Hacker News: dkokelley

New comment by dkokelley in "Pornhub extorted after hackers steal Premium member activity data"

dkokelley — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:17:30 +0000

You CAN turn off watch history in Youtube (not sure about Spotify). However, for better or worse revealed preferences seem to show that people prefer automatic content recommendations over doing the search & bookmark work themselves.

New comment by dkokelley in "The missteps that led to a fatal plane crash at Reagan National Airport"

dkokelley — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 21:10:36 +0000

Not sure what the next best option here is. There was a thought experiment once where it would require the president to kill the key holder in order to launch a nuclear attack (the launch codes would be embedded in the designated key holder's heart). In theory this would make sure the president knew the seriousness of his or her actions, but it was never seriously considered as a protocol.

New comment by dkokelley in "Sonos CEO steps down after app update debacle"

dkokelley — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 23:16:32 +0000

> Engineers are in a better position to understand what the customer wants and needs. Salespeople are there to sell their product, and fundamentally don't need to understand what the customer wants, or needs.

Why do you say that? My gut reaction is that the opposite is true. Salespeople must understand their customers' wants and needs in order to effectively sell! Engineers are generally a step or two removed from the customers. This may be an unpopular take on HN but I'd wager the people who spend time directly with the customers have a better chance at understanding what they want. Taken a step further, customer support probably has the best understanding of their markets' needs!

New comment by dkokelley in "Three of Vietnam's five undersea internet cables are down"

dkokelley — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 23:32:06 +0000

There could be a common cause (all 3 cables terminate in the same city, could follow a similar path where a single event/failure occurred, etc.).

Another possibility is that these cables provided an ideal training environment to test the capabilities of an adversary to cut off a region from the rest of the world. I'd think an adversary in wartime would cut all 5 cables. Vietnam could be the victim of an aggressor who just wants to practice/prove capabilities without much fear of repercussions.

I don't know who would benefit from crippling Vietnam's internet infrastructure today, but it could still benefit another nation to see/prove that it could.

New comment by dkokelley in "Just another practical sales rep comp plan"

dkokelley — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 02:34:18 +0000

I've only been in low stakes sales roles (outside of personal projects) so this comes from someone with very little "professional" sales experience:

The good: setting a target comp that is realistic and explained (e.g. "I expect you to hit $200K 4/5 times with this plan.")

The bad: plans with complicated rules (x% up to $Y in sales with a kicker + incentives for certain deal structures) can be demotivating and incentivize the wrong sales behaviors

The ugly: some high-intensity salespeople might thrive on the chaotic and unpredictable nature of comp structures. I don't love the idea of hijacking the "gambling/variable reward" centers of the brain to get what you want out of your people. Be fair and simple.

New comment by dkokelley in "FreeTaxUSA"

dkokelley — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 00:36:01 +0000

Important distinction that a tax preparer != a CPA.

New comment by dkokelley in "FreeTaxUSA"

dkokelley — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 23:16:25 +0000

Honest question: Why don't more people (especially high earners) go with a CPA firm to take care of their taxes? With the amount of money involved, and the potential legal trouble for getting it wrong, the cost/benefit calculation seems to strongly favor hiring a professional to guide you.

New comment by dkokelley in "Starlink satellites are 'leaking' signals that interfere with radio telescopes"

dkokelley — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 01:06:22 +0000

Satellites provide humanity a ton of good. Would you say the bad outweighs the good overall? What would you propose we do instead?

New comment by dkokelley in "Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?"

dkokelley — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 02:33:32 +0000

A bit late, but I built a BattleBot back during the original show days. Never finished/competed though - I was in high school and couldn't make anything competitive with my birthday money. Learned a lot about radio controllers and aluminum angle bars! Taught my younger brother and we battled in the driveway.

New comment by dkokelley in "Twitter now requires an account to view tweets"

dkokelley — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 23:17:26 +0000

Honest question, should services that host user generated content be obligated to provide that content "for free" through APIs or scrapers? On one hand, users created the content "for free" for the platform to use and monetize. On the other hand, providing the content through an API without any ad/monetization potential doesn't make good business sense.

Is there an acceptable threshold of free viewing before it becomes abusive? (Think, getting a single free See's candy from the store vs. employing an army of people to source thousands of pounds of chocolate treats.)

With the Reddit API issue I'm honestly unsure where I stand. I love(d) Apollo and want it to succeed, but Reddit is doing the work and not getting the rewards. Where do you draw the line at "fair"?

New comment by dkokelley in "San Francisco Whole Foods made 560 emergency calls before closing"

dkokelley — Tue, 02 May 2023 00:14:33 +0000

Is there something that the bused in/out employees could do to make a difference?

New comment by dkokelley in "Clinic to open near Ohio derailment as health worries linger"

dkokelley — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 01:12:25 +0000

I'm pretty worried about this. The fallout/plume won't just be isolated to a region we can avoid or mitigate. It's in our waterways and in our air. I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now we can detect it all around the world. We might not know the full extent of the disaster for many years.

New comment by dkokelley in "Understanding the limits of large language models"

dkokelley — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 22:56:59 +0000

Thanks for the clarification! It sounds like chatbots aren’t ready for adversarial conversations yet.

New comment by dkokelley in "Understanding the limits of large language models"

dkokelley — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 20:07:01 +0000

Ahh that makes sense. It wasn’t clear to me which parts were generated by the AI, AI instructions, or the human. I guess I got fooled by prompt injection too!

New comment by dkokelley in "Understanding the limits of large language models"

dkokelley — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 19:40:13 +0000

I don’t fully understand the prompt injection issue. In the bank example, the AI was previously told that a $1m credit was appropriate. There’s no context for whether the issue was or wasn’t the bank’s fault, so I assume the AI was given the answer that it WAS the bank’s fault, and then it responded appropriately.

Is the issue that the customer convinced the AI that the bank was at fault through prompt injection?

New comment by dkokelley in "Passenger Uses AirTags, Discovers Airline Donated Their Bags to Charity"

dkokelley — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:27:01 +0000

The airline lost the bag. The customers entrusted it to them, and it's pretty clear the fault lies somewhere on the airline's side.

Devil's advocate: The airline doesn't have access to the tracking data that the customer did. It's one of hundreds of bags they can't find owners for. Donating them doesn't seem like too bad of an option, provided they still make the customer whole.

New comment by dkokelley in "Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?"

dkokelley — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 19:54:51 +0000

#3 can be abused, but a 1 on 1 isn't meant to solve a bad culture.

Think of it more like "oh yeah my kid just started soccer at school", "we found this neat new restaurant", etc. It's relationship building. Work is more fun when you like the people you work with!

New comment by dkokelley in "Ask HN: What do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?"

dkokelley — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 18:49:03 +0000

1. Here's what I'm working on. (Is this a good use of my time?)

2. Here are my blockers. (Can you help clear the way so I can do my work?)

3. Here's what's going on in my life (relationship building, context for manager to understand your work and capacity)

New comment by dkokelley in "U.S. stock market returns – a history from the 1870s to 2022"

dkokelley — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 18:26:12 +0000

I guess eventually the earth will be swallowed up by the sun, but for practical purposes economic growth happens when we rearrange the atoms and bits at our disposal into things that people consider more useful. All of the materials to create a car existed here thousands of years ago, but we didn't value it as much until somebody figured out how to assemble it into a useful form.

What's more, an old junk car might be valued at $3,000, but we can take most of the same materials and transform it into a new car with $15K (or other goods we consider worth more than the $3K car). The same finite resources + energy & labor (when used productively) = economic growth!

New comment by dkokelley in "I was laid off 2 months ago and I’ve never even seen a severance letter"

dkokelley — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 05:13:23 +0000

> This is an inane hypothetical.

I’m sorry. You’re right. I did not mean to insinuate that Sam was embezzling from Twitter.