Hacker News: boomzilla

New comment by boomzilla in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

boomzilla — Tue, 19 May 2026 20:40:00 +0000

That's interesting. What is the input into the process? Don't you need a PRD or a requirement doc to start with?

New comment by boomzilla in "CUDA Books"

boomzilla — Mon, 18 May 2026 04:15:48 +0000

How about this guide:

https://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-programming-guide/pdf/cuda...

New comment by boomzilla in "[dead]"

boomzilla — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 17:32:30 +0000

sorry could not resist the pun

Prince Harry to become chief impact officer at US coaching firm BetterUp

boomzilla — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 20:20:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56500298

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26559923

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Soros Regrets Early Investment in Peter Thiel’s Palantir

boomzilla — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 21:51:21 +0000

Article URL: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/soros-regrets-early-investment-peter-192239542.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130403

Points: 8

# Comments: 2

New comment by boomzilla in "The invisibility of Sheryl Sandberg"

boomzilla — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 18:38:58 +0000

Two words: plausible deniability

New comment by boomzilla in "First look at Tesla’s latest Autopilot (2.5) computer in Model 3, S, X vehicles"

boomzilla — Wed, 28 Mar 2018 18:28:28 +0000

how would failover work?

Fair Housing Groups Sue Facebook Over Discriminatory Ads

boomzilla — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 19:35:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing-ads-discrimination-lawsuit.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691981

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by boomzilla in "The Dark Side of Resilience"

boomzilla — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 15:06:13 +0000

Peter's principle and whatnot, but I think there is something deeper. The manager positions are designed, by definition of the word, to manage, and the top goal is to extract values from workers. Managers (and product managers in tech companies) are encouraged to create a `healthy` tension with line workers (software engineers included) in work estimation and commitments. This is supposed to make the work challenging enough, but not so demanding that burn out the workers. The best managers can do that by providing the intellectual challenges and motivational goals. Most resort to processes and plain OKRs though (reflected in the worst ever software tool, JIRA. Also any line manager who's got any clue, meaning who can provide technical/business directions, would be quickly promoted to directors (where they are supposed to direct :-).

Protip for frontline managers: The percentage of time you spend on JIRA is negatively correlated to the chance of being promoted to the director level.

New comment by boomzilla in "Andrew Ng is raising a $150M AI Fund"

boomzilla — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 19:59:13 +0000

I am of the opinion that `true AI` is the science/engineering of understanding and replicating human intelligence. Why are we able to come up with abstract concepts from the surrounding physical environments? Why do we look at the stars and wonder what they are (and why)? How are we able to communicate with one another through pictures, words, writings, snapchat. Is that something special about our brains, our collective society, or something else, that enables such remarkable different behaviors from other any animal on earth? I don't know which direction we can start to go down to answer these questions, but collecting good data sets is probably as good as anything. Maybe we'll get the `quantity` of smarter specialized systems first, and once we get the `quantity`, maybe the `quality` will follow?

New comment by boomzilla in "How Fear and Outrage Are Sold for Profit"

boomzilla — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 01:18:24 +0000

Well then the OP ignores the biggest advertiser of them all: the communist party.

New comment by boomzilla in "Why Should I Start a Startup?"

boomzilla — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 04:49:54 +0000

The AirBnB story about `literally a month from being homeless` is total BS. Both Chesky and Gebbia worked for a few years before starting the company and the other guy went to Harvard.

New comment by boomzilla in "Go's work-stealing scheduler"

boomzilla — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 16:47:16 +0000

You can read the comments (and the linked papers) first. This is an advanced algorithm that could take days (or weeks) to fully internalize the details. One can't expect to just read the code and build a mental model of the program in one parse, no matter how expressive the variable names are.

New comment by boomzilla in "Two Decades of Recommender Systems at Amazon.com"

boomzilla — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 21:47:32 +0000

Don't think there is much rationale behind all these models. It's more like P(would buy a vacuum | bought a vacuum) > P(would buy X | bought a vacuum) where X is a single product. Now P(would buy a vacuum | bought a vacuum) < sum(P (would buy X | bought a vacuum)) for X that is not a vacuum, but what would be the recommendation? Hey, you bought a vacuum, come back and buy some non-vacuum stuff?

For most recommendation UIs, you would need a hero item that make people want to click on. It might turn out that another vacuum is probably the best item for some people to click on, and go on to buy other stuff once they are on the site.

New comment by boomzilla in "Suicide of an Uber engineer: Widow blames job stress"

boomzilla — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 05:43:22 +0000

Be frugal. Don't buy a house unless you have at least 6 months of payments in the bank. Don't buy a car if you need to take a loan. Save as much you can. Build and maintain a strong network outside work (family/friends/professional contacts).

Every time I got into a difficult situation at work, I take a deep breath and tell myself: "Don't worry, give it your best shot to resolve this. And if that's not good enough, you know you can walk out that door and take a break for some time". It's been working well for me.

New comment by boomzilla in "Google X employee collapsed on the job due to harsh working conditions"

boomzilla — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 05:07:22 +0000

This is a better link: http://www.businessinsider.in/an-ex-military-contractor-work...

New comment by boomzilla in "Founder Stories: Leah Culver of Breaker (YC W17)"

boomzilla — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 23:34:05 +0000

how would `an iOS app for listening to podcasts focused on social discovery` make money? I couldn't find that question in the interview.

New comment by boomzilla in "The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017"

boomzilla — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:38:11 +0000

No the idea is that you invest on the real estate with your own money, and invest on start up with LPs' money.

New comment by boomzilla in "Parallelizing Word2Vec in Multi-Core and Many-Core Architectures"

boomzilla — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 23:24:31 +0000

The original word2vec, written in C, could utilize all the cores available. It's actually refreshing to read that code, a true one person shop, hard engineering code :)

New comment by boomzilla in "Andrew Wiles: what does it feel like to do maths?"

boomzilla — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 22:03:30 +0000

So are logic frameworks discovered or invented? Are true/false values discovered or invented?

I think the question whether math is discovered or invented is silly. It is both.