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yokisan

103 karma · joined January 22, 2017

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yokisan··on Anthropic says Alibaba illicitly extracted Claude AI model capabilities
One would think Anthropic could point Mythos at this to solve the reseller problem outright:

- Purchase multiple accounts via resellers

- Send messages that contain a UID

- Capture these in Anthropic's logs

- Shut down account. Use any metadata to identify related accounts

/loop

yokisan··on Ask HN: What are the best tools for web scraping in 2022?
A good no-code solution is https://simplescraper.io. Leans towards non-developers but there's an API too.
yokisan··on Ask HN: Would you accept a job that pays you in Bitcoin?
What type of cheese?
yokisan··on 150 days of living and coding in a van
Thanks for the reply. Very neat adventure you're on.

> Sometimes you meet people who don't love the "simple" life like I do.

Hey, if the ladies don't dig the man with the van, their loss!

yokisan··on 150 days of living and coding in a van
This is awesome. So much so, I'm going to borrow his idea and kick this off next Spring.

If the author is reading this, some questions:

- How do you deal with solitude? Most can handle it but seeing as everyday is a new day in a new place there must be an urge to share that with somebody.

- This mode of living must have an impact on the ol' love life. What do the ladies say - if you meet many at all - when you suggest going back to your van/office/home?

- What are your plans for the Winter? I imagine just go as south-west as possible to chase the sun.

yokisan··on McClure steps back at 500Startups after internal sexual misconduct investigation
You'll just looove his inane tantrum about Trump then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTVf7ffShg

If one wishes to virtue-signal it helps to at least be virtuous.

yokisan··on Take Naps at Work
> It seems like if you're so tired while you're at work that you actually want to take a nap, then maybe there is another underlying problem.

There is: tiredness. Often, but not always, due to lack of sleep. A nap is the solution.

If you need 8 glasses of water a day to be at peak-performance but for whatever reason only manage to drink 7 in the morning, why not have that final glass sometime during the day? Same with sleep.

In fact it's absurd to think everybody can store energy upfront and power through 9 hours of activity without falling off towards the end.

Naps are natural.

yokisan··on European Commission fines Google €2.42B for abusing dominance
They may have studied in the LSE but Yizhou Ren is from Germany, apparently.
yokisan··on Why Trello Failed to Build a $1B Business
"Because it's a todo app" is an obvious response to the title but the content is interesting.

Trello Gold with emoji support and custom backgrounds was a weak proposition and they could have moved into enterprise faster. Still, it's amazing they did as well as they did.

Kanban boards and Chat apps are the new todo lists - ten a penny - which makes people dismiss the notion of building a business around such a trivial feature.

This is a mistake. Most of those apps are badly designed, meaning for those looking to eke out a living rather than break $1 billion, there's still plenty of opportunities.

For example, Diigo the highlighting app is relatively unknown but is a hit with educators and so makes cash in a corner where few competitors are looking. The top stopwatch on The Play Store makes over $400,000 with in-app sales.

And Wunderlist sold for $125 million. And Todoist is profitable.

It's a big Internet out there.

yokisan··on If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system
I had an existential crisis after scrolling 50 times and revealing nothing but more background-color: #000000;
yokisan··on How Uber Used Secret “Greyball” Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide
> is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point?

They're the Trump of the startup world.

yokisan··on Ask HN: What's the one thing that let you grow the most as a developer?
> I don't have the confidence to call myself a developer.

Start building things. Pick some open source projects you like, dig into the code, and try make a better version of them. Also stalk (or if you like, talk to) the creators on Twitter to learn how they think.

Do this consistently and in a few months you'll begin to be embarrassed by how bad and inefficient your previous projects/processes were.

That's when you'll know that you're growing.

yokisan··on Dwitter – A social network for short JavaScript demos
Opened page: this is kinda lam....oooh that's neat.

* scroll scroll scroll *

Nice work.

yokisan··on Running Costs of a SaaS app
For Stripe analytics, Profitwell is free. And awesome.

https://www.profitwell.com

yokisan··on What no one talks about when running and selling a business
I'm in the same boat. 6 months into a 7 days a week routine of bootstrapping my business. It's beginning to pay off but being so selfish with my time has definitely frayed relationships. Luckily these are friends I've known long enough to understand that the frequency of our friendship says nothing of its quality.

Plus don't underestimate the power of a WhatsaApp group or email to rekindle connections.

> this is not really a major concern of mine at this time, but I suspect it may be a regret later.

Possibly. If you succeed though (and I hope you do), the door opens to more connections. Not that friendships are interchangeable but to own your time and be a successful business owner provides the tools and experience to meet many like-minded individuals.

Depending on your age and interests, the 'digital nomad' scene is an excellent way to meet interesting peeps who will '"understand the obsession and inability to "turn it off."'

yokisan··on Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
> They ask for it by accepting the position in the first place.

The spotlight is thrust upon them, that's true. However I think equating leading tech figure with righteous human being is something we take as axiomatic. It may often be true, but don't be crestfallen when it's sometimes not.

Plus the scale tips over the course of one's career. Bill Gates spent decades crushing the competition before he took upon the task of eradicating disease.

yokisan··on Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock
> I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time.

There's your problem: being enchanted in the first place. The tech world likes to build these epic hagiographies of people who never asked for them and then huff when reality—inevitably—fails to keep up with the myth.

Flawed human accomplishes great things is the story of most of history's pioneers.

yokisan··on The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
> The persuasive benefits that Russian propagandists gain from presenting the first version of events (which then must be dislodged by true accounts at much greater effort) could be removed if the true accounts were instead presented first.

Or at all. Just about every news outlet threw credibility away in a frenzy of mass hysteria these last 18 months. There's simply few bastions of impartiality left.

> corrections that provide an alternative story to help fill the resulting gap in understanding when false “facts” are removed.

So, like "alternative facts"?

> Our fourth suggestion for responding to Russian propaganda: Compete!

A bigger, better firehose! One on the right side of history™.

The sad reality is that people don't care about the truth nearly as much as they care about information which validates their worldview. The market acknowledges this and behaves accordingly.

Furthermore, not all truths are equally palpable and I'd argue that repeated censorship of uncomfortable/offensive truths has caused a breach of trust so wide that it has cast doubt on sources of information as a whole. See the 'Fake News' phenomenon.

It's from this set of experiences that people are lured to RT and 'alternative' sources of news. The next thing you know they're buying a years supply of Survival Shield X-2 Nascent iodine on infowars.

yokisan··on On Loneliness
Useful advice for any field. Take no heroes, only inspiration.
yokisan··on Why Europe Is Warning of Pax Americana's End
Touché. Although the opponents in the campaign are mostly terrible. Even by French standards.
yokisan··on Why Europe Is Warning of Pax Americana's End
Crimea used to be part of Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea

A poor argument, we can agree.

yokisan··on Why Europe Is Warning of Pax Americana's End
Sigh. Must we?

"EU investigation says Tbilisi launched indiscriminate assault on South Ossetia..with a massive artillery attack"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/30/georgia-attack...

yokisan··on Why Europe Is Warning of Pax Americana's End
It's literally this simple. Integration has been a disaster to the extent that soldiers now patrol within the borders of France and Belgium.

The great opportunity-cost of integrating populations and monitoring them when it fails has clearly become too expensive and people are saying "enough".

Oddly, the EU doesn't seem to acknowledge the sentiment of the public and just keep hammering on about 'ever closer union'. Clarity from mainstream Parties on this issue alone would shrink the poll numbers of the Far-Right.

yokisan··on Why Europe Is Warning of Pax Americana's End
For the record: Georgia initiated their conflict with Russia.
yokisan··on Evernote’s transition to Google Cloud Platform
I run a service on Firebase (now part of Google Cloud Platform) and ran into problems recently. To my surprise, the support was excellent. And I've only a few thousand users.

As for whether that level of support was acquired with the rest of Firebase or is native to GCE, I don't know.

yokisan··on How Immigration Uncertainty Threatens America’s Tech Dominance
> There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company.

"There's nothing stopping somebody from the ghetto from getting an education and joining a big tech company".

In both cases, sadly there is. And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this.

yokisan··on Fake News Challenge
> Never mind that it's incredibly easy to cherry-pick facts or exaggerations to target "offensive" articles (by both/all sides).

Exactly. I'd argue that disingenuous news from mainstream news organisations is worse than dedicated "fake news" websites because they exploit legitimacy and reader-trust to peddle falsehoods. They are our port in a storm of bullsh*t, and they're failing us.

yokisan··on How to start a startup without ruining your life
> 80% won't give you critical feedback, because humans like to avoid conflict and are polite

Haha. I wish!

"Your app sucks".

"Why is this not free?"

"Can I do X? Why can't I do X?"

"You changed Y and I hate it"

80% won't give you feedback, period. Because they've another 10 tabs open and you've haven't intrigued them enough to warrant anymore of their precious time and attention.

yokisan··on Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order
> the only real hope being basic income and friends

This may the the only real hope. But what about these people until then?

Rather than doling out welfare, it looks like Trump is shifting wealth around by increasing the incentive to hire Americans at the cost of more expensive goods and slightly smaller margins.

It's unorthodox, but is it foolish?

yokisan··on Google Recalls Staff to U.S. After Trump Immigration Order
> No country on that list has had a national commit an act of terror on US soil since 1975 or so.

See? It's working already!

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