Hacker News: fludlight

New comment by fludlight in "Roll Your Own All-Sky, Raspberry Pi Camera"

fludlight — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 03:00:00 +0000

> Maybe have something in there that is colder

Such as?

New comment by fludlight in "AI voice scams: 77% of victims lose money"

fludlight — Sun, 07 May 2023 16:08:53 +0000

> anyone who still answers phone calls from strangers

Isolation leads to paranoia.

New comment by fludlight in "Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access"

fludlight — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 04:11:03 +0000

You realize these companies will quiet-fire all employees residing in Utah and never hire there again? That this will place massive negative pressure on all software salaries in Utah? Possibly on all software salaries outside of deep blue states?

New comment by fludlight in "SVB insider says employees are angry with CEO"

fludlight — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:52:04 +0000

Lehman employees were also angry with their final CEO, Dick Fuld. At one point there was a now-debunked rumor that he got punched in the face at the company gym a few days after that bankruptcy.

Dick was a dick even for a big swinging dick on Wall Street and he spurned several last minute lifelines, so, at the time, people in the industry universally approved.

A fast, dramatic demise of a massive company leaves scars. Almost 15 years on, former Lehman lifers are still salty about what happened. Perceived mismanagement ("They squandered it!") and regulatory failure ("They bailed out our competitors but not us!").

The former are similar to the feelings of older engineers who worked at IBM, Intel, Palm, Yahoo, Nokia, etc during their heyday.

New comment by fludlight in "A Bank of One's Own"

fludlight — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 01:10:53 +0000

Banks use some of those deposits to make loans to private parties. This is, on the whole, beneficial to society so we want it to continue.

You do not want the government, which is supervised by politicians, picking who gets loans.

New comment by fludlight in "ChatGPT's API is so good and cheap, it makes most text generating AI obsolete"

fludlight — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 01:03:31 +0000

Why stop there?

- "Draft a class action complaint in {venue} against {bank} for using AI to robo*-approve loans. Repeat 10 times."

- "Pretend you are a {group} journalist. Write {x} words in {style} about {aspect} of robo loan approvals. Repeat 1k times."

- "Pretend you are a {party} politician. Angrily and dramatically complain about the other side oppressing {group} wrt robo loan approvals. Dress it up with {x}% lies. Repeat 100k times."

- "Pretend you are a {group} social media user. Write {x} words in {style} about {aspect} of robo loan approvals. Repeat 100M times."

The only real, thoughtful work will be the lobbyists drafting the bills, everyone else will become performers or consumers or simply drowned out in the fog of fake discourse.

* "robo-signing" mortgages was a big legal & political issue ~10yo so the lawyers will probably retain the "robo-" prefix.

New comment by fludlight in "Actuarial Life Table"

fludlight — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 03:06:29 +0000

Is there a site where one can add more data points like BMI, smoking, booze & other drugs, family history of horrible diseases, current medical conditions, etc?

The world as we know it is ending. Why are we still at work?

fludlight — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 14:06:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.vox.com/2021/12/16/22837830/covid-pandemic-climate-change-great-resignation-2021

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29604558

Points: 10

# Comments: 17

New comment by fludlight in "Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law"

fludlight — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 04:52:01 +0000

I'll go further: there are no poor innocent carnivores or omnivores. All are brutal killers without regard for the suffering of others. Nature is struggle, awful, awful struggle.

But humans have the capacity to be more...humane.

New comment by fludlight in "OnlyFans drops planned porn ban"

fludlight — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 14:37:32 +0000

Besides adult content, what else is considered "high risk"? What are the commissions in this space?

Also, major media outlets* are now doing bait and switch subscriptions. Does that make them high risk too?

*Bloomberg $2/mo->$35/mo after 3m

NYT $4/mo->$17/mo after 1yr

WAPO $4/mo->$10/mo after 1yr

Economist $25/qtr->$55/qtr after 1 qtr

New comment by fludlight in "A social platform where you get paid for being helpful"

fludlight — Wed, 05 May 2021 15:17:03 +0000

What is your plan for transaction costs?

New comment by fludlight in "Epic expert estimates Apple's App Store profit to be nearly 80%"

fludlight — Sun, 02 May 2021 00:35:22 +0000

And what’s epic’s margin from getting kids addicted to wasting their time (and money) on Skinner box games? Both companies are socially destructive, but epic is pure-play evil.

Bad software sent postal workers to jail

fludlight — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 13:56:49 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/23/22399721/uk-post-office-software-bug-criminal-convictions-overturned

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932720

Points: 14

# Comments: 0

New comment by fludlight in "EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd"

fludlight — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 01:20:07 +0000

Schools should be teaching kids to be confident speakers and readers from an early age.

New comment by fludlight in "'This has never happened': San Jose State's wildfire lab makes scary discovery"

fludlight — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 04:12:38 +0000

Cumulative seasonal rainfall data has been collected for much longer than 8 years. This year looks very, very dry.

https://ggweather.com/seasonal_rain.htm

https://www.cnrfc.noaa.gov/awipsProducts/RNORR4RSA.php

New comment by fludlight in "'This has never happened': San Jose State's wildfire lab makes scary discovery"

fludlight — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 01:22:53 +0000

Here’s a field guide on measuring fuel moisture content written by people at a California branch of the Forest Service:

https://www.bia.gov/sites/bia.gov/files/assets/public/pdf/id...

New comment by fludlight in "Big money bought the forests. Small timber communities are paying the price"

fludlight — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 16:17:38 +0000

This isn't a problem of "big money", but a failure of government. They reduced taxes and, shocking(!), that led to lower tax revenues.

> Oregon lowered taxes and maintained weaker environmental protections on private forestlands than neighboring states in exchange for jobs and economic investment from the timber industry.

> Despite such concessions, the country’s top lumber-producing state has fewer forest-sector jobs per acre and collects a smaller share of logging profits than Washington or California.

> If Oregon taxed timber owners the same as its neighbors, which are also top lumber producers with many of the same companies, it would generate tens of millions of dollars more for local governments.

New comment by fludlight in "Understanding Media Through Food: 8 Metaphors"

fludlight — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 06:08:21 +0000

One of these days the pharmaceutical industry will create a blockbuster pill that's methadone for information withdrawal.

New comment by fludlight in "Miss a payment? Good luck moving that car (2014)"

fludlight — Sun, 04 Apr 2021 03:09:18 +0000

You can’t do safety without regulation.

New comment by fludlight in "The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto (1991)"

fludlight — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 03:18:06 +0000

...and zip code, which is very correlated with parental income, occupation, and education level