Hacker News: bigthymer

New comment by bigthymer in "Job application asked for my SAT scores"

bigthymer — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:44:02 +0000

From the students' perspective, it is better to not be allowed in than fail out midway through. One test is cheaper than years in college.

New comment by bigthymer in "LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do"

bigthymer — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:30:19 +0000

> Are banks that concerned about velocity?

Yes

New comment by bigthymer in "New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker"

bigthymer — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 23:13:38 +0000

> medicine will always be the most secure and stable career, still has a shit life-work balance too.

It only is because it effectively has a guild\cartel system preventing an oversupply of doctors and that we have an aging population that increasingly demands medical care.

New comment by bigthymer in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

bigthymer — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 19:35:06 +0000

> The research overwhelming says its a good practice.

I disagree. From what I've read, the data is more mixed. More tracking optimizes for the top achievers. Less tracking optimizes for the lower and middle. Less tracking probably maximizes average metrics.

> The type of people who say this type of thing are the exact type of ideologically motivated people who are destroying school systems in blue districts. Ironically this group both hates private schools and creates the environment that pushes parents to pay for private schools. I've personally seen the bad consequences of schools that do this and I know people who aren't here anymore because of it.

I agree. However, I think the counter solution these people imagine is a similar scenario as described here <https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/sd3in2/...>.

> So please, for the love of god, stop talking about topics you know nothing about.

Let's be civil. There is no need to attack me personally. You're welcome to disagree with my ideas, share your opinion, and present support. I think a reasonable person can find support for both opinions.

New comment by bigthymer in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

bigthymer — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 23:57:29 +0000

Having multiple parallel tracks for different types of students is controversial. Schooling tends to be cyclical with periods with more tracking is popular shifting to periods of less tracking and more classroom mixing. It really depends on what you want to optimize for. More tracking benefits the highest achievers. Less tracking raises the bottom and the average but at the cost of not maximizing the outcome of the top.

New comment by bigthymer in "Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup"

bigthymer — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:21:03 +0000

Why?

New comment by bigthymer in "Agentic Coding Is a Trap"

bigthymer — Mon, 04 May 2026 03:53:59 +0000

While prescription drug marketing to consumers is an issue in the US, I think the actual problem in this situation is people Googling their issue then coming to the doctor with the conclusion of their investigation instead of letting the doctor do the investigation themselves.

New comment by bigthymer in "Investors pile into clean energy as Iran war drives push for energy security"

bigthymer — Sun, 03 May 2026 13:01:12 +0000

Typical commodity cycle...most commodities work like this

New comment by bigthymer in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

bigthymer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:34:43 +0000

Yes. From what I've read, they can't stop enrichment unless they deploy soldiers for occupation and they are unwilling to do so.

New comment by bigthymer in "Solar Balconies Take Europe by Storm"

bigthymer — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 09:44:44 +0000

Virginia recently became the 2nd state to allow it.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/virginia-to-becom...

Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years

bigthymer — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:29:27 +0000

Article URL: https://hechingerreport.org/faster-thinner-colleges-bachelors-degree-three-years/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47388979

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by bigthymer in "Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions"

bigthymer — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:03:31 +0000

> Near zero interest rates + COVID remote work + PPP loans = Booming economy

One more factor to add to the equation...when everyone went remote during COVID, all brick-and-mortar businesses had to quickly move to conducting their businesses online driving demand for SWEs.

New comment by bigthymer in "Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse"

bigthymer — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:23:23 +0000

> Puff piece with 1000+ words that doesn't ever assert anything in particular that the author was wrong about

His article mostly talks about other things but I think his title is sufficient. He says that he never thought that the news would become so unreliable that he would end up getting his news from randos on Bluesky who simply share what they know without an intention to monetize it.

New comment by bigthymer in "US economy unexpectedly sheds 92k jobs in February"

bigthymer — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:55:46 +0000

More money is flowing into commodities. Gold price going up feeds into more mining.

New comment by bigthymer in "Making Firefox's right-click not suck with about:config"

bigthymer — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:30:58 +0000

Personally, I think the Firefox browser right-click options are one of the more useful right-click menus. The one on the Apple OS is a better example of excessive and worthless.

New comment by bigthymer in "Payment fees matter more than you think"

bigthymer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 22:16:20 +0000

> Maybe I'm just remembering badly, but I don't remember encountering this twenty years ago; back then the rules were clear that you either didn't accept credit payments, or you did and it was the same price as cash

My memory is in accordance with yours

New comment by bigthymer in "Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024"

bigthymer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:04:36 +0000

> Can the source database for an LLM be one-way, in that it does not contain output from itself, or other LLMs?

I think, for public internet data, we can only be reasonably confident for information before the big release of ChatGPT.

New comment by bigthymer in "Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is killed in Israeli strike, ending 36-year rule"

bigthymer — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:19:58 +0000

From my understanding, it wasn't the bombing that motivated Japan to surrender even though this is commonly taught, it was the recent Soviet declaration of war and fear of invasion/occupation.

New comment by bigthymer in "Silicon Valley can't import talent like before. So it's exporting jobs"

bigthymer — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:14:45 +0000

I think the logic goes something like...in a democracy, government policies should reflect the will of the people. The majority of the people are against exporting jobs overseas when the economy at home is not doing well, especially when the people that control the hiring are becoming obscenely wealthy at the cost of impoverishing the workers.

New comment by bigthymer in "Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning"

bigthymer — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:16:44 +0000

We would have to prepare for a deluge of accounts posting\commenting just for the sake of accumulating karma to be able to downvote.