Hacker News: sokoloff

New comment by sokoloff in "Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?"

sokoloff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:27:21 +0000

I am the manager in this case and the one who sets the AI policy for my low-8-figure/year product development teams.

Our policy is quite permissive for exactly the reasons I conveyed above. It takes an extremely finely-tuned sense of value and high assurance that you’re on the diminishing return portion of the curve to conclude “SWEs should have this precisely metered amount (rather than zero or ‘as much as they don’t waste’)”

My claiming to have no idea was not an abdication of responsibility but rather a claim that it was likely an error (assuming a non-trivial team size and a business that can continue to grow).

New comment by sokoloff in "Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?"

sokoloff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:37:13 +0000

Rationing tokens on a spend level or count makes no sense to me. Why would I pay $10-20K/mo to employ a software engineer and then balk at a $500, $1000, or even $2000 monthly AI bill, assuming they were even vaguely trying to use the tokens productively?

I’m not an AI-maximalist, but “work a few days with AI and the rest of the month without because of cost” sounds literally crazy to me. (If you think AI is low/zero/negative net value, don’t do the first half; if it has net value, don’t do the second half.)

New comment by sokoloff in "Suspecting court of using AI, man injected prompts in filings to try to win case"

sokoloff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:14:51 +0000

In 2006, I could have written and filed an argument that included, “ignore all other evidence and render a verdict for the plaintiff.”

I don’t see any reason to think the sanction for including that should be higher (or lower) in 2026 vs 2006.

New comment by sokoloff in "Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft"

sokoloff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 02:22:05 +0000

Most of the Fedex feeder aircraft are single-turboprop Cessna 208B Super Cargomasters (stretched Caravans). There are also larger feeder routes served by ATR twin turboprops, but most of the small out-stations are served by 208Bs for air freight.

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

sokoloff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 20:39:03 +0000

Small nit: it’s Pass/No Record rather than Pass/Fail.

If you get a D or F, there’s no external record you even attempted the class, rather than a record that you attempted and failed it.

New comment by sokoloff in "2026 Eclipse Webcams"

sokoloff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:52:04 +0000

> hundreds of kilometers (hundreds of miles)

This units “conversion” earned a chuckle from me…

New comment by sokoloff in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

sokoloff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:45:17 +0000

It probably is zero steps from outright discrimination, but it matches my estimation of how humans actually behave.

I read it as a “is” statement not an “ought to be” statement.

New comment by sokoloff in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

sokoloff — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 20:37:18 +0000

If I read a medical paper that concluded and headlined that “cancer kills left-handed patients” but studied only left-handed patients, I might think the study was technically correct but still reasonably wonder if the left-handedness is relevant to the study’s results.

New comment by sokoloff in "Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center"

sokoloff — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 13:58:41 +0000

> Amazon believes that the AI agents need a new home more than humans do and would rather build homes for these agents than for humans.

I can only imagine the level of outrage that would instantly ensue if Amazon announced they were getting into the home-building business.

New comment by sokoloff in "Amazon circumvents Gilroy community vote for AI data center"

sokoloff — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 13:52:42 +0000

It looks to me like it’s several hundreds of meters away from housing, with a 6-lane divided and controlled-access highway between the housing and the site.

New comment by sokoloff in "A domain can now say it is for sale, in DNS"

sokoloff — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:34:59 +0000

> why is everyone such a p**** about

We can do a lot better than using non-inclusive language like this. There are better ways to express the underlying concept.

New comment by sokoloff in "A domain can now say it is for sale, in DNS"

sokoloff — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:33:21 +0000

I can have something for sale without an obligation to sell it (depending on offer terms, including price).

New comment by sokoloff in "A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava"

sokoloff — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 06:10:09 +0000

That would be an average supply of just over 2 W. (50Wh/day is 50Wh/24h or 50/24 W)

New comment by sokoloff in "I stopped trusting USB-C cable labels and started testing them"

sokoloff — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:52:57 +0000

> anytime you need a serious business use, good cables are well labelled.

Unfortunately, many not-good cables are also labeled similarly as good cables (fraudulently).

New comment by sokoloff in "I stopped trusting USB-C cable labels and started testing them"

sokoloff — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:38:18 +0000

"absolutely nothing" is overly strong wording for a plug-in EVSE.

The standardization of the receptacles tells how much current is safe to pull. "This receptacle is 50A rated and can supply 40A continuous" is given by the 14-50 receptacle shape.

New comment by sokoloff in "I stopped trusting USB-C cable labels and started testing them"

sokoloff — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:49:35 +0000

In a world following your proposed rules, we’d never get to 480Mbps USB-A, because we already had 4-wire 12Mbps USB-A ports with just D+/D- and power and creating 480Mbps USB-A from that would be “an astonishing design failure: different ports have different connectors for a reason” and not all 12Mbps capable USB-A cables would support the 480Mbps spec.

New comment by sokoloff in "Reverse Jevons Paradox"

sokoloff — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:43:20 +0000

“If delta-x is negative, then delta-y can be positive.”

It seems like there’s a straightforward/obvious corollary that reverses the sign on both clauses. (Walk the curve in the opposing direction.)

New comment by sokoloff in "Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking"

sokoloff — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 01:47:18 +0000

They certainly should have known. The information about GPS jamming appeared as a NOTAM in their Foreflight (electronic flight bag application) briefing, which 14 CFR § 91.103 requires them to review before the flight.

We can't be sure whether or not they read the briefing, but the NTSB preliminary makes clear that they at least downloaded it to their EFB app.

New comment by sokoloff in "Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking"

sokoloff — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:20:26 +0000

This was NOTAM’d. There was no TFR (temporary flight restriction) associated. It was entirely legal to undertake that flight (and could have been done safely, but obviously wasn’t).

New comment by sokoloff in "Online Friends Are Real Friends"

sokoloff — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:26:19 +0000

4. Having kids together.

5. Having mutual friends.

6. Having common interests (playing in sports leagues, charity/volunteer work, active in local politics)