Hacker News: mattmcknight

New comment by mattmcknight in "65% of Hacker News posts have negative sentiment, and they outperform"

mattmcknight — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 15:56:18 +0000

Sort by controversial. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

Just need to find the right scissor statement to really get the debate going.

New comment by mattmcknight in "[dead]"

mattmcknight — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 18:45:19 +0000

One person wants a list of their political enemies banned from software conferences, one of them doesn't want them banned. Which one is tolerant? The only intolerance and exclusion I see is from those requesting that specific people with whom they have political disagreement be banned.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams"

mattmcknight — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 18:32:44 +0000

Can we fix the title to be "scams and banned items"?

It seems like the banned items bit is misleadingly left out, and this title falsely implies it is 10% from scams alone.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Addiction Markets"

mattmcknight — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 18:59:13 +0000

I am really tired of the lazy argument style of using "corporate" as a synonym for "bad". I too think it's bad to encourage addictive gamblers. I don't care if it is corporate, individual, or state run.

New comment by mattmcknight in "The Rubygems.org takeover"

mattmcknight — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 02:14:21 +0000

It seems like things have ended up in a better place than they started.

New comment by mattmcknight in "A shift in developer culture is impacting innovation and creativity"

mattmcknight — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 16:52:00 +0000

For me, the push to single page applications and the unnecessary complexity that brought with it made me just sick of fooling around with web things- we had solved the problem and they invented nonsense that made it harder. There has been so much to explore over the past 7 years in machine learning though- it just requires a lot more compute than most people have available on their desktop.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Epistemic Collapse at the WSJ"

mattmcknight — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 18:55:00 +0000

"the postmodernists attacking physics"

The Sokal affair was a physicist attacking the postmodernists for attacking physics (and scientific realism) by showing the postmodernists would publish complete nonsense.

The current attack is saying the physics establishment is backing a theory that doesn't adequately make predictions (not adequately supporting scientific realism).

It can be viewed outside the realm of power, that's a very postmodern view.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Ask HN: Looking for headless CMS recommendation"

mattmcknight — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 17:34:16 +0000

I think it depends a little on what your intended head is? Headless CMS is just CRUD UI for a database that has an API.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work"

mattmcknight — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 00:52:57 +0000

This is where John Gall's Systemantics comes into play, “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system."

Obviously a bit hyperbolic, but matches my experience.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, then a hacker found it"

mattmcknight — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 14:34:14 +0000

> Anytime data is recorded legal is immediately asking about retention so they don't end up empty handed in front of a judge.

In my experience, they are setting automated 90 deletion policies on email so they don't end up with surprises in discovery.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Kiwi.com flight search MCP server"

mattmcknight — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 17:11:32 +0000

I have 10 Claude agents running so I am able to develop years of experience in parallel.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court"

mattmcknight — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 15:04:41 +0000

They sued both.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny"

mattmcknight — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 16:15:01 +0000

I am trying to explore the ways in which the IPO, in particular, separate from the continued operation of the company, is evidence that blocking M&A is good. I have seen nothing from you supporting Khan's position that the IPO is vindication for blocking M&A.

Her particular claim was that it was "a great reminder that letting startups grow into independently successful businesses, rather than be bought up by existing giants, can generate enormous value.” However, the IPO price was $700M less than the value the company was at three years ago, which, given opportunity costs and inflation, would not seem to be an indicator of enormous value being generated.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny"

mattmcknight — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 13:32:58 +0000

They were independent the whole time and it wasn't considered a success. I suppose IPO is an indicator they might stay independent longer. Now that they are in the public markets even Adobe can buy a few shares. I just don't feel like the IPO event has brought any particular benefits to the consumer and Khan is incorrectly looking at post IPO stock price bounce as some kind of financial indicator that it was a better deal for the company.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny"

mattmcknight — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 03:05:04 +0000

But how is the IPO a sign of success in that case?

New comment by mattmcknight in "Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny"

mattmcknight — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 03:01:04 +0000

But the company only sold the shares at $19.3B.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny"

mattmcknight — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 02:47:03 +0000

So blocking a sale at a $20B valuation so the company can IPO at a $19.3B valuation 3 years later (a loss of $700M in value over 3 years) is a success?

New comment by mattmcknight in "XMLUI"

mattmcknight — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:58:36 +0000

React is so unnecessary. Would make more sense to do this with web components. The event model of VB, before .Net, was much more coherent.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Investors bought 27% of US homes in Q1, as traditional buyers struggle to afford"

mattmcknight — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 00:59:33 +0000

The original source explains that it is 1 home in addition to a primary residence.

New comment by mattmcknight in "Investors bought 27% of US homes in Q1, as traditional buyers struggle to afford"

mattmcknight — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 01:01:07 +0000

It's not even a long article, but why are so many of the comments ignoring the end of it? "Indications are that institutional investors are scaling back home sales." from the article would seem to contradict a large number of the comments.

"Of those, mom-and-pop investors, or those who own between 1 and 5 homes, account for 85% of all investor-owned residential properties, while those with between 6 and 10 properties account for another 5%.

Institutional investors that own 1,000 or more homes account for only about 2.2% of all investor-owned homes, the firm said.

And that number could get smaller, amid signs that large institutional investors are scaling back home purchases.

Out of a group of eight of the biggest companies that own and lease single-family houses, including Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, six sold more homes in the second quarter than they bought, according to data from Parcl Labs."