Hacker News: idkwhattocallme

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "The AI bubble is 17 times the size of the dot-com frenzy, analyst says"

idkwhattocallme — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 19:22:59 +0000

The bubble bursts when Apple announces it's doing good enough (private/secure) LLMs on device. At that point the capex on cloud infra starts to come into question and the dominos start to fall...

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "35% of buyers less likely to buy car with FSD"

idkwhattocallme — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:24:05 +0000

The Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report for August, published by political consulting firm Slingshot Strategies, polled 8,000 Americans. Only 14% of those surveyed said FSD would make them more likely to buy a Tesla, while 35% said the technology would make them less likely to purchase one.

35% of buyers less likely to buy car with FSD

idkwhattocallme — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:24:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/tesla-fsd-turns-away-more-us-consumers-than-attracts-survey-finds.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45063798

Points: 5

# Comments: 3

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Blue-collar jobs are gaining popularity as AI threatens office work"

idkwhattocallme — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 14:27:10 +0000

But it is broken. There is a shortage of every type of trades worker. Sure it's been great for existing trade folks because there are plenty of jobs and the pay is great more demand than supply. But the lack of supply has meant that it's too expensive to build/fix stuff. If you're in the US look around. It looks like we literally stopped building in the 1950s. Every renovation/building project is multi-year. Why? The lack of plentiful skilled trades people is one of the reasons the US building and infrastructure are deteriorating.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Ask HN: What is the biggest waste of money?"

idkwhattocallme — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 02:35:15 +0000

Fossil Fuels. I read 70% of it is wasted in extraction, processing, transportation and inefficient use. This despite ~100 years of working on the problem.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Hi guys, any thought on this project?"

idkwhattocallme — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 02:29:08 +0000

A couple of years ago, some smart kids created fractal. Every week (or maybe 2) you got matched with another exec. It was super high quality and I got a lot of value from it. I met someone I hired, someone who eventually hired me and another I still trade texts with. My impression was others felt strongly about it as well. But they abandoned the project as there was no viable monetization model. That and Founders are a terrible demographic to build for. 99% don't stay founders for long.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Daniel Heinemeier Hansson: "American Hype""

idkwhattocallme — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 20:09:30 +0000

I wonder if the callousness is a consequence of generational experiences. Hundreds of years ago, Europe was once like the US. It had hype manias (tulips). But perhaps they had enough of them where they stopped believing. The US is much younger and we're now in just our 3-4 meta hype cycle. Though in the last 10 years they seemingly have accelerated in tech (SaaS, SoLoMo, Crypto, AI). I wonder if over time that hype will wane. I do agree with DHH here that VC is the gas that keeps the engine going.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 22:43:11 +0000

A landline for a 3 year old to communicate with her friends. lol

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Tin Can – The landline, reinvented for kids"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 22:20:29 +0000

The local public elementary school blocked all chat programs on student chromebooks. The 3rd graders figured out that they could chat with another in a shared google doc. They had thousands of pages of chat before the teacher finally put an end to it. The teacher only found out because a kid shared that it was getting unruly during class. I share this because most kids have an ipad and are digital communication natives. This landline concept is like puting a lid back on a can of worms.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Why many American workers feel guilty about taking the vacation they've earned?"

idkwhattocallme — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 21:24:52 +0000

I've managed thousands of people. In my experience people didn't feel guilt about taking PTO, they felt FOMO because they didn't feel secure in their position or at the company. They felt something would come up or someone would undermine them while they were away that would affect their employment.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Microsoft to Cut 9k Workers in Second Wave of Major Layoffs"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 22:47:51 +0000

A digital strike by all employees for a week to get a collective bargaining agreement in place to show companies just how far AI has to go as a replacement would be powerful.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Microsoft to Cut 9k Workers in Second Wave of Major Layoffs"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:02:57 +0000

For the most part, I'm indifferent to layoffs. Companies over hire and then course correct. It's part of the game. But for MSFT, it rubs me the wrong way. In the past 5 years, their stock has soared (150% on stock and doubled in valuation). They are insanely profitable ($82B profit). They are diverse (no existential business risk). The fact that they are unceremoniously laying off 30K of the people that helped them get there drives home it's just a paycheck, do your job, but know it can and will end when convenient for the company. I know folks will argue, low performers, but really. This "productivity apps" company hired them, onboarded them, made $82B in profit, surely they can figure out how to uplevel folks. Also how do you have a layoff every couple of months for 3 years. Thinking about the middle class in the previous generation, it was unions that effectively ensured a labor job meant a secure future. I wonder if that's the solution (again).

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Microsoft laying off about 9k employees in latest round of cuts"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 14:32:53 +0000

For the most part, I'm indifferent to layoffs. Companies over hire and then course correct. It's part of the game. But for MSFT, it rubs me the wrong way. In the past 5 years, their stock has soared (150% on stock and doubled in valuation). They are insanely profitable ($82B profit). They are diverse (no existential business risk). The fact that they are unceremoniously laying off 30K of the people that helped them get there drives home it's just a paycheck, do your job, but know it can and will end when convenient for the company. I know folks will argue, low performers, but really. This "productivity apps" company hired them, onboarded them, made $82B in profit, surely they can figure out how to uplevel folks. Also how do you have a layoff every couple of months for 3 years. Thinking about the middle class in the previous generation, it was unions that effectively created the middle class. I wonder if that's the solution (again).

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Ask HN: Anyone using augmented reality, VR, glasses, helmets etc. in industry?"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 17:04:14 +0000

I've gone down this rabbit hole with customers as a PM still working in the space. Here is what I've learned. The past decade of devices (hololens, realwear, google glass, vuzix, etc) were some combination of way too heavy, expensive, fragile, short battery life, no wifi connectivity, too much UI long to get to point of value and/or simply not useful. That and most customers had a content problem. The AR/VR use in the field typically came down to looking something up in a manual or calling someone. Both easily and perhaps more effectively done on a smartphone. There was an instance where I asked techs why they weren't using the headset for showing what they were seeing in realtime and they said, it's easier to facetime (hard to argue that). The cool AR 3-D demos or overlays rarely worked in the field on real equip or didn't actually convey anything useful (everyone knows the basics of how the machine works). There are training VR use cases (like learning to operate a crane), but once again it's a nice to have supplement and not a replacement. Recent advances with LLMs (specifically voice) + Meta type "glasses form factor" have created intrigue again with innovation centers at large companies. The use case we're currently working on is inspections or filling out forms with audio/videos.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "[dead]"

idkwhattocallme — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 14:40:41 +0000

No way FB is offering $100M. But it's a good tactic from Sama to set the expectation of value to leave

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "I convinced HP's board to buy Palm and watched them kill it"

idkwhattocallme — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:02:48 +0000

I went to this launch. I was excited about palmOS and intrigued when HP bought them. HP had a massive enterprise PC business. At the time custom apps were all the rage and Apple was killing it. But not in the enterprise. Apple didn't care about corporate use. It was famously hard to buy ipads for teams (limits on how many you could purchase at once). The most basic enterprise app requirements to for a mobile/tablet were impossible on IOS. WebOS was web based (like most enterprise apps). HP did hardware. HP did enterprise. The new CEO was an SAP guy (enterprise software). It seemed like it an enterprise OS + hardware was about to launch. I was expecting an event targeted at CIOs... But the event was targeted at consumers as an ipad competitor. It made no sense.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "The "AI jobs apocalypse" is for the bosses"

idkwhattocallme — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 14:44:59 +0000

The apocalypse will presumably come when communication + coordination meetings are no longer necessary. People are really inefficient at this. We have to all get on a synchronous meeting and wait 20 minutes to share our 90 second update. We can debate the utility of these meetings, but that's how it's done and nothing has replaced them. Agents/AI will just get the info they need from the source, no updates needed. In my experience 60%+ of a corporate job would go away if I could just ask an all knowing bot where we were on something and get an instant response vs waiting for someone to respond to a slack or not wanting to bother them knowing we were meeting tomorrow morning for updates. All the people who dedicate themselves to making meetings work won't be necessary. I'm kinda excited for this future.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "What Elon Musk's personal feed on X looks like"

idkwhattocallme — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 03:07:18 +0000

Money buys you access to insane physical places and people. But all the digital places that take your attention are the same.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "Ex-'Top Gear' Producer's License Suspended for Driving 24 MPH in a 20 MPH Zone"

idkwhattocallme — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 23:01:25 +0000

I just got a courtesy notice from the roll-out of these speeding cameras in San Francisco. This after getting 0 speeding tickets in SF for the last 15 years. It's admittedly had a chilling effect on my driving. It's hard for me to drive < 30MPH when there is no traffic. I have to deliberately focus on going that slow. I feel more compelled to take an uber.

New comment by idkwhattocallme in "The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine"

idkwhattocallme — Fri, 30 May 2025 23:29:51 +0000

Don't worry, there is always another bubble on the horizon