Hacker News: Shocka1

New comment by Shocka1 in "The internet is kind of a predatory cesspit now"

Shocka1 — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:03:28 +0000

It's terrible... I find myself purposefully dumbing down my writing now.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras"

Shocka1 — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 14:28:32 +0000

It has been a few years now, probably mid to late 2010s if I had to guess. I'm sure someone with enough interest and tokens could do some kind of sentiment/data measurement in order to back up our anecdotes.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B"

Shocka1 — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 18:17:45 +0000

This brings back memories of the CVS/Aetna merger for me, which ended up going through of course. Hopefully the anti-trust enforcers have some experts in the ML/AI pipeline, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't bat an eye at this one. Hope I'm proved wrong though.

New comment by Shocka1 in "My Friend Aaron"

Shocka1 — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:00:07 +0000

Very black and white here - a person can easily do both by making a great living and working on side projects/dreams. Someday if the side hustle takes off, maybe even give great opportunities to others to have employment. And give them much more than a pat on the back, or whatever it is you are saying.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Mario Meets Pareto"

Shocka1 — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 18:58:49 +0000

I think the author didn't want to go too in depth for the sake of simplicity, very similar to the blog post itself, which just hit the surface. That being said, many more dimensions can be made out of easy - when I think of easy, I think of technically easy, management easy, drama levels, west coast nice vs east coast nice easy, etc... Depending on the individual they could probably split the word easy alone into 5 to 15 dimensions.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Mario Meets Pareto"

Shocka1 — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:13:10 +0000

I agree that many assumptions are made, but the concept was presented well in combination with something most people can relate to. They mention in the Acknowledgements section at the end of the post that assumptions are made, but not sure if they added it after your post or not. When something goes viral on HN authors tends to add things...

I think to truly do a deep dive into the best overall character in Mario Kart would be a fairly complex task. We'd need data from years of real games and players to even get started. As an ML engineer/software engineer who played a lot of Mario Kart back in the day, this post was a very enjoyable read for me.

New comment by Shocka1 in "US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market"

Shocka1 — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:33:05 +0000

IBM and American car companies enter the chat, just to name a few...

New comment by Shocka1 in "The bond market isn’t buying what Fed Chair Warsh is selling"

Shocka1 — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 19:47:32 +0000

I don't think picking sides is helpful here at all, but I do agree with you that we are more than likely screwed. The average left or right leaning American has no idea how a bond even works. Experiment - ask random people in your life (with tact of course) how bond yields affect bond prices. YMMV, but I would guess more often than not they would not know. The same people can tell you what's going down on Facebook/Instagram, but other than that both sides seem to be hypnotized or outraged on rotating social media topics. It's actually very disturbing to me at times, but what can ya do?

New comment by Shocka1 in "The Cold Email"

Shocka1 — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 18:57:57 +0000

This is really cool thank you for sharing.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Terence Tao's ChatGPT conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample"

Shocka1 — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:30:37 +0000

A mathematics book that was once on the front page here said the same. Mathematica by David Bessis.

New comment by Shocka1 in "FAANG Simulator"

Shocka1 — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:05:16 +0000

Cbus has been designated as the "Silicon Valley of the Midwest" in recent years, and the prices have reflected. Fortunately, you can make FAANG or coastal money if you have the right skills, even though our fellow "real" Silicon Valley devs might not want to admit it.

New comment by Shocka1 in "John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement"

Shocka1 — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:06:41 +0000

Almost every conversation I've had over the years goes two ways: "Why do you care so much about ? If you have nothing to hide, why are you so concerned?"

Or:

"Why do you care so much about ? We already walk around with cell phones in our pockets 24/7."

I used to be more passionate about persuading people about privacy, but I've pretty much given up. I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the population doesn't care what is happening around them as long as they have internet access and their iPhone.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Top researchers leave USA for the Netherlands (in Dutch)"

Shocka1 — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 23:00:31 +0000

I know this is anecdotal, but my engineering graduate program at a well known private university in the NE had roughly 300 graduates, more than half of them on student visas. I feel it's more popular than ever to act as though one has ideals, but there is an endless supply of talent waiting for a spot at these prestigious American universities.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

Shocka1 — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:40:33 +0000

I competed at a professional level in motorsports and had a lot of momentum in my 20s. It felt as though I was headed to the top of the sport, but it came to an abrupt end from a rare medical condition. I struggled for several years to come to terms with not knowing what could of been and probably had some minor depression because of it. It took a lot of self reflection and time to realize that I was extremely lucky to experience what I had, and I had so much to be happy about in the present.

That being said, there is a Limitless episode with Chris Hemsworth that might resonate with you, especially regarding martial arts. Watch season 1, episode 6, called "Acceptance". I had never watched any other episode of this show, but late one night when the whole house was asleep I was browsing and came across this episode and thought "hmm, looks like a good bedtime show". Ended up watching it and you'd have thought someone was cutting a thousand onions in my house. In fact, our Golden Retriever turned into a service dog that night hah!

New comment by Shocka1 in "I am retiring from tech to live offline"

Shocka1 — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:58:14 +0000

I went from big tech to a team of four at a small org. To work uninhibited and with close to zero speed bumps from management has been life changing for me and my stress levels. We all have each other's backs and there is none of that "West Coast Nice" stuff going on.

I worked manufacturing in my younger days and also spent some time in the Marines, so I feel ya on the cushy tech jobs... But I'd just about rather go back to Iraq before I go back to corporate culture.

New comment by Shocka1 in "I'm Tired of Talking to AI"

Shocka1 — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:11:18 +0000

I volunteered down there for a week when that happened. I think the only thing we used our phones for was a picture here and there. Otherwise, complete darkness. Despite the obvious of it being a disaster zone and homes destroyed everywhere, it was a positive experience.

When I first heard of Starlink and the possibility to have internet everywhere, I was a little sad inside. It is now impossible to escape in this world, even in the most remote mountains on earth. People always look at me sideways when I say this, but I truly think the power/internet needs shutoff for 6 months to a year every so often to give us a little bit of a reset.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets"

Shocka1 — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:44:13 +0000

I would agree that the insights provided are little to none. I think this is some sort of fallacy that being being PR'd by tech bros with a lot of skin in the game attempting to come up with some kind of positive reason to sell to people. It's fairly easy to see right through it though.

WSJ had an insightful article that claimed .1% of the accounts take 67% of the profit, along with some other facts: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/polymarket-kalshi-bett...

Full disclosure, I've written performant market making algorithms for Polymarket. I'm actually a fan of these markets and enjoy the statistics and engineering challenges they present, but see it as a net negative on society. I'd gladly give up my PnL if it was a net positive on the American psych.

New comment by Shocka1 in "The last six months in LLMs in five minutes"

Shocka1 — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:04:58 +0000

> One of my projects was a vibe-coded implementation of JavaScript in Python—a loose port of MicroQuickJS—which I called micro-javascript. You can try it out in your browser in this playground.

I'd like to remind everyone here that people on this forum used to actually code truly remarkable and pointless stuff like this, with zero LLMs, using nothing but their brains and motivation from who the heck knows where from.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Eric Schmidt speech about AI booed during graduation"

Shocka1 — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:55:13 +0000

I'm guessing the reason is probably the sex allegations. I don't see a graduating class that probably used an LLM for every single homework assignment boo'ing a speech because of AI alone. When it comes to sex allegations in the US, you are guilty until proven innocent, even more so as a powerful and/or rich individual. Of course shame on him if it's true, but in this day and age it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.

New comment by Shocka1 in "Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise"

Shocka1 — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:12:27 +0000

Wish I had you at my first engineering job at IBM. A couple senior devs there (not all) would get pissed when juniors tried asking them questions. Not only did it take a bit of courage to ask someone who had been there 20 years about something, but it was a 50/50 chance they were going to be an asshole to ya lol. Was a good learning experience for me - I go out of my way to mentor now.