Hacker News: ksplicer

New comment by ksplicer in "The American vs. European Mindset on Life"

ksplicer — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 20:05:04 +0000

I'd say the German mindset and American mindset is closer than most other European countries. Germany is one of the most capitalistic countries in Western Europe.

New comment by ksplicer in "Nobody cares"

ksplicer — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 01:33:44 +0000

This is where the author lost me as well. Massive peer pressure to conform is not the same as not caring. Maybe thats a little reductive, or the worst possible way to look at it, but no place that really cares would have such a bad reputation for terrible working conditions.

New comment by ksplicer in "Agents Are Not Enough"

ksplicer — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 19:05:01 +0000

When reading anthropics blog on agents I basically took away that their advice is you shouldn't use them to solve most problems.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/building-effective-agents

"For many applications, however, optimizing single LLM calls with retrieval and in-context examples is usually enough."

New comment by ksplicer in "Fraud, so much fraud"

ksplicer — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 19:39:33 +0000

I try to distinguish between "the scientific process" and building scientific consensus. As rigorous as the scientific process may be, building consensus is always a messy and human thing.

New comment by ksplicer in "Notes on OpenAI's new o1 chain-of-thought models"

ksplicer — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:31:30 +0000

This is something we've been grappeling with on my team. Many of the researchers in the org want to try all these reasoning techniques to increase performance, and my team keeps pushing back that we don't actually need that extra performance- we just want to decrease latency and cost.

New comment by ksplicer in "A road safety plan that will lead to cars communicating with each other"

ksplicer — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 22:37:20 +0000

Cars are built for drivers, any inconvenience they cause for others is a problem for someone else to solve /s

One example of this that drives me crazy is how soundproof vehicles have become. Horns and sirens keep getting louder to make up for it, which makes being near traffic incredibly painful. Sirens are often 120+ decibels, a volume that is unsafe for listeners for more than 10 seconds. All cars should be mandated to easily be able to hear a 100 decibel siren.

New comment by ksplicer in "Entropic Engineering DEFCON 32 Statement"

ksplicer — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 11:18:09 +0000

"I always avoid working with EU firms, they are way too lazy. You give them a clear deadline and the next thing you know they tell you everyone went on vacation."

I'm sure you've heard that before. It's exactly the same kind of shit "woman-owned, queer- and POC-driven" firms hear. I'm sure they are happy for the occasional person that wants to hire them due to prejudices considering how much more work they are losing for the same reason.

New comment by ksplicer in "Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood"

ksplicer — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:12:36 +0000

You almost hit on it, but I think the real problem is the economy got worse first. That trickled down to increase pressure in college and high school.

New comment by ksplicer in "Deterioration of local community a major driver of loss of play-based childhood"

ksplicer — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:08:32 +0000

Exactly, what the hell is "not necessarily because of cars" supposed to mean? Or maybe it's a comment on how, despite cars being way more dangerous, parents over-focus on crime?

New comment by ksplicer in "In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them"

ksplicer — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 23:15:55 +0000

You're making the assumption that roads pay for themselves, but that isn't true at all either. Across the US cities are going bankrupt because they can't maintain roads and other infrastructure. California has a gas tax that pays 80% of road maintenance, the rest of which is often paid from local city taxes that drivers and non-drivers alike pay. Many cities are falling behind in road maintenance though, the true impact of which won't be felt for ~20 years. A hidden cost of car infrastructure is also that the low density increases the costs of other infrastructure maintenance, such as sewage, gas, and power. Good mass transit is ultimately cheaper for everyone.

New comment by ksplicer in "In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them"

ksplicer — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 22:50:18 +0000

This would only be true if additional lanes were built on top of each other instead of next to each other. As lanes are widened though they just keep pushing things apart and making other types of transit less pleasant, which will then create demand that wasn't there before (because people now need to be on roads longer to get where they want to go). There is a maximum density that cars can support that is LOWER than most cities are built up at.

New comment by ksplicer in "In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them"

ksplicer — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 22:21:59 +0000

That's a weird way to put that. Tax haul for 10 houses is definitely higher than the tax haul for a 10 unit complex, but how many 10 unit complexes can you fit in the space you need for 10 houses? The complex has a much better tax haul per square foot.

New comment by ksplicer in "In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them"

ksplicer — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 22:13:53 +0000

You don't need more than two lanes to dedicate one to buses.

New comment by ksplicer in "In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them"

ksplicer — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 22:11:00 +0000

How are you coming to the conclusion that cars are paying their fair share of costs? I'm not familiar with Australian politics at all, but a quick look found that local governments pay most of road maintenance, not the fuel excise tax[1]. Another hidden cost of cars is that they decrease density of cities and suburbs, which causes all other infrastructure to also get more expensive (sewage, gas, power, etc).

[1] https://alga.com.au/policy-centre/roads-and-infrastructure/r...

New comment by ksplicer in "In Colorado, an ambitious new highway policy is not building them"

ksplicer — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 21:47:54 +0000

What you are missing is that every time we widen roads to allow more car throughput we are making every other type of transit and mobility less attractive. Busy streets with big parking lots are unpleasant to walk or bike along, so people just drive to their destinations instead, which makes the street even busier, louder, and smellier starts this cycle all over again. Every time a road is widened or a new parking lot is added the city also becomes less dense, making getting anywhere useful more time consuming. Drivers have to spend longer on the road to get where they want to go, public transit gets more expensive as routes get longer, and walking and biking quickly become too time consuming. There is just a maximum density that cars can support which works totally fine for suburbs but breaks down in denser cities. Personally I think Park and Ride programs are the most reasonable compromise.

New comment by ksplicer in "I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business"

ksplicer — Wed, 29 May 2024 17:35:59 +0000

His full compensation was probably between 300k-500k at Google, so I don't think money was what motivated him...

New comment by ksplicer in "Young women fall out of love with dating apps"

ksplicer — Sun, 26 May 2024 19:53:06 +0000

"the odds are good but the goods are odd"

I've only ever heard that said in the Bay Area, and I think I would agree...

New comment by ksplicer in "Young women fall out of love with dating apps"

ksplicer — Sun, 26 May 2024 19:51:40 +0000

> Would you also tell the chronically unemployed person that you being flooded with job offers all day means you're dying just like him, but in water instead of sand?

The analogy would be one person not getting any job offers while the other is only getting job offers with compenation that are too low to support their family.

New comment by ksplicer in "High prices are not the main cause of low fertility rates in cities"

ksplicer — Thu, 09 May 2024 16:57:19 +0000

"New housing should be of a family-friendly type (something with a yard for kids to play in)"

Low density of other children nearby and inability for children to safely travel on their own is not family friendly. I agree that if we only build one and two bedroom apartments its going to discourage larger families, but there is no reason we can't build denser three or four bedroom housing.

Though honestly I think the entire premise of this article is flawed. Cost of housing is only one of many factors. Cost of having children is higher than ever before, which housing can play a factor in.

New comment by ksplicer in "The Rise of the Forever Renter Class"

ksplicer — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:07:05 +0000

Only considering the cost of housing ignores how expensive transportation can be. See https://htaindex.cnt.org/compare-affordability/ for a comparison of affordability between housing costs below 30% of median regional income and housing and transportation costs below 45% of median regional income. When I moved to New York and got rid of my car it ended up being significantly cheaper than the Bay Area overall despite the higher rent.