Hacker News: bbreier

New comment by bbreier in "From burner phones to decks of cards: NYC teens adjusting to the smartphone ban"

bbreier — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 18:46:10 +0000

Funny enough, I've had the opposite experience. Easy access to books and reviews has me reading conservatively 10x as much as I did a decade ago

New comment by bbreier in "Leaked Ice document shows worker detained in Hyundai raid had valid visa"

bbreier — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 14:32:56 +0000

It’s unfortunate that many Americans are comfortable with this guilty even if proven innocent approach to justice

New comment by bbreier in "Why Everybody Is Losing Money On AI"

bbreier — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 17:55:53 +0000

It has dropped to 100th while the MentraOS post remains at 5th. Is HN pushing negative PR for AI down the ranks?

New comment by bbreier in "Why Everybody Is Losing Money On AI"

bbreier — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 17:48:56 +0000

Does controversy cause articles to slide on HN? I noticed that this had more points in less time than several articles ranked above it, which surprises me a bit

e.g. at time of writing a post about MentraOS has 11 points in 1 hour compared to this article's 51 in 53 minutes, but this is ranked 58th to Mentra's 6

New comment by bbreier in "The worst possible antitrust outcome"

bbreier — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 22:05:31 +0000

As far as I am aware, wealth inequality is significantly better in Europe than it is in the United States (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in... as an example) and I still wouldn't characterize democracy in Europe as "perfect" even if we narrowly define the rubrick to be only concerned with money tipping the scales of power

New comment by bbreier in "Oakland cops gave ICE license plate data; SFPD also illegally shared with feds"

bbreier — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:04:56 +0000

I think the frog and the scorpion were both wrong

New comment by bbreier in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"

bbreier — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 03:59:07 +0000

Peasant has a more specific meaning than this. More importantly, it has been used as a pejorative for a very long time now and that is clearly the intent the vice president had in mind.

New comment by bbreier in "Try thinking and learning without working memory (2008)"

bbreier — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 23:29:23 +0000

Not likely to be a workable system in a home with children, then

New comment by bbreier in "I built an open source AI tool to find my autoimmune disease"

bbreier — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 18:19:42 +0000

I would say in your toy example the hospital has been shutdown due to the PE firm "cashing out" excessively

New comment by bbreier in "The FAA’s Hiring Scandal"

bbreier — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 01:37:28 +0000

This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge candidates by their performance and nothing else", which always seemed pretty reasonable to me.

New comment by bbreier in "Deepseek: The quiet giant leading China’s AI race"

bbreier — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 02:12:23 +0000

Deflation is a problem, but not for the reason mentioned there. The reason deflation is an issue is because it makes holding cash into an investment strategy. If the price of goods is dropping, the value of money is rising, so the more cash I hold the richer I get. This obviously dissuades people with cash from investing their cash into actual productive work, which means fewer jobs. There was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.

New comment by bbreier in "U.S. math scores drop on major international test"

bbreier — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 05:34:17 +0000

funding for public schools in California and most other places is based on number of students in attendance

New comment by bbreier in "Hezbollah pager explosions kill several people in Lebanon"

bbreier — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:44:49 +0000

The same way anyone could make a judgment call before the attack was carried out? We are capable of abstract reasoning about the consequences of our actions.

New comment by bbreier in "Experience the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing"

bbreier — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 23:08:50 +0000

I would like to add that everyone should check the incredible documentary "For All Mankind" scored by Brian Eno.

New comment by bbreier in "Deals with the devil aren't what they used to be"

bbreier — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 20:11:10 +0000

funny enough, "To Beat the Devil" of his is my pick for the best riff on the trope of country songs about musicians taking on the devil

New comment by bbreier in "Coup Attempt in Bolivia"

bbreier — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 22:57:16 +0000

And how long has it been since the last US backed coup in Bolivia?

New comment by bbreier in "The economics of the Birkin handbag"

bbreier — Sun, 23 Jun 2024 22:45:10 +0000

A mix of quality, management of scarcity, x-factor (call it what you will, some kind of intrinsic appeal to the in group who buy this sort of thing or otherwise inherent desirability), and marketing

New comment by bbreier in "The Luddite's Guide to Defending Cash (2023)"

bbreier — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 19:00:06 +0000

> We have already imported Mao struggle sessions, essentially.

What? I haven't had to go publicly shame my neighbors for not being revolutionary enough, at least that I remember.

New comment by bbreier in "Divorce hits men harder financially than women: economists"

bbreier — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 18:42:00 +0000

The article explicitly states that the drop is in income, and does not take spousal or child support into account

New comment by bbreier in "Show HN: A Dalle-3 and GPT4-Vision feedback loop"

bbreier — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 04:12:13 +0000

I'd like to be able to begin it with an image rather than a prompt.