Hacker News: Cerium

New comment by Cerium in "AI is wiping out entry-level jobs"

Cerium — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:15:51 +0000

The main focus of education as a taxpayer supported activity is about the perpetuation of the state. The fact that a healthy state relies on a healthy economy is a constraint that helps shape the aims of public education. Other constraints are about culture, values, and understanding the government to the degree that the government can count on having a future generation of legislature.

One of my favorites on this topic, the 1963 "A Talk to Teachers", by James Baldwin.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/baldwin-talk-to-teac...

New comment by Cerium in "Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)"

Cerium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:46:06 +0000

Some perspective: I feel that I participate here, yet most days I don't write even a single comment. When I comment I rarely write more than two comments a day.

New comment by Cerium in "How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?"

Cerium — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 02:55:24 +0000

Agreed - my experience mirrors this.

> "Fix the following compile errors" -> one shot try and stops.

> "Fix the following compile errors. When done, test your work and continue iterating until build passes without error" -> same cost but it gets the job done.

New comment by Cerium in "Having Kids (2019)"

Cerium — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:37:40 +0000

A good friend of mine holds the belief that "having friends with kids is better than having kids of your own", and I definitely feel the "can't explain" part - there is an unexplainable reality when you have kids of your own.

New comment by Cerium in "Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis"

Cerium — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 19:20:51 +0000

Now that reserved seats are the norm, I leave my house at the specified starting time and never have missed even a minute of the feature film.

New comment by Cerium in "Claude helped select targets for Iran strikes, possibly including school"

Cerium — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 04:08:21 +0000

When you have a hammer as big as an LLM a lot of problems start to look like nails.

New comment by Cerium in "H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright typographic mystery"

Cerium — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 04:57:14 +0000

The second image in the article clearly shows screw holes in the letters. The H appears to be perfectly symmetric for 180 degree mounting.

New comment by Cerium in "I baked a pie every day for a year"

Cerium — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:55:12 +0000

Do it! Making a pie might seem unapproachable, but it will all work out. I have never failed to make a pie that brought some happiness into the world.

New comment by Cerium in "The Missing Semester of Your CS Education – Revised for 2026"

Cerium — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:09:03 +0000

I don't see the lock in effect (such as learning a language, or a complex software product) with LLMs yet that would drive student based marketing efforts.

New comment by Cerium in "Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash"

Cerium — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 03:32:02 +0000

It is not really cheap, nor best "value for the dollar", but I am extremely satisfied with UniFi [0]. Nearly instant setup, decent mobile apps, web interface, basically just works as you need.

[0] https://ui.com/

Edit, update link.

New comment by Cerium in "Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair"

Cerium — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:58:51 +0000

If you wanted to pay for direct air capture of CO2 to directly "undo" your climate effect of driving, the cost would currently be about $6 per gallon. Price comes from [1], found [2] looking for a second opinion on current direct air capture cost.

[1] https://theclimatecapitalist.com/articles/gas-should-cost-13... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/phildeluna/2024/11/29/will-dire...

New comment by Cerium in "The hidden engineering of runways"

Cerium — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 03:19:54 +0000

I interpreted the effect here not to be on the deck plates but to be the point of impact between the cable and the hook. Sudden bends in cables can wear them fairly quickly in the immediate vicinity. I'm sure you can extend cable life proportionally to the spread of the loading.

New comment by Cerium in "Ask HN: What do you consider fun?"

Cerium — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 21:32:04 +0000

Hand tool woodworking. Zero screens needed. All you need is about a 8x8 foot space that you can get messy.

New comment by Cerium in "Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time"

Cerium — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 18:52:40 +0000

There is also Quadro Toys. I have a couple of the large sets and have built a series of houses, climbing toys, and now a "castle" with a slide for my daughter.

New comment by Cerium in "RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung"

Cerium — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:52:30 +0000

Don't worry, if you are happy with those specs you can get corporate ewaste dell towers on ebay for low prices. "Dell precision tower", I just saw a listing for 32gb ram, Xeon 3.6ghz for about 300 usd.

Personally, at work I use the latest hardware at home I use ewaste.

New comment by Cerium in "Proximity to coworkers increases long-run development, lowers short-term output (2023)"

Cerium — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:14:03 +0000

Keep your eyes open for a better job? The work you do should have impact of some kind. In the corporate world there is business impact (increase revenue, decrease direct costs or improve system efficiency), social impact (make a product that directly helps people in some way), or personal impact (work on something that you find intrinsically interesting or helps you grow your skills or understanding).

I don't see any reason to permanently stay in a role filled with mundane triviality .

New comment by Cerium in "Booking.com cancels $4K hotel reservation, offers same rooms again for $17K"

Cerium — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:41:39 +0000

Not only can the hotel select their own policies, but the cancellation is 6 months early. Surely the room will not go empty in that time.

New comment by Cerium in "Basalt Woven Textile"

Cerium — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 15:46:59 +0000

Not bearings, this is "wear and tear" as in abrasion resistance. Cast basalt is used to create abrasion resistant pipes and flooring.

New comment by Cerium in "The government has no plan for America’s 300 billion pennies"

Cerium — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:30:28 +0000

Average gift card has a discount of 8 to 20% built in. Looks like Coinstar is currently charging 12.9%, so a gift card could actually be more profitable for them.

New comment by Cerium in "Mullvad: Shutting down our search proxy Leta"

Cerium — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 05:29:26 +0000

I switched to Kagi a few years ago and have not looked back. The quality has been great and continues to perform well.