Hacker News: davidw

New comment by davidw in "Decathlon Germany adds Wero payment option to decathlon.de website"

davidw — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:32:57 +0000

They seem to have tried and given up in the US as well outside of an online presence. It's a pity, as they make 'ok' gear at good prices. It's perfect for if you're getting into a sport, or know you're going to use it only casually and don't want to spend a lot on high-end gear, but want to avoid getting something that's completely cheap junk.

New comment by davidw in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

davidw — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:24:17 +0000

Breaking things is also a lot easier than building complex things.

New comment by davidw in "Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall"

davidw — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 04:23:37 +0000

"No shit?" jokes aside, it seems like a bad corporate strategy. Rather than owning up and doing what they can to protect their customers, they kept trying to hide, and now Taylor Farms is going to forever be associated in customers minds with explosive diarrhea.

New comment by davidw in "British runner Josh Kerr breaks world record for mile which stood for 27 years"

davidw — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:26:59 +0000

What are the rules around pacers for this kind of thing? Are there separate records for with/without pacers?

New comment by davidw in "Elixir-lang.org has a new design"

davidw — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 17:04:26 +0000

Elixir/Erlang works very well in a semi-embedded environment where you need a higher level command and control component that behaves in a deterministic way and is pretty robust.

I was involved, years ago, in using Erlang on these devices: https://www.icare-world.com/us/product/icare-eidon/

It was a lot of fun and there were some very interesting challenges for everyone involved.

New comment by davidw in "A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp"

davidw — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:33:50 +0000

When people have a lot of choices, that can create problems, because it's often the people with the least information trying to make that choice.

For instance "I'm new to Lisp, I want to try one..." is a person without a lot of background and information to make that choice. And they probably realize it and it makes them nervous about making that choice.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

New comment by davidw in "Turn your singing voice into printable notes (in the browser)"

davidw — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 01:38:20 +0000

Ok I'm picturing one of those scenes from the original Star Trek where the computer melts down in a blaze of sparks when I sing to it.

New comment by davidw in "The real prices of frontier models. Tokens * Price, right?"

davidw — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:21:50 +0000

Where is it getting more tokens in the same source file? Like if you kept minimizing what you're feeding it, what accounts for the difference?

New comment by davidw in "Control the Ideas, Not the Code"

davidw — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:21:56 +0000

What I'm curious about is how a young programmer in, say, Sicily or Finland or somewhere who is a student or doesn't have a lot of spare cash, is going to deal with a world where everything is predicated on access to expensive tokens controlled by megacorporations, or where even 'open source' models require fairly expensive hardware to run.

New comment by davidw in "Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets"

davidw — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 03:02:04 +0000

That potentially consumes a lot more resources than the very negligible marginal wear and tear that using a work computer would cause.

New comment by davidw in "FAANG Simulator"

davidw — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:30:17 +0000

Oh no, I died of dysentery.

New comment by davidw in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

davidw — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:45:25 +0000

And now we have a guy with dementia, which got kind of ignored by the media while they hyped up the other guy's decline.

People did actual research on how much the 'old!' thing was very inconsistent in narrative and framing:

https://css.seas.upenn.edu/new-york-times-a-case-study-in-in...

New comment by davidw in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

davidw — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:41:34 +0000

Framing someone who supports democracy vs someone who tried to overturn a free and fair election as a 'weaker' candidate is kind of the problem though. In any sane world, you'd support a literal corpse over a guy who does not want there to be free and fair elections.

New comment by davidw in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

davidw — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:40:08 +0000

This explains the problem with it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance

It's fine if you're talking about something where there are a broad spectrum of fairly reasonable policy positions. It's not fine when you have a TV segment that's like "here's Christina, an astrophysicist from Stanford, explaining how we measure the circumference of the earth, and up next we'll have Bob from the flat earth society"

New comment by davidw in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

davidw — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 03:16:52 +0000

After subscribing for 15 years or so, I noped out after their "walker" cover. The world has enough "both sides" journalism, and I had thought them somewhat immune from that.

Marc Andreessen Says One Job Is Mostly Safe from AI: Venture Capitalist

davidw — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:09:32 +0000

Article URL: https://gizmodo.com/marc-andreessen-says-one-job-is-mostly-safe-from-ai-venture-capitalist-2000596506

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48807548

Points: 21

# Comments: 21

New comment by davidw in "AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers"

davidw — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 03:26:30 +0000

People are already sour on the economy. They are going to be in a whole mood if we get a real, serious recession.

New comment by davidw in "Ask HN: What is everyone in SF talking about?"

davidw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:23:25 +0000

That area still has some 'gold rush' mentality to it, where people want to get in, make their money and get out. That doesn't foster much of a long-term attitude that pays attention to local politics. Also some of the local politics are totally psychotic, like the guy harassing Scott Wiener.

New comment by davidw in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

davidw — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 18:48:05 +0000

There's a huge difference between 'pro market' and 'buddies with some big businesses' and this administration is making it very clear, at least to those who would see.

https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/47857230937/luigi-zi...

New comment by davidw in "An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time"

davidw — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:55:19 +0000

"We've been trying to contact you about your extended chariot warranty"