Hacker News: ewhanley

New comment by ewhanley in "License plate reader searches should require a warrant"

ewhanley — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:28:59 +0000

Would you feel similarly if microphones were installed everywhere to record all public conversations for analysis via algorithms? Is that the same as police officers listening to conversation in a public space and taking notes?

New comment by ewhanley in "Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns"

ewhanley — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:10:58 +0000

Exactly. In a few short years no one will feel the slop content is unusual - just in time for thr next jarring iteration to come along. It's not good or bad. It just is. Time marches on.

New comment by ewhanley in "OpenAI and Hugging Face address security incident during model evaluation"

ewhanley — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:45:12 +0000

This is awesome. Big concepts of cyberpunk fiction are turning real.ICE vs ICE breaker. I love it

New comment by ewhanley in "OpenAI closes funding round at an $852B valuation"

ewhanley — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:43:31 +0000

Sure for like $5-10MM, but no one is landing $100B cash in a startup's bank account

New comment by ewhanley in "What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the world?"

ewhanley — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:31:53 +0000

Wedding photographers often ask people to refrain from taking photos during the ceremony. It sucks to have every photo that you hired a professional to take have a sea of people holding up cell phones so they can each take their own photo. In this case it's not rude to request that people not take images, it's a practical matter so people can have photos of their wedding instead of photos of people taking photos of their wedding. Much of this wouldn't be necessary if people could just be present at events instead of rigorously chronicling their every experience.

New comment by ewhanley in "iPhone Air"

ewhanley — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 21:37:02 +0000

This seems to be true for almost every product update. Everyone hates everything. It's true when a new gen of a car comes out - "I guess I'm keeping my model forever." or user interfaces or seemingly anything else. People hate change and predict the massive failure of every product revision. Flash forward six months and everyone has forgotten about these rants and likely owns the new version. Now, someone will come along and say "well, I personally" - Apple/Toyota/whoever doesn't care about "you personally", they care about everyone else who is going to buy the product. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it just is.

New comment by ewhanley in "Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed"

ewhanley — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 14:45:59 +0000

That's sort of the tradeoff, though. You get the convenience of having tp show up without having to to through the steps of shopping for it. Except in extreme cases, it seems likely your roommate will pick something that is effectively a commodity at a reasonable price. If you want granular control over brand, features, and pricing, you'll have to pay for it in time and/or money.

New comment by ewhanley in "Figma Slides Is a Beautiful Disaster"

ewhanley — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 02:36:08 +0000

Slides have unfortunately moved well beyond their intended use. People (management) often asks for more and more information density, but that's not the point of slides. What they really want is a report or memo. Slides were meant to convey information during presentation and don't hold up well absent that context. I hate slides as a medium outside of the specific text of a conversation - they're a bad pre-read, and they're a poor meeting summary. It's unfortunate that slides have become _the_ corporate communication medium.

New comment by ewhanley in "The Who Cares Era"

ewhanley — Wed, 28 May 2025 16:29:57 +0000

Bingo - sorry, this was a mostly rhetorical question.

New comment by ewhanley in "The Who Cares Era"

ewhanley — Wed, 28 May 2025 15:51:06 +0000

Nah, but for real - why wouldn't they take PTO?

New comment by ewhanley in "The Who Cares Era"

ewhanley — Wed, 28 May 2025 15:50:07 +0000

It sounds like you should be able to run the table with so little competition. Why not engage, take on more responsibility, and obviously stand out to get more money and influence?

New comment by ewhanley in "The Who Cares Era"

ewhanley — Wed, 28 May 2025 15:31:10 +0000

This is only an example of people being bad at their jobs or not caring if you are referring to the management/administration responsible for staffing and scheduling over that time period. The people who are actually out of the office are presumably using approved PTO.

New comment by ewhanley in "Try Switching to Kagi"

ewhanley — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 18:32:26 +0000

It always seems like there's no one less willing to pay for software than those who create it for a living

New comment by ewhanley in "AI Horseless Carriages"

ewhanley — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 20:28:51 +0000

Meh, show me a human that can reliably produce 100% accurate notes. It seems that the baseline for AI should be human performance rather than perfection. There are very few perfect systems in existence, and humans definitely aren't one of them.

New comment by ewhanley in "Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI"

ewhanley — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 21:02:35 +0000

This is exactly right. If resume driven development results in more money, people are (rightly) going to do it. The incentive structure isn't set by the ICs.

New comment by ewhanley in "Is the world becoming uninsurable?"

ewhanley — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 18:23:24 +0000

It's not a competition. Both can be sights that people view in awe. Are you "Four Yorkshiremen-ing" wildfires?

New comment by ewhanley in "JPMorgan Workers Ponder Union in Wake of Return-to-Office Mandate"

ewhanley — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:51:22 +0000

This always comes up in RTO discussions. Why haven't they already done it - why go through the pain of forcing an RTO when they can cut costs by 2/3?

New comment by ewhanley in "Stimulation Clicker"

ewhanley — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 21:27:23 +0000

This is a Black Mirror level hellscape. It really does capture the overstimulation of the modern world without filters. I found myself simultaneously anxious and inclined to keep clicking so I can unlock the next tier. It's over the top but not by much.

New comment by ewhanley in "The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines (2023)"

ewhanley — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 17:42:49 +0000

Rock often has sufficient structural integrity to get by with some bolting vs adding structure (steel, shotcrete, etc) to the soil tunnel as they go

New comment by ewhanley in "What is it like to be a thermostat? (1996)"

ewhanley — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 15:18:35 +0000

Ecobee thermostats can run in dual heat/cool mode