Hacker News: stewx

New comment by stewx in "Talking to strangers at the gym"

stewx — Mon, 04 May 2026 20:07:59 +0000

Read the book. It's good. I have almost finished it and the biggest criticisms you could make of it, IMO, are "this is all just common sense!" or that the techniques, which are all essentially about treating people well and trying to understand their perspectives, could be abused by unscrupulous people.

The idea that the teachings could be misused frankly says more about the cynicism of the book's critics than the actual content of the book.

New comment by stewx in "Eat Real Food"

stewx — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:06:52 +0000

> We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources, paired with healthy fats from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados.

This is some seriously radical stuff, if you take it literally. Every single meal you eat "must" prioritize protein? Why? Who is lacking protein in America?

New comment by stewx in "I spent over $31k on Whiteout Survival"

stewx — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 13:07:00 +0000

I wonder what would happen if the app stores posted info on the app page like "the top 1% players of this game spent an average on $5,000 on it last year". Would that do anything to help people avoid getting into this form of quasi-gambling?

New comment by stewx in "The Role of Blood Plasma Donation Centers in Crime Reduction"

stewx — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 16:25:51 +0000

It isn't just "the rich" who need blood plasma. It's everyone. And paid plasma is the only mechanism in the world to date that yields enough plasma to meet demand.

New comment by stewx in "My new deadline: 20 years to give away virtually all my wealth"

stewx — Thu, 08 May 2025 18:34:53 +0000

What diseases has Torvalds eradicated?

New comment by stewx in "Assignment 5: Cars and Key Fobs"

stewx — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 13:30:43 +0000

We should just GPS track the cars and arrest the thieves.

New comment by stewx in "I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks"

stewx — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 12:34:00 +0000

My takeaway from this is that laws and rules don't matter if the officials on the ground are incompetent, ignorant, and have contempt for you.

There is a lot of unnecessary cruelty and lack of due process in this story.

New comment by stewx in "JavaScript Temporal Is Coming"

stewx — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 13:05:11 +0000

One represents a time in a specific place, and one represents merely a shift from UTC. A specific time zone can have different offsets depending on the time of year, for example with Daylight Savings Time.

New comment by stewx in "NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker"

stewx — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 13:17:23 +0000

Only the super rich can afford to pay $9? I.e., roughly the price of a sandwich in 2025?

New comment by stewx in "DVD shop owner vows to be ‘last man standing’"

stewx — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 13:19:02 +0000

There is going to be an interesting breaking point when DVDs and Blu-rays stop being sold mass-market. I think a lot of people will realize the downside of going all-in on streaming.

New comment by stewx in "Daisy, an AI granny wasting scammers' time"

stewx — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 20:15:18 +0000

Lenny was the OG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWrkDOt_IfM

New comment by stewx in "Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now"

stewx — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 17:44:37 +0000

I presume this is for applying rate-limiting, so their API doesn't get utterly abused

New comment by stewx in "Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers"

stewx — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 19:35:00 +0000

I've gotten 2 good jobs directly or indirectly from LinkedIn. I would argue LinkedIn is probably the one site that you absolutely need to be on.

New comment by stewx in "CA law means stores can't say you're buying a game if you're merely licensing it"

stewx — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:59:22 +0000

Willing to bet that the retailers will opt to change the button label rather than change business practices.

New comment by stewx in "I have 2000 old VHS tapes in my garage and don't know what to do with them"

stewx — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 12:13:56 +0000

To be fair, hard drives are not necessarily more future-proof than audio cassettes. A hard drive typically lasts, what, 10 years, whereas a cassette tape is probably good for 50 years. You need to back up the digital copy onto different devices.

New comment by stewx in "Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder"

stewx — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 18:12:59 +0000

One answer: Google's interests are at cross-purposes. They are simultaneously making money from showing you advertisements, but also giving you a browser, and sometimes these conflict. For example, they recently rolled out a new on-by-default "feature" to identify yourself to advertisers.

Another answer: concentration of power and market share stifles innovation. Look at what happened to Internet Explorer when Microsoft was the only game in town.

New comment by stewx in "Malaysia to Join BRICS"

stewx — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 11:48:47 +0000

Because member states like China and Russia are illiberal and left to their own devices pose a risk to global security and human rights. When these illiberal countries band together, the West loses economic and political leverage over them to change their ways.

New comment by stewx in "How Shadow Banning Can Silently Shift Opinion Online"

stewx — Tue, 21 May 2024 16:13:15 +0000

Ok, TikTok has the illusion of being content-neutral and just a fair algorithm, but we have no reason to believe it is unbiased.

New comment by stewx in "How Shadow Banning Can Silently Shift Opinion Online"

stewx — Tue, 21 May 2024 16:11:50 +0000

ByteDance is headquartered in China, a repressive country where they throw you in prison or worse if you don't obey the government. If the Communist Party told them to meddle with the algorithm to the advantage of China and harm of the USA, for example, they would have to obey, or else suffer the consequences.

New comment by stewx in "When children become caregivers, who cares for them?"

stewx — Mon, 13 May 2024 12:37:25 +0000

Note that the 15-20% of people who are "disabled" are not defined as needing around-the-clock caregivers. Disability is a spectrum.

I would indeed dismiss that particular statistic about the number of kids spending 50+ hours looking after family members, because it is likely wrong by an order of magnitude.