Hacker News: confidantlake

New comment by confidantlake in "Show HN: Learn Arabic with spaced repetition and comprehensible input"

confidantlake — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:26:37 +0000

Kind of crazy that it has Swahili but not Portuguese.

New comment by confidantlake in "Yann LeCun raises $1B to build AI that understands the physical world"

confidantlake — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:10:47 +0000

And while they don't have language like we do, dogs can understand basic commands and they aren't even the smartest animals.

New comment by confidantlake in "British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time"

confidantlake — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 03:06:20 +0000

Seems dumb that we change the time to an offset rather than changing from 9 to 5 to 8 to 4.

New comment by confidantlake in "Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]"

confidantlake — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 11:08:03 +0000

Yes the correlation is there but it doesn't really matter. There are hundreds of millions of kids growing up with stable healthy parents and a handful of prodigies.

New comment by confidantlake in "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling"

confidantlake — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 13:33:59 +0000

> Regulation does curtail freedom. Completely.

This depends on what definition of freedom you are using.

Take this definition.

> the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do

Being able to walk down a street because there is a regulation restricting cars would enhance my freedom.

New comment by confidantlake in "Oregon raised spending by 80%, math scores dropped"

confidantlake — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:15:31 +0000

Yup this needs an answer.

New comment by confidantlake in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

confidantlake — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:37:17 +0000

It is so depressing that teams won despite being worse than pretty much every other chat application just because MSFT bundled it with office.

New comment by confidantlake in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

confidantlake — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 02:33:16 +0000

The one guy who owns everything.

New comment by confidantlake in "Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica"

confidantlake — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 01:22:22 +0000

So confident yet so wrong.

New comment by confidantlake in "Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI"

confidantlake — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 23:41:41 +0000

Education, health care, housing...

New comment by confidantlake in "Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams"

confidantlake — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 01:32:41 +0000

Likely 2. Not something that will make it into in their kpis. No one is getting promoted for mitigating black swan events.

New comment by confidantlake in "Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams"

confidantlake — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 01:28:06 +0000

> I'm not sure where the sentiment that a trillion dollar corporation is naturally going to implement this system with the best interests of society in hand comes from

The sentiment comes from the corporation itself. With this much money at stake you know they have a hand in steering the conversation and that includes on sites such as this.

New comment by confidantlake in "Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time"

confidantlake — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 15:32:59 +0000

For me I always had the time I just didn't have the ability. I solved all of them in 2017 but never really got close any other year.

New comment by confidantlake in "Why formalize mathematics – more than catching errors"

confidantlake — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 02:01:54 +0000

It is interesting that you argue for formalism using a metaphor in natural language, rather than use a mathematical/data oriented argument. I find the metaphor pleasing in a way that I suspect a more data driven argument would not be.

New comment by confidantlake in "'We need the smartest people': Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs react to H-1B visa fee"

confidantlake — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 01:20:44 +0000

I don't trust the solution, but at least they acknowledge the problem. The other side just pretends we are stupid and lies about a "talent shortage" right to our faces.

New comment by confidantlake in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

confidantlake — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:31:09 +0000

Where is this wealth coming from though? The other countries aren't producing anything, everything is being produced by America. America would have to produce everything both for the domestic market and the entire rest of the world. And consequently why does this wealth suddenly disappear once the rest of the world catches up. You are talking about demand, but don't mention supply.

New comment by confidantlake in "Ask HN: Books that helped you lose weight?"

confidantlake — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 01:40:20 +0000

Any book that preaches calories in calories out. Or any book that distracts you from eating.

New comment by confidantlake in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

confidantlake — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 21:43:22 +0000

If you gave me a million dollars for a piece of paper and I gave you a million dollars for a different piece of paper we just generated $2 million in economic activity. It seems like a stretch to call it a net positive. Economic activity is a poor measure.

New comment by confidantlake in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

confidantlake — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 21:06:44 +0000

Ah the famous trickle down rebranded as "spill over".

New comment by confidantlake in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

confidantlake — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 21:02:38 +0000

This argument never made sense to me. Why would the rest of the world being poor cause a huge middle class in America? Why would the rest of the world recovering cause the US to suddenly get poorer.

Like post post ww2 say we produced 1 car for every American. Also we produced 1 house for every American. Every car and house was produced in America because Europe was bombed to shit. Now 20 years later, Europe has recovered a bit and can start producing cars and houses again. Why wouldn't the US still be able to produce 1 car for every adult? Oh sorry, Germany is no longer a pile of rubble, you and your spouse need to share a car now. Also your adult kids need to move back in with you, no house for them either.

This is obviously absurd. US would be even richer since they no longer had to spend massive amounts of money funding the war effort and then massive amounts of money rebuilding Europe. Hollowing out the US middle class was a choice, not some law of nature.