Hacker News: spoonjim

New comment by spoonjim in "Kermit: A typeface for kids"

spoonjim — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:22:36 +0000

Cool font bro, but what's the license? I can "use" it in Microsoft Office? That raises more questions than it answers.

This is why I only use Google fonts. They're all permissively licensed so I don't have to worry about anything.

New comment by spoonjim in "What if we made advertising illegal?"

spoonjim — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 07:10:33 +0000

I've sold a product that were only possible to sell because of targeted advertising.

The customers were happy and I made a profit.

Hard to see advertising as outright bad even though it should probably be more regulated than it is.

New comment by spoonjim in "Charlie Javice convicted of defrauding JPMorgan in $175M startup sale"

spoonjim — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 01:56:25 +0000

Her fate is going to come down to whether she pocketed enough from the transaction to purchase a pardon.

New comment by spoonjim in "A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake"

spoonjim — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 01:52:16 +0000

First of all, the F-35's job is to kill people, let's not get overly moralistic here, but of all places, the military is quite explicit about using human lives as expendable resources to achieve military objectives. If the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is asked to choose between losing 20 enlisted privates in a training accident vs. losing 20 B-2 bombers which one is he going to choose?

New comment by spoonjim in "A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake"

spoonjim — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 01:50:35 +0000

Of all places, the military is quite explicit about using human lives as expendable resources to achieve objectives.

New comment by spoonjim in "A decision to eject from a failing F-35B fighter and the betrayal in its wake"

spoonjim — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 05:50:36 +0000

It's not a bad practice to automatically dismiss any pilot who ejects from a plane (other than test pilots) except in cases which are wholly obvious equipment failures. It will ensure that for these planes which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the pilot doesn't eject unless, yes, they really fucking need to eject.

Will this mean you accidentally fire some great pilots? Yes. But given the cost of these airplanes it is better to spend some more money on training a few more pilots.

New comment by spoonjim in "Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans"

spoonjim — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 09:06:03 +0000

Americans are great marks because we are so relentlessly optimistic

New comment by spoonjim in "The curious surge of productivity in U.S. restaurants"

spoonjim — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 07:12:33 +0000

This uses the economists' definition of "productivity" creating a confusing headline.

In reality, "productivity" as a layperson would understand it hasn't increased at all and the reason isn't very "curious." What's happened (by the economists' own conclusion) is that more people are ordering take-out and fewer people are eating in the restaurant, causing the restaurant to make more money per unit of labor. This is a trend that is probably going to make things like social isolation etc. worse, so not really something to celebrate.

New comment by spoonjim in "Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg"

spoonjim — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:57:51 +0000

They tend to have cult dynamics because the people who subscribe to the cult dynamics are the ones who get promoted. If you’re happy to just make a living as a software engineer instead of trying to propel your way up the ladder of the world’s richest companies then you can live very happily and comfortably.

New comment by spoonjim in "Ex-Facebook director's new book paints brutal image of Mark Zuckerberg"

spoonjim — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:55:38 +0000

I agree for something like a McDonalds employee or even entry level software engineer but this is a senior managerial role at Facebook. Nobody needs to do this job. Unless your spending is out of control you do not need this income. So if it comes with unreasonable demands, I don’t really care. There are problems worth caring about and this ain’t one of them.

New comment by spoonjim in "San Francisco homelessness: Park ranger helps one person at a time"

spoonjim — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 06:25:49 +0000

If we imprisoned people for playing their music on speakerphone in public there would be a lot fewer murders

New comment by spoonjim in "UnitedHealth hired a defamation law firm to go after social media posts"

spoonjim — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 18:17:52 +0000

Why? Pausing a surgery to take an insurance call is highly unusual. It’s a very serious allegation. Why shouldn’t its veracity be subject to scrutiny and verification by a court?

New comment by spoonjim in "America's "First Car-Free Neighborhood" Is Going Pretty Good, Actually?"

spoonjim — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 18:25:57 +0000

The first quote is from a 50-year-old mother of two who left her husband and kids in British Columbia to do ocean research in Arizona so that’s the kind of weirdo you’ll be living with

New comment by spoonjim in "The Sudoku Affair"

spoonjim — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 21:47:10 +0000

Norvig is a world level genius and he outdid Jefferies because of that. No shame in losing a basketball match to LeBron James.

New comment by spoonjim in "Broadcom loses another big VMware customer"

spoonjim — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 17:27:23 +0000

If you see an enterprise software product starting to decline, as VMWare has in the cloud era, then sometimes the "best" (but evil) thing to do is just milk your customers as hard as you can. Just squeeze every penny out of people who are stuck with you. Any migration of a large enterprise will take several years so you can just get all that money in one big go and then shoot the product in the head.

New comment by spoonjim in "Bluesky is ushering in a pick-your-own algorithm era of social media"

spoonjim — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 16:52:43 +0000

The two problems with your approach are: 1) There is always some post you'd be interested in that you won't see because it's outside your social network. Different people have different preferences on how much of this they want to see. 2) When you follow someone, you're probably interested in some aspect of what they post and not others. For example, if there's a biologist who is also a big Pittsburg Steelers fan, you're probably not interested in both types of posts.

New comment by spoonjim in "It's hard to stop Math Acceleration once you start"

spoonjim — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 09:47:12 +0000

In America you can’t say that anyone’s better than anyone else. This even applies to murderers

New comment by spoonjim in "Bricked iPhone 16 Can Be Restored Wirelessly Using Another iPhone"

spoonjim — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 23:48:46 +0000

I've never heard of a "bricked" iPhone. I didn't think you could flash its firmware outside of official methods so how exactly would you brick it?

New comment by spoonjim in "In the US opioid-maker Purdue is bankrupt. Its global counterparts make millions"

spoonjim — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 06:45:12 +0000

Oh no, they have to live in Palm Beach? The Florida punishment for murdering 5 people in cold blood is a needle in your arm. What should be the punishment for murdering a million?

New comment by spoonjim in "Why Ed-Tech Startups Don't Scale (2022)"

spoonjim — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 00:19:18 +0000

This is not an “edtech startup.” It’s a side hustle