Hacker News: roxgib

New comment by roxgib in "5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients"

roxgib — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:24:26 +0000

Can't speak to pesticides, but lead would have been detected in blood tests

New comment by roxgib in "Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck"

roxgib — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:33:53 +0000

This will be interesting to watch. If I bought an autonomous car and the autonomous mode was disabled for a few days or even weeks while a bug was fixed I can always fall back to driving it myself. If that's not possible (maybe because the car doesn't support it or I didn't have a licence or human drivers had been banned) and suddenly it's a whole different situation. Of course owning a car might become less common in itself, if you're just taking them like an Uber you can always switch to a different company.

New comment by roxgib in "Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck"

roxgib — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:26:36 +0000

These cars can and do slow down or even stop and wait for human assistance in response to unexpected situations. I'm actually quite surprised this didn't trigger here, although we don't really know much about the specifics of the situation.

New comment by roxgib in "Waymo recalls software after two self-driving cars hit the same truck"

roxgib — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 11:19:07 +0000

But autonomous vehicles tend to perform best on freeways, that's where they are most likely to be allowed

New comment by roxgib in "Making a PDF that's larger than Germany"

roxgib — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 10:28:07 +0000

I'm a bit disappointed in myself that it didn't occur to me to submit my CV in A3.

New comment by roxgib in "Making a PDF that's larger than Germany"

roxgib — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 10:26:19 +0000

I was surprised that the underlying format doesn't implement compression (though I assume objects can be compressed). Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised since I often get text only PDFs with unreasonably large sizes.

New comment by roxgib in "Making a PDF that's larger than Germany"

roxgib — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 10:19:54 +0000

It will do that if it doesn't already know what direction you're travelling, which is usually because you've just activated navigation and you aren't moving yet. Unless I happen to know which direction north is or which way to towards my destination I'll just pick a random direction and it will adjust the route if I guessed wrong.

New comment by roxgib in "It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027"

roxgib — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 10:06:18 +0000

I bought my iPhone XS at launch and it just reached 80%, although on the latest version of iOS 80% doesn't get you as far as it once did. I'm not a super heavy smartphone user though.

New comment by roxgib in "It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027"

roxgib — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 09:03:27 +0000

Five years is much too short, although it's nice to see that it's measured from the date of sale stop rather than start.

New comment by roxgib in "It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027"

roxgib — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 08:58:24 +0000

I'll be interested to know if it applies to things like AirPods, those would be more challenging to redesign with replaceable batteries (though obviously not impossible).

New comment by roxgib in "It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027"

roxgib — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 08:57:27 +0000

What about AirPods and the like? I'm all for it with phones and everything else, but some devices are small enough that non-replaceable batteries might well be justified.

New comment by roxgib in "It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027"

roxgib — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 08:53:59 +0000

Shouldn't that be "in vivo diagnostic medical devices"?

New comment by roxgib in "The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)"

roxgib — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 14:32:10 +0000

What's stopping you learning about philosophy now? Do you not have time, not know where to start, or just don't have the motivation any more?

New comment by roxgib in "The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)"

roxgib — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 14:28:06 +0000

I definitely agree, but I do think for a lot of subjects schools can provide benefits that are hard or impossible to find on your own, such as access to equipment and facilities, dialogue with peers and teachers, group activities, objective measurements of your progress etc.

Edit: the other commenter's example is a good one - you can certainly study medicine by yourself, but without access to labs, cadavers, and clinical training you'd have a tough time.

New comment by roxgib in "The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)"

roxgib — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 04:27:00 +0000

This is all undoubtably true, but are any of these worth four years and a ton of debt? Perhaps for some individuals, but across the board?

New comment by roxgib in "The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone (2018)"

roxgib — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 04:25:03 +0000

Credentialism and signalling are well established. At a broader level it's the old 'correlation vs causation' chestnut. Policymakers notice that people with education earn more, and decide that people should do more education so they too can earn more, but it mostly fails because it wasn't just the education that holds them back. Meanwhile, in a world where everyone is forced to see high school through to graduation the value of a diploma is diminished.

In tech, some companies are increasingly willing to captialise on this by expanding their hiring pool and benefiting from snapping up workers that other companies don't want to hire. So there's some hope it seems that we can break free from the credentialist world that we're in right now.

New comment by roxgib in "The unsolved mystery of the Brinks jewelry heist"

roxgib — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 11:51:27 +0000

The merchants are lucky no one got hurt. Imagine being a guard, thinking what you were guarding was worth x amount, and it was actually worth 10x that and you get killed or injured because the employer reasonably assumed there wasn't a big risk of getting jacked. This is totally on the merchants.

New comment by roxgib in "The unsolved mystery of the Brinks jewelry heist"

roxgib — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 11:49:38 +0000

I don't think that makes a difference, because the shipping company has accepted liability for the stolen goods. The company looked at the value of the goods, and decided on these particular security measures, knowing they'd be on the hook if anything got stolen. Shit got stolen, and now they're paying up. You can't treat every shipment like it's the Mona Lisa, so if there's only $8.7 million of merchandise, you do the maths and optimise accordingly.

Put another way, it was a business decision.

New comment by roxgib in "The unsolved mystery of the Brinks jewelry heist"

roxgib — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 11:42:33 +0000

I should really start reading the HN comments before opening the article, it would save a lot of time

New comment by roxgib in "Helplessness is not learned (2022)"

roxgib — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 04:49:06 +0000

Requiring them to make their beds doesn't strike me as unreasonably petty, and to the extent that they do make soldier follow petty rules it's often done with a purpose, usually to install obedience. Not that there aren't lots of dicks in the military, but you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the way organisations do things because often there's a good reason.