Hacker News: bostonsre

New comment by bostonsre in "Anthropic Faces Potentially "Business-Ending" Copyright Lawsuit"

bostonsre — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 14:12:00 +0000

It needs to hook into the existing legal book supply chain so that authors could potentially get compensated (I doubt they do for used book resale tho..).

New comment by bostonsre in "Terraform Provider for Dominos Pizza"

bostonsre — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 02:16:24 +0000

Do you have to run destroy first to order the same order again a second time?

New comment by bostonsre in "Goldman Sachs: AI Is overhyped, expensive, and unreliable"

bostonsre — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 22:59:51 +0000

They don't have an incentive to share their view of reality until after they make investments that would capitalize on their belief in that view of reality. After they take those positions though, it is in their best interest to inform everyone about what they view to be real. It would seem to be risky for them to try to take positions based on some false narrative on some aspect of the market because if someone else finds and publishes the true narrative, and that becomes the prevailing sentiment, they would be harmed.

New comment by bostonsre in "Vista Equity writes off PluralSight value, after $3.5B buyout"

bostonsre — Fri, 31 May 2024 19:54:18 +0000

It was not great to work at a company Vista acquired company ~10 years ago. Engineering talent fled, code quality dropped, product prices were jacked up, etc. I guess the company I worked for was then sold to another pe company in 2017, but it's not public if Vista made money or not. I would guess they're still using cold fusion to this day.

New comment by bostonsre in ""Fake Chinese income" mortgages fuel Toronto real estate bubble: HSBC bank leaks"

bostonsre — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 20:20:05 +0000

I think they want to get their money out of china and parked into a safe place. If they pay off their mortgage, they don't want to find a new place to park their money, they can just keep the house as an asset. I think a lot of investing in china is real estate based and is part of the reason that market is struggling over there so much now. It would make sense for them to continue to follow that investing model when exporting their wealth to other countries.

New comment by bostonsre in "Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees"

bostonsre — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 17:30:37 +0000

> why would a company ever do a stock buyback if changing the amount of issued stock didn't change the price?

Buy low/sell high maybe? They buy their stock when the price is low and they think it is undervalued so that they can sell it later when the price more accurately reflects the value or even better when the price is overvaluing their stock.

New comment by bostonsre in "Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees"

bostonsre — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:11:19 +0000

Is it all due to inflation and the interest rates? Shouldn't these companies be able to issue stock to get some cheap capital to continue growth/hiring? Or anyone know why this is happening?

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 08:43:59 +0000

From the abstract:

> This paper explores this case in detail and its potential impact.

You talk about them like they are the enemy. Lots of people talk about them like you without a word of thanks without acknowledging how fucked we would be without the good ones out there. I am thankful we aren't living in a country where there is complete anarchy or horrible police corruption like in Mexico.

Municipal budgets aren't great and their pay and benefits should be better for the work they do. You and I being on this forum probably means we are paid way too much for not real jobs screwing around on computers. There is a reason we aren't cops and their hiring isn't great. It is a hard job where you literally risk your life and literally deal with the worst parts of society.

There are guns in America. It doesn't matter whether we think that's right or not, that's the world we live in. There are criminals out there, they exist. Should cops carry around tasers only? I would like my local police force to effectively deter local criminals. Lax laws and lax deterrents are taken advantage of, we are not some peaceful species.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 20:22:36 +0000

You cite one instance and equate that to a lot of them are not bright by design. I am sure there are indeed some cops that are not great and some that have lower intelligence. The bad cases are usually highlighted, while those that serve their country honorably and professionally get zero recognition. It is an incredibly hard and thankless job and we will be a lot worse off as a country in the future if we keep shouting them down and denigrating them instead of giving constructive criticism about the system. The better ones will become more and more discouraged and people will have more and more to complain about in the future.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 19:26:37 +0000

Their job is to enforce the law. It doesn't seem quite right to denigrate them and call them not bright for doing their job. Shouldn't you be blaming someone else and not the people in the trenches? Also, I'm not sure its so black and white about how drug prohibition has caused more harm than good. I definitely wouldn't want to live in Portland or SF and some of the people stuck in the throws of inescapable addiction might disagree with you.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:39:13 +0000

Yea.. there is so much ambiguity in stuff like this. Reasonable and probable mean different things to different people and its not like we have statistics to show that when a powder of a given texture of a given quantity in a given container is found, what percentage of the time is it drugs and what percentage of the time is it something innocent.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:33:30 +0000

Yea, I didn't think of something like creatine. That being said, I would still be a little sketched to travel with it like that as I would assume the first thoughts of a police officer isn't going to be "that's probably creatine" when most of the times they are exposed to something like that in the past, it was drugs.

That probably sways my thoughts on should it be enough for an arrest if it flags as positive some though.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:25:26 +0000

Yea, didn't think of that. I would probably be too scared to pack that for a flight.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:24:15 +0000

Yea, makes sense, didn't think of that. It would indeed sketch me out a little to carry that around, but could see wanting to carry it around.

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:22:58 +0000

Right.. hence my dunkin donuts statement.

New comment by bostonsre in "Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 18:21:47 +0000

Were there technical reasons for the deprecation or was it more of a cancelled type thing?

New comment by bostonsre in "Study: Field Drug Tests Generate Nearly 30k Bogus Arrests a Year"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 16:08:58 +0000

Is it common for people to carry around baggies of white powder that isn't drugs? The container might tip the scale one way or the other. If there is a little white substance at the bottom of a dunkin donuts bag, I'd err on the side of not being enough for an arrest if it flags as positive since it is more than likely powdered sugar, but if its in a little baggies that are commonly used for distribution, I'd probably say that would be enough.

New comment by bostonsre in "Is the Tesla Cybertruck a Dud? An Experienced EV Reviewer Thinks So"

bostonsre — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 03:39:33 +0000

Maybe there is a market for people who get shot at or with those that are paranoid about that? I know the windows aren't bullet proof, but the panels stop smaller calibers. If it is performance enough, maybe they could be used by police? The default panels on their cars don't offer protection.

New comment by bostonsre in "Engineer Used Water Pump to Get $1B Stuxnet Malware into Iranian Nuclear Plant"

bostonsre — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 19:35:59 +0000

The putin assassinations are a little different though. The assassinated are publicly known to have links to the regime. The methods of death have a similar signature and the rarity of that type of death makes most people draw one likely conclusion so that the message is communicated. People fall out of windows for minor infractions and to really send a message they are poisoned.

The asset in this case wasn't known publicly and the method of death makes people assume it was simply an accident. Unless they did some private announcement, no one was deterred. If it was Iran and they wanted to send a message, they would probably have to out the asset publicly and/or make it clear that it was an assassination. e.g. a bomb would send a clear signal that it was more likely to be a nation state assassination and not some accident or a random robbery/act of violence.

New comment by bostonsre in "Engineer Used Water Pump to Get $1B Stuxnet Malware into Iranian Nuclear Plant"

bostonsre — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 19:27:37 +0000

Is a car accident and not publicly announcing it as a reprisal sending a message? Seems a little too quiet for that and like it might be cleaning up loose ends by someone else instead.