Hacker News: skeeter2020

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:23:33 +0000

everyone of those things is built around data collection and tracking, which feeds their ad machine.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:22:34 +0000

>> So <$5 per month for someone in the developed world to keep using Instagram and stop being the product.

This is only true if everyone does it; Why would they stop advertising for a tiny market, especially if they can get both? Why decrease the value of the tracking on a smaller userbase? Sales conversion says you'd have to charge $50 or $500 a month and you'd have a much smaller base; does social media like this even work with a fraction of the people?

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:19:03 +0000

Maybe hthe GP is confident enough to have passed by the shallow indicator of displaying their wealth? The richest people I know personally (and who I deeply respect) absolutely delight in people under-estimating them, assuming they're "poor plebs" like the rest of us. They like money, recognize it's important and appreciate what it allows, but feel no need to advertise it.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:14:29 +0000

>> product managers can justify investing in features that otherwise would be passed up due to lack of revenue potential from advertising.

Like no ads? that's usually the #1 you pay for and no mention of that.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:13:36 +0000

I can't imagine the economics would work to support anything close to what they make from the ads & tracking model. They'd probably have to charge $39.99/month from everyone to compete.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "MacBook Pro Rival with the Nvidia Powered Surface Laptop Ultra"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:10:41 +0000

Microsoft has always made great hardware, often with partners or acquisitions. If they don't run (traditional) Windows - like the phones - they are really good; if they do run desktop Windows we've gone from useable-but-handicapped to completely unacceptable IMO. They also tend to be side projects within MS; I'd suspect this thing saw the light of day because it was sold as a way to pump more AI at their mostly captive audience.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "LLMs Are Closer to Religion Than They Appear"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:05:30 +0000

>> didn't make any sense.

only because of your lack of FAITH

New comment by skeeter2020 in "LLMs Are Closer to Religion Than They Appear"

skeeter2020 — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:04:41 +0000

The analogy that jumps to mind immediately is "you get the wikipedia page by default, but have the option to explore the page's metadata (including conversations)." This feels reasonable, and how most people use wikipedia - which isn't surprising since you're often getting an LLM's output from the training on the exact same information. The complaints in the report seem to miss the point IMO, jumping to some form of artificial intelligence and applying it to what is text prediction that unsurprisingly reflects the body of human knowledge on which it is trained.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

skeeter2020 — Sun, 31 May 2026 21:20:52 +0000

maybe not, but a terrorist would call in a fake bomb threat to inflect terror; that's kind of the point.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Headway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting Care"

skeeter2020 — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:13:35 +0000

What seems more likely for a startup doing online mental health to collect biometric data? 1. "getting ahead" of potentially changing regulations. 2. collecting data they don't need because it's (a) easier and (b) never know when you'll need it!

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Headway Therapy Patients Forced to Scan Their Faces to Keep Getting Care"

skeeter2020 — Fri, 29 May 2026 18:09:50 +0000

and each of these substances is widely mis-prescribed, abused and has huge illegal markets. Just because the OP obviously referred to this scenario doesn't mean they discounted your interpretation of big pharma. Also since you want to promote a super narrow perspective, Ozempic is a type-2 diabetes drug that has pivoted to the more lucrative weight-lose market and Viagra a pretty ho-hum hypertension drug that makes a better boner pill, so your takes are technically "side-effects"

New comment by skeeter2020 in "I am retiring from tech to live offline"

skeeter2020 — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:12:47 +0000

nothing tactical from me, but I've fostered a strategic approach over the years that's lead to a deep appreciation for the real-time experience. You can probably recognize when it's good (and bad) once you've worked for a while, and you really need to consciously pause and remark "If this isn't nice, what is?"^1 at those times when it is good.

A decade of consulting had me always ready to wrap my engagement at the end of any day, and (for better and worse) I carried this with me to future jobs. I always miss (at least some of) the people, but never the situation when it turns sour and I leave. The good news: you often get a chance to work with the good ones again (even if that's because you entice them away to your next gig).

^1 https://archive.org/details/ifthisisntnicewh0000vonn/mode/2u...

New comment by skeeter2020 in "I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline"

skeeter2020 — Fri, 29 May 2026 16:06:03 +0000

>> they went all-in on very orthodox scrum

do you mean "unorthodox"? What you describe sounds both terrible and not very scrum-like, at least ideally (I too have experienced when whatever terrible approach you use is labelled "agile" by leadership...)

New comment by skeeter2020 in "I'm Tired of Talking to AI"

skeeter2020 — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:47:57 +0000

>> what makes you feel they didn't make an effort?

Because everyone has had that person who you help out, and become their path of least resistance to an answer. They are not looking for the BEST or a GOOD answer, just the least effort. It's completely reasonable to push back with "what have you tried so far?"

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

skeeter2020 — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:37:15 +0000

Her exact comp hasn't been filed yet (watch for next year's IRS filings) but I'd suspect she'll make around 500K. That's a lot of money, but it's obvious she could make more in some of those other roles. This is not "Big Tech CEO" money.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

skeeter2020 — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:30:48 +0000

it's still ridiculously good compared to the alternatives, IME it's that a huge cohort of people came into tech during COVID and that was not a normal market. Now things are tightening up and the sense of entitlement is on display.

I've been doing this for a long time, and I remembering quiting my sales job to make 50% less as a developer, but I loved the work, the growth opportunities were amazing and playing the long game worked out.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

skeeter2020 — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:26:30 +0000

these demands are also embarassingly vague and based on situational judgement. They can claim that there's no transparency, accountability, consultation and that inconsistency continues regardless of what happens, if they don't like the outcome. I'd have a lot more sympathy if they asked for some concrete things, even if those were specifically defined funding or programs. "The ability to safely dissent." - WTF does that mean? where do you draw the line? We've all worked with that person who thinks they're "dissenting" when in reality they're just being an asshole.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

skeeter2020 — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:16:10 +0000

>> It was the one team at WMF whose product owner was, in effect, the volunteer community.

The author has no idea what a product entails if they think community suggestions - regardless of how sophisticated a community - is equivalent to a product owner. The most valuable thing a PO does is say "no" to what on the surface sound like good ideas.

New comment by skeeter2020 in "Ferrari Luce"

skeeter2020 — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:28:03 +0000

honest question: is there any difference between this and the Pontiac Aztek? I guess time will answer that one...

>> the Aztek was to signal a design renaissance for GM, and to "make a statement about breaking from GM's instinct for caution. One designer said that during the design process, the Aztek was made "aggressive for the sake of being aggressive." Peters, the Chief Designer said "we wanted to do a bold, in-your-face vehicle that wasn't for everybody."

New comment by skeeter2020 in "A reality check on the AI jobs hysteria"

skeeter2020 — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:47:19 +0000

You need to look at this in context of longer timeframes; recent college graduates have had higher unemployment rates since 2019, well before AI, and the diff has increased since covid. I suspect it's more about a decline in overall growth and hiring and AI now gives a convenient excuse, but the trend has been in play for a while.