Hacker News: nitwit005

New comment by nitwit005 in "I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program"

nitwit005 — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:46:54 +0000

I suspect there is actually three groups, because the app also has a sort of coupon-ing in it. The lowest price requires you to search the app to find a "deal" that is currently available, rather than just use your loyalty points to get a discount.

One of the ideas of classic coupons was to offer a lower price to the most price sensitive customers. The people willing to deal with the fuss of finding and cutting out the coupons.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app"

nitwit005 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:27:41 +0000

> Twitter has plenty of leftists.

How, when according to you, they're dominating Reddit and Bsky?

Baring the possibility that people on the left use all the platforms, and people on the right don't for some reason, an excess on one platform has to mean a shortage on another.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app"

nitwit005 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:21:09 +0000

Neither Bluesky or Threads actually made that pitch.

Threads was started up because of the business opportunity of Musk fumbling things, but Bluesky seemed almost annoyed by all the new users.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app"

nitwit005 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:18:47 +0000

You choose what you see on Bluesky. I see little politics while using it. If everyone you followed moved over, just limit it to their posts.

New comment by nitwit005 in "US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers"

nitwit005 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 02:44:48 +0000

Consider the ratio of air traffic controllers to the number of people moving through the airport. It's not a huge cost. There's often far more staff moving bags.

It was a problem at very rural airports, and now some people man those remotely.

New comment by nitwit005 in "The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses"

nitwit005 — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:25:46 +0000

This is just the classic "we're going to crack down, but even harder!".

It's just the behavior of people who have no new ideas for how to solve a problem.

New comment by nitwit005 in "The US tried to stop cartel money-laundering; devastated mom-and-pop businesses"

nitwit005 — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 20:19:57 +0000

> With the changes, people became reluctant to make these transactions, Ornelas said, because they worry it will open them up for government surveillance or targeting by immigration authorities in the current intensified enforcement.

Presumably, because it's hard to get a bank account in a country you aren't supposed to be in.

New comment by nitwit005 in "As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing"

nitwit005 — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:13:37 +0000

They don't have much of an offering yet. OpenAI has some conventional ads, but everyone expects more involved advertising integrated into the conversation itself somehow.

New comment by nitwit005 in "A California Program Is Bringing Down the Cost of Heat Pumps by Buying Bulk"

nitwit005 — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:32:32 +0000

Never, not a single time, in the entire history of California, has efficiency ever increased?

New comment by nitwit005 in "Why Wall Street is ignoring big tech's debt [video]"

nitwit005 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:47:46 +0000

A number of famous business leaders have admitted they had no idea what they were doing in their memoirs. A few have even suggested that was an advantage.

Everyone running these AI firms is being forced to make educated guesses about the future of the technology and the industry. It's unlikely they're all making accurate predictions.

New comment by nitwit005 in "A California Program Is Bringing Down the Cost of Heat Pumps by Buying Bulk"

nitwit005 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:57:54 +0000

That you struggle to believe a government could ever operate modestly more efficiently, doesn't mean it never happens.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

nitwit005 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:21:51 +0000

The problem is deception. People aren't going to check the weight and ingredients label every time they buy a product. A small size decrease won't get caught.

New comment by nitwit005 in "ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style"

nitwit005 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:20:15 +0000

You can generate 10000 different versions of something that might resemble someone's lost work. It's unlikely anyone will want to read any of them.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Managing AI Coding Costs at Scale"

nitwit005 — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 23:04:43 +0000

Someone did notice, as they panicked at the cost.

What didn't happen is any analysis of cost/benefit up front. Many of the corporate decisions around AI have seemed characterized by companies blindly copying each other.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Interviewing Engineers in the AI Era: Lessons from a Year of Rebuilding"

nitwit005 — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 21:57:24 +0000

My company has tried to produce an AI oriented process, and I just don't see it making sense.

The basic problem is, no one on our side has actually doubted the ability of candidates to us the AI tools in conventional ways.

Consider the design section here. I think we are all confident the candidates can query some AI tool for a design. It's basically copy-pasting the description in. The real goal is to have a discussion, to see if they understand the relevant issues. But then, we could just hand them a design.

It just seems like you waste time having them fiddle with prompts and everyone trying to read the output. Just skip to the discussion.

New comment by nitwit005 in "U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal"

nitwit005 — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 20:01:21 +0000

Technically yes, but you can clearly see the growth slow to essentially zero during part of the late Clinton years in that chart.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Civilians under siege by Mexican cartel fight back with AK-47s, grenades"

nitwit005 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 22:53:55 +0000

Maybe after the US annexes Greenland, for some reason.

New comment by nitwit005 in "I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy"

nitwit005 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:19:17 +0000

Sure, but remember the use case being discussed is interrogation. You have a tool that can collect what someone is trying to type, but they aren't trying to type.

And, my point was, there may be zero words to collect at all, because they'll tend not to be actively thinking about any words.

New comment by nitwit005 in "Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery"

nitwit005 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:14:44 +0000

Anime characters they clearly haven't paid for the rights to use seem popular (anime studios typically announce their partnerships).

Also not a copyright violation, but using Elon Musk's likeness without permission for investment scams seems to be a big thing.

New comment by nitwit005 in "I’m leaving OpenAI to build telepathy"

nitwit005 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:42:25 +0000

Remember that a lot of people have no internal monologue, and even for those that do, it's silent most of the time. They might hope to get that, but the typical case is for there to be no text or voice to extract.