Hacker News: KittenInABox

New comment by KittenInABox in "A walking tour of surveillance infrastructure in Seattle (2020)"

KittenInABox — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:07:53 +0000

> Not enough (LE|DA|jail) funding or staffing or space.

How is it possible that there isn't enough funding/staffing? Budgets have increased, ballooned beyond inflation in many cases they are the biggest line item in a city's budget.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers"

KittenInABox — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:24:35 +0000

I am perfectly for less job stability in the US but only if it comes with a strong safety net. Losing your job after a year or six months is whatever broski if you have robust healthcare and are unlikely to go homeless. I see SpaceX and Anthropic aiming for IPOs in the trillion range of valuation and all I can see is, how come these companies are benefitting from the "increased efficiency" but the regular guys are not feeling the same kind of optimism? I wanna cheer for them because a rising tide lifts all boats. Instead I feel less and less secure while I have anonymous online people "well actually"ing me about how broadly my life is supposedly better in aggregate average. The cognitive dissonance makes no sense to me.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Daily pill can double survival time for deadliest cancer, trial shows"

KittenInABox — Sun, 31 May 2026 19:56:56 +0000

This may sound condescending but: you sound young, not disabled, and extremely sheltered from being exposed to disabled people.

I am in a position to be intimately familiar with illness. I will say that health is a spectrum and the mind is incredibly resilient. You will surprise yourself as you inevitably age how much your mind will adapt to always hurting. There is more to life than body discomfort. This patient sounds like he has his faculties and is making an informed decision to continue living, because his life is worth the discomfort he is going through. I am reminded of a line along the lines of every day you experience, no matter how terrible, is very likely a day that someone else yesterday would have desperately wanted.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

KittenInABox — Thu, 21 May 2026 02:26:32 +0000

The fundamental problem with this of course is that every human being is likely more niche and more advanced at the LLM in the things that they find most important, and this realization sours the average user's impression of LLM usefulness. For example, an LLM cannot reasonably find me alternatives to specific tea regional vendors because the LLM does not know enough about tea to be able to say "this tea is half the price for 80% of the qualities of tea you're looking for". Instead I have to build my own mental knowledge base of careful trying and tasting and recalling which an LLM would maybe only have if I personally wrote every single tea session I have ever had in my life for it as context.

But hunting for a new tea to try is something I do regularly and something I would likely try with an LLM only to come away deeply disappointed with the results. And then I just wouldn't have much faith in it after that for things I don't have much knowledge about, like looking for a gift idea for one of the hobbies of a friend.

New comment by KittenInABox in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

KittenInABox — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:56:45 +0000

> Rising productivity would have reduced the average work week regardless.

Do you have evidence of this?

> consider that the benefits package routinely offered to employees is worth around 40% of their pay

Please define "routinely" and "employees". Part-time employees do not get benefits packages, much less benefits packages worth 40% of their pay. PTO, Sick time, family leave, and other "benefits" are actually legally mandated and I do not see any evidence that companies would offer this if they were not mandated to do so.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Head of FCC threatens broadcaster licenses over critical coverage of Iran war"

KittenInABox — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 02:00:33 +0000

In my impression the billionaire worship is just another form of fundamental respect and enforcement of hierarchy that has been part of conservative politics forever. We are back to transparently the "right" leaning being wanting to keep the absolute monarchy.

New comment by KittenInABox in "DHS Contracts Explorer – Hacked data from the Office of Industry Partnership"

KittenInABox — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:12:12 +0000

I'm a bit confused by claiming that this is confidential information. I thought contract awards were public? Would someone who is more in this space be willing to explain what actually was leaked here?

New comment by KittenInABox in "Most of the US economy is in a recession"

KittenInABox — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:29:56 +0000

Disabled people exist, even temporarily so (e.g. pregnant with a craving, broken ankle and can't drive, etc)!

Also, sometimes some meals are arguably not worth the labor of cooking. Making proper pho takes at least a whole day. Pad Thai really doesn't function without the kind of intense heat of specific equipment. Etc etc.

New comment by KittenInABox in "The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist"

KittenInABox — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 01:11:57 +0000

Extremely weird cover selection. Books like Stag Dance, Project: Hail Mary, The Emperor of Gladness, etc. None of them have that. Some of the books listed there are several years old (The Death of Vivek Oji was published in 2020). A Map Is Only One Story isn't even fiction?? I think its very cherrypicked of a complaint. Not to mention the author doesn't talk at all about the rise of romantasy and finding bets like Alchemised and Fourth Wing (neither of which have these covers complained about).

Science Fiction Is Dying. Long Live Post Sci-Fi?

KittenInABox — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:57:43 +0000

Article URL: https://www.typebarmagazine.com/science-fiction-is-dying-long-live-post-sci-fi/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47293191

Points: 69

# Comments: 112

New comment by KittenInABox in "Tinnitus Is Connected to Sleep"

KittenInABox — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 20:24:34 +0000

This is the first time I heard that this is an issue where the brain isn't filtering out noise properly. This explains why I have had tinnitus, the sound of breathing, whooshing in the ears from my heartbeat, etc. audible to me for as long as I've been conscious and have never understood why everyone else seemed to be really disturbed by what I consider to be supremely normal. Except I also have a sensory processing disorder that makes my brain unable to filter input well so I also come off as sensitive to touch and able to pick up smells well. Because I grew up with all this though I have normalized it enough to function.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Just two days of oatmeal cut bad cholesterol by 10%"

KittenInABox — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 03:34:05 +0000

IIRC the relationship between cholesterol and diet is more complicated than eating cholesterol == more cholesterol. Especially in this case you're eating cholesterol with a high-fiber meal which prevents a significant amount of the absorption of it.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Layoffs at Block"

KittenInABox — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:31:07 +0000

I see fundamentally human wellbeing as more important. Jobs are just the structure society has built as a gateway for this.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Layoffs at Block"

KittenInABox — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:29:25 +0000

I do mean homo sapiens. Humans are a cooperative species. They will hunt and gather together in loose communities naturally, sharing excess resources even if individuals are not directly contributing to the resource creation due to being too young, too old, sick or injured. Having inter-societal competition doesn't mean we don't still have cooperative society. Just because ants will fight other ants in different colonies doesn't mean ants are not a social species.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Layoffs at Block"

KittenInABox — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:47:27 +0000

I feel like the idea that X doesn't owe you Y is fundamentally at odds with the fact that humans are a cooperative species and survive the best when they are cooperating. A choir can hold a note together because individuals can stop singing to breathe, safely covered by peers who will take their turn to breathe later. What is the point of organizing socially if not for the benefit of all society members?

I know we have to balance inefficiency and optimal allocation of resources... but I agree it doesn't seem optimal for social wellbeing to remove people from their access to health and risking their ability to house and feed themselves without a financial need to do so (like Block going bankrupt).

Gender markers are useless, so why not abolish them?

KittenInABox — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 03:56:47 +0000

Article URL: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2021/11/gender-markers-are-useless-so-why-not-abolish-them/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161641

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by KittenInABox in "Amazon accused of widespread scheme to inflate prices across the economy"

KittenInABox — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 03:17:47 +0000

I wouldn't ascribe averages to mean much. I expect there is a small minority that buys everything on amazon (everything meaning groceries, holiday gifts, prescriptions, etc) that would jack up the average significantly.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras"

KittenInABox — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:50:59 +0000

On the contrary I think Americans are reacting about the same as any other set of people would react. There are always going to be people who, as long as their personal lives are stable, they are not going to do anything to put that stability at risk. America is also huge enough that even if one part of the country is having a crisis, millions of fellow citizens will not hear of it or have any 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand connection to the matter.

But also if a small portion of Americans disparately plan to do stuff like sabotage surveillance camera, it's still newsworthy.

New comment by KittenInABox in "Sizing chaos"

KittenInABox — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 02:03:38 +0000

GLP-1 functioning as methodone is fine for me tbh. Medically assisted addiction management is pretty gold-standard for a lot of addictions!

New comment by KittenInABox in "What is happening to writing? Cognitive debt, Claude Code, the space around AI"

KittenInABox — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:01:48 +0000

I agree with this in general but with caveats. For example I think reading national-sized news every day sucks. But if you're of a specific demographic it might be useful to keep pretty up to date on nuanced issues, like if you're a gun owner you will probably want to keep up to date on gun licensing in your area. Or if you're a trans person it's pretty important nowadays to be very aware of laws being passed to dictate your legally going to whatever bathroom or something.