Hacker News: oarla

New comment by oarla in "Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)"

oarla — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:44:32 +0000

Having no concerns and being healthy.

New comment by oarla in "Why aren't smart people happier? (2022)"

oarla — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:39:36 +0000

As the old adage goes

Ignorance is bliss.

Drawing from my own life experiences, the more I learn the more things I worry about that could go wrong. This worry creeps into all aspects of life and becomes the norm. This creates a sense of dissatisfaction which can be a form of unhappiness.

Smart folks get aware of environment/challenges etc much sooner than others and maybe that creates the pathway to erosion of happiness.

New comment by oarla in "U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’"

oarla — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:40:23 +0000

My personal opinion is that grades are one aspect of a filter that decides which college and subsequently which network a certain individual will have access to. It has a high correlation with intelligence but not linked via causation.

Every generation has struggled with it, except now it’s discussed heavily on social media and other forums. Hence the impression that it’s unique to this generation.

Are there challenges today that didn’t exist for previous generations? Yes! Are they more complex compared to what the previous generations faced? No!

New comment by oarla in "U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’"

oarla — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:25:30 +0000

If it’s the case, what’s wrong with that? Many have had to do that to get better gpa and college prospects.

New comment by oarla in "How many of the 170k English words do you know?"

oarla — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:07:00 +0000

Not a native speaker and my scores are 20, 19, 19, 20 and 15 for a total of 93.

Maybe I should consider myself as one :)

New comment by oarla in "Ask HN: Will you invest in SpaceX IPO?"

oarla — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 02:14:23 +0000

Can't. It'll be too expensive, I suspect, for mere speculation.

New comment by oarla in "S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic"

oarla — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 01:13:38 +0000

Thanks, makes sense now why they’re pushing for it.

New comment by oarla in "S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic"

oarla — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:53:30 +0000

I don’t have any background in finance, but what is stopping these companies from creating their own index and promoting it heavily? They have the market cap and the capital backing to do it I presume.

New comment by oarla in "S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic"

oarla — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:38:02 +0000

Probably it estimated future AI subscription costs.

New comment by oarla in "Cars collect a startling amount of data about you"

oarla — Sat, 30 May 2026 04:18:05 +0000

Now you have a different problem to solve!

New comment by oarla in "100 Best Novels of All Time"

oarla — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:52:06 +0000

I was initially very surprised to see "The god of small things" in this list and even more so to see it at 32 in the list. But then, this is a list voted for by authors, critics and academics who are probably the only set where such books are popular.

New comment by oarla in "US healthcare marketplaces shared citizenship and race data with ad tech giants"

oarla — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:17:32 +0000

Relevance?

New comment by oarla in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

oarla — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:16:05 +0000

I suspect something like this may already be in place.

New comment by oarla in "What your Bluetooth devices reveal"

oarla — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 01:30:14 +0000

As someone explained it below in this thread, walk into a mall with Bluetooth turned on and phone starts chiming with multiple "... wants to send you a media/audio/image etc." Not just ads, some bad actors would try to infect the phone with malware. Luckily never happened to me, but I heard from my acquaintances.

New comment by oarla in "What your Bluetooth devices reveal"

oarla — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 16:14:57 +0000

Yeah, but it stopped pretty soon stores figured out that they could flood you with advertisements over Bluetooth. In some places it was bad enough that I had to turn off Bluetooth.

New comment by oarla in "Common bad arguments for the correct answer to the Monty Hall Problem"

oarla — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 05:41:55 +0000

The way I understood why it’s beneficial to switch your choice after the host opens a door showing you a goat is as below

Assume that door 1 has a goat , door 2 has a car and door 3 has a goat behind it. There are 3 trials possible in the Monty Hall scenario

Trial 1 Contestant chose door 1(which is a goat). Host opens door 3(because he has to) and asks if contestant would like to switch. If he switches, then he wins the !

Trial 2 Contestant chooses door 2, host can open door 1 or 3 doesn’t matter. Host asks contestant if he’d like to switch and if he does then he loses.

Trial 3 Contestant chooses door 3(which has a goat). Host opens door 1(he has to) and asks if contestant would like to switch to door 2. Contestant switches to door 2 and wins a cat!

So 2/3 times contestant wins when switching his/her original choice.

New comment by oarla in "Captive Wi-Fi"

oarla — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 04:51:43 +0000

I see this every time I connect to my local library Wifi or Costco. I thought Captive was the name of the company providing this service. TIL.

New comment by oarla in "Show HN: H-1B Salary Data Explorer"

oarla — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:20:38 +0000

Thanks for sharing this! I suspect that the salary listed for certified petitions may be capturing the upper end of the range of salary provided in the LCA for the job/position rather than the actual salary.

New comment by oarla in "When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts"

oarla — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 01:28:15 +0000

Yes. Pitfall of not reading the entire comment before responding.

New comment by oarla in "When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts"

oarla — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 01:27:45 +0000

Noted.