Hacker News: srj

New comment by srj in "Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)"

srj — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 03:59:21 +0000

I still have my foam gateway cow!

New comment by srj in "The lost civic life of movie rental stores"

srj — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:04:58 +0000

At some point UPS / FedEx became much faster. I recall ordering things in the mid 90s and it taking weeks or months to arrive. That definitely tilted shopping toward retail brick & mortar.

New comment by srj in "Our position on open-weights models"

srj — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:49:46 +0000

I find it totally implausible that the president or any subordinates intentionally targeted a school. As I recall it was located next to a military base. A mistake seems more likely.

New comment by srj in "Our position on open-weights models"

srj — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 03:54:16 +0000

The bombing of the school was horrible, but it was a mistake. I could see essentially the opposite argument: Anthropic should be more involved as to prevent mistakes in the future with better technology. Imagine Claude asking the decision makers at CENTCOM "this looks like a school, are you sure you want this added as a target?"

New comment by srj in "Where is the AI jobs crisis?"

srj — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:23:37 +0000

For US SWE labor, off-shoring was and still is a big contributor. I do think AI is a factor too though. You almost get laughed at asking for headcount now. For junior positions in particular, there are close to zero openings.

AI has grown dramatically in capability since last year as well so I'm not sure 2025 data holds today.

New comment by srj in "LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do"

srj — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 18:44:48 +0000

For me it's mostly dealing with humans and bureaucracy now that takes the most time. Actually kicking off an LLM will often (though not always) get me in the ballpark of the right solution, and then iterating with the LLM from there gets me the rest of the way.

New comment by srj in "SpaceX, Other Mega IPOs Denied Fast Index Entry by S&P"

srj — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:42:41 +0000

To me it's more about how real the financial strength of the company is versus being propped up on some shady accounting. Not sure if that was the case with Carvana or any of these new IPOs, but personally I have my nest egg in the S&P and don't want sharks abusing the index for their pump and dump exit strategy.

New comment by srj in "Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career"

srj — Tue, 12 May 2026 02:54:47 +0000

Probably many legally protected professions such as medicine and law will continue to be okay. There's a cap imposed on the number of residency positions that will keep those jobs scarce.

New comment by srj in "Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career"

srj — Tue, 12 May 2026 02:52:02 +0000

One way it seems different today is that wealth inequality is already quite high in the US. Even if AI delivers massive productivity gains the windfall is only likely to be more concentrated. When manufacturing was outsourced at least median housing wasn't 7x median income.

I'm curious what you mean by prepare, to have savings?

New comment by srj in "DeepSeek v4"

srj — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:04:52 +0000

On the contrary, I find reading your own confused spin on morality here an interesting window into the effectiveness of propaganda. You're taking two oppressive authoritarian governments and elevating them above the US.

New comment by srj in ""cat readme.txt" is not safe if you use iTerm2"

srj — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 15:22:26 +0000

I love iTerm2, thank you!

New comment by srj in "Nowhere is safe"

srj — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 03:38:12 +0000

We have the prospect of AI destroying humanity and living life underground. It's more like The Matrix every day.

New comment by srj in "Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability"

srj — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 07:58:02 +0000

Sure but in a less broken society thieves would be apprehended and theft risk would be low. Instead the police do nothing and honest people live like a school of fish trying not to stick out for fear of the nearly-authorized property theft rampant in SF.

In many parts of the world, including major cities, it would be okay to leave your belongings in a locked car.

New comment by srj in "Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available"

srj — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 05:32:46 +0000

It was the same at google. If I'm remembering right we couldn't export any vector type data (raster only) and the tiles themselves had to be served out of South Korea.

New comment by srj in "California governor signs AI transparency bill into law"

srj — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 21:40:39 +0000

Yes I'm talking about LLMs in particular. I'm in the stochastic parrot camp. Though I could be convinced humans are no more than stochastic parrots, in which case it does have a path for development of AGI.

If I'm right the breakthroughs will plateau even while applications of the technology continue to advance for the next several years.

New comment by srj in "California governor signs AI transparency bill into law"

srj — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 10:15:59 +0000

FWIW I didn't downvote you. I don't work on AI personally, and while I have no way of proving it to you I certainly am not trying to shill for my employer.

My skepticism of AI safety is just because of skepticism of AI generally. These are amazing things, but I don't believe the technology is even a road to AGI. There's a reason it can give a chess move when prompted and explain all the rules and notation, but can't actually play chess: it's not in the training data. I simply think the hype and anxiety is unnecessary, is my issue. Now this is most definitely just my opinion and has nothing to do with that company I work for who I'd bet would disagree with me on all of this anyway. If I did believe this was a road to AGI I actually would be in favor of AI safety regulation.

New comment by srj in "Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow [audio]"

srj — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:10:39 +0000

I've seen zero job loss from AI but substantial job loss to off-shoring. What you said about over-hiring I think is also true, but if you look at headcount numbers they have dropped only marginally. The geographic distribution of that headcount however has shifted in a big way to India, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The reason is obvious, people in those countries are paid far less (often 1/3 or 1/4) compared to their US counterparts.

It seems this rarely gets discussed in the media though. As you said, AI gets more readership attention. I also get the impression people feel there's something culturally offensive about discussing off-shoring.

New comment by srj in "California governor signs AI transparency bill into law"

srj — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 21:55:54 +0000

Reading the text it feels like a giveaway to an "AI safety" industry who will be paid well to certify compliance.

New comment by srj in "IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites"

srj — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 18:08:01 +0000

The article cites no evidence except for anonymous accounts. There's no video evidence even though people would widely have smart phones there. The association distributing aid as well as Israel's government have denied any of this happened.

I'd be upset if this happened too, but there's no evidence of that. My guess is that warning shots were fired.

Did I miss something from the article? I did read it.

New comment by srj in "Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors"

srj — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:25:11 +0000

As an austinite I'm nervous about these things. My son and his classmates play along the street and I'm 90% sure I saw one of these driving by our house last week, presumably for testing. The street is legally at a higher speed than most people will drive because there's a lot of activity and no sidewalks which I'm about to argue for changing. Normal people will slow when they see kids around but autonomous cars still drive their normal speed.