Hacker News: jackcarter

New comment by jackcarter in "Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem"

jackcarter — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 13:24:56 +0000

It’s funny that this is probably due to bias in the training texts, right? Humans are way more likely to publish their “Eureka!” moments than their screwups… if they did, maybe models would’ve exhibit this behavior.

Now that AI labs have all these “Nevermind” texts to train on, maybe it’s getting easier to correct? (Would require some postprocessing to classify the AI outputs as successful or not before training)

New comment by jackcarter in "Running Claude Code dangerously (safely)"

jackcarter — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:14:15 +0000

"At some point I realized that rather than do something else until it finishes, I would constantly check on it to see if it was asking for yet another permission, which felt like it was missing the point of having an agent do stuff"

Why don't Claude Code & other AI agents offer an option to make a sound or trigger a system notification whenever they prompt for approval? I've looked into setting this up, and it seems like I'd have to wire up a script that scrapes terminal output for an approval request. Codex has had a feature request open for a while: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/3052

New comment by jackcarter in "My washing machine refreshed my thinking on software estimation"

jackcarter — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 17:54:47 +0000

> wants it moved over to the others side of the utility closet so that when you open the door it is easier to put clothes from there into the dryer

That's when you swap the hinges so the door opens the other way, and you thank the manufacturer for providing such an easy solution to a common problem. It's good to keep things flexible and user-configurable.

Now quick, someone reply with a counterexample of how user configuration complicates the product and increases cost. It's design tradeoffs all the way down...

New comment by jackcarter in "Show HN: I convert videos to printed flipbooks for living"

jackcarter — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 15:32:41 +0000

This is very cool, congrats on the execution!

Seems great for grandparents. Have you tested with older people with frail or arthritic hands? I'm curious how much dexterity and force is required.

New comment by jackcarter in "Penn Station Can Handle the Load: New York Is Ready for Through-Running"

jackcarter — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 20:43:14 +0000

It's been this way for over a decade: https://www.vox.com/2014/3/31/5563600/everything-you-need-to...

New comment by jackcarter in "How Good Is ChatGPT at Coding, Really?"

jackcarter — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 15:00:45 +0000

"How Good is ChatGPT [3.5] at Coding, Really?"

New comment by jackcarter in "Cameras abandoned 85 years ago by photography pioneer found on glacier"

jackcarter — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:12:50 +0000

I don't know the answer, but there's a famous lost camera owned by a team that perished on Everest before Hillary/Norgay successfully climbed it. It's possible that the camera contains proof of an earlier first ascent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory#Reaching_the_su...

Kodak has published instructions for how to protect the camera and develop the film, if it's ever found: https://web.archive.org/web/20130303001517/http://www.veloci...

New comment by jackcarter in "Show HN: I 3D scanned the interior of the Great Pyramid at Giza"

jackcarter — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:51:46 +0000

Camera limitation – it doesn't capture a full sphere. That's exactly the spot where I also noticed it.

New comment by jackcarter in "Meta stock price drops more than 20%"

jackcarter — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:33:24 +0000

This isn't true for RSUs in the USA. You're taxed on the value at the time when you receive them.

New comment by jackcarter in "Cruise driverless vehicles involved in 3 separate traffic incidents in SF"

jackcarter — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 15:44:12 +0000

Hopefully, a self-driving car would have waited for a safe opening to make the turn.

New comment by jackcarter in "Nuclear-Powered Cardiac Pacemakers"

jackcarter — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 14:59:08 +0000

A heat pump warms a home more efficiently than using the same amount of electricity for resistive heating. It can do this because it's not generating the heat from scratch; it's moving heat from outside to inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Performance

New comment by jackcarter in "13 Months: The Kodak Calendar Experiment"

jackcarter — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 18:33:19 +0000

“A hotel that did a business of $10,000 per week in room sales found that its receipts from room sales were less in May than those in April. It looked as if the business was dropping off. May was one day longer than April and yet its room sales were less. The figures, however, proved to be very misleading. As a matter of fact business was actually better in May than in April – ten dollars a day better – but the monthly comparison seemed to show that it was worse.”

So revenue/day was up in May, and there are more days in May, but total revenue was down in May? What's the explanation?

New comment by jackcarter in "Airbnb May 2022 Release"

jackcarter — Wed, 11 May 2022 14:09:54 +0000

Does anyone know if there's a secret advanced option to search by keyword?

Some Airbnbs have free bicycles available, but there's no "bicycle" filter (possibly for liability reasons). There's also no way to search for homes that mention "bicycle". Instead, I have to comb through every listing.

I think this used to be an option, but they took it away. This is the only feature I've ever wanted from Airbnb search.

Do You Know Who That Worker You Just Hired Is?

jackcarter — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 21:54:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/business/jobs-hiring-fraud.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409616

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by jackcarter in "La Palma Volcano Live [video]"

jackcarter — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 13:41:54 +0000

If you use Chrome, the extension Video Speed Controller: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-contro...

New comment by jackcarter in "Product placements may soon be added to classic films"

jackcarter — Wed, 26 May 2021 15:26:33 +0000

David Lynch on contemporary product placement, 14 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wh_mc8hRE

Where Americans gathered, the coronavirus followed

jackcarter — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 20:25:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/28/us/covid-virus-cluster.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24309532

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by jackcarter in "Ottawa Library fines people using unreliable automatic calling system (1994)"

jackcarter — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 20:15:16 +0000

This is about the notification that a book is ready for pickup.

New comment by jackcarter in "U of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to cost $100k per year"

jackcarter — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 16:22:37 +0000

It was $39,381 in 2009, $58,230 in 2019 [1]. These are tuition-only, exclusive of room & board, books, etc.

The $100k figure is a projection for 2025.

[1] https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-c...

New comment by jackcarter in "How to build a plugin system on the web and also sleep well at night"

jackcarter — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 15:58:19 +0000

I learned about Figma recently, in this HN-frontpage article about fast software: https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/

It really is delightfully fast. It's no surprise that the team behind it is producing this caliber of content.