Hacker News: jtsnow

New comment by jtsnow in "Show HN: 18 Words"

jtsnow — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:12:59 +0000

Hardly dangerous. The same disclaimer put on the Anti-Defamation League website applies here:

> All the symbols depicted here must be evaluated in the context in which they appear. Few symbols represent just one idea or are used exclusively by one group. For example, 100% is often used as an amount or an expression and it is also used by some by some white supremacists as shorthand for "100% white."

New comment by jtsnow in "You Are in a Box"

jtsnow — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:24:26 +0000

I wonder if unconventional writing styles are becoming the signal for deliberate content. If text is too polished– or even using certain punctuation– can lead to readers questioning whether AI assisted in the creation of the text.

A quick search shows that others have made this connection between Altman and lowercase and non-AI authenticity: https://ted-merz.com/2023/12/18/writing-in-lowercase/

It looks like this particular blog previously used conventional capitalization from 2017 to late 2023. The first post in this style appears to hint at a kind of shift in identity of the author, so perhaps, in this instance it is more a signal of personal expression or tribalism than non-AI-ness. Then again, we may see the line between the two continue to blur.

New comment by jtsnow in "TikTok is harming children at an industrial scale"

jtsnow — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 19:42:26 +0000

This seems highly revisionist. Cancel culture isn't just about boycotting or being selective about what one consumes. It's not even about holding people accountable.

It's about destroying people and tearing them down in order to make examples of them. It results in antagonists showing up at people's homes, writing letters to employers, creating petitions, attacking people in the nastiest ways possible with out engaging with ideas or arguments.

It's the disproportionate and graceless reactions that distinguish cancel culture from past methods of accountability.

New comment by jtsnow in "Do Insects Feel Pain?"

jtsnow — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 23:05:18 +0000

Wouldn't modifying current behavior be sufficient to justify the existence of pain? The mechanism can be a useful adaptation even if a single organism cannot learn. Maybe the default state of bacteria is pain and they can only relieve it temporarily. The ones that survive to multiply are the ones best adapted to relieving pain.

New comment by jtsnow in "Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with Switch"

jtsnow — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:02:28 +0000

In addition to supporting GameCube discs, the Wii had physical ports for plugging in GameCube controllers and memory cards. So, not much of a stretch.

New comment by jtsnow in "DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again"

jtsnow — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:21:57 +0000

Netflix shipped DVDs from 1997 to 2023, predating Redbox by 5 years. This is essentially how we got to streaming. GameFly still ships movie and game discs as a service.

Why are most sofas so bad?

jtsnow — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 16:57:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.dwell.com/article/dtc-sofa-crisis-32304b9e

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39706330

Points: 783

# Comments: 739

New comment by jtsnow in "TikTok-owner ByteDance planning to layoff thousands in coming months"

jtsnow — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:41:40 +0000

Interesting data! And very different from the anecdotes presented in another top HN discussion today, detailing fierce competition with software engineer job postings receiving 100x the number of applicants compared to just a few months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34913015

New comment by jtsnow in "I don't read web articles anymore, but I read books"

jtsnow — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 19:13:46 +0000

"So why is reading books any better than reading tweets or wall posts? Well, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading. But a book has two advantages over a tweet. First, the person who wrote it thought about it a lot more carefully. The book is the result of his solitude, his attempt to think for himself.

Second, most books are old. This is not a disadvantage: this is precisely what makes them valuable. They stand against the conventional wisdom of today simply because they’re not from today."

Thank you for reminding me of this excellent essay.

https://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/

New comment by jtsnow in "Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?"

jtsnow — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 20:51:01 +0000

SimCopter and Crazy Taxi are older titles that come to mind.

New comment by jtsnow in "Books to read to understand financial crime"

jtsnow — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 05:35:24 +0000

Red Notice

New comment by jtsnow in "Books to read to understand financial crime"

jtsnow — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 04:44:55 +0000

Also worth reading are Red Notice and Freezing Order by Bill Browder.

New comment by jtsnow in "Bolivia is awash with contraband cars from Japan"

jtsnow — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 05:39:25 +0000

Nation Geographic's Trafficked has a fascinating episode on the stolen car market. The episode follows cars that are shipped out of the port of New Jersey to Ghana and documents just how organized the operations are.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/trafficked-with-...

New comment by jtsnow in "What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity"

jtsnow — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 00:35:37 +0000

There are some good arguments that current hospitalization metrics are misleading and underestimate the healthcare workload. Delayed treatments or patients who cannot access treatment may be a more useful metric to measure how overwhelmed a healthcare system is.

See https://twitter.com/DellAnnaLuca/status/1486208081142947840/...

New comment by jtsnow in "Conservatives are flocking to the social media app Parler"

jtsnow — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 23:48:41 +0000

Conservatives are running the hardest hitting anti-Trump ads this election year (see The Lincoln Project). Conservatives are split into 3 groups: Trumpers, those hoping the Republican party will just return to its roots after Trump, and those advocating for a new conservative movement because the Republican party is beyond saving.

New comment by jtsnow in "Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures"

jtsnow — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:01:58 +0000

Ioannidis continues to push this evidence-based approach, but I have not yet seen an adequate response to critics such as Nassim Taleb or Yaneer Bar-Yam. They argue that one doesn't need raw evidence to act if the statistical evidence shows that the risks are catastrophic. They published a paper on January 26th which lays out arguments for why conventional risk management approaches are inadequate in these situations. [1]

This paper was met with disregard on HN [2], but the persistent reach of Ioannidis shows why Taleb's arguments have value.

Some on Twitter argue that the WHO statement on January 14th shows where Ioannidis' approach fails: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission..." [3] Authorities were looking for evidence before taking any action.

[1] https://necsi.edu/systemic-risk-of-pandemic-via-novel-pathog...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22154333

[3] https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

Guide to Exercise at Home

jtsnow — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 17:45:47 +0000

Article URL: https://darebee.com/fitness/guide-to-exercise-at-home.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22595195

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Read the European Court Ruling on Magnitsky

jtsnow — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:54:07 +0000

Article URL: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/27/why-you-should-read-european-court-ruling-magnitsky

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20830600

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by jtsnow in "Arrived – a new model of home ownership"

jtsnow — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 06:13:21 +0000

Point (https://point.com/) is another company in this space.

New comment by jtsnow in "Who Owns Huawei?"

jtsnow — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 01:18:53 +0000

Or as Bill Browser described it:

"This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak"