, who might have achieved more worldly things.

tinycombinatoron Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison – with a $500M bill

I see the valid point you make about how civilization should strive to be above cruel, black/white judgement and ideally encourage empathy towards others in order to be considered just. But I also can't argue against an average citizen not having enough empathy/attention to give (from the limited pool we all have) to one of the biggest and most infamous con artists of our time. It's not like she's in there for just doing drugs.

Law should not be one's entire moral compass, but the things she did are undeniably extreme.

tinycombinatoron Transcending My Father's Abuse

It's one thing to trivialize asian abuse situations with what-abouts. It's another to make a bold statement that trivializes everything else.

tinycombinatoron Transcending My Father's Abuse

I think your observation is phrased in a way that implies the father has done something entirely selfless and the daughter has done something relatively selfish.

The reply from the daughter was an attempt to set a clear boundary while also showing appreciation and support for his change. I think setting boundaries like this is a perfectly healthy thing to do, including/especially towards family members.