Hacker News: quietthrow

New comment by quietthrow in "Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]"

quietthrow — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 06:15:09 +0000

Genuine curiosity: if you are gifted with a certain “wiring” (genes, brain chemistry etc) why is that considered an accomplishment? Also - We, as a society, tend to celebrate people with “natural didn’t really need to work for” type gifts quite inconsistently - eg A supermodel who is gifted with the gift of looks, beauty etc is also in the same category of “natural” talent but sure doesn’t get the same celebration as a prodigy in maths or science. In both cases the people are fundamentally bestowed with abilities they didn’t really have to work extremely hard to acquire but are perhaps looked at differently. What’s kind of psychology is at play here? Would love to understand how we tend to interpret such things and then form beliefs.

I realize and acknowledge both sets had talents and the spent thier time doing something with it to produce something extraordinary but we seem to tend to overlook the massive head start they also had. Why so?

(Totally understandable if you feel like downvoting but I would ask you to articulate and share the cord it struck with you if you down vote)

New comment by quietthrow in "India's Electric Two-Wheeler Market: Rise, Reset and What Comes Next"

quietthrow — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 14:22:31 +0000

Curious how this impact air pollution? My understanding is that the largest contributor of air pollution in cities is vehicles. And if predominantly the vehicles are cars and 2 wheelers and of that the higher percentage is 2 wheelers and if those are changing from petrol to electric then it should make a dent in pollution. As such air pollution could be a proxy of how e-2w benefit the country…

New comment by quietthrow in "Willis Whitfield: Creator of clean room technology still in use today (2024)"

quietthrow — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 07:21:42 +0000

Well said.

New comment by quietthrow in "Theory – how to make it so nobody's poor"

quietthrow — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 06:04:55 +0000

Well the whole thing is damned if the point can’t make it across right.

New comment by quietthrow in "Theory – how to make it so nobody's poor"

quietthrow — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 05:55:25 +0000

Dude - use a LLM. Make it coherent and try again. You owe it to your idea

New comment by quietthrow in "Cost of AGI Delusion:Chasing Superintelligence US Falling Behind in Real AI Race"

quietthrow — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 15:24:06 +0000

Because that’s what is configured as the “default” page to show when somebody goes straight to archive.ph. When you go to archive.ph/someurl the server then serves you a page that corresponds to that url (someurl in this example). When you go to YouTube.com/somerandomstring it takes you directly to the video. But if you just go to YouTube.com you get a bunch of “random” videos as the home page is configured to show that (grossly simplifying )

New comment by quietthrow in "What to do with an old iPad"

quietthrow — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 06:09:10 +0000

Genuine question:

1) I am surprised there is no mention of trading it back to apple? 2) I am sure putting a decent “churn” schedule for apple devices is already been done right? Top of my head I can imagine coming up with one where for of the major product line apple offers (mbp, iPad, iPhone) we can look at the typical depreciation curve and find optimal “get in” points and “get out” points right? How hard could it be. I agreed there is a friction and activation energy needed to going down to the Apple Store and trading it in but you could get a new device every 1-2 years and keep largely churning the same out of money plus a slightly more to top up (call it premium to avoid the anger /pain inflicted by not doing it.)

What am I missing here ?

New comment by quietthrow in "Prison isn’t set up for today’s tech so we have to do legal work the old way"

quietthrow — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 02:16:17 +0000

Aren’t prisons a business run by corporations? And I could be wrong but I recall reading somewhere a while ago that 1 or 2 companies run most of the prisons in USA. As such they probably have no need / incentives driven by market forces to modernize. It’s not exactly a market to begin with in the first place I would say.

New comment by quietthrow in "Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation"

quietthrow — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 13:25:02 +0000

This. To me if you are still unprofitable after 15 years you are not really a business.

However genuinely curious about the thesis applied by the VC’s/Funds that invest in such a late stage round? Is it simply they are taking a chance that they won’t be the last person holding the potato? Like they will get out in series L or M rounds or the company may IPO by then. Either ways they will make a small return? Or is the calculus diff?

Ask HN: How to ask questions to LLMs privately?

quietthrow — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 02:06:13 +0000

It’s an incredible time we live in. We can ask any question we want the previously we may have been embarrassed to ask and get an answer and learn and improve ourselves daily. Just one thing I can’t wrap my mind around is privacy. We all seem to be asking sometimes stupid and some times incredibly personal questions to these llms. Questions that we may not even speak out loud from embarrassment or shame or other such emotions to even our closest people. How are these companies using our data ? More importantly what are you all doing to protect yourself from misuse of your information? Or is it if you want to use it you have to give up such privacy and uncomfortableness ? What are some solutions available today that people are using there are somewhat privacy, preserving or fully privacy preserving?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44730323

Points: 2

# Comments: 4

New comment by quietthrow in "Study mode"

quietthrow — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 02:04:28 +0000

I agree with all that you say. It’s an incredible time indeed. Just one thing I can’t wrap my mind around is privacy. We all seem to be asking sometimes stupid and some times incredibly personal questions to these llms. Questions that we may not even speak out loud from embarrassment or shame or other such emotions to even our closest people. How are these companies using our data ? More importantly what are you all doing to protect yourself from misuse of your information? Or is it if you want to use it you have to give up such privacy and uncomfortableness ?

Ask HN: How commonly is PIP deployed for non performance reasons in FANGs

quietthrow — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 08:18:08 +0000

A dear friend confided recently that they are being forced out of a team. The options given were change teams or go on PIP. The reasons cited were hand wavy. They went through a manager change recently and prior manager gave positive feedback (solid performance and happy with current state) and suddenly next quarter with new manager feedback was performance is suboptimal however no specific causes given (its all hand wavy and subjective which means it’s open to interpretation and it’s the managers interpretation against the subordinates)

This person is junior and I can see it’s taking a toll on them psychologically. I have never been a manager so I don’t know the dynamics of a large organization (fang) but am curious how many of you have experienced something similar or were forced to performance manage a employee when they really didn’t have bad performance but you had to do it anyways due to organizational pressures/circumstances?

I am an IC in tech given the current climate want to protect myself from something like this happening. What’s the best way to do so?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44487913

Points: 4

# Comments: 6

New comment by quietthrow in "California has got good at building giant batteries"

quietthrow — Thu, 29 May 2025 23:59:38 +0000

Genuine question: If CA is mostly getting its energy from Solar why is my energy bill so high especially during winters? Or does solar energy while clean does not necessarily mean cheap?

New comment by quietthrow in "Observations from people-watching"

quietthrow — Sun, 11 May 2025 07:26:36 +0000

What’s the name of the book? Can’t just leave that hanging !

New comment by quietthrow in "Tsunami Warning for Northern California"

quietthrow — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 19:16:52 +0000

Interesting observation: I am in a circumstance where I am transitioning from an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy) to a iPhone. I observed that android phone alerted me about an earthquake and that I should be ready to feel tremors. To my surprise as I was pondering how this system works - especially wrt to latency - where it alerts me head of time, I then fell small tremors in 2 or 3 seconds after the alert. The tremors were very small and I would not have noticed it if it weren’t for the alert. ~10 (may 15 minutes) later, the IPhone gave a tsunami warning which I take it was due to the earthquake.

What I was surprised by is how behind the iPhone was. I expected iPhone to be on par with android in terms of safety alerts.

Anybody know if there is a way to get the early alerts on iPhone like I did on the android phone?

In general my impression of Android is that it’s quite ‘leaky’ and apps can abuse it quite easily and iPhone is more secure. Would love to hear thoughts on this or point me to resources that address this question.

New comment by quietthrow in "Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove"

quietthrow — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 14:32:04 +0000

Well said. "Youth is wasted on the young"

New comment by quietthrow in "Bill limits smartphone use in California schools"

quietthrow — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 02:38:41 +0000

> So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?

Because your prefontal cortext does not fully grow till you are in your early 20s. A 17 years olds brain is very different from that off a 22 year old. There are different repercussions to arressting development vs letting the brain "grow" and then have it face the issues of the day. Both will still have impact but the latter gives them the best fighting chance.

New comment by quietthrow in "Ask HN: How do you deal with an off-day?"

quietthrow — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 03:55:58 +0000

Genuine question: why does being productive matter on a off day? Isn't an off day ones body's way of telling that it's need something else not what the mind conjures up randomly or something that is instilled in the subconscious through cultural or personal values?

New comment by quietthrow in "Ask HN: How do people feel about working for Meta?"

quietthrow — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 14:38:51 +0000

Just know somebodys hero is another persons zero or villan ;) Having saud that I understand its not a competition.

New comment by quietthrow in "Ask HN: How do people feel about working for Meta?"

quietthrow — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 14:36:43 +0000

This is very close how most are there. There are those who need a paycheck and keep the job but on balance lot of the ones there have drunk the coolaid.