Hacker News: skrbjc

New comment by skrbjc in "First live birth using Fertilo procedure that matures eggs outside the body"

skrbjc — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 23:37:28 +0000

Interesting because it seems like a miracle to me

New comment by skrbjc in "Noise-canceling single-layer woven silk and cotton fabric"

skrbjc — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 19:06:09 +0000

The Tines would kill for this tech.

New comment by skrbjc in "Who Pays for the Arts?"

skrbjc — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 16:09:43 +0000

I don't think you have been to a university recently, considering it seems like literally everything has some donor's name attached to it - including the actual professors themselves. This is an actual professor's title: "Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering"

Also Stanford literally has a building named after Bill Gates: https://www.cs.stanford.edu/about/gates-computer-science-bui...

New comment by skrbjc in "New Anti-Toxicity Features on Bluesky"

skrbjc — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 20:06:29 +0000

This is a key criticism of reddit, and everyone knows how much of an echo chamber reddit is

New comment by skrbjc in "New Anti-Toxicity Features on Bluesky"

skrbjc — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 20:02:33 +0000

Pretty much, the first one being more like you can hide a comment that you don't like and if someone wants to see it they can click "see hidden replies"

New comment by skrbjc in "A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee"

skrbjc — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 17:34:30 +0000

My thought is: if the process is followed properly there is very little risk of these chemicals being in the end product, but if a mistake is made, they could be present in levels that may have some negative health effect. However, if the water or co2 processes were screwed up, the only risk is caffeine being present, which is not ideal, but not as bad as those chemicals. We all know mistakes happen, which is why I'd rather go with a process that has less negative outcomes from a mistake.

New comment by skrbjc in "It's Time for Americans to Get over It and Embrace the Bidet (2015)"

skrbjc — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 18:26:29 +0000

If you had a wookie costume and there was peanut butter spread all over it, which would be more effective: A. wiping it off with toilet paper B. hosing the costume off

New comment by skrbjc in "It's Time for Americans to Get over It and Embrace the Bidet (2015)"

skrbjc — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 18:24:20 +0000

"Flushable" wet wipes are still terrible for the sewer system and honestly that is misleading marketing. They still get stuck in municipal systems and anyone that runs such a system would tell you that these shouldn't be labeled so.

New comment by skrbjc in "Supreme Court overturns 40-year-old "Chevron deference" doctrine"

skrbjc — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 18:50:42 +0000

Yes, exactly. Perfectly put.

New comment by skrbjc in "DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage (2020)"

skrbjc — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 17:36:00 +0000

Pretty sure it's becoming increasingly common that one person runs a fleet of drivers that they have imported from a foreign country. The primary person sets up all the accounts, and provides the cars, etc and the drivers do the deliveries and get paid a minuscule amount. In many cases they're akin to indentured servants that also live in packed housing owned by the "boss", to whom they also pay rent. The workers get their tiny sliver of money and send it home to help out their families, with the hope they can eventually establish themselves in the US.

New comment by skrbjc in "Spudguns: Potato Cannon Guide"

skrbjc — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 16:49:20 +0000

I remember the first time we fired one of these. It was dusk and my brothers and I had rigged a remote igniter, and I was elected to hold the cannon itself. We loaded it up, sprayed hairspray in and my brother pushed the igniter.

None of us had any idea of how powerful one of these was! The flame that came out the front was over a foot long. We thought maybe the potato would reach the back fence of our yard, but it was launched into oblivion. Luckily our house backed up onto a nature preserve, so at least no-one had a surprise potato land on them.

We had much fun that summer iterating on designs and trying every type of various projectile we could find.

New comment by skrbjc in "British duo arrested for SMS phishing via homemade cell tower"

skrbjc — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 23:38:55 +0000

Wouldn't be surprised if these people are connected to a foreign gov.

New comment by skrbjc in "Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education again"

skrbjc — Wed, 22 May 2024 21:48:38 +0000

That's more of a service for the school as an institution. I believe the OP is saying that most ed-tech startups that have a goal of helping with the learning process have not been successful. The thing that comes to mind to me was all the hype around MOOCs and how much everyone thought they would be a game-changer for education, but the reality is that the problem wasn't the fact that people didn't have access to the education, it's that so few have the focus/discipline/resources to actually follow-through.

New comment by skrbjc in "Minister defends arrest power for people feared to commit a hate crime in future"

skrbjc — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:53:56 +0000

Is it a hate crime if you attack someone because you hate that they're rich? Is it a hate crime if you attack someone because you hate blue shirts and he was wearing a blue shirt that day?

What exactly is a hate crime and how is it precisely defined such that it's more serious than crime in general?

If you punch someone in the face vs Punch them because they are a woman vs Punch them because they are white vs Punch them because they are black vs Punch them because they are gay vs Punch them because they are a nazi vs Punch them because they are a commie

Which of these is a hate crime and which is a "normal" crime. Which get punished more harshly and how to decide the motivation other than in the absolutely most obvious cases of the person confessing why they did it.

New comment by skrbjc in "Minister defends arrest power for people feared to commit a hate crime in future"

skrbjc — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:47:20 +0000

>Anglo-Saxon >Arif Virani

New comment by skrbjc in "Google lays off its Python team"

skrbjc — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 16:35:24 +0000

There's not much info in that thread, but it reads to me that they consolidated the responsibilities of this one team into another and let the original team go.

New comment by skrbjc in "This is a teenager"

skrbjc — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 19:50:54 +0000

The argument of the data seems to say we should put resources towards those with more adverse experiences in childhood.

But I wonder, if you were optimizing for improving more people's lives in a more meaningful way with limited funds, would you come to the conclusion that you could do so by focusing on improving the lives of those in the no adverse experiences group because you might be able to get more "life improvement units" per dollar?

Most think resources should be targeted towards groups that "deserve it more" because they are "worse off", but it's interesting to think if your goal is to create more happiness or whatever per dollar, maybe the discussion would lead us to investing in groups that are not on the proverbial "bottom"

New comment by skrbjc in "New paintings found at Pompeii"

skrbjc — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 16:56:17 +0000

Seems unlikely the slaves would be doing things like painting frescoes and laying mosaic floors. That would more likely be from skilled craftsmen. My impression was that the slaves were probably used to run the bakery.

New comment by skrbjc in "SFMTA's train system running on floppy disks; city fears 'catastrophic failure'"

skrbjc — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 22:09:03 +0000

>Let me guess, you also think public servants are lazy, overpaid and unskilled? Comments like this belie how many people form opinions of public agencies without having any real experience with government.

I've worked in the public sector for several years, and there are definitely a decently-sized group of people in many different positions that are riding out their time until retirement trying to fly under the radar and do as little as possible. Not to say there aren't people that aren't competent, but as a competent person you have to work around the people that don't care and often actively don't want to see more work come their way to get anything done. It becomes tiring and eventually the private sector is too enticing and the competent people leave.

New comment by skrbjc in "Anatomy of a credit card rewards program"

skrbjc — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 17:32:23 +0000

It's not just crypto it's any alternative payment system. Multiple payment vendors have tried to up-end the credit card companies by focusing on lower fees for merchants, but customers have no incentive to use that new system if they have a benefit to using their credit card, at least in the US.

It's why, though, there are a bunch of payments companies that have popped up in places throughout Asia that aren't competing with rewards systems off the back of interchange.