Hacker News: johnjreiser

New comment by johnjreiser in "Show HN: Searchable directory of 22k+ products from worker-owned co-ops"

johnjreiser — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:24:13 +0000

Seconding location based lookups. I might not be looking for something specific, but if I know of businesses nearby worth patronizing, when I need that good/service, I'll visit them then.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Show HN: The text disappears when you screenshot it"

johnjreiser — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 11:40:12 +0000

I also appreciate that Hn removes emojis from comments. :'(

New comment by johnjreiser in "Show HN: The text disappears when you screenshot it"

johnjreiser — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 11:39:39 +0000

Appreciate that it handles emoji as well. Can't distinguish between smileys though.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Not all tokens are meant to be forgotten"

johnjreiser — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:54:06 +0000

I'd counter with an anecdote; I had a colleague that boasted how he memorized a classmate's SSN in college and would greet him by SSN when seeing him years later. Is the goal of AI to replicate the entirety of the human experience (including social pressures, norms, and shame) or a tool to complement human decision making?

While, yes, you can argue the slippery slope, it may be advantageous to flag certain training material as exempt. We as humans often make decisions without perfect knowledge, and "knowing more" isn't a guarantee that it produces better outcomes, given the types of information consumed.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Things I said as a manager part 2: Hiring is emotional"

johnjreiser — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:16:19 +0000

I can agree with that in principle, however it shouldn’t take months. If there are multiple levels of middle management here, issues that arise in a probationary/grace period should be addressed and course-corrected. You have that period post hiring, not in a drawn out review process.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Things I said as a manager part 2: Hiring is emotional"

johnjreiser — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 00:02:15 +0000

Amen. If an organization is taking months to come to a hiring decision that’s a red flag, unless it’s a C-suite level position, where a misstep could have irreversible damage. A tech position should be able to close within a few weeks, lest the candidate get a better offer from a less dysfunctional company.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US"

johnjreiser — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 17:47:59 +0000

This is mostly true in the US. The map is reflecting districts. I happen to be in a small town in New Jersey, so we're an elementary district with one school. Children after 6th grade go to a middle school and high school that is part of the secondary district which overlaps other municipalities/elementary districts. Some districts have multiple elementary schools and their own local level maps (not reflected here) that influence placement in the elementary schools in the district.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Show HN: Atlas – GIS and interactive maps in the browser"

johnjreiser — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 01:05:14 +0000

Atlas (and Felt, as another commenter mentioned) are interesting, but seem to be targeting a market I feel is too small. If you're established in GIS, you likely have your own stack (and biases). If you're new to it and need something more than just a visualization tool, these offerings can work well, but I fear that users may quickly outgrow the functionality and then move to a more conventional GIS offering.

I do like how Felt includes QGIS integrations as a marketing point. I feel like tools like these are great compliments, but not wholesale replacements. "The new standard for GIS software" is a gross overstatement. If I normally deal with data in the multi-GB range, limiting my uploads to 250MB seems woefully insufficient.

And I think far too many people have experienced data loss when any new platform goes under. Both Atlas and Felt have "sign in with Google" but not Microsoft OAuth which just seems odd to me unless they truly aren't targeting the existing desktop GIS user community. Import/export from OneDrive/O365 would likely be a selling point to many GIS users.

New comment by johnjreiser in "How does Brown University know where you are?"

johnjreiser — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 01:06:30 +0000

As the article states, WiFi monitoring is likely happening on a large scale. Why purchase outside data when you have better data (including authenticated users) already in house?

New comment by johnjreiser in "How does Brown University know where you are?"

johnjreiser — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 01:04:58 +0000

I don’t believe it falls under FERPA. Plus, the WiFi monitoring tracks everyone with a mobile device, regardless of matriculation status.

New comment by johnjreiser in "How does Brown University know where you are?"

johnjreiser — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 01:02:02 +0000

They’re all doing it, just at different levels of nanny-state oversight.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Slow map: Mapping Britain's intercity footpaths"

johnjreiser — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 14:50:09 +0000

Exactly this. The metadata is flexible and OSM could readily support a quality assessment within a "slowways" namespace.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Verenitti: OS for Gamers and Professionals"

johnjreiser — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 11:53:38 +0000

Reading through their Kickstarter, my BS detector was triggered. Run any app from Windows/Mac/Linux? Run this OS as a VM elsewhere, taking all off your stuff with it?

Is this just a custom Linux OS with some virtualization and half-truths sprinkled in?

Verenitti: OS for Gamers and Professionals

johnjreiser — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 11:47:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/v-os/verenitti-os-unix-like-os-for-gamers-and-professionals

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481428

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by johnjreiser in "IT Runs on Java 8"

johnjreiser — Fri, 10 May 2019 17:03:19 +0000

Isn't this what Bimodal IT strategy all about? You'd want to keep current with cutting edge (through sites like this one) so you know which future looks promising and then incorporate the changes into your organization's systems when the time is right.

I enjoyed the article and too have felt the urge to think "why aren't we doing that?" but the business still needs to happen while you're also experimenting with tensorflow emoji recognition.

New comment by johnjreiser in "How to generate random geo-coordinates within a given radius"

johnjreiser — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 00:59:28 +0000

> 1. How do you stop someone from finding the actual property location by querying that map a bunch of times and averaging the positions returned?

Back when YikYak was a thing, I was scraping the data for university campus through their API and found that their location data was randomized upon access. This meant that popular posts (they survived for longer) would end up producing pretty accurate location data.

In one case, I confirmed this by walking into the computer lab in the building where the Geography courses were located and asked "who was asking for lab help on YikYak?" and one student sheepishly raised his hand. I helped him and then also gave him a lesson on real world applications of the central limit theorem.

New comment by johnjreiser in "How big is the Google Earth database?"

johnjreiser — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 14:34:13 +0000

For some interesting historical perspective, here's what Microsoft and partners had to come up with in 1998 to support Terraserver and it's 3TB of imagery. http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/68552/msr_tr_98_17_terras...

New comment by johnjreiser in "Canadians don’t live as far north as you think"

johnjreiser — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 14:12:51 +0000

The latitude is an analogue for habitability. The ocean currents do enable agriculture and thus historic patterns of stable habitation at higher degrees of latitude on the east side of the Atlantic, compared to the west.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Update on a Side Project"

johnjreiser — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 23:22:06 +0000

Thanks! I welcome any feedback you might have on how I can make it even more useful.

New comment by johnjreiser in "Update on a Side Project"

johnjreiser — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 20:59:40 +0000

I have added a neighborhood map to each property page, in addition to the Bing "Bird's Eye." I'm also working on a Leaflet-based map of the whole state with the parcel layer. Still thinking over how to handle creating the vector tiles and linking them up to the assessment information. NJ's parcel GIS data gets updated yearly, while the assessment/sales records are updated weekly. I don't want to have the assessment data in the vector tiles, so I've got to perform some matching & retrieving data after they're loaded.