Hacker News: erehweb

New comment by erehweb in "OpenAI’s head of ethics leaves less than a year after joining"

erehweb — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 07:19:36 +0000

Crucially, the FAA is not a part of United Airlines, and the FDA is not a part of Pfizer. If there weren't any FDA, then the safety group in Pfizer would be a lot weaker.

New comment by erehweb in "Truth is not a direction: a Tarski attack on LLM probes"

erehweb — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 05:56:24 +0000

As the article notes, the sentence "This sentence is written in English" is well understood, and true. "This sentence is written in French" is also well understood and false.

New comment by erehweb in "The Doorman's Fallacy in action"

erehweb — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 10:25:13 +0000

It's difficult to tie changes in customer retention to not having a doorman in a "hard data" way. Ideally you'd want to do an A/B test of doorman vs non-doorman, but you'd need multiple hotels for that to work.

New comment by erehweb in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"

erehweb — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:10:25 +0000

This seems like a logical error. I don't understand how an internal combustion engine works, but I know it doesn't come from goblins jumping up and down inside.

AI hiring algorithms reject Black, Asian job seekers at higher rates

erehweb — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:51:46 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/27/ai-hiring-algorithms-reject-black-asian-job-seekers-at-higher-rates/5247387

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380044

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Woman's Talkspace therapy app sessions exposed in court

erehweb — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 06:08:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.proofnews.org/womans-talkspace-therapy-app-sessions-exposed-in-court/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47944711

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Has the Era of the Mega-Layoff Arrived?

erehweb — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:21:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/business/has-the-era-of-the-mega-layoff-arrived-928f061d

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47789754

Points: 5

# Comments: 3

Man quit tech job after 60 to become professional poker player

erehweb — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:43:32 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/apr/06/a-new-start-after-60-i-jacked-in-my-job-in-tech-to-become-a-professional-poker-player

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657680

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

A Stanford Experiment to Pair 5k Singles Has Taken over Campus

erehweb — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:31:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/stanford-students-experiment-dating-date-drop-92a4aea8

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972364

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

OpenAI Executive Who Opposed 'Adult Mode' Fired for Sexual Discrimination

erehweb — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:30:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-executive-who-opposed-adult-mode-fired-for-sexual-discrimination-3159c61b

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972348

Points: 22

# Comments: 12

Pinterest sacks two engineers for creating software to identify fired workers

erehweb — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:28:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/04/pinterest-sacks-two-engineers-for-software-identify-fired-workers

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892781

Points: 43

# Comments: 13

New comment by erehweb in "How many chess games are possible?"

erehweb — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:17:00 +0000

This link https://wismuth.com/chess/longest-game.html from the article talks about the 2014 changes (75-move rule and draw by 5-fold repetition) that make it no longer infinite.

New comment by erehweb in "If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?"

erehweb — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 08:11:10 +0000

Looking at the actual article, the people suggesting taxes on AI are American Nobel laureate Edmund Phelps, and Bill Gates, founder of MSFT. The Europeans suggest more general taxes on capital instead.

New comment by erehweb in "Eels are fish"

erehweb — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 12:01:30 +0000

See (listen?) also the Radiolab episode https://radiolab.org/podcast/slippery-mystery

Empty homes in England on rise, but not being used to solve housing shortage

erehweb — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 21:56:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3r413l5n57o

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44966933

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by erehweb in "An engineer's perspective on hiring"

erehweb — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 10:58:02 +0000

The OP thinks that candidates spending a lot of time on applications is OK, as long as the company shows respect by spending a lot of time themselves. I think this is mistaken - I care about how much time I have to spend, and am a lot less concerned about how much time the company takes.

There's a trade-off: if a company spends more time / requires more effort on an interview process, they can get a better signal on the candidate's abilities, but then they'll lose out on candidates who are unwilling / unable to commit this time. This might just be a hard trade-off in recruiting.

Publish or Perish: The Board Game of Academic Survival

erehweb — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 06:45:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.the-scientist.com/publish-or-perish-the-board-game-of-academic-survival-73133

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44834211

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by erehweb in "The King and AI: A humanoid robot painted a picture of Charles. How did it do?"

erehweb — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 06:22:32 +0000

This is an interesting use of AI. If we just want to know what Charles III looks like, photography has solved that problem. So a portrait is interesting because it's saying something about him, rather than being a photo-faithful likeness. But what is the robot (or rather, the robot's programmer) trying to say here? Any ideas?

Making hard choices? Try thinking less

erehweb — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 16:03:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/03/nx-s1-5406260/a-surprising-trick-to-making-hard-choices-try-thinking-less

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44397861

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by erehweb in "Congestion pricing in Manhattan is a predictable success"

erehweb — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:17:49 +0000

Trivially, the measure of how much it costs in dollars to drive into Manhattan along the affected routes has gone up. So there are likely some people who are worse off. It's rare to have a completely free lunch, but this one looks pretty cheap.