Hacker News: jimmydddd

New comment by jimmydddd in "Israeli settlers attack olive framers & Washington Post journalist in West Bank"

jimmydddd — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 20:09:03 +0000

We can't control terrible things that are going on all over the world. But we can decide if we want our tax dollars to be supporting it.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Making chicken transparent using Dorito dust"

jimmydddd — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:33:00 +0000

Hey, why do I have an empty pan? Who took my chicken?

New comment by jimmydddd in "Israeli settlers attack olive framers & Washington Post journalist in West Bank"

jimmydddd — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:03:25 +0000

It's not just Arab countries. I remember being on a business trip 20 years ago in France and the news channel on at the airport was matter of factly showing Israili soldiers with rifles shooting (rubber?) bullets at Palestinian teenagers. The same scene was on every day. It was disorienting to see because I had never seen these scenes once on US news channels.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Smart people don't think others are stupid (2012)"

jimmydddd — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 14:15:05 +0000

I read an article along these lines with a title like "how would you go about buying a car for $500." The gist is that folks in poorer rural areas would have the experience and contacts to buy the car. In contrast, most middle class folks would have no idea how to by such a car.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Apple's new 'Switch to Safari' campaign details why you should ditch Chrome"

jimmydddd — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 12:43:45 +0000

---old enough to have been in the industry when ChatGPT launched.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program"

jimmydddd — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 02:56:23 +0000

I worked at an engineering company that employed immigrants to assemble metal cabinets. The attorney for one of the workers said that if we listed him as a "machinist" he could get his green card quicker. Problem was, we listed a machinist position in the small local paper, and, because a nearby Ford auto plant has shut down a few years earlier, many unemployed machinists saw the ad. We ended up having to replace the worker that was making $10/hr with a machinist making $40/hr, and the worker ended up going back to his home country in eastern Europe.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over"

jimmydddd — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 13:42:15 +0000

I agree about the two groups. I spent years trying to invite some friends to our home for dinner, but we always had "scheduling conflicts." Then one time I suggested going out to a restaurant, and we immediately scheduled it and did it that weekend. I finally figured out that they didn't want to come to our home because they thought that then they would have to recipricate and invite us over, which they didn't want to do.

New comment by jimmydddd in "SNL Weekend Update: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on A.I.'S Threat to Humanity [video]"

jimmydddd — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 21:42:29 +0000

Recently I was channel surfing and caught some of the early seasons of SNL (Murray, Chase, Belushi, Radner, etc.). Someone syndicated the episodes into 30 minute shows with a few skits per show. They actually weren't as good as I remembered. Maybe one skit was funny per show. Maybe it was just something new and different in the 70's, with people making jokes about pot use and such. But it didn't really stand the test of time.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Allow Carriers on Planes"

jimmydddd — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 18:46:43 +0000

I think most (all?) car seats for babies are designed to be used with the baby facing the rear?

New comment by jimmydddd in "Enjoy Every Sandwich"

jimmydddd — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:50:39 +0000

One thing I know for sure. You won't do it with bagged lettuce. You need a cool head of lettuce. Carry on.

New comment by jimmydddd in "The darker side of being a doctor"

jimmydddd — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 14:08:42 +0000

Also, people are not aware of their skill sets. A lot of doctors I know think, just because they were "smart" in school, that if they had gone into, for example, tech or finance, they would have become a CEO. But you can tell they don't have the skill set for business. I mean, they can't even run a medical office with 8 employees well, and they think they could run a business with 100K people. The office is a mess, the records are sloppy, the appointments are 2 hrs. behind, they don't pay the staff well, the receptionist is rude, the photocopied forms are barely readable. Yet they think they would be inovating like Jeff Bezos.

New comment by jimmydddd in "AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible"

jimmydddd — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 15:31:05 +0000

I'm a drummer (musician) and drummers faced a similar crisis forty years ago with the advent of drum machines. A guitarist and bassist could perform with a drum machine instead of sharing their pay with a drummer. An experienced drummer was always way better then a drum machine. However, inexperienced drummers often don't keep steady time, play too loud, over complicate things. The drum machines avoided these pitfalls of using a mediocre drummer.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Waymo in Singapore"

jimmydddd — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:42:10 +0000

Amazon's Zoox is running a limited test of robo taxis in Las Vegas, just going between certain hotels. The rides are free, so a friend and I tried it out. At the hotels, the cabs are constantly pulling into spaces that open up at the curb, while others are waiting at the entrance for a spot to open up. While waiting, I saw the look on some cab drivers' faces, and they looked sad and maybe a bit disoriented watching their livelhood disappear in slow motion.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Doing Everyone Else's Job"

jimmydddd — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 13:24:22 +0000

In the 1990's UPS spent a lot of effort grooming promising junior employees to move up the ranks and become managers. They would then move the managers around to different locations, thinking that good manager can manage any dept. Many of these guys had moved up from being delivery drivers. It became interesting when they would get assigned to manage the IT division, which was developing and supporting internal and external software products, as well as various help desks.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Nike exits the S&P 100 after 18 years and a $200B market-cap wipeout"

jimmydddd — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:33:50 +0000

As best I can tell, main narratives are: 1) Nike decided to sell direct from their Web site and pulled shoes from Foot Locker to save on their cut. Foot Locker filled the empty shelves with Hoka. 2) Nike decided to stop innovating for performance, and focused on being a fashion brand. Hoka provided more cushioning, which runners were asking for. 3) Nike just kept rehashing old models with minor tweaks instead of coming out with new designs. 4) Nike kept its prices high.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster"

jimmydddd — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 03:18:37 +0000

Not an enterprise product, but SimpleNote is great. I was happy that they bought it.

New comment by jimmydddd in "More questions about whether researchers can trust OpenAI with unpublished math"

jimmydddd — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 19:25:25 +0000

So, at my company (and most companies I think), we use confidential in-house versions of the AI software. We don't want any confidential information leaking into the public realm. Are these scientists doing that, or are they just using the public version of the software?

New comment by jimmydddd in "Please don't rearrange our shoes when we turn up, paramedics in Japan urge"

jimmydddd — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 03:22:14 +0000

Agreed. But you have to go shoeless throughout your youth so that the bones and muscles of the foot grow strong. This is true, for example, with kids in some African countries. There was a trend of barefoot running in the US in the 2010's (see Barefoot Sensei), but most people who tried this ended up quitting it as it's hard to shift to this style in, say, your 40's, after a lifetime of wearing shoes.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?"

jimmydddd — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 02:27:12 +0000

I think classical and symphonic music are helped in the US by school music programs. It's the best way to have 100 kids practice and perform for a concert. Breaking them into 25 jazz quartets is a lot more complicated.

New comment by jimmydddd in "Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?"

jimmydddd — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 02:25:10 +0000

Old joke: What's the difference between a flautist and a flutist? About $50 an hour. :-)