Hacker News: spondylosaurus

New comment by spondylosaurus in "House Arab"

spondylosaurus — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 22:04:17 +0000

A common enough mistake :) Re. your other comment though, I'm not sure the NYer has ever cared about worrying what conservatives will think about their contributors, at least not in my lifetime. I just read a lovely new Zadie Smith essay yesterday where she talked about her commitment to socialist ideals!

Which is ironic compared to the NYT, because I think the New Yorker tends to slip under the conservative media's radar, whereas the NYT has conspicuously attempted to appeal to conservatives but in doing so has only alienated some more liberal readers while still catching a whole lot of conservative ire.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "House Arab"

spondylosaurus — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 21:46:15 +0000

Given the cartoons and references to fact-checking, I assume this is about the New Yorker (and not the NYT as another commenter suggested), but I'm a bit surprised because the New Yorker has been one of the most vocal outlets speaking out about the plight of Palestinians, even prior to the current assault on Gaza. Which obviously doesn't preclude the possibility that this guy's coworkers were weird and shitty to him, but like, the NYer has not been shy about discussing civilians casualties in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank, or featuring guest pieces from Palestinian authors.

Chotiner alone has done at least a few dozen interviews in the past few years where he's made his opposition to the war in Gaza very clear, and (famously) made its supporters look very stupid and callous by letting them trip over their own words. But... Chotiner himself is a white guy (or at least I assume?), so there is that. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes. Could very well be some ugly office politics that this author is right to be upset about, even if I'm skeptical about his commentary on the effects of those politics on the NYer's reporting.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Escaping the Internet"

spondylosaurus — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 18:48:10 +0000

Another head-scratcher from the link you shared:

> ...the progressive default that change==good, never honoring tradition or asking why it often prevails.

As a progressive this "default" is certainly news to me...

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Using your phone on toilet may give you hemorrhoids: study"

spondylosaurus — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 18:21:11 +0000

Learning to relax your pelvic floor is helpful too. You should be opening the door, not pushing things through it :)

New comment by spondylosaurus in "We Ran the CDC: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American's Health"

spondylosaurus — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 19:34:19 +0000

Many chronic conditions are also "chronic" now but just two or three generations ago were either a swift or slow and painful death sentence. We see more adults with because now they actually survive into adulthood and can reasonably participate in society rather than being confined to their homes (or to a home).

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed"

spondylosaurus — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 01:57:08 +0000

Case studies suggest otherwise, at least for most people.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/05/10/to-see-and-not...

New comment by spondylosaurus in "The Fancy Rug Dilemma"

spondylosaurus — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 17:36:26 +0000

I have to ask... why the extra lettuce? At In-N-Out I sometimes ask for less lettuce because I feel like it's unnecessary filler compared to the other ingredients, lol. Maybe they've just been giving my unused lettuce to you...

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law"

spondylosaurus — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 03:18:54 +0000

Does it actually? (Genuine question.) The article doesn't get into specifics about how the block is implemented, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is some non-trivial way around it.

Or, conversely, I'm unsure if other decentralized platforms would be unable to implement a similar block.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "In the long run, LLMs make us dumber"

spondylosaurus — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 22:01:35 +0000

> Also it has a high opinion of Bryan Ferry. Deeply untrustworthy.

Whoa, whoa, are we talking Bryan Ferry as an artist, or Bryan Ferry as a guy? Because I love me some Roxy Music but have heard that Bryan is kind of a dick.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "AI vs. Professional Authors Results"

spondylosaurus — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 02:14:21 +0000

I thought it was interesting/telling (but maybe not surprising) that the AI-generated stories scored the highest according to reader rankings, yet pinged to me as immediately flat and generic. But I really liked the idiosyncrasies of a few of the human-authored entries!

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Administration seeking $1B settlement from UCLA"

spondylosaurus — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 22:27:37 +0000

It's "discrimination" when it helps people the admin doesn't like, but it's mandatory to actually discriminate against people the admin doesn't like.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "The Crisis of Professional Skepticism"

spondylosaurus — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 03:45:41 +0000

I dunno. I can understand OP's point, but in an era where bullshit runs rampant at every level of society, it's hard for me to agree that "We need to hear these guys out" is either a priority or a generally good idea.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "“No tax on tips” is an industry plant"

spondylosaurus — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 23:29:33 +0000

Sure, but TFA makes clear that any benefit to workers from tax-free tips is laughable compared to the numbers of times the restaurant lobby has fucked them over, by repeatedly killing attempts to keep wages low. It's not even throwing workers scraps, it's more like throwing them crumbs.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”"

spondylosaurus — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 05:53:05 +0000

I scoured their website to look for any clues about how it might (allegedly) work and got a fat lot of nothing.

> Rest constantly monitors room air quality, using a proprietary algorithm to pinpoint any tobacco, marijuana, or nicotine presence.

So a smoke detector with an "algorithm" attached. Uh huh. How does that algorithm work?

> By analyzing various factors and patterns[...]

Some cutting edge shit here!

And as for accuracy, they don't even pretend to make promises about "99.99% success rates" or anything. This is the most detailed they get:

> Q: Is it accurate?

> A: Our sophisticated smoking detection algorithm has been tested for accuracy in real-world scenarios, backed by years of development, and tens of thousands of hours of rigorous testing and validation.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "OpenAI investor suspected to fall into ChatGTP-induced psychosis"

spondylosaurus — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 21:46:41 +0000

This output reads like a knockoff SCP entry to me... which is unsurprising because I'm sure there were plenty of SCP entries in its training data.

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/

If you're unfamiliar, here's a classic one:

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-076

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Protecting My Attention at the Dopamine Carnival"

spondylosaurus — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 02:47:53 +0000

There's a particular Instagram ad my wife always sees for a graphic tee with a design that we both love, but the vendor selling it is (according to Reddit reviews) garbage. The infuriating thing is that no one else seems to sell a shirt with that particular design!

New comment by spondylosaurus in "LLMs should not replace therapists"

spondylosaurus — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 22:42:48 +0000

Cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, EMDR, acceptance and commitment therapy, family systems therapy, biofeedback, exposure and response prevention, couples therapy...?

New comment by spondylosaurus in "LLMs should not replace therapists"

spondylosaurus — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 22:28:42 +0000

Plus, 24/7 access isn't necessarily the best for patients. Crisis hotlines exist for good reason, but for most other issues it can become a crutch if patients are able to seek constant reassurance vs building skills of resiliency, learning to push through discomfort, etc. Ideally patients are "let loose" between sessions and return to the provider with updates on how they fared on their own.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "LLMs should not replace therapists"

spondylosaurus — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 22:23:52 +0000

> it really is only an option for the elite, which is fine if you're counselling people from similar backgrounds, but not when you're dealing with people from lower socioeconomic classes with experiences that weren't even on your radar

A bizarre qualm. Why would a therapist need to be from the same socioeconomic class as their client? They aren't giving clients life advice. They're giving clients specific services that that training prepared them to provide.

New comment by spondylosaurus in "Data on AI-related Show HN posts"

spondylosaurus — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 22:10:51 +0000

I had the same thought about crypto/NFTs... Before AI exploded it seemed like that was the "big topic" on HN for a long time. But there may have been less Show HNs for crypto since it has fewer applications.