Hacker News: tash9

New comment by tash9 in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

tash9 — Thu, 28 May 2026 17:02:29 +0000

As a parent of a kid that has special needs (at a minor level), there really is a separate set of skills needed to teach to these kids, as well as needing a better student teacher ratio. It made a huge difference for my kid.

New comment by tash9 in "Tell HN: Help restore the tax deduction for software dev in the US (Section 174)"

tash9 — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 17:27:31 +0000

Correct but the point is that the salaries of the developers are not treated as an expense to net out, they are treated as an asset that depreciates over some period of time. (Even though some "developer" work might be day to day maintenance, rather than building a new feature.)

New comment by tash9 in "Show HN: Prioritize Anything with Stacks"

tash9 — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 17:38:25 +0000

How the hell is Sour Cream and Onion not on there

New comment by tash9 in "Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?"

tash9 — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:07:54 +0000

- How do they take a business problem and model it into code - How do they debug their own code - Is their code easy to read - Do they name their variables/fields/methods/classes in easy to understand and consistent ways or are the names confusing or inaccurate - How do they take constructive criticism - How collaborative are they - Do they think about the problem first or do they just start hacking away - When asked to add a feature to existing code, do they start hacking or do they write out a test describing the new functionality first - When confronted with vague requirements, how well do they ask questions to get the information they need - How much experience do they have with algorithms, database design, systems design, building things so they scale well

New comment by tash9 in "The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning"

tash9 — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 18:46:23 +0000

True but there has been a movement towards replicating these high profile findings in the soft sciences. Hopefully that will gain more traction as a lot of the "newsworthy" studies are forced to get retracted after failing to replicate.

New comment by tash9 in "Show HN: Daily price tracking for Trader Joe's"

tash9 — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 18:02:16 +0000

Or... you could change it to something funnier, like "Pumpkin Body Butter"

New comment by tash9 in "Amazon is blocking promotions of employees who don't comply with RTO policy"

tash9 — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 17:49:13 +0000

My hot take: this is actually really good (and would be fantastic if all the big tech followed suit).

Why? Imagine a world where big tech was cool with remote workers. They would be able to out-pay and acquire all the best talent, everywhere.

With this self-imposed restriction, this leaves a big pool of high end talent able to be recruited by smaller start-ups who ordinarily wouldn't be able to compete on comp, benefits, and stability.

New comment by tash9 in "GraphCast: AI model for weather forecasting"

tash9 — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 18:29:12 +0000

If you're talking about small scale phenomena (less than 1km), then this wouldn't help other than to be able to signal when the conditions are such that these phenomena are more likely to happen.

New comment by tash9 in "GraphCast: AI model for weather forecasting"

tash9 — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 17:29:26 +0000

It's been a while since I was a grad student but I think the raw station/radiosonde data is interpolated into a grid format before it's put into the standard models.

New comment by tash9 in "GraphCast: AI model for weather forecasting"

tash9 — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 17:23:13 +0000

One piece of context to note here is that models like ECMWF are used by forecasters as a tool to make predictions - they aren't taken as gospel, just another input.

The global models tend to consistently miss in places that have local weather "quirks" - which is why local forecasters tend to do better than, say, accuweather, where it just posts what the models say.

Local forecasters might have learned over time that, in early Autumn, the models tend to overpredict rain, and so when they give their forecasts, they'll tweak the predictions based on the model tendencies.

New comment by tash9 in "California's plastic bag ban is failing"

tash9 — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 22:46:09 +0000

I would think heavy metals would be a much bigger issue wrt water contamination from a health point of view.

Not that the anaerobic sludge is great, but I would rather see a bigger push to recycle used electronics.

As far as methane, am in total agreement there. It's probably even better to incinerate paper products (if you are not in a subtropical region like LA).

New comment by tash9 in "California's plastic bag ban is failing"

tash9 — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 22:42:00 +0000

But the volume of compostable material is small compared to the overall trash volume, right?

Aren't we talking about a negligible quantity relative to amount of effort and (potentially) negative sentiment amongst swing voters?

New comment by tash9 in "California's plastic bag ban is failing"

tash9 — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 16:14:48 +0000

Maybe I'm missing something but I've never understood the point of composting.

- It's a hassle.

- You can buy good compost for very little at the hardware store that's produced at industrial scales

- Landfill space is not a precious resource in most parts of the world

- Your garbage will still turn into compost, just in a landfill

Where is the upside?

edit b/c I don't know how to format things

New comment by tash9 in "Woman with untreated TB finally in custody – held in “negative pressure” room"

tash9 — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 16:21:52 +0000

I wondered too, until I read the part about her being from Tacoma

New comment by tash9 in "Show HN: Portable Secret – How I store my secrets and communicate privately"

tash9 — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:38:40 +0000

Whatever, now we know your password is "Miffy.Biffy.Boffy"

New comment by tash9 in "THC and CBD improve wound healing, may be valuable as skin rejuvenators, study"

tash9 — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 17:07:24 +0000

I heard it can make your kids listen to jazz and hang out with black people!

New comment by tash9 in "A Ruby program that generates itself through a 128-language quine loop"

tash9 — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 15:59:06 +0000

Maybe. What sound did it make?

New comment by tash9 in "What I’ve learned from users"

tash9 — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 17:31:02 +0000

Giannis Antetokounmpo. He's been great for almost a decade and everybody still loves him. Growing up dirt poor for most of his life probably helps w/ being a great guy, though.

New comment by tash9 in "Chess is just poker now"

tash9 — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 16:41:46 +0000

I think what he's trying to say is that a human has limited time to analyze variations, so they would typically analyze the "best" move for a given situation.

But if you make a suboptimal move, then you are going down a path that is less analyzed and thus you are likely to have an analytical advantage.

So while the board state is well known, what your opponent has researched is not known, or partially known (since players have favorites and predispositions).

New comment by tash9 in "Apple’s next big thing: A business model change"

tash9 — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:09:06 +0000

It's not that much better than the normal network of AMS sensors. For one, it doesn't give you wind speeds at various levels (critical for predicting weather).

Second, it doesn't give you any additional readings over oceans, which is where the data is lacking in the current network of data.

It does give you more robust surface temperature readings in cloudy areas but that doesn't really help you predict the weather significantly better.

Source: degree in atmospheric sciences