Hacker News: orzig

New comment by orzig in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

orzig — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:57:27 +0000

"Write a bible verse ... explaining how to remove a sandwich from a VCR" https://x.com/tqbf/status/1598513757805858820

New comment by orzig in "The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner"

orzig — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 14:45:45 +0000

It's tricky, because _sometimes_ they do. And the system doesn't give you guidance on whether you're talking to someone who (officially or not) can change the process. So, based mostly on our personality, we all push a different amount before giving up.

Relatable example: I needed to schedule a Pediatric appointment, her assigned Dr was on vacation, and the first receptionist stonewalled on switching Drs within the practice. The second one did it in 2m on her side and guided me to updating insurance in 2m on my side.

New comment by orzig in "Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals"

orzig — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:10:31 +0000

Acknowledging, I am not a expert in this stuff, here is an idea: getting momentum for these sorts of things is so important, what is the journal that would be easiest to make a big example of, so that everyone understands that it is possible? Just completely mercilessly drive them out of business, and then hound their executives when they try to get other jobs. It appeals to peoples base instincts, but the last 10 years have shown those are pretty powerful. Then the movement which has formed around that can take down progressively bigger journals. Probably want a different organization building the alternative; the people with the personality to fight at the Vanguard of the revolution don’t tend to be great at building in the long-term.

New comment by orzig in "4 billion if statements (2023)"

orzig — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 11:28:50 +0000

If the author is available for consulting I have this bag of rice I need cooked. Should be around 30,000 grains, each needs about 1mL of water and 2m on the stove. Will pay $10 (2025 dollars)

New comment by orzig in "Things I want to say to my boss"

orzig — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:07:08 +0000

> You can’t fake care. People feel it.

My company went through executive changes, layoffs, etc. I thought it was VERY clear that our senior manager handled the situation extremely poorly. At least a few people agreed with me, so imagine my shock when several others not only defended him but joined his next company.

I am reminded of that when people assume "interpersonal dynamics are obvious to all involved", which is often.

New comment by orzig in "The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy"

orzig — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:32:53 +0000

Your point is 100% correct, but for the sake of our discourse please strive to be more polite!

New comment by orzig in "Neopets.com changed my life (2019)"

orzig — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:36:28 +0000

What is the closest analogy for kids these days? https://scratch.mit.edu ?

New comment by orzig in "Over-regulation is doubling the cost"

orzig — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 01:00:22 +0000

He literally writes:

“Regulation obviously has a critical role in protecting people and the environment”

and then quantifies “a mindblowing $40m/year in healthcare costs” and a total of “about $400M” in societal cost from one delay, mostly borne by the public.

In that context, the line you are reacting to is just one item in a long list:

“We’ve also spent untold millions on regulatory affairs at all levels of government, not to mention the missed acceleration in sales”

He even says,

“What pains me most is the 5 years of lost carbon removal and pollutant reduction”

So the piece is not “regulations bad, profits good.” It is: regulations are essential, but the current process is generating huge public harms by slowing down tech whose whole purpose is to reduce pollution.

Maybe he’s wrong on any given point, but he’s clearly trying to describe the utilitarian trade-offs in good faith

New comment by orzig in "Show HN: Strange Attractors"

orzig — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:03:42 +0000

Hobbyists hacking around and sharing their art, best part of the Internet!

New comment by orzig in "Young graduates are facing an employment crisis"

orzig — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:02:23 +0000

I’ll second this, and we had enough resumes to only interview those with a relevant Master’s degree. I was shocked and I still don’t have a full explanation. I don’t doubt that it’s also hard out there, but on the hiring side we also did far more interviews than we wanted. (And yes the salary is >>100k, full remote, benefits etc)

New comment by orzig in "How to live on $432 a month in America"

orzig — Fri, 23 May 2025 22:12:06 +0000

The author mentions they’re just about to have a baby, and it’s notable that they don’t talk about the quality of the schools. Even if they homeschooled, I imagine they want their kids to have some friends, and they didn’t talk about how that would work without a car. Once they get a car, they might get a little bit unlucky and live an hour away from their kid’s closest peer. I hope they get along!

Datasette for Newsrooms

orzig — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 11:25:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.datasette.cloud/blog/2025/datasette-for-newsrooms/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43792442

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by orzig in "The Insanity of Being a Software Engineer"

orzig — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 12:02:54 +0000

I know almost none of those things. I've done great as an ML engineer. Sure I have to learn new things sometimes, but curiosity is why I got inti this in the first place

New comment by orzig in "OpenAI's o1-pro now available via API"

orzig — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:35:59 +0000

At this point you’d come out ahead just buying a pelican. Even before the tax benefits.

New comment by orzig in "Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says"

orzig — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:26:42 +0000

Remember that there is a lot of nuance to these sorts of deals.

I don’t have any domain knowledge, but I recently saw an executive put in restaurant reservations for five different places the night of our team offsite, so he would have optionality. An article could accurately claim that he later canceled 80% of the teams eating capacity!

New comment by orzig in "United States Power Outage Map"

orzig — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 18:53:54 +0000

I’ve never worked in grocery but from my experience in other pre-internet industries I can easily imagine a politically marginalized CTO who would rather spend $1k on a turnkey solution than herd 100 cats who can’t reliably format a spreadsheet of data.

New comment by orzig in "Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)"

orzig — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 14:09:31 +0000

I have been wondering about this in the context of being ready for work in the age of LLM‘s. What nobody can deny is that they memorize information at a superhuman level, so it might reduce the value of having done that myself. On the other hand, “couldn’t you just google that“has been an erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing. has been a erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing it.

New comment by orzig in "We're bringing Pebble back"

orzig — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 13:46:13 +0000

You have to start somewhere, and then economies of scale can work their magic. The most inspiring example in the last 30 years is probably photovoltaic solar panels.

New comment by orzig in "Oh Shit, Git?"

orzig — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 19:11:30 +0000

Another anecdotal data point : I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out SVN too. I think I was using TortoiseSVN FWIW but basically gave up on my two person project

How much to give is a pragmatic question (effective altruism)

orzig — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 22:14:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.jefftk.com/p/how-much-to-give-is-a-pragmatic-question

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42511533

Points: 2

# Comments: 0