Hacker News: berberous

New comment by berberous in "'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations"

berberous — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 18:10:44 +0000

Why did you go in with your sidearm and camera? Legal or not, it seems unnecessarily provocative, and that you went in with a camera because you knew it would cause a reaction.

New comment by berberous in "Tesla directors agree to return $735M following claims they were overpaid"

berberous — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 05:28:04 +0000

On average, I don't know, but I certainly think in some instances, the answer is yes, e.g. if I was Apple's board, I would have been happy to overpay Steve Jobs and Tim Cook relative to an average CEO.

New comment by berberous in "Twitter’s legal letter to Meta: a guided tour of a weak litigation letter"

berberous — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 23:05:34 +0000

The letter was sent by a partner at Quinn Emanuel, a well known and highly regarded litigation firm.

New comment by berberous in "Threads, an Instagram app"

berberous — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:07:36 +0000

I take no view on whether Elon will be successful on making Twitter more profitable. But as a user -- and someone that typically supports Elon -- I have to say he's made the app subjectively worse IMO. I find the "For You" page and algorithm to boost more "junk" content than before. I used to find it interesting, now it feels like scrolling through Instagram meme pages. I'm at the point where I am thinking of uninstalling it.

New comment by berberous in "Loneliness is stronger when not alone"

berberous — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 16:41:18 +0000

Louis CK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be-NXGbepU0

New comment by berberous in "MusicGen: Simple and controllable music generation"

berberous — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 17:49:28 +0000

For TV, hard to go wrong with an HBO series. Most recently, Succession was excellent.

New comment by berberous in "Apple's Vision Pro headset deserves to be ridiculed"

berberous — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 23:27:30 +0000

Sure, $3,500 is too steep for this to be a mass market hit with v1. But I think it's a fairly reasonable price to get the ball rolling, and they will see a fair number of early adopter consumers (much more than Google Glass or Magic Leap, less than Oculus).

I remember admiring flat screen TVs in the early 2000s when they cost like $10k: https://www.applianceretailer.com.au/eeqycmzusg/

I also used to have this SGI 1600SW monitor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW. 1600 x 1024 17", $2,500 (equivalent to $4,490 in 2022)...

New comment by berberous in "The proto-fascism of Elon Musk"

berberous — Fri, 19 May 2023 08:25:09 +0000

Mainstream media

New comment by berberous in "The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007"

berberous — Wed, 17 May 2023 12:50:42 +0000

If you grew up with $50M+ and lived a luxurious life, but lost it all, would you not have children over worries they may not have the same standard of living that you did?

If you could be born in America in 1925 and live until 2015, would you? Or would you decline because the standard of living dropped right away with a Great Depression followed by a world war?

I agree with you that if I knew, with certainty, that my children’s lives would be filled with nothing but suffering, I would make the same choice. But a fear of a theoretical drop in a standard of living, and which may not even impact an American over the next 100 years all that much, does not seem to me like it should reach that threshold, and I suspect it is starting to for others because of the media playing into their anxieties. There are people living that lived through the holocaust and are still happy to have lived and, over their lifetime, have had fulfilled and happy lives. I suspect your children could likewise carve out a happy life, even if their standard of living is somewhat reduced.

I agree you have no moral duty to have kids, and if you don’t want them, don’t have them. But if you want them, but are not having them because you find that to be cruel to your unborn kids, I question whether that is really a rational choice.

New comment by berberous in "The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007"

berberous — Wed, 17 May 2023 10:34:24 +0000

You think you need two children for one to make it to 18?

New comment by berberous in "The U.S. birth rate has fallen by 20% since 2007"

berberous — Wed, 17 May 2023 10:25:25 +0000

This is a weird take to me. Even if climate change turns out to be significantly bad, I have a hard time imagining it would be worse than most times in human history. Only a few generations ago people lived through two world wars. We could have a third world war at some point, or the AI doomers could be right, but would that stop you from having children? This feels to me like someone who doesn’t leave their house because they are worried a car might hit them…it’s an unhealthy anxiety about one of many potential risks, that shouldn’t prevent you from living life.

New comment by berberous in "A morale crisis after multiple Meta layoffs"

berberous — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 17:57:04 +0000

It’s still early. Within 10 years, I’d be surprised if headsets and software haven’t improved enough that it’s reached a tipping point where many more people do use it consistently.

New comment by berberous in "1Password to Add Telemetry"

berberous — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 20:34:19 +0000

Why does it need a server? Does bitwarden have the ability to just use a local vault?

New comment by berberous in "Sam Altman's Worldcoin (Unique Global Digital ID) Is Inherently Insecure"

berberous — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 20:02:32 +0000

I think it’s probably a failure of an idea, but I think “pyramid scheme designed to harvest biometric data” is uncharitable and wrong.

New comment by berberous in "Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco"

berberous — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 08:43:11 +0000

The person you are replying to did not even get into the politics of it or his feelings on SF, but are we really denying facts now? Sure, anything could have happened, but 95%+ chance he got stabbed by a crazy homeless person.

New comment by berberous in "Do Kwon faces 100 years in prison in the US and 40 years in South Korea"

berberous — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 17:49:22 +0000

Not sure how true it, but there were news stories of people actually killing themselves from Lina’s collapse.

New comment by berberous in "SushiDAO served with subpoena by SEC"

berberous — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 19:03:38 +0000

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by OFAC, which makes it illegal for U.S. persons to interact with the relevant contract addresses to the same extent as interacting with North Korea.

SushiSwap is not going to be sanctioned. It's not clear what the U.S. could do to shut it down in the same manner, although of course, they could bring enforcement actions like this one and scare off any U.S. person from working on it.

New comment by berberous in "The Tantrum Venture Capitalists Threw over Silicon Valley Bank"

berberous — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 17:16:37 +0000

Well, putting aside how annoying they all can sound, I think today’s markets proved them right that things would have been a real disaster had the Fed not taken the action they did.

New comment by berberous in "First Republic, other regional bank stocks sink after failure of SVB"

berberous — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 18:10:39 +0000

I, and others, would never keep more than $250k in a bank account even before this SVB debacle. There are products made to manage this risk. For example, Mercury gives you up to $1M of insurance by sweeping to four different banks on the back end without you having to lift a finger. You can also sweep excess into money market funds.

I do have sympathy for 20-something founders who were too young and unaware of these risks, and focused on other aspects of their business, but this is not a “hindsight only” kind of thing.

New comment by berberous in "SVB in talks to sell itself after attempts to raise capital fail"

berberous — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 16:56:58 +0000

It says 10+. I wonder what the average duration is.