Hacker News: andygroundwater

New comment by andygroundwater in "Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain"

andygroundwater — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 20:18:40 +0000

Macabre stuff, but indisputably scientific all the same.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Neural nets are not “slightly conscious,” and AI PR can do with less hype"

andygroundwater — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 21:00:05 +0000

It's stretching credulity beyond the usual exaggerated hype associated with AI. What we have now is semi-OK forecasting at scale, nothing more. We (as in the researches, platform and technology) can get a system to select what looks to be a valid response to a host of stimuli, e.g., chess moves, patient diagnostics, vehicle driving etc.

None of this "thinks for itself", nor is it remotely near to such levels of conscious self-awareness. I'm sick of this hype, it's been going on since the 1905's with hucksters promising robot household domestics, and all sorts of kooky weirdness that was swallowed up by the popular media.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Show HN: Open-core icon sets that took me 12 years to create"

andygroundwater — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 10:03:52 +0000

> It would never occur to me to create a programming library where you have the 'basic' open source version and the 'optimized' commercial version.

It's occurred to plenty of others - look at the GPT-3 libraries or a few of the more advanced Deep Learning ones.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?"

andygroundwater — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 10:22:32 +0000

I've got a major a-hole neighbour that's been stealing my food when delivery drivers accidentally call at their home instead of mine. This guy has even claimed to be me to the delivery folks, which I guess is out-and-out fraud.

Anyway, I've been sitting on a plan for a little while to deal out some karma - involving some ML, a camera, an SDR board and a Raspberry Pi.

New comment by andygroundwater in "13 years sailing around the world"

andygroundwater — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 13:56:36 +0000

In the words of the late Dr. Johnson, "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned".

New comment by andygroundwater in "Poll: Is the leetcode grind necessary to land a high paying remote job?"

andygroundwater — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 14:58:10 +0000

Absolutely not! I got my current role by going in to an interview and critiquing my previous employer's architecture, data pipeline and (complete) lack of data oversight.

New comment by andygroundwater in "13 years sailing around the world"

andygroundwater — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 13:56:38 +0000

This just begs the question why?

It's not the 18th century anyone, if you want to get from A to B there's better ways. Even if you want to go sailing, just go and do it and have it done. This seems like some form of nautical itinerancy.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car"

andygroundwater — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 14:14:16 +0000

> But Starbucks would never adopt such a robot, because they know customers wouldn’t like it.

Incorrect - I would much prefer getting top-quality coffee from a robot than some barista all other things being equal.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct"

andygroundwater — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 11:04:44 +0000

Like it! Scrapegoating it is from now on in these circumstances.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Activision Blizzard pushes out dozens of employees over workplace misconduct"

andygroundwater — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 11:00:28 +0000

The "do just the minimum" strategy of corporate inclusion and diversity.

New comment by andygroundwater in "The curious case of the Raspberry Pi in the network closet (2019)"

andygroundwater — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 18:10:55 +0000

Was working with a NOC technician who was responsible (along with some others) for a pretty large EMEA mobile network, with many millions of subscribers. There was an RFP to update their SMS/MMS system and a certain Israeli company came in to do a site survey, or installation or something in the network data center.

Anyway the long and the short of it was one of their technicians was caught with the previous vendor's SMS-C prized open and some USB device insert into it. Similar response to this, a lot of hollering and hair pulling, but ultimately no contractual or legal implications.

I guess it happens higher up the food chain too.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Accepted and ghosted: interviewing for a leadership position at Stripe"

andygroundwater — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 10:09:22 +0000

Damn, if that's how they treat the higher ups I can only imagine what they would do with IC's lower down the food chain. Stripe were on my "would like to someday work there" list until I read this, now it'd be no way I'd jump through any number of hoops to apply to them.

New comment by andygroundwater in "Steps Towards Happiness (2015)"

andygroundwater — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 13:21:02 +0000

This advice is all well and good, but what happens to your state of internal bliss when one of you a-hole neighbors deliberately brings their dog to do its business on your front lawn. No amount to karmic happiness will stop you from wanting just retribution.

New comment by andygroundwater in "European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition"

andygroundwater — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 09:39:06 +0000

I guess all those malcontents working on "AI Ethics" committees now will be out of a job.

New comment by andygroundwater in "China prepares to test thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor"

andygroundwater — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 08:52:45 +0000

Fair play to the lads!

New comment by andygroundwater in "LWDR: Light Weight D Runtime"

andygroundwater — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 17:46:28 +0000

I hope they got around to fixing the D garbage collector, which was, and possible still is, pure garbage.

New comment by andygroundwater in "The mysterious Cold War case of unidentified aircraft descending on Loring AFB"

andygroundwater — Sat, 29 Aug 2020 19:04:27 +0000

The track of this thing coming over nightly from Canada was so well known to the locals that they'd sit out and wait for it - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32608477-charlie-red-sta...