Hacker News Reader

xfouron I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

Is there an open database of this?

Cool stuff. Do you have a the hardware and a way to bridge the compute? Or just hopeful?

xfouron Microsoft is using TPM chips to crack down on pirated Windows activations

What is windows actually good at? I bought a computer with it pre installed a copy a few years back and it seemed like just an upsell into Microsoft’s ecosystem and random other ads.

Everything was slow, barely responsive you could just feel the code bloat. After a few hours I just gave up and installed a Linux distro.

Are people really putting up with this en masse as consumers?

xfouron Will tech giants ever let us opt out of AI search features?

With most of these moments put X into everything is just a moment of temporary insanity with a high dose of FOMO. It eventually settles into a clearer patterns of where it makes sense and makes revenue at margin.

The last point is key though if there’s actually margin to be made we’re stuck with it.

xfouron 10 years building vertical software: are we cooked?

Even if it wasn't generated by AI, it reads like an advertisement for some company which sure sounds like a wrapper on top of a LLM. I think the moat for that type of company is a lot less defensible than any of the Vertically Integrated category leaders by a country mile.

xfouron Personal thoughts/notes from working on Zootopia 2

This is so cool, I’m glad the company allowed the author to release this to the public. People like myself with knowledge of some of the art and technology involved but that stand outside the industry can get a little bit of a sense how the SOTA of animation evolves.

Secondly the bit about the evolution catching the unnamed studio, likely Pixar in production capability as of the first Zootopia certainly shows up on screen.

xfouron Floor796

What did I just click on? Love the no context drop in with 37 points and no comments.

That being said whatever this is… something

xfouron OpenAI won't make money by 2030 and needs another $207B, HSBC estimates

I think you may want to adjust your units there. 500M is a Tuesday breakfast for these AI companies burn rate

xfouron Apple reports fourth quarter results

Seems like the obvious reason for this is that Mac is now a niche for people that operate computers, where there are likely 6 people that don't for every 1 that does. We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.

The second reason is likely that there are computers that are 1/3 of the price subsidized by the terrible ad-supported OS installs. (Has anyone tried to setup a MS computer lately, it's an ad-box).

xfouron Ask HN: Widespread Apathy?

Looks like this post was buried, what part of the rules did it fall afoul of?

xfouron Show HN: Daily price tracking for Trader Joe's

I feel like Charles Shaw is an exception to that and cheaper in California?

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/trader-joes-two-buck-chuck-...

xfouron Netflix adds 13.1M subscribers, tops revenue estimates

"Netflix is also looking at making its ad tier more attractive to advertisers, including by bolstering its sales teams and ad operations to “meet brands where they need us and how they need us.”

“We’re focused on the long-term revenue potential here,” said (Co-Ceo) Peters. “We’re very optimistic about it. It’s a huge opportunity."

Seems about what everyone was predicting, and inline with making the watching experience worse. It's surprising they added subscribers. I wonder how many were due to deals with Phone providers etc.

xfouron T-Mobile to cut about 7% of workforce, mostly corporate roles

Interesting, they just gobbled up the Mint Mobile MVNO for something like 1.35B which was already using their network and of course there's the Sprint for 26B and now are cutting jobs to save half that.

I wonder how much of this is the articles cable company wireless deals, and more just consolidation of jobs around the new megaco they've created.

xfouron Creating Animated Cartoons with Character (2010) [pdf]

Thank you. This will be great to work through with my kids - They're really into the Captain Underpants and Dogman which feature a lot of characters and I'm building their creations into video games with Godot.

Seems like an opportunity to do a reprint? I don't love printing 240 pages on a home printer... but maybe that's the only option.

What's the copyright situation if I tried to reprint this for personal use through an on-demand printer, would they accept it?

xfouron MusicGen: Simple and controllable music generation

Pretty good at transcribing the text, but the outputted music feels for lack of a better word “safe”. For example the kicking beat is way to generic and soft.

xfouron JMAP – a modern email open standard

I tried to implement this for quite a while but the ecosystem situation both server and client seemed to be a status of "Weekend Project" rather than a robust implementation. Is there commitment to create a reference implementation etc.

xfouron Home Prices Rose in February for First Time Since June

https://archive.ph/C4UWl

xfouron CFTC sues Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao [pdf]

Is this confirmed that it's really launching in July, do you have a source?

xfouron Stop Listening Please, Google

Can anyone (perhaps a former employee) confirm this behavior. I can’t tell if I’m imaging connections or the words spoken are being ingested by the ad machine.

It seems like a huge overreach to be listening, the microphone privilege I could see being abused for this, but it just seems so wrong.

xfouron News Corp in Talks to Sell Realtor.com for $3B

https://archive.ph/jfTth

xfouron Ask HN: Why is Google freaking out about ChatGPT

I totally get your point, that was a fun metaphor.

xfouron Amazon-Stripe partnership

Wait, obviously Amazon has their own checkout software. Is this a name recognition play to have AWS come with Stripe batteries included?

xfouron Meta dumping nearly half a million square feet at San Francisco high-rise

https://archive.ph/4rAej/again?url=https://www.bizjournals.c...

xfouron Tesla’s Tumble Obliterates Half of Meteoric 2020 Rally

https://archive.ph/5L49z

xfouron America Should Once Again Become a Manufacturing Superpower