Hacker News: josh_carterPDX

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"

josh_carterPDX — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:48:57 +0000

I guess it would depend on the role.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"

josh_carterPDX — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 19:51:15 +0000

> Are you saying the people who have been working for Meta had no other options? That would be a ridiculous claim.

The point is that there have been many, many options and yet they chose to interview for Meta and take the offer.

Bold assumption.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"

josh_carterPDX — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:50:22 +0000

This is a tough one because I've been there. I have worked for orgs that don't align with my values, but when you're in there you aren't thinking that you are contributing to the absolutely horrible crap they're doing. You just keep telling yourself, "I just do this one little thing." And that's enough to convince yourself that it's ok. You're keeping your values and morals intact.

Saying that, I'm sure if more of them had options they'd jump in a heartbeat.

When the Partnership Breaks, So Does the Company: The Jawbone Story

josh_carterPDX — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:31:49 +0000

Article URL: https://joshcarterpdx.substack.com/p/when-the-partnership-breaks-so-does

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47966470

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

A Startup Failure That Looked Fine Until It Didn't

josh_carterPDX — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:10:03 +0000

Article URL: https://substack.com/home/post/p-185097529

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46683102

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The Trump Tracker

josh_carterPDX — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 22:52:59 +0000

Article URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNPGRB5ZcrxxIk_27Mmbe10nxc5wyCuHJPpD4ZGSvEU/edit?gid=1528334158#gid=1528334158

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46238461

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Poker Tournament for LLMs"

josh_carterPDX — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 20:25:15 +0000

Unlike chess or Go, where both players see the entire board, poker involves hidden information, your opponents’ hole cards. This makes it an incomplete-information game, which is far more complex mathematically. The AI must reason not only about what could happen, but also what might be hidden.

Even in 2-player No-Limit Hold’em, the number of possible game states is astronomically large — on the order of 10³¹ decision points. Because players can bet any amount (not just fixed options), this branching factor explodes far beyond games like chess.

Good poker requires bluffing and balancing ranges and deliberately playing suboptimally in the short term to stay unpredictable. This means an AI must learn probabilistic, non-deterministic strategies, not fixed rules. Plus, no facial cues or tells.

Humans adapt mid-game. If an AI never adjusts, a strong player could exploit it. If it does adapt, it risks being counter-exploited. Balancing this adaptivity is very difficult in uncertain environments.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "So you're a manager now"

josh_carterPDX — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 14:55:51 +0000

I agree with most of this except the overcommunicating part. If you're setting the right expectations, overcommunicating may be mistaken for micromanaging.

Managers are judged by outcomes, not by contribution. Good leaders know how to shield their team from the chaos above while shielding the managers above from the challenges of managing many different personalities. They are a conduit for collaboration and inspiration.

Bad leaders are chaos agents and are the main drivers of attrition and should be rooted out quickly. They are a poison pill.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits"

josh_carterPDX — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 05:58:13 +0000

This reminded me of an old app that would scan the MAC addresses of devices already connected to a paid WiFi network. You would then just change your MAC to one that already paid for the WiFi, and then reset it once you were done.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Working on databases from prison"

josh_carterPDX — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:46:10 +0000

This needs to be a model for other states to follow. Too often, incarcerated people are left with very few real options to have a viable career beyond some sort of physical trade like construction, hospitality, or food service. And while all of those career options are great, they do not often provide a real living wage.

Hopefully, we see more of this throughout the country!

DIU Presents: Dual-Use University Accelerator Challenge

josh_carterPDX — Wed, 28 May 2025 16:10:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.diu.mil/latest/diu-presents-dual-use-university-accelerator-challenge

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44117573

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The DoD Is Looking for C-UAS Low-Cost Sensing Solutions

josh_carterPDX — Mon, 12 May 2025 21:15:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.diu.mil/latest/diu-presents-c-uas-low-cost-sensing-challenge

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43967534

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "In 2025, venture capital can't pretend everything is fine any more"

josh_carterPDX — Mon, 12 May 2025 19:25:08 +0000

While I agree with some of the statements made in the article, I don't think everything is doom and gloom. There is still a place for early-stage VC for founders looking to scale.

While I agree that AI is making it easier to launch things, there are so many other ancillary things that require human capital that AI still hasn't solved for, and I don't see that changing in the next 10-15 years. Call me a boomer, but there are a lot of companies that need to grow, and VC funding is a great solution for them.

I will say, however, seeing larger funds change to evergreen funds or even to a more PE model should make everyone pay attention. Adapt or die, right?

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors"

josh_carterPDX — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 02:33:37 +0000

I'm feeling a little bit of buyer's remorse for that same reason. I love my Canon, but having a closed loop lens system is not ideal and is insanely pricey. All of the "adapters" that allow you to use 3rd party lenses suck.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Show HN: Trolling SMS spammers with Ollama"

josh_carterPDX — Sat, 25 Jan 2025 03:17:11 +0000

This is great! I once set up a Twilio script that would call spam callers every five minutes and play "Macarena."

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "TikTok goes dark in the US"

josh_carterPDX — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 04:03:35 +0000

It'll be interesting to see how much the other social media platforms work to replicate the TikTok model if this ban ends up being permanent.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Cold Email Handbook"

josh_carterPDX — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 17:52:05 +0000

The moment I started reading, "Set up multiple domains" I felt like I needed to shower. Sleazy indeed.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Show HN: Quantus – LeetCode for Financial Modeling"

josh_carterPDX — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 17:17:07 +0000

Thank you for building something like this. Financial modeling can be daunting, but I think it's the most important tool for entrepreneurs to have in order to understand how best to run their business. Can't wait to spend some time playing with this tool!

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Y Combinator often backs startups that duplicate other YC companies, data shows"

josh_carterPDX — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:36:29 +0000

We took our startup through Techstars in 2016. The next year they took a very similar company that ended up getting more funding and attention. We didn't understand it at first, but looking back it was definitely because they were the better team.

In the end, both teams failed to scale so it ended up being the wrong platform at the wrong time, but if one of them could have taken off then the bet they made would have paid off.

New comment by josh_carterPDX in "Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI"

josh_carterPDX — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 16:01:11 +0000

My first reaction to the title was, "That explains why things are broken." but this explanation makes so much sense. Thanks for clarifying.

But yeah, I wish the new version of Chrome worked better. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯