Hacker News: a123b456c

New comment by a123b456c in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

a123b456c — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:50:20 +0000

Oh come on. So you're rooting for the evil genius in the comic book movie? You would harm millions of people to move up the financial success yardstick?

I don't think many people would agree with such positions.

I do think that people who have succeeded financially might adopt that ethos as an ex post rationalization.

New comment by a123b456c in "Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act"

a123b456c — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:50:17 +0000

You could engineer the feed to maximize user satisfaction, rather than maximizing usage.

New comment by a123b456c in "The American Healthcare Conundrum"

a123b456c — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:46:23 +0000

If Intuit and other tax preparers can protect their tax preparation rents at the expense of all income earners, then it is not difficult to believe that the medical industry is also able to protect its own rents.

New comment by a123b456c in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

a123b456c — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:54:43 +0000

There are two basic topics:

1. Talk about them. Start by paying attention to them. Then when you notice something that was clearly an intentional choice on their part, say something nice about it. Listen carefully to what they say, and follow up in response without filtering yourself.

2. Talk about us. Notice some aspect of experience that you are both sharing. The weather is the most popular and safest topic.

New comment by a123b456c in "I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported"

a123b456c — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:05:21 +0000

Can you think of any instances where powerful tech companies broke laws, perhaps in ways that increased profit?

New comment by a123b456c in "Attention Media ≠ Social Networks"

a123b456c — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 18:36:27 +0000

It's not complicated. That random garbage increases advertising revenues. Maybe not from every user, but certainly in the aggregate.

New comment by a123b456c in "Mark Zuckerberg Lied to Congress. We Can't Trust His Testimony"

a123b456c — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:37:52 +0000

It's also possible that users could misuse the reporting system, in order to get other users' accounts suspended.

Requiring N distinct reports of a suspension reason would seem to reduce misuses of the reporting system.

The 17-reports threshold might have been found to balance type-1 and type-2 errors, as account removals are costly actions when made in error or as a result of reporting-system misuse.

New comment by a123b456c in "Communities are not fungible"

a123b456c — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 23:54:00 +0000

It sounds to me like you should contact your good friends more often.

New comment by a123b456c in "A flawed paper in management science has been cited more than 6k times"

a123b456c — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:28:07 +0000

Many people do not know that Impact Factor is gameable. Unethical publications have gamed it. Therefore a higher IF may or may not indicate higher prominence. Use Scimago journal rankings for non-gameable scores.

New comment by a123b456c in "Texas police invested in phone-tracking software and won’t say how it’s used"

a123b456c — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 03:32:29 +0000

claims like these require a source

New comment by a123b456c in "Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy"

a123b456c — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:39:15 +0000

The question is what average; some people apparently view "in the US" as implying US population-level averages (which it does not explicitly imply), whereas authors report the average within adopting households, which for this study's data source, all happen to be in the US

New comment by a123b456c in "Google broke my heart"

a123b456c — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:32:17 +0000

It seems like we will need either legislation or litigation, if we want things to improve.

New comment by a123b456c in "Iowa City made its buses free. Traffic cleared, and so did the air"

a123b456c — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 04:04:41 +0000

OK, but do you realize that the worst cases from places like yours get exported to SF, NYC and other hubs, for them to deal with?

And you're out here bragging about what you "let" your neighbors and kids do. And bragging about visiting two US cities.

New comment by a123b456c in "Why aren't smart people happier?"

a123b456c — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 17:06:52 +0000

You had me until you said that "all of it is fleeting and ultimately meaningless - relationships, work, accomplishments. (and many, many more)"

My dear friend. These are the only types of meaning that matters, and its fleeting nature is why we need to appreciate and savor them.

New comment by a123b456c in "I’m worried that they put co-pilot in Excel"

a123b456c — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 18:49:50 +0000

This is the reason the higher-ups in finance who rely on Brenda might continue to rely on Brenda, rather than relying on AI. She offers them accountability.

New comment by a123b456c in "Addiction Markets"

a123b456c — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 02:10:05 +0000

> If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty.

No.

An organization's liberty to advertise is not individual liberty.

Let individuals gamble. Do not let organizations advertise gambling services. Organizational liberty is not individual liberty.

New comment by a123b456c in "Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025"

a123b456c — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:34:33 +0000

I think you're pointing in the right direction, but I would rephrase as,

what's the likelihood that the solution exists in the github repo in a way that the machine can recognize as relevant to your prompt?

If many versions of the solution exist, due to the problem's common occurrence, and if you can evaluate the LLM's output, then you're good to go.

New comment by a123b456c in "No I don't want to turn on Windows Backup with One Drive"

a123b456c — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:24:17 +0000

I would call it a constructive contrarian claim, quite distinct from trolling.

New comment by a123b456c in "Selling Lemons"

a123b456c — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 02:01:07 +0000

Or it would take a strong base of reviews to establish a moat and the premium pricing that enables.

New comment by a123b456c in "Tesla changes meaning of 'Full Self-Driving', gives up on promise of autonomy"

a123b456c — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 17:12:00 +0000

OK so you believe "Elon was right" and people should "ignore the comments" Hmm very interesting.