Hacker News: skt5

New comment by skt5 in "U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’"

skt5 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:18:10 +0000

+1.

As an alum I've observed both:

* kids who partied hard first semester since grades didn't matter only to struggle second semester

* kids who benefited from this transition because they didn't go to Hotchkiss

I ended up in both buckets and I have mixed feelings about this since it helped and hurt me.

In the long run - it really didn't matter.

New comment by skt5 in "Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring"

skt5 — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:50:17 +0000

Wealth could be invested (impacts those borrowing), used on consumables (impacts businesses), or hidden under the mattress or equivalent (reduces the supply of money so acts deflationary).

I would argue that those 3 are the main downstream effects of having wealth -- and they all impact people at large enough values.

New comment by skt5 in "Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk"

skt5 — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 03:02:49 +0000

This approach does work when there's a clear answer but what about tasks where the correct answer is multi-modal? Incentivizing agreement works only for tasks where there's clear answers.

New comment by skt5 in "Amazon will stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk"

skt5 — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:17:52 +0000

This likely means those consuming the outputs of Mechanical Turk don't have a good way to measure the value (aka quality) of the outputs.

If they did - then they shouldn't care whether it's a human or a LLM. And if it's a LLM - then the cost will roughly correlate to the MIN(cost of the LLM, cost of a human) to do the task.

New comment by skt5 in "U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T"

skt5 — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 03:16:59 +0000

Any advice for a senior/staff level FAANG dev working in ML tooling but not in the health space interested in this kinda stuff?

What are good things to read, etc?

New comment by skt5 in "U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T"

skt5 — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 03:16:02 +0000

Fascinating. I feel like smart person + data (context such as health records, labs, insurance docs, etc.) + LLM -> some helpful tips for navigating the process. However, evaluating the tips on whether they are helpful or not would be hard for a smart person without the expertise.

Or put another way - how does a smart lay person evaluate the independent advocates? Do incentives align?

New comment by skt5 in "U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T"

skt5 — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:40:04 +0000

> If you're a software engineer who cares about health, and have been sitting on the sidelines till now, I think the next few years are a really interesting time to make a contribution.

do you have thoughts on what that looks like? what does the hiring landscape look like?

New comment by skt5 in "Vibe coding my way to a healthy family: Introducing Gamow Labs"

skt5 — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:48:53 +0000

I'm in a similar boat too! I found verbalizing it with anyone who will listen helps the anxiety.

New comment by skt5 in "Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing"

skt5 — Mon, 25 May 2026 20:38:00 +0000

> I participate in some management-focused online communities.

I know - slightly off topic - but would you be willing to share this list?

New comment by skt5 in "We saved $500k per year by rolling our own "S3""

skt5 — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 14:16:48 +0000

I used to use the docker + homebridge route but it became tedious to maintain. Instead, I connected it via the Google Home integration (requires an Insights plan) and then use my existing Starling Home hub to access it via HomeKit. This seems to be more reliable and less work than before.

New comment by skt5 in "Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market"

skt5 — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:29:33 +0000

The HHI [0] attempts to quantify that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl–Hirschman_index

New comment by skt5 in "The Consequences of Limiting the Tax Deductibility of R&D"

skt5 — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 04:56:53 +0000

isn’t that just an estate tax?

New comment by skt5 in "Leaked Microsoft pay data shows how much software engineers report making"

skt5 — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 15:08:25 +0000

59/60 - SDE 61/62 - SDE II 63/64 - Senior SDE 65/66/67 - Principle SDE (aka Staff) 68/69 - Partner SDE (aka Senior Staff)

New comment by skt5 in "Car ownership in the US is becoming more expensive"

skt5 — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:38:45 +0000

> the rest tried every trick in the book to get me to the dealership before they'd give me a price

would you be able to list those tricks? I'm currently car shopping myself. how did you get them to give you a price without showing up?

New comment by skt5 in "More Americans are using ‘buy now, pay later’ services to pay for groceries"

skt5 — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 15:31:30 +0000

> contractors can write off the expense

there's an opportunity cost for that expense. it reminds of this episode of Schitt's Creek - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg1Uk60rBsc.

New comment by skt5 in "Is Seattle a 15-minute city? It depends on where you want to walk"

skt5 — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 17:52:05 +0000

both

New comment by skt5 in "Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs"

skt5 — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 19:37:14 +0000

I wonder if for those who it was very obvious for "put their money where their mouths were" and bought a set of securities that would make them a ton of money on what was obvious when the obvious materializes in real life.

then, with that ton of money, they could buy enough shares to influence the board to implement their agenda.

in theory, this would quantify the definition of "obvious".

New comment by skt5 in "Tech CEOs Should Be Held Accountable, or Even Fired, Amid Layoffs"

skt5 — Mon, 06 Feb 2023 19:32:26 +0000

> create a management committee, possibly with a rotating chairship, and in general give the employees more say over the direction of the company they work for".

this sounds very similar to a government where politicians are elected (un)fairly. likely, this just presents another set of trade-offs.

New comment by skt5 in "The cost of being poor: Why it costs so much to be poor in America"

skt5 — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 14:28:03 +0000

Income is evidence of a person's ability to pay. Credit history is evidence of a person's willingness to pay. I would expect a positive correlation between the two but relying on that correlation seems risky.

New comment by skt5 in "EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business"

skt5 — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 19:47:47 +0000

This is what economists call the Laffer curve. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve.