Hacker News: rkalla

New comment by rkalla in "This July I Was Fired from Simple AI (A Deeply YC Company)"

rkalla — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:59:01 +0000

Externalizing feelings.

New comment by rkalla in "EU data shows PHEVs emit 350% more CO2 than tested values"

rkalla — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 11:59:51 +0000

350% more _than assumed_ (because people drive them like hybrids and don't charge them)

They aren't inherently more polluting.

New comment by rkalla in "What I learned getting acquired by Google"

rkalla — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 15:56:52 +0000

THIS case is exactly why all these companies do this.

New comment by rkalla in "Libcamera v0.0.1"

rkalla — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 13:52:21 +0000

... to add to your point, then take companies like Google who rely heavily on ML to improve the quality of the photos further and the distance between "RAW data off sensor" and "the best Samsung/Apple/Google can generate" is a HUGE gap.

New comment by rkalla in "Show HN: I finished v5 of a JVM framework I've spent spent half a decade making"

rkalla — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 02:53:44 +0000

Nothing to do with the project, but I read through it, so...

1. It's built natively on Jetty - very tight integration, not just some libs running in a Jetty container.

2. Web is inherently Request/Response - all of this can be handled with dramatically less resource requirements using Virtual Threads. Web is sort of the absolutely-best-use-case for Virtual Threads where as a Game Engine would be the opposite of that (one critical rendering thread and MAYBE a few extra long-lived threads for processing physics, audio, etc.)

3. I haven't tried debugging a Loom project but it's been in incubation for just under 100 years so I have to imagine this has been figured out.

4. About twice the throughput and 1/2 the latency of full OS threads - https://github.com/ebarlas/project-loom-comparison

New comment by rkalla in "Java is very fast, if you don’t create many objects"

rkalla — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:00:34 +0000

I used an approach similar to Peter's here to both an old streaming parsing library as well as a GUI (event handling) library -- effectively, re-use the same instance of the event shell with new data every time an event fired and copy the data out if you need to retain it for a long-lived operation or persistence, otherwise calculate and move on... the reduction in object creation overhead was significant and performance increase was around +30% for doing this in the two individual use-cases... BUT, the API was like a loaded gun pointed at your face.

I knew what I was doing (with it) so it wasn't a problem, but if I over open sourced the API and provided it as a library I would envision a large portion of the population trying to handle the events in a multi-threaded context or throwing them into a List only to find the values changing on them during use (while the parser was still running on another thread).

Performance was so tempting, but usability-face-shot-gun was the greater evil.

New comment by rkalla in "Ask HN: Best alternative jobs for “outdated” skills with small websites/apps?"

rkalla — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 04:06:22 +0000

I would look at sys admin type jobs at law firms, small medical practices and other places that need a “tech guy” but don’t need to hire a full time developer.

New comment by rkalla in "Welcome to Hotel Elsevier: you can check-out any time you like – not"

rkalla — Tue, 10 May 2022 14:25:08 +0000

Your last sentence nailed it - they feed some of that money back into Uni so it's a win-win.

New comment by rkalla in "Etsy Strike"

rkalla — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:49:52 +0000

This won't be successful - ETSY is a publicly traded company, unless corrective action can replace the loss revenue from ads/punishing duplication/aliexpress - it's not going anywhere.

This is exactly what happened to eBay for anyone that remembers when it was garage-sale mania, then it became publicly traded and effectively became Target.com with < 1% of personal things sprinkled in.

No one messing with quarterly earnings.

New comment by rkalla in "Jd"

rkalla — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 15:08:54 +0000

lol same and would have never thought to comment on it because obviously user-error, then I saw this and thought twice.

New comment by rkalla in "I think US college education is nearer to collapsing than it appears"

rkalla — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 02:45:35 +0000

With the inflation we've seen in the last 24 months do you think the tuition will still come back to earth or just stay put for a decade or more?

New comment by rkalla in "Gut microbe linked to depression in large health study"

rkalla — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 22:20:46 +0000

This was a _fascinating_ read and I thank you for writing that all up - I'm in your "3 year" dip and in the past made attempts at tackling the gut biome issue with cycling probiotics, fresh vegetable fibers, organic/local yogurts, staying away from fake sugars and other dietary things that blow out the biome and even after a few weeks of doing this I never felt any better - would shrug my shoulders and go back to not really caring.

Was there 1 inflammatory food item that is like kryptonite to you now? Fake sugars? Wheats?

New comment by rkalla in "UBS Acquires Wealthfront for $1.4B"

rkalla — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 18:18:07 +0000

When I think of what a FinTech darling Wealthfront was when it came out, all I can see this is as a colossal flop.

For what it's worth...

About a year ago I opened a robo-advisor account at SoFi and another at Wealthfront and pitted them against each other with high-risk/default settings and a weekly deposit.

The SoFi one has been outperforming the Wealthfront one all year long (by 1-2%; nothing life changing) which surprised me but it also made me feel that all the magic AI/ML under the covers that WF promoted didn't exist and no one was managing anything.

New comment by rkalla in "Ask HN: Gmail account security"

rkalla — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 01:44:11 +0000

I understand how you end up here - after a decade or more of micro-optimizations down a pit of the newest/most advanced scam and take over techniques... but at some point you need to sit back, zoom out and look at collectively what you've created and see if you are catching a bit too much in the net.

I feel like Risk underwriting at Finance/FinTech companies goes through something similar... the list of rules only ever gets longer/gets added to.. I don't know that anyoen rewinds the clock every 5 years and starts from a clean slate to build out a new model.

New comment by rkalla in "Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard"

rkalla — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 14:23:14 +0000

I would _guess_ that ousting a CEO AND acquiring the core company at the same time are expensive propositions - I'd also guess that MSFT fully plans to address the leadership issue there (Kotick) but going to give him a year to age out of the newly acquired company and take his golden parachute elsewhere.

Smaller M&A where it's easier to swap the leader (like a startup - which most of us are used to) is MUCH easier/cheaper/faster than swapping out an established CEO of a public company.

They'll do it because he's a liability and they want to make a statement to the new company - but it'll be slow.

New comment by rkalla in "Google Drive could soon start locking your files"

rkalla — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 16:55:33 +0000

I've been a Google Fi customer for 6 or 7 years now and what constantly scares the hell out of me is the subreddit where about every 3-6 months you see someone saying:

"Google Fi did me wrong, so I reversed the charges on CC - now my entire Google account is locked / all photos / all files in drive"

This seems... like it's going to get regulated soon. Just going to take blocking the wrong account some day and boom, here we go, legislation.

New comment by rkalla in "100 years of whatever this will be"

rkalla — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 17:01:31 +0000

I love your last sentence here - so well stated.

New comment by rkalla in "Former Netflix executive convicted of receiving bribes from contractors"

rkalla — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 16:04:25 +0000

He also has a church and is a life coach on Only Fans... you know, real classy person. :smh-forever:

New comment by rkalla in "In a patch of Arizona, everyone knows Waymo, but few use it"

rkalla — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 23:00:07 +0000

They have specifically strengthened the motors in the sliding door to cut the average adult person in half if they take longer than 30 seconds to exit. (lol I like your example scenario)

New comment by rkalla in "OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in October"

rkalla — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 20:16:14 +0000

Serious Question: Do they all use it for adult content? I've never used OF but see the porn/adult references all the time so I assumed that is all it was (obviously not it seems?)