Hacker News: tabtab

New comment by tabtab in "Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness"

tabtab — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 23:03:05 +0000

There's an interesting job interview question: do you want to be more like Woz or S. Jobs? Elon Musk's management style is very Jobs-like: Motivates via manipulation and wow-factor of cutting edge, has grand visions, yet knows what factories and the market can and can't handle, tries odd drugs, etc. However, Jobs rarely stuck his nose into politics; Jobs mostly just trolled about tech.

New comment by tabtab in "Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too"

tabtab — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:37:35 +0000

GittoffmylawnGPT ;-)

If the bottom falls out of AI market, what's job Plan B?

tabtab — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 23:29:45 +0000

AI smells bubbly and there's a reasonable chance it could pop soon, throwing many thousands of AI engineers onto the streets to survive. What are similar alternative jobs and the best way to get ready for them? What's in your Aipocalypse Planner? Even if you disagree with the pessimists, it's always good to be prepared.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41573982

Points: 4

# Comments: 9

New comment by tabtab in "The Subprime AI Crisis"

tabtab — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 22:24:34 +0000

I think the point is that anyone can enter the AI cloud market to compete with the fat cats if they get too pricy. NVIDIA's de-facto standards are the closest thing to a market moat. If AI ends up highly tied to NVIDIA's standards, then NVIDIA could become the Microsoft of AI. It's hard to know how tool chains will evolve to answer that though, it's new territory. (It could be all moot if the bots take over and eat us humans. I taste like chicken.)

New comment by tabtab in "The Subprime AI Crisis"

tabtab — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 22:16:19 +0000

I don't think anyone is arguing it's giving zero value, only that the total value is not keeping up with investments. Look at the recent smart-speaker bubble: people indeed use them, but not often enough for profitable activities, and so the speaker market popped. Trying to goad people into shopping with them failed.

Making AI pictures of Pee Wee Herman riding a shark blindfolded is indeed fun, but not profitable for Microsoft because it's too hardware intensive for ads to cover. I gotta make more goofy pics before the bottom falls out...

New comment by tabtab in "The Subprime AI Crisis"

tabtab — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 22:04:20 +0000

Objective info is currently hard to come by, but my horse sense is that Big AI is subsidizing it for many projects, including those in other companies, to gain both market share and investor excitement (deserved or not).

If one looks at most the bubbles of the past, the writing is on the wall. AI won't go away, but will probably take longer to make profitable than anticipated, just like dot-coms and smart-speakers. Force feeding it is causing indigestion, and it's likely to PukeGPT.

New comment by tabtab in "Max Headroom and the World of Pseudo-CGI (2013)"

tabtab — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:53:06 +0000

Similarly, those of us who cannot afford high-end AI have to use Photoshop to fake the AI look for our memes, like gluing extra toes on people.

New comment by tabtab in "Neanderthals' social isolation may have sped up their extinction"

tabtab — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:44:42 +0000

"Sorry Grog, you weren't horney enough"

New comment by tabtab in "AI Adoption Hasn't Led to Significant Job Cuts, NY Fed Survey Reveals"

tabtab — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 23:08:08 +0000

Many companies are merely blaming layoffs on AI, when in fact it's due to poor sales. Investors seem to fall for this lie.

New comment by tabtab in "What happens when you touch a pickle to an AM radio tower"

tabtab — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:18:17 +0000

If you simply had my personality, your pickle would never be at risk of getting used.

New comment by tabtab in "What happens when you touch a pickle to an AM radio tower"

tabtab — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:14:50 +0000

End result of horny people watching "A Christmas Story".

New comment by tabtab in "Cough or sneeze? How the brain knows what to unleash"

tabtab — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:10:29 +0000

Once I coughed, sneezed, and farted at the same time. Very painful.

New comment by tabtab in "Did Sandia use a thermonuclear secondary in a product logo?"

tabtab — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:06:00 +0000

That would have made a good Silicon Valley plot: they discover they accidentally put a trade secret in their logo, and have to jump through hoops to collect, hide, and delete the bad version without making competitors curious about their effort.

Ask HN: Opinion on browsers making drop-down lists longer via spacing?

tabtab — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:00:02 +0000

It appears the Chromium UI engine was recently updated to increase the default spacing between items of drop-down lists (Html SELECT). Both Chrome and Edge users & devs have complained. Are you okay with this change? I'm not, it seems rude, and creates UI problems. Make it an option, fine, but not the default for desktops. -Miffed

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41469262

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by tabtab in "Small asteroid to hit Earth's atmosphere today"

tabtab — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 16:35:05 +0000

Small dinosaurs are very worried.

New comment by tabtab in "The History of CP/M (1980)"

tabtab — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 00:41:27 +0000

CP/M is the Yahoo of OS's: had a mile-wide opening of opportunity to step into, but blew their chance through greed, short-term thinking, and suits-gone-wrong. CP/M and co. could have been Microsoft, and Yahoo could have been Google.

New comment by tabtab in "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection (1995) [pdf]"

tabtab — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:18:03 +0000

IT Fad Detection Kit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DilbertProgramming/comments/q3k1cb/...

New comment by tabtab in "The existence of a new kind of magnet has been confirmed"

tabtab — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:40:23 +0000

The Orange Man was right!

New comment by tabtab in "US homelessness up 12% from 2022, hits highest level since 2007"

tabtab — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 16:58:33 +0000

What about embracing forms of tent cities rather than disparaging them? Homo Sapiens have been sleeping in teepees and portable huts for roughly a hundred thousand years; we have evolved to survive in such. Have shared showers, restrooms, washrooms, etc. I can't say it would work in all climates, but in many.

New comment by tabtab in "Making synthesized sounds more acoustic"

tabtab — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 16:50:46 +0000

In the end it may be easier to reprocess the synth version with AI trained on acoustic sounds, ideally with options to select different performers' styles. The long list of algorithmic tips there may indeed work, but could be expensive to code, test, debug, and tune.