Hacker News: coastermug

New comment by coastermug in "Reproducibility project fails to validate dozens of biomedical studies"

coastermug — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 16:49:22 +0000

I’ve not got the context on why Brazil was chosen here (paywall) - but I coincidentally read a story on here of Richard Feynman visiting Brazil whereby he assessed their teaching and tried to impart his teaching and learning techniques.

New comment by coastermug in "UK's hardware talent is being wasted"

coastermug — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 07:49:59 +0000

People need examples of success in their network. Most people have frankly never met or heard of anyone who founded a successful startup- and therefore would never think of taking on such a risk. I agree that in some places there is a sense of malaise, but if we are to believe founders are a 1-2% outlier of the population, I don’t see why America’s 1-2% should be so much more ambitious than the UKs. I think it’s more a cycle induced by lack of funding.

New comment by coastermug in "UK's hardware talent is being wasted"

coastermug — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 07:42:16 +0000

I am a former Mech Eng who trod this path. Started at JLR, moved by self teaching into software. Engineering in the UK felt like it moved at a glacial pace that only made sense in the days of final salary pension schemes. Senior management really struggled to get their heads around why young people were so impatient, but we were not competing for the same rewards.

New comment by coastermug in "Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'"

coastermug — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:41:28 +0000

Klarna use a huge dark pattern on their payment processing (irrelevant of bnpl), whereby they store your details for future use by default, even without an account. Last time I checked you only needed a couple of pieces of easily identifiable information to be granted access to “your” autofill. - I know all the H&M group shops use it as their payment processor in the UK.

New comment by coastermug in "End of the librarian? Council cuts and new tech push profession to the brink"

coastermug — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 12:47:43 +0000

My local library inherited the staff from other libraries that closed well over ten years ago. This means they have a constant staff of circa 5 people, meanwhile they do no real outreach into the community nor are they friendly, and I am fairly certain they get fewer than 10 people through their doors each day. I believe that libraries are an essential public resource, but I don't think it’s productive to have resources that are essentially beyond scrutiny as that in turn leads to a very poor service.

New comment by coastermug in "Taking Risk"

coastermug — Tue, 21 May 2024 08:02:20 +0000

I’ve noticed the risk appetite of investors in the Uk is much worse. They want a much larger slice of the pie early on, so there’s much less incentive to do a risky startup, rather than a sure thing like GS / Google. There’s nearly no risk in working at GS - you will work hard and you will be paid exceptionally well for it.

New comment by coastermug in "Financial market applications of LLMs"

coastermug — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 15:37:45 +0000

AWS textract now has the functionality to offer a table cell based on a query - if I’m not mistaken. I’ve seen nothing similar to this and would be very interested if there are other solutions.

New comment by coastermug in "Show HN: FollowDev, HH-like forum exclusively for software dev-related topics"

coastermug — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 18:08:08 +0000

Given a quick read, I enjoy it and see why it is different. I can’t get on with Medium because of their login process, and HN is great but I just doom scroll comments and don’t really use it for technical learning. - I already found an interesting article on SQL optimisation, so thank you.

New comment by coastermug in "Signals says cloud repatriation has already saved $1M"

coastermug — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 10:27:56 +0000

Are you able to share that research thesis? Or any key papers on how this should be done? Knowing SOTA on these approaches is always nice.

New comment by coastermug in "Poor people ‘surviving not living’ as UK social contract collapses, says report"

coastermug — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 22:07:31 +0000

Genuinely interested here, who are you referring to as ‘feral’?

I see a lot of very well educated non-feral people in the UK struggling to make good wages and a ‘proper’ standard of living. I think that’s what is meant by a broken social contract ?

New comment by coastermug in "UK inflation falls to lowest level (7.9%) in more than a year"

coastermug — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 12:37:33 +0000

My employer is now struggling to outsource our jobs to Europe because the prices are too high. I try not to think about it too much, but a move to Ireland looks enticing.

New comment by coastermug in "UK inflation falls to lowest level (7.9%) in more than a year"

coastermug — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 08:59:03 +0000

Who needs shelter when it’s so warm outside?

New comment by coastermug in "Who employs your doctor? Increasingly, a private equity firm"

coastermug — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 18:54:34 +0000

I believe this to be the case also. In the UK we have lots of cases cropping up of PE being the bad guys, but the current owners being to blame for buying these companies in unstable positions and allowing the sellers to make fortunes. It does often seem like it is Pension funds making these poor investments. I am also really happy to see this line of questioning on HN, as it has been lacking in previous discussions.

New comment by coastermug in "Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive – Enclosure"

coastermug — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 21:47:03 +0000

Magnesium is harder to machine. The chips produced can be highly flammable.

New comment by coastermug in "Private equity is buying everything from vet offices to tech conglomerates"

coastermug — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 20:36:43 +0000

Thank you, this is a balanced and detailed response. I don’t personally “buy” the narrative that all LBOs are destructive. After all there are entire funds devoted to LBOs and how would these PE outfits carry on getting loans if their companies constantly defaulted?

New comment by coastermug in "Private equity is buying everything from vet offices to tech conglomerates"

coastermug — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 20:34:16 +0000

What I want to know, is how do the banks keep lending to PE outfits? They are surely the losers in this situation?

New comment by coastermug in "Private equity is buying everything from vet offices to tech conglomerates"

coastermug — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 18:54:08 +0000

Leveraged buyouts. I’ve seen them explained like a mortgage, except that doesn’t work in my head either.

New comment by coastermug in "Private equity is buying everything from vet offices to tech conglomerates"

coastermug — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 18:51:16 +0000

I’ve pushed back on previous discussions on here about PE because of lack of detail about wrong doings, however this article is excellent. “dividend recapitalization” seems absolutely insane for anyone running a business.

New comment by coastermug in "Helplessness is not learned (2022)"

coastermug — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:16:45 +0000

I could see it being useful in helping people in these situations.

Teaching someone to have control, as opposed to “unlearning” their helplessness (which presumably if default, can’t be done).

New comment by coastermug in "The Alan Turing Institute has failed to develop modern AI in the UK"

coastermug — Thu, 18 May 2023 16:14:21 +0000

UK vs USA. You’re not wrong at all though. It’s also very interesting the lack of salary transparency that exists in the Uk. If you don’t poke your head around London, you can be blissfully unaware of the salaries that are available in Finance and broader tech scene in London. Given that many great UK universities exist outside of London, there will be PHDs who are unaware or don’t care about what they could be earning.