Hacker News: jonfromsf

New comment by jonfromsf in "London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces"

jonfromsf — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:34:49 +0000

Yes. Anacho-tyranny sounds very conspiratorial, but if you think from the police perspective, it is 1000X times easier to enforce fines and codes on the middle class and shopkeepers then it is to arrest criminals. Having an effective police force means cracking that motivation problem, and it's a sign of a well-aligned and well-functioning society. We aren't one.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Midlife Vascular Risk Burden and Dementia-Free Survival Years"

jonfromsf — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:09:41 +0000

This is indeed a problem. My mom had excellent cardiovascular health (she walked hours a day, ate a mostly vegetarian diet, etc). She got Alzheimers at 65 and is now 82. She's been completely gone as a person for the last decade, but her body hasn't died yet. It's tragic.

New comment by jonfromsf in "'Pervert glasses': Backlash against Meta's smart glasses grows"

jonfromsf — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 16:23:46 +0000

The backlash on these is entirely about the fact that they are unfashionable looking. The previous RayBan Metas were very popular and no one had a problem with them. Then Zuck wanted to put in an LCD display so he made them chunkier and they don't look as cool. So people are retroactively coming up with objections to the technology. Nobody cared when the glasses looked good!

New comment by jonfromsf in "Almost no skill required to cook a steak"

jonfromsf — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 01:15:36 +0000

Using a manual espresso machine is one of the hardest culinary preparations. It takes much more skill than one would assume!

New comment by jonfromsf in "The relay market powering token resellers and fraud"

jonfromsf — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 19:00:29 +0000

These aren't stolen credit cards. This hack works by maxing out subscription limits of the Anthropic/OpenAI plans, so you never pay additional API fees. It's fraud but not theft.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop"

jonfromsf — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 23:38:25 +0000

Business books are 99% slop.

New comment by jonfromsf in "As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers"

jonfromsf — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 20:07:22 +0000

Mamdani is going to destroy the entire pre-1974 multifamily housing stock of the 5 boroughs. It will happen really quickly (values already down 40%, 11% of owners are behind on their mortgages).

New comment by jonfromsf in "How to earn a billion dollars"

jonfromsf — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:31:14 +0000

Just don't step-up cost basis at death and you solve the problem. Elon's fine, we can wait until he dies and his heirs sell their shares.

New comment by jonfromsf in "How to earn a billion dollars"

jonfromsf — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:29:00 +0000

100%. I don't understand how anyone defends the "death loophole" for capital gains. If you get rid of it you could actually get rid of estate taxes, which are a kludge to capture some of the capital gains that are given away by resetting the basis at death. It's a nutty system we have right now.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Italy's Bending Spoons, owner of AOL and Vimeo, files for Nasdaq IPO"

jonfromsf — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:01:11 +0000

I left last month. $250 a year or something crazy like that. Obsidian has a free web clipper, I'm planning on using that since I was just bookmarking stuff.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers"

jonfromsf — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 07:28:06 +0000

Stocks for the Long Run makes the pretty compelling case that over longer holding periods stocks are less risky than bonds.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Outsourcing plus local AI will soon become more economical vs. frontier labs"

jonfromsf — Wed, 27 May 2026 15:19:21 +0000

Yes, for indie developers and small startups. Large corps won't want their code /email/etc data being looked at by the Chinese government.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

jonfromsf — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:45:34 +0000

I think the Malm has the highest body count of any individual piece of furniture on the planet.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Measuring Claude 4.7's tokenizer costs"

jonfromsf — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:30:24 +0000

This is an amazing frame /reframe.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Cloudflare's AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents"

jonfromsf — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 03:30:07 +0000

Gilfoyle? Is that you?

New comment by jonfromsf in "The Brand Age"

jonfromsf — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:31:46 +0000

Defining your identity to other humans is incredibly useful. It's one of the essential tasks a human faces, and it makes all other tasks easier if done effectively.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Scott Adams has died"

jonfromsf — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 23:07:31 +0000

The expectation that artists be "good people" always baffles me. Anyone who becomes a great artist has: 1)High levels of narcissism required to think the world needs to hear "your vision. 2) High levels of sociopathy to thrive in a snake pit like the art world or Hollywood. It's even stranger than if someone expected CEOs to be good people (which we don't).

New comment by jonfromsf in "Sergey Brin's Unretirement"

jonfromsf — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 18:12:29 +0000

After a decade, "founder of X that I no longer work at" is considered a lame answer. People want to know what you are doing now, not your highest claim to status of your entire life.

New comment by jonfromsf in "Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?"

jonfromsf — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 21:34:40 +0000

I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of Stanford students are anxious or depressed. Isn't everybody, especially young kids who have spent the last decade going through the meat grinder of prepping for elite college admissions?

New comment by jonfromsf in "Sex, aggression, and humour: responses to unicycling (2007)"

jonfromsf — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:21:10 +0000

Fascinating. I wonder what drives the male aggression towards unicyclists. Is it a response to perceived competition (another male doing something attention-getting: must put them down to maintain my place in the male hierarchy)? Is it enforcing male norms of being "serious", conformist, etc?