Hacker News: strongpigeon

New comment by strongpigeon in "Alphabet's cash burn raises alarm for Big Tech as AI spending climbs"

strongpigeon — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:25:20 +0000

> Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day

When I worked on Google Ads (I left in 2020), I remember this one tripping a lot of people. As I remember it, the limit for a single day is indeed 2x daily budget, but over a month it will average to it. This is supposed to give more flexibility to the auto bidder.

New comment by strongpigeon in "Alphabet Announces Second Quarter 2026 Results [pdf]"

strongpigeon — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:06:12 +0000

Noteworthy:

- Negative free cash flow for the quarter

- $98B in unrealized gains on equity securities

- Cloud revenue are up 82% to $24.8B

New comment by strongpigeon in "Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year"

strongpigeon — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:51:23 +0000

What’s crazy is how Oracle’s free cash flows have gone from “money-printing machine” to deep in the red due to their data center investments. My guess is that some of those cuts are to try to balance that?

New comment by strongpigeon in "DHL Set to Transport Goods on New Wind-Powered Cargo Ships"

strongpigeon — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:42:03 +0000

At the risk of sounding overly negative, these things are pretty much always vanity projects. Someone wanted a really cool boat and managed to get some investors onboard. It’s more about an aesthetic than a business case.

We’re talking here about a fairly large crew that will transport a small amount of cargo while taking a really long time. On top of that, these aren’t container ship so loading/unloading will take a long time. There is no economic case here.

The only way you can make this somewhat work is by selling the aesthetic/story. E.g.: this coffee was shipped by sailboat. But even then, notice how every company linked in the article of another commenter aren’t actually operating anymore…

New comment by strongpigeon in "Prefer duplication over the wrong abstraction (2016)"

strongpigeon — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 16:55:14 +0000

Echoing the article, anyone who has experienced both will agree: it’s far easier to work with an under engineered code base than an over engineered one.

New comment by strongpigeon in "The LLM warnings Google fired Timnit Gebru over have all come true"

strongpigeon — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:05:06 +0000

The second point is only true if you don't do any RL, right?

New comment by strongpigeon in "Debug Project"

strongpigeon — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:26:06 +0000

This is cool, but wasn't this a "Verily" project about 10 years ago? What is new here and what has happened since then?

New comment by strongpigeon in "New York passes pied-a-terre tax"

strongpigeon — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:33:43 +0000

It's a luxury tax that only affects people wealthy enough to have a second home in NYC. These people, by virtue of not living there, aren't paying income tax and thus don't contribute as much as someone who is.

New comment by strongpigeon in "New York passes pied-a-terre tax"

strongpigeon — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:25:49 +0000

> The rates sound a bit steep.

Agreed, but you also have to keep in mind that those people don't pay NYC income tax.

New comment by strongpigeon in "New York passes pied-a-terre tax"

strongpigeon — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:23:01 +0000

This specifically targets people who don't live in New York though (and thus don't pay income tax).

New comment by strongpigeon in "Cloudflare Flagship"

strongpigeon — Wed, 27 May 2026 18:19:02 +0000

I really liked Google Domains, but alas…

New comment by strongpigeon in "The real cost of owning a home"

strongpigeon — Tue, 26 May 2026 20:24:29 +0000

I think some of it is due to the lay off, some of it due to the supply situation not being as bad as SF (though construction has slowed recently), and a lot of it due to interest rates making "effective prices" much higher.

New comment by strongpigeon in "Stack Overflow’s forum is dead but the company’s still kicking"

strongpigeon — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:47:06 +0000

> but it always was that way.

I don't think that's true. I remember the very early days of Stack Overflow and it felt much more fun and friendly than it did 6-7 years later. I have so many 15+ years question/answer that somehow get revisited by a "moderator" that decides that maybe we should close this.

But was that the cause of Stack Overflow's demise? I agree that it most likely isn't. It's most definitely because of LLMs.

New comment by strongpigeon in "The real cost of owning a home"

strongpigeon — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:31:38 +0000

> You don't have to worry about rent increases

I'd also argue there are financial advantages (on top of the psychological ones) to the price stability as you don't have to hedge against your housing cost shooting up as much.

New comment by strongpigeon in "The real cost of owning a home"

strongpigeon — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:26:03 +0000

HOAs can be a big variable cost, yes, especially in the case of underfunded condos associations with a lot of delayed maintenance. Insurance can vary a lot, but is usually a much smaller amount than your mortgage payment (though I only have experience with the PNW).

But yeah, for a single family home in a not-too-flood-prone area it'll be very predictable.

Wi-R: Using the human body as a "wire" for inter-device communication

strongpigeon — Sun, 24 May 2026 21:34:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.ixana.ai/blog/wi-r-technology-white-paper

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48261229

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Gemini Omni

strongpigeon — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:05:21 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-omni/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48196904

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by strongpigeon in "A Meta employee gets real about the horror of working there"

strongpigeon — Sat, 16 May 2026 15:10:12 +0000

Unlike a startup that pays with illiquid RSUs, Meta paid its people extremely well for its bets though. I dont think Zuck is a great leader at all, but he’s definitely willing to pay for talent.

New comment by strongpigeon in "Making the news available at no cost is a victory"

strongpigeon — Wed, 13 May 2026 20:23:22 +0000

To add to this, I would assume that advertisers are more diverse and numerous than donors are, therefore reducing the influence any single one of them can have.

Blue Origin may need external funding to hit ambitious launch targets

strongpigeon — Wed, 13 May 2026 19:26:15 +0000

Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/blue-origin-may-need-external-funding-to-hit-ambitious-launch-targets/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126289

Points: 4

# Comments: 0