Hacker News: aaronbaugher

New comment by aaronbaugher in "AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'"

aaronbaugher — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:13:19 +0000

Smart people can get away with tricks like that.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'"

aaronbaugher — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 15:35:41 +0000

I'd love an example too, and an example of the classical system that this replaced. I'm willing to believe the worst of the school system, but I'd like to understand why.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts"

aaronbaugher — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 14:38:31 +0000

Yeah, a whole lot of Americans who still click the "religious" box on a poll are just going on habit and family tradition, or they go to a church that's become part social club and part community charity center. (Nothing wrong with charity, of course, but you don't have to be religious to be charitable.) It doesn't mean what it meant a few generations ago, when, probably coincidentally, there was less crime.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts"

aaronbaugher — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:44:00 +0000

Yep. Eventually the businesses shut down the stores that have too much theft to be profitable; then people complain about problems like food deserts and accuse the businesses of isms; then well-meaning people elect politicians who promise to make it all better; then the politicians use tax breaks, sweetheart deals, and social pressure to get the businesses to open stores in those areas again.

The cycle continues because we can't learn a lesson that sticks for more than a generation, and the next generation thinks it'll be better this time because they care more than their parents did.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "The Rise and Fall of Music Ringtones: A Statistical Analysis"

aaronbaugher — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:28:44 +0000

I've noticed in a lot of newer movies, people's phones only vibrate and they always notice it and grab it (unless the script says they miss the call/text for plot reasons). Of course, the scene is always quiet at that moment, so you can hear the vibration effect and believe that the character does too. In real life, it doesn't often work that way.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "[dead]"

aaronbaugher — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:05:19 +0000

It seems odd because it assumes you agree that silent prayer would make people feel unsafe, and that prayer is a form of "freedom of thought." You could agree that freedom of thought is a human right, but not think that applies to prayer. You could also think silent prayer outside abortion clinics won't make people feel unsafe, but still think it should be banned. Unless you agree with at least one of the assumptions they're baking into the answers, you can't give a satisfactory answer.

The question itself is very simple, and the answers should be "yes" and "no." All the rest is message.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "The End of Handwriting"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 14:33:19 +0000

I got high marks for cursive in grade school, but I switched to printing in high school when I took Latin, because it made the distinction clearer between m's and n's and things like that. Forty years later, I'm trying to go back to cursive because it's faster, but it's a whole lot harder now.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "The End of Handwriting"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 14:11:27 +0000

Aside from learning, I also find that pen-and-paper is much more effective for journaling, when I want to work through a problem or brainstorm something. Once I've worked it out, I'll often type it in so I've got it saved in a searchable, archivable form. But putting it on paper first seems to help me think about it. It's like I see the words in a deeper way than when I'm putting them on the screen.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing – MIT report"

aaronbaugher — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 14:13:08 +0000

> Because the customer wasn't the user - it was their boss and shareholders.

I'm starting to get asked, "Could AI help you do such-and-such faster?" At first I tried to explain why the answer is no, because such-and-such doesn't lend itself to what AI is good at. But I'm starting to realize I'm going to have to tell them I am using it and maybe give them an example once in a while, because they're hearing too much about its wonderfulness to believe there's something it can't help with. They're going to think I'm just being stubborn even though I tell them I'm not opposed to using AI where it makes sense. If that means the job actually takes a little longer to add in the part where I use AI to speed it up, they'll be happier.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "The road that killed Legend Jenkins was working as designed"

aaronbaugher — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 18:33:04 +0000

I served on a grand jury a while back, and one of the few cases that wasn't a slam dunk was one where a woman's baby smothered while in bed with her and under the covers, possibly while the mother was using someone else's prescription drugs. Some of us were queasy at the idea of potentially putting a parent in prison, thinking that losing your own child and carrying that guilt was punishment enough, plus the question of what would happen to her other children, who by all accounts were well cared for (she was a single parent with no father in the picture).

We quizzed the prosecutor about it, and he said he understood that, but, as he put it, "A child is dead." He hoped to use the seriousness of the charge to get the mother to accept counseling and supervision as part of a plea deal; but his office couldn't just let it go, which is what a lesser charge effectively would do in my state. After he explained that, he got the indictment. Maybe this prosecutor is thinking the same way.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Nobody’s buying homes, nobody’s switching jobs, America’s mobility is stalling"

aaronbaugher — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 13:23:51 +0000

It's unlikely that the people in that rural subdivision are driving two hours a day for work. In the US Midwest, you're rarely more than 30 minutes from a town large enough to have some jobs. For instance, there's a town of 1100 near me that has a veterinarian, general store, post office, gas station, auto mechanic, school, a couple bank branches, and so on, which all employ people, some at pretty good salaries. And within ten miles of that town, there are a couple of those little blocks of suburb-looking houses like you describe.

Or the people living in them might be retired, or work from home, or work on local farms. Whatever the case, they're not driving a long way for work.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse"

aaronbaugher — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 13:27:33 +0000

Right. The big lie of what's called Our Democracy (in the US, UK, and other Western nations) is that having 51% on your side and winning elections means you get some control over government. What recent years have made clear is that the bureaucratic class does what it wants, and resists most attempts by the people to control it through their representatives, using its media wing to call those anti-democratic and other epithets. At best, you can make temporary changes that the machine will roll back as soon as it can get rid of your representatives.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:41:01 +0000

No one who knows anything about cattle does, but that leaves out a lot of people these days. Polls have found people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows, and I've heard people say they've successfully gone "cow tipping," so there's a lot of cluelessness out there.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "H-1B Visa Changes Approved by White House"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:50:28 +0000

If it were highly effective, it already would have replaced importing the workers, since it's cheaper to hire them over there. But I've seen multiple companies go big on offshoring and then scrap it after a few years and hire domestic again because it went poorly. There may be a new surge of interest in it if importing people gets harder, but I don't suppose it will go much better than it did before.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Farmers want California to change its autonomous tractor ban [video]"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:15:02 +0000

When you're tilling, planting, or harvesting, you're often trying to beat the rain or the season. You don't want to go any slower than necessary.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:07:04 +0000

My town still has quite a few third places (the mall, bowling alleys, bars, etc.) and even some new ones like a trampoline place. Most of them are struggling because the young people don't go out. Go into a corner bar on a Saturday night, and you'll see more people in their 50s than 20s. The pool league that used to run 6 divisions a week is now down to 2.

So as far as I can tell, people (especially the young) stopped going out, and then third places started going away.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 16:28:48 +0000

In fact, the petty criminal may benefit the regime, if his crimes damage those the regime sees as a greater threat to itself and its goals.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Farmers want California to change its autonomous tractor ban [video]"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 16:05:54 +0000

When you see a headline that starts with "Farmers [something]", it always refers to large farming corporations and the lobbying organizations like Farm Bureau they fund. It never means they went and interviewed Farmer Hank with his 50 cow dairy or his 1000-acre grain and pasture operation.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Farmers want California to change its autonomous tractor ban [video]"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:58:30 +0000

Also, it's useful to remember that before tractors, there were horses, and the equipment pulled by horses was gradually converted to tractors. With horses, the farmer might sit on the equipment and use reins, or he might walk in front of the horses and lead them. Either way, he had control of them without literally sitting on them. So when the first tractors came along, it probably wasn't automatic to think you needed to sit directly on it. And it was a lot easier to hop on and off them when they were small machines without cabs. They were pretty dangerous, really, with little in the way of safety protection over moving parts, so I can see why people thought a rule was needed to keep the driver on the seat.

New comment by aaronbaugher in "Farmers want California to change its autonomous tractor ban [video]"

aaronbaugher — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:42:55 +0000

Tractors are made heavy for traction (hence the name), not for safety. In addition to the weight of the tractor itself, fluid is often added to the tires for extra weight, and weights added to the front for more traction and to keep the front down when pulling a heavy load.

You can gain some traction by going from tires to tracks, as some modern tractors do, but you still need a certain amount of weight or you're just going to spin when you're trying to pull a 30-foot-wide chisel plow through soil and last year's stalks.

Going fully autonomous might make tractors a little cheaper, if they don't need A/C and mirrors and things like that, but not lighter. And they'd still need the human stuff for occasions when it can't drive itself anyway, like moving it around the barn lot or going down the road to the next field.