Hacker News: episteme

New comment by episteme in "AI psychosis is the new leadership blind spot"

episteme — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:51:36 +0000

Sounds like the CTO is right though? Why prioritize this? Surely there are way more important things to do. You are judging him for not thinking it’s important because you said so, that’s not strong argument.

New comment by episteme in "Popular sugar substitutes linked to faster brain aging"

episteme — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 03:02:23 +0000

I agree that they should control for this, but I’m not sure if this correlation would hold. I suspect people who are healthy weight are commonly staying there partly by their diet containing low calorie versions of some items. Some things like soda are very hard to enjoy in their non-diet form without drinking a huge amount of calories, so I could see an argument for artificial sweeteners potentially being consumed more in weight conscious people.

New comment by episteme in "Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%"

episteme — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:14:41 +0000

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking for things that can be prompted. You still need to understand the why behind things, being able to reason about them and choose between options. How will you teach this level of understanding or certify them without exams?

Of course, not all testing is good, but the written exam has survived and proven useful despite the internet age, I'm not sure an even better search engine really changes that.

New comment by episteme in "Leaking YouTube creators' private videos"

episteme — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:06:17 +0000

The company, not the individual

New comment by episteme in "Ask HN: Are most corporate SWE jobs performative?"

episteme — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:34:35 +0000

This very much depends on the place and the level of maturity in how you share the negativity. Good managers will try to understand and help you, that's a large part of their job.

Also, if you are a high performer then being an attrition risk isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's in the companies best interest to try keep people who are important.

New comment by episteme in "Ask HN: Spent thousands, got no customers. What's wrong with my site?"

episteme — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 22:13:50 +0000

I entered a prompt, was then asked to sign in, signed in using Google, then had to choose a completely different prompt which I couldn't scroll through on mobile, for it to tell me I have no credits. I then opened a tab to Gemini and entered my prompt to get an image for free.

New comment by episteme in "Splinter Cell veteran says realistic modern lighting has screwed up stealth game"

episteme — Wed, 27 May 2026 11:54:47 +0000

This is exactly the point OP is making, fans of pure stealth games don’t want you to be able to muscle your way through, that cheapens the experience.

It doesn’t matter that you think you only have time to mindlessly mash buttons, and it’s not about being realistic, it’s about a game doing one thing very well and not making it optional, it’s a particular type of puzzle to figure out.

New comment by episteme in "When Is "Next Friday"?"

episteme — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:51:39 +0000

Your rule is describing this Friday, not next Friday.

New comment by episteme in "Every book recommended on the Odd Lots Discord"

episteme — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 12:54:15 +0000

I suppose smart people can’t optimize for pure discussion? One of the most popular and easy to use messaging platforms seems like a reasonable choice.

New comment by episteme in "Product and design are the new bottlenecks"

episteme — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:57:23 +0000

If only they were as good at their job as you are.

New comment by episteme in "Grok turns off image generator for most after outcry over sexualised AI imagery"

episteme — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 14:04:44 +0000

I think I hold a similar view to you and have the same question so maybe what I’ve been thinking about might be useful to you. Everyone is upset about CSAM but when you talk about it, it’s only about deepfakes.

I don’t think we can avoid a world where people can generate CSAM easily, so we have to separate the discussion between being able to do that privately and grok being able to do it.

It makes sense to me that we don’t want widely used websites to contain images of CSAM that you can’t easily avoid, it’s simply repulsive to almost everyone and that’s almost certainly a human instinct, I don’t think it needs to be much more complicated than that.

In terms of generating CSAM privately or even sharing it with other people, I think this is a much more interesting discussion. I think at this point it is an open question on whether it is harmful. Could this replace the abuse that is happening to create some of the real content? Does the escalation argument hold water - will people be more likely to sexually assault children due to access to this material? I don’t think we know enough about pedophilia to answer these questions but given that I don’t think there is a way to stop generating this content in 2026 we really need to answer these questions before we decide to simply incarcerate everyone doing it.

New comment by episteme in "How Twitch tamed a million lines of TypeScript"

episteme — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 01:17:57 +0000

It wasn’t X, it was .

We didn’t need X, we needed .

This wasn’t about X, it was about .

This resulted in X rather than .

Over and over and over again.

New comment by episteme in "Why didn't AI “join the workforce” in 2025?"

episteme — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 04:41:23 +0000

Is that a useful thought experiment? Claude benefits you as an individual more than a coworker, but I find I hard to believe your use of Claude is more of a value add to the business than an additional coworker. Especially since that coworker will also have access to Claude.

In the past we also just raised the floor on productivity, do you think this will be different?

New comment by episteme in "Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second"

episteme — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 05:48:40 +0000

So what happens if this wins after a very low number of plays? What if it won twice in a row? Would the plays be reset because it isn't representative anymore? Or should it be left up to give a different message?

New comment by episteme in "Doctors' estimates of the feasibility of preserving the dying for future revival"

episteme — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 23:14:47 +0000

With no memories going with me, it feels just as scary.

New comment by episteme in "After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click where it used to be"

episteme — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:41:11 +0000

The author of the post is ‘ChatGPT’

New comment by episteme in "Louvre to hike ticket prices for most non-EU tourists by 45%"

episteme — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 16:31:05 +0000

I don't think that's true for European tourists, $37 per person is a lot and there are so many other cultural sites to see that paying twice that could definitely drop this off the list during a visit to Paris.

Makes total sense from a US point of view though, you are already committing to spend so much to get there.

New comment by episteme in "JavaScript Just Leveled Up: ES2025 – You'll Fall in Love With"

episteme — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:29:19 +0000

Open article.

"X isn't Y — it's Z"

Close article.

> As front-end developers, staying ahead of JavaScript’s evolution isn’t optional — it’s survival.

New comment by episteme in "Studio Ghibli, Bandai Namco, Square Enix Demand OpenAI to Stop Using Their IP"

episteme — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 13:57:04 +0000

Can a style be trademarked? I thought that was what copyright was meant to cover.

New comment by episteme in "Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture'"

episteme — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 18:24:20 +0000

You can do the right thing and still need to reverse the decision. If all the signals in the world suggest you will be able to support more initiatives in future then you should hire. If in the near future the economy changes dramatically and you can't support those hires, you need to let them go.