Hacker News: tbrownaw

New comment by tbrownaw in "Grok Build is open source"

tbrownaw — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:53:33 +0000

$employer uses Cursor, which is apparently owned by them and presumably using their models now.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Grok Build is open source"

tbrownaw — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:50:12 +0000

That's a much longer long run than Keynes' "in the long run we are all dead".

New comment by tbrownaw in "Grok Build is open source"

tbrownaw — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:43:52 +0000

> Musk bought Twitter looking to build an “everything app,”

I thought it was mostly on a whim that turned out to be binding, and the 'everything app' plan came later?

New comment by tbrownaw in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

tbrownaw — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:44:38 +0000

> Why should there be a difference in the degree being conferred at all?

You are asking why there "should" be a difference between a CCNA cert and a Computer Science degree. That difference isn't a "should" thing, it's an "is" thing. They are fundamentally different.

> why not split off the departments that confer degrees with a low-earning potential

Earning potential is unrelated to the distinction between trade certification vs academic degrees.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

tbrownaw — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:40:16 +0000

So have community things where people give free lectures at the local library or whatever.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

tbrownaw — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:27:54 +0000

I read the parent comment as claiming that some colleges select student bodies that are on average worse than the average of people who don't go to college at all.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

tbrownaw — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:12:25 +0000

I would think that in this case, credit would mostly go to people expected to not have negative net worth after that 7 year limit.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Under federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid"

tbrownaw — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 05:08:12 +0000

> pejoratively named "trade schools"

That's an accurate name, and only seems pejorative if you see learning a trade as lesser than studying academics.

> name university can confer a bachelor's in some bullshit field, but the respectable local trade school cannot confer a bachelor's in plumbing

This misunderstands what the different kinds of credentials are.

New comment by tbrownaw in "AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit"

tbrownaw — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:17:07 +0000

> just make even cheapest CPUs support 8/16 DDR4 channels

Isn't adding pins kind of expensive?

New comment by tbrownaw in "Global review confirms mRNA vaccines are safe, effective and full of promise "

tbrownaw — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:41:35 +0000

> Also, the manufacturers can never be held responsible, because they have legal immunity for the COVID vaccines.

Since there was basically a soft mandate for it, especially on top of some of the usual official red tape being cut, the manufacturers really wouldn't be the appropriate party to hold responsibility. That'd be the government.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Are readers generating fiction with AI models?"

tbrownaw — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:55:09 +0000

I suspect that those other groups are largely not trying to generate fiction.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Are readers generating fiction with AI models?"

tbrownaw — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:54:00 +0000

I've heard that word used to refer to (still) pictures, and in more casual/offhand use to refer to text. I don't understand it as being quite so restricted by media-type as you seem to.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Historical memory prices 1960-2026"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 23:23:40 +0000

> The unit needs to be tied to the relative usefulness for its time.

That requires baking in assumptions, and makes the data less general.

You can go from $/gb to $/usefulness fairly trivially by adding assumptions, but you can't go the other way.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Ford rehires 'gray beard' engineers after AI falls short"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 19:59:05 +0000

It could also be that business conditions provided a convenient opportunity to run some experiments.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 19:40:19 +0000

> If you've ever worked in hospitality or retail, you'll know that managers will call/contact you at all hours to make sure they have coverage. It's irritating.

I vaguely remember a few years ago there was some news pushing new scheduling software that was supposed to help make schedules more predictable, and how it wasn't working to full potential because store managers wouldn't trust it.

But I don't think the bill in question here would actually do anything to affect that issue?

New comment by tbrownaw in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 19:26:40 +0000

I don't really see any other interpretation of saying that if someone says you're wrong you should update your worldview. There isn't much that could be other than a call for unquestioning belief.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:00:49 +0000

The comment I was replying to appears to be a call for unquestioning belief. Which is the far extreme in the opposite direction.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:49:58 +0000

> Someone is telling you the world works differently for them than it does for you, which means you've got an opportunity to learn something new about the world and expand your model.

...than it does for you, which means there's an opportunity for someone to expend resources verifying and characterizing the claimed difference.

New comment by tbrownaw in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:04:42 +0000

> a lot of people who are victims of

Are there statistics somewhere about what percent of people in various roles get asked but know they're safe declining, or mistakenly think they can't decline, or correctly think they'd get in trouble for declining, or don't get asked but think they have to anyway?

New comment by tbrownaw in "Michigan bill would bar employers from requiring after-hours coms with workers"

tbrownaw — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 16:25:28 +0000

> Indeed. If $job is not willing to buy and hand me a "work phone" then they are out of luck

My employer has a BYOD program with a monthly stipend that is somewhat more than my phone provider (Fi) charges for an extra line. I think doing this with a non-flagship phone would probably pay for itself in a year or two.