Hacker News Reader

ytwySXpMbSon Why Startups Die

Why have you wasted both my time and yours by posting replies clearly written by AI that add nothing to the discussion and only restate what the parent comment has said? Infuriating.

ytwySXpMbSon Ryanair wins screen scraping case against Booking.com in US court ruling

I use Railboard, exactly like trainline but without the booking fee as it's made by national rail

ytwySXpMbSon YouTube embeds are heavy and it’s fixable

There’s a great app called PiPifier, which allows you to use PiP for free on iOS.

ytwySXpMbSon EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control

They mean any party that's had majority control of parliament, they don't mean it's been used as a strategy to get there but rather once they're ruling it's been introduced

ytwySXpMbSon Brain overgrowth dictates autism severity, new research suggests

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325115316.h...

> finds that size is the only clear-cut difference between male and female brains. Women's brains are about 11% smaller than men's, in proportion to their body size.

> "This means that the brain differences between large- and small-headed men are as great as the brain differences between the average man and woman," Dr. Eliot said. "And importantly, none of these size-related differences can account for familiar behavioral differences between men and women, such as empathy or spatial skills."

ytwySXpMbSon Brain overgrowth dictates autism severity, new research suggests

That’s obviously not true, men don’t have 7x more grey matter.

ytwySXpMbSon Is Europe better than America for working in tech?

You seriously wouldn't want to work less? You aren't penalised for taking the time off.

I see it more as protecting the employee from exploitation.

ytwySXpMbSon Can GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 play Wordle?

Just want to add a data point: I just tried this word for word with today’s Wordle (secret word = tough) and ChatGPT 4 got it completely wrong, didn’t reuse letters it got right and kept reusing letters it knew weren’t in the word. It’s easy to look at this Twitter thread and freak out, but even a broken clock is right twice a day and I encourage people to try these examples for themselves.

ytwySXpMbSon Pgrok – Poor Man’s Ngrok

In a couple places grok is typoed as gork

ytwySXpMbSon Using ChatGPT as a Co-Founder

I'm assuming this comment was written by ChatGPT, am I correct? It's got quite a predictable writing style, and also your comment doesn't add anything to the original, it's just reworded

ytwySXpMbSon As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen

I don’t think England would ever leave the UK, as English people view England as the main UK country. Also, the EU has been blamed for decades as a scapegoat, whereas the UK definitely hasn’t.

ytwySXpMbSon UK government: no more smart motorways without stopped car detection

That’s obviously ridiculous, you can’t purposefully puncture a moving cars tires to enforce a lane. You’d kill people, what about people who missed the signs?

ytwySXpMbSon Facebook is pushing back on Apple’s new iPhone privacy rules

Why would you want effective advertising? The sole purpose of advertising is making you buy something you otherwise wouldn’t buy. Call me old fashioned but if I want to buy something I look up reviews, I don’t just scroll Facebook until a good advert pops up.

ytwySXpMbSon Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

This isn’t quite right. The UK has delayed second doses to 3 months after the first dose to enable more people to get their first dose quicker. The plan is all adults vaccinated by September, and they certainly aren’t delaying second doses until then.

ytwySXpMbSon Virginia lawmakers pass marijuana legalization bills

I think you’re projecting and trying to defend your ego against supporting racist policy, because you’re not racist so how can the war on drugs be?

Please tell me how harsher sentencing on crack cocaine compared to cocaine is not the dictionary definition of racism. It sorts one group out from another (statistically crack cocaine is used more by black people), which is discrimination, and then punishes those people, racism.

The good thing is instead of trying to mind-bend your way around supporting a racist policy, you can just change your opinion free of charge.

ytwySXpMbSon Ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry

The Imperial College London trials looked at this. In the first trial, people were given 1 dose of psilocybin, and while some people recovered fully, many went back to being depressed after some months. In the second trial, they gave people 2 doses spaced a few weeks apart, and focused more on integration after the experience. They had much more success in sustained recovery with that. Here’s a podcast episode all about it if anyone’s interested (soundcloud link at the bottom of the page): https://www.mindmanifestpodcast.com/news/sureshmuthukumarasw...

ytwySXpMbSon Facebook Has Been Showing Military Gear Ads Next to “Insurrection” Posts

How is someone supporting and fostering a bad act not also to blame? I see from your profile you work in adtech, perhaps rights shouldn't be decided by people who seek to avoid blame because they profit from it.

ytwySXpMbSon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

There’s no overall rule that says people fighting governments is always good. Trump is trying to overturn democracy and create a bad government. The difference is that in one case the people are rising up against their dictator, and the other is a multimillionaire who is angry he lost.

ytwySXpMbSon U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

Well we agree on Trump at least :). I think election fraud does happen at a low level and is detected, usually in most US elections they report a low level of fraud, but nothing that would swing an election. That’s very interesting, why don’t you trust people to be honest? I personally believe in the good of people, that >90% of people are good people who want to do the right thing. So when people without skin in the game or anti-Biden people say there was no election fraud, I trust them. This is why I believe Raffensperger. But I’d be very interested to hear why you don’t trust people you don’t know?

ytwySXpMbSon U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

I’m sure you’ve reviewed the evidence and have come to your own conclusions, which is reasonable. I assume you trust what Trump says as he’s the biggest supporter of the election fraud allegations, but tell me if I’m wrong. My problem is I don’t trust at all what Trump says, from my perspective he doesn’t understand you can’t inject bleach, refuses to disapprove of the Proud Boys, etc. So when he says there’s election fraud, I don’t believe him.

Maybe you’re in a position where you do believe him. His rhetoric is such that if you believe him, he tries to get you to believe only him, sowing distrust in news organisations and election officials.

I think another problem is it’s very hard to disprove a negative. For example, prove that there isn’t a spy satellite orbiting earth. You can always say “well what about that other satellite, what about this area of space?”. It’s unknowable, and therefore comes down to who you trust. If you look up Trump’s factual inaccuracies so far, unless you already have, then you’ll have a clearer picture on which to base your trust.

ytwySXpMbSon U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

It may not be a good way of persuading people, but it seems there’s no good way of persuading you as you simply refuse to be persuaded. We could argue about the specifics all day, but I think you should ask yourself why you want it to be true. Do you seek community? Are you angry inside and need an outlet?

Here’s a video[1]. Of course from your perspective, your position makes perfect sense and isn’t extreme, and by no means am I calling you a white supremacist, but you should watch and see if you relate in any way. Please don’t dismiss it out of hand, there’s valuable lessons in it that apply to everyone, not just former white supremacists.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SSH5EY-W5oM

ytwySXpMbSon Info is available about which college majors pay off, students aren’t using it

> “effective altruism”

It’s funny because it’s really a justification to be selfish, the carbon offset of bad ethics.

ytwySXpMbSon No, Cellebrite Cannot “Break Signal Encryption”

If it's not too personal a question, I'm curious which culture you're talking about? My guess is French?

ytwySXpMbSon New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

Not addressing your main points, but that is a seriously prejudiced view of people struggling with mental illness. Mentally ill people aren’t “psychos”, many people in all walks of life struggle with anxiety, depression or something else. That’s not to say violent people don’t have underlying mental health issues. It’s quite an outdated view that mentally ill people are distinct from “normal” people, and aren’t just people who’ve suffered trauma. What happens if you find yourself dealing with these issues, are you going to shame yourself into not seeking treatment?

ytwySXpMbSon Being kind to others is good for your health

As the other child of this comment said, I’m not talking about being socially aware. I’m talking about people who are so obnoxious they turn everything into a competition so they can validate their own ego, quite the opposite of being socially aware. Lectures aren’t a competition of who said what.

ytwySXpMbSon Being kind to others is good for your health

Or worse, ask pointless questions just to prove they understand the content.

ytwySXpMbSon The Abolition of Work (2002)

The grandparent of your comment suggested that unemployed people are shamed because they don’t contribute meaningfully to society, in that they don’t produce anything or provide any services. Similarly, a hedge fund employee contributes nothing of tangible value to society. Sure, they use pension money to make money for themselves, but pensions don’t depend on that.

ytwySXpMbSon Being kind to others is good for your health

And yet everyone silently hates those people, people who waste everyone’s time just to prove how smart they are, usually failing in the process. There were always those people in my lectures.

ytwySXpMbSon Dead millionaire convinced dozens of women to have as many babies as possible (2015)

I don't understand this point of view. I think often in saying this the implication is that you wouldn't make the same choice. That somehow you would resist the same urges that poorer people face. But who are you to say you wouldn't if you were in their shoes? You don't know the stress they face or their desperation, their life experiences. We're all human.

ytwySXpMbSon My million dollar domain hobby

I think by definition acting in a self-interested way is going to benefit you the most, otherwise it wouldn't be called self-interested. The problem is that often, acting in a self-interested way harms others, either directly or indirectly, hence being unethical. That's not the fault of the system, no system can prevent dogged self-interest being the most beneficial for yourself.