Hacker News: dingdongditchme

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Los Puesteros, solitary men who look after ranches and livestock in Patagonia"

dingdongditchme — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 13:18:41 +0000

wouldnt get my hopes up too high, worldwide it seems there may be less than 100 left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_keeper (most in Canada, interestingly)

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Why do we assume everyone should be working?"

dingdongditchme — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:51:57 +0000

Woa. I'm with you all the way but let's agree that the people who think the disabled should be exterminated is a minority many of whom died at then end of world war II? Even if I tolerated someone else exterminating people, hell even if I helped in some way I would still know that it is not morally defensible. Of course with 8B people you will find some willing to exterminate the disabled but not "lots" by any stretch.

New comment by dingdongditchme in ""The Persian MâR-Nâmeh Or, the Book for Taking Omens from Snakes" (1892)"

dingdongditchme — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:45:55 +0000

the doc "Taxi": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_(2015_film)

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Why do we assume everyone should be working?"

dingdongditchme — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:16:57 +0000

I'm happy to give some lazy dude smoking weed all day my tax money.

1. Working gives me satisfaction and money.

2. A lot more people are doing worse things with my tax money.

3. I don't envy that lifestyle in the slightest... if somebody chooses it: ok. Most of the times i pity the fool who thinks such an existence is fulfilling. The ones I know who had the lifestyle in the past were deeply unsatisfied iirc.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop"

dingdongditchme — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 04:55:36 +0000

Very elegantly put! So much so in fact, that I finally put down my phone to grab my laptop in order to write this. I have had a similar much cruder version of this thought: LLMs are not human, they don't know what it's like to stub their toe, despite having read probably millions descriptions of it. Even amongst humans there are experiences which are impossible to share, despite us having evolved to communicate quite effectively. Writing is just a small part of it, and cannot replace the actual experience of being human.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources"

dingdongditchme — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:57:08 +0000

There is a good podcast on this topic: hot money (2022) from the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...

spoiler: visa and mastercard do act as a morality police.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "3D Airplane tracker on Mercator map"

dingdongditchme — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:08:15 +0000

Hilarious is what it is. I find it endearing and reminds me of my youth idolizing historical figures and playing role playing games and lord of the rings assembling the team. My jaded middle-aged self though puts it in the category of LLM mystification which makes me want to throw up frequently. As a daily Claude user I find it utterly lacking in intelligence but a wonderful tool which I'd hesitate to give away. If only because it provides an okish API to a lot of tools I have to interact with. Programming is fun again?!

New comment by dingdongditchme in "How to ask for help from people who don't know you"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 06:24:13 +0000

Yup. I read the second version twice and am still not sure what the ask is and what to do. Prime example of not having a clear ask and showing too much hubris behind some polite questions. "Have you ever considered making a better product?"

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown"

dingdongditchme — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:40:23 +0000

I did my masters in the UK and PhD in Germany. The difference in quality graduates (in engineering) is staggering. The first two semesters are more challenging than the 4 years Meng.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Job application asked for my SAT scores"

dingdongditchme — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 11:34:51 +0000

in my experience it (announcing to people in your network that you are job hunting) is precisely what you should be doing. Some might even point you to the next opportunity. I understand your concern though and have personally only shared it with close contacts (guess it is an ego thing).

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Job application asked for my SAT scores"

dingdongditchme — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:46:33 +0000

You are correct, but an RC circuit is part of the amplifier circuit and you can do a lot to improve the signal to noise ratio (SNR) depending on frequencies/signals are trying to amplify versus the ones you want to filter out.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics"

dingdongditchme — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 08:35:01 +0000

https://bostondynamics.com/solutions/warehouse-automation/tr... they have a few hundred of these in operation.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:16:05 +0000

Any alternatives to recommend?

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 08:30:27 +0000

I'm in the market for some wifi access points. If Ubiquiti is not so great can you name some alternatives?

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Cars collect a startling amount of data about you"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 29 May 2026 06:28:27 +0000

...not yet. But I am sure they could.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Cars collect a startling amount of data about you"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 29 May 2026 06:13:51 +0000

not the accuser but I have seen even AI to drop its usage of the emdash... thankfully! (Whats wrong with brackets?)

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Cars collect a startling amount of data about you"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 29 May 2026 06:12:28 +0000

Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. No I am not a bot, I'm for reals.

My two cents with the EU tinted glasses. I completely agree with failures of governance that you mention. Especially the plane/train cost comparisons are infuriating. My personal view is though that the slippery slope of "security" -> "control" -> exploitation. I heard the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" in history class and time and time again, authoritarian systems have exploited the masses more effectively. All it takes is one bad ruler to turn thing around and syphon more than is "acceptable". Not that the western world is looking that great right now in terms of class divide, but the laundry at least is open for everyone to see. Freedom > Security for me.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Cars collect a startling amount of data about you"

dingdongditchme — Fri, 29 May 2026 04:20:48 +0000

oh god yes... but I am carrying my self chosen surveillance device with me every single time I enter a car.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "Where does next-token prediction leave us?"

dingdongditchme — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:29:53 +0000

So I am expecting the AI bubble to burst (or at least deflate) some time soon. Perhaps this puts me I an specific camp, I am not sure. But this whole "AI will replace X jobs" does not phase me, not because I think AI is useless. On the contrary I am a daily user, but in my mind, people fail to see that the economy is not built around jobs and capital, but wants (or needs) and trades. Even in a world where everything can be done better by a machine than a human, there will always be the "want" for an item that is handcrafted. AI is yet another tool that accelerates us to satisfy more "wants" and that's great. I'm looking at a whole lot of things that will be available in the future (especially software but not limited to) which are not available today, AI generated or not.

New comment by dingdongditchme in "GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension"

dingdongditchme — Thu, 21 May 2026 07:00:52 +0000

As a "gun nut of tech", I have resolved this issue for myself with two computing categories for hardware I use: Hardware-I-trust and Hardware-someone-else-trusts. Sometimes these share information, and have to interact. Usually I am the one who decides how. Smartphones have never been in the category of "Hardware-I-Trust". For the first time in a long while my current employer paid for hardware is in that category for reasons of my own.