Hacker News: magnusss

New comment by magnusss in "The last RadioShack in Maryland is closing"

magnusss — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:41:47 +0000

Yes, but they asked even if you were paying with a credit card! I guess it was "separate systems."

New comment by magnusss in "'End of an era': The last RadioShack in Maryland is closing its doors"

magnusss — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 18:56:15 +0000

Yes, Radio Shack was often the only place you could find the odd resistor, vacuum tube (for an audiophile-grade amp, what else?), or coax signal splitter. But they always asked for your phone number on checkout -- why? It's not like they ever called you or anything (thankfully).

New comment by magnusss in "Docusign just admitted that they use customer data to train AI"

magnusss — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 04:55:08 +0000

Why does docusign need such sophisticated and powerful AI models, to the point that they’re willing to risk their customers’ ire by training on their data (yes I know, even though it’s anonymized per “industry best practices”)? Are they in some additional line of business besides making it possible to sign a contract electronically?

New comment by magnusss in "The best way to get unstuck"

magnusss — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 04:42:18 +0000

I had a teacher who promulgated the same technique for what we called Calc III (similar to a proofs class, I imagine; Spiwak was the text). It was very effective.

New comment by magnusss in "Rite Aid banned from using AI facial recognition for five years"

magnusss — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 03:23:58 +0000

> Rite Aid is currently going through bankruptcy proceedings and the order will go into effect after approval from the bankruptcy court and the federal district court…

Talk about kicking someone while they’re down.

New comment by magnusss in "Why is c the symbol for the speed of light? (1997)"

magnusss — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 09:52:31 +0000

> The same Latin root is found in more familiar words such as acceleration and even celebrity, a word used when fame comes quickly.

According to the OED, celebrity comes from the Latin “celebritās, [the] state of being busy or crowded, festival, games or other celebration characterized by crowded conditions, reputation, renown, fame, frequency or commonness.”

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/celebrity_n?tab=etymology#991...

New comment by magnusss in "New York City may be sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers"

magnusss — Thu, 18 May 2023 03:50:01 +0000

As far as I can tell, the entire premise of this article is based on a model, not any empirical measurement of Manhattan actually sinking. The article then tries to distract us from examining its thin thesis too critically by connecting it to the effects of climate change. Besides, isn’t lower Manhattan made of bedrock, not sand?

Nothing to see here, move on.

New comment by magnusss in "The least impactful way to spend $300M?"

magnusss — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 03:22:53 +0000

I think neither a 40-billionaire nor Harvard would risk legal trouble by pulling off such an easily auditable maneuver.

New comment by magnusss in "Apple fires hundreds of contract workers, previously assured jobs were safe"

magnusss — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 01:13:11 +0000

The whole value proposition of a contractor is that you can onboard them quickly when you need to augment your existing staff, and can terminate them just as fast when they’re no longer needed. This is in no way a layoff or mass firing, it’s a standard contract termination that occurs all the time with tech companies.

The “previously assured jobs were safe” claim is ungrounded in the article, which lamely provides little more than an anonymous source mentioning an unnamed Apple employee: “One of the contractors reportedly said that Apple previously assured the workers that their jobs were safe.”

New comment by magnusss in "Safe deposit boxes aren’t safe (2019)"

magnusss — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 12:21:31 +0000

Haha right! Or that some ne’er-do-well tricks or coerces you into revealing your treasure’s location.

New comment by magnusss in "Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research, pleads guilty to seven offences"

magnusss — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 23:18:53 +0000

SBF’s plea deal can’t be far behind. He is uniquely positioned to help FTX’s receivers recover the maximum amount of money, and will use that leverage to strike the best deal possible. The whole FTX crew will likely pay their debt to society and be free before they’re 40 with the potential to do something useful with their skills and knowledge (think Mitnick).

New comment by magnusss in "Twitter Blue for $8/Month"

magnusss — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 12:49:26 +0000

Interesting point! What may be an effective management style for running a company you own could be deleterious when running a country for which you are an elected official.

New comment by magnusss in "Twitter Blue for $8/Month"

magnusss — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 03:24:21 +0000

What I love most is that the new CEO of Twitter is front and center making a major product and pricing announcement to the entire customer base within 4 days of buying the company. That’s awesome execution, baby! Not to mention the best type of product marketing imaginable.

New comment by magnusss in "How much people lost with Celsius Network"

magnusss — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 03:22:46 +0000

He didn’t cause the collapse, but he failed to deliver on his promise to his customers that Celsius was structured to protect their savings from market volatility. In fact, the promise was fake — it was never possible to fulfill, from the outset.

New comment by magnusss in "How much people lost with Celsius Network"

magnusss — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 17:50:50 +0000

Celsius seemed to be a classic Ponzi scheme wrapped in a cloak of crypto. The founder was a smooth-talking pitch man who claimed to have “discovered” a risk-free way to earn outsized returns by arbitraging some flaw in the centralized finance system. Madoff’s scheme was similar, but with capital markets rather than crypto. What these schemes have in common is that, once the market takes a dip, it becomes impossible to cover redemptions and the whole thing collapses.

I don’t see the collapse of Celsius so much as a cautionary tale against crypto (“not your keys…”), so much as a lesson against investing in Ponzi-like scams. If it sounds to good to be true…

New comment by magnusss in "The overengineered solution to my pigeon problem"

magnusss — Sun, 15 May 2022 12:54:42 +0000

Not as much fun to build and deploy, but equally effective is pigeon-repellent adhesive. It prevents the birds from landing on treated surfaces and is not too unsightly.

https://www.nixalite.com/product/4-the-birds-gel-repellent

New comment by magnusss in "US passes emergency waiver over fuel pipeline cyber-attack"

magnusss — Mon, 10 May 2021 04:34:25 +0000

The US and other government wills outlaw all cryptocurrencies but the ones that they control (“Govcoin,” as The Economist refers to them). Game over.

New comment by magnusss in "US passes emergency waiver over fuel pipeline cyber-attack"

magnusss — Mon, 10 May 2021 03:38:05 +0000

The reason that cyberattacks are proliferating is because it has only recently become easy for the threat actors to receive massive payments quickly and anonymously. Remove that ability and the entire cyberattack ecosystem shuts down instantly. It is only a matter of time before this happens.

New comment by magnusss in "Breonna Taylor case: Louisville police nearly blank incident report"

magnusss — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 04:23:43 +0000

Exactly this. The single most important question with a shootout is “Who fired the first shot?” The Times clearly misleads the reader to think the police fired first after a “brief confrontation,” only later to reveal that this confrontation was the police being shot at by the boyfriend. The fact that the Times did not report the sequence of shots in that straightforward way (in the purportedly dispassionate “What Happened...“ section of the article) indicates their clear bias.

New comment by magnusss in "$5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA"

magnusss — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 22:20:20 +0000

> Hospitals in the USA marking stuff up 500 or 1000% ARE harming society already.

Agreed, that needs to be fixed.

> If all shoe companies charged $400 for a $2 shoe, I believe society would be harmed, yes.

A competitor would step in, charge less, and win the business. It would only be immoral if competition was quashed or impossible, such as in a hoarding situation.

> If every company hired people as part time only so they didn't have to pay benefits, again, society would be harmed.

I don’t see why this is true. The only benefit of moral significance is medical, and there’s no law of the universe that states that must be paid by an employer.