Hacker News: winterbourne

New comment by winterbourne in "I'm skeptical about efforts to revolutionize schooling"

winterbourne — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:10:39 +0000

Homeschooled kids can socialize outside of homeschool and be perfectly well-adjusted. There's something to be said for avoiding the hierarchical social structure present in schools.

New comment by winterbourne in "Changing how we develop Ladybird"

winterbourne — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:51:33 +0000

> that implies a certain amount of time and cognitive investment on my part

Yes, this is the takeaway for me. A PR can no longer be a reasonable proof of work.

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

winterbourne — Sat, 30 May 2026 05:45:11 +0000

Agreed. Professional sports are the closest institution that society has to a meritocracy. Highly competitive, public, obsessively measured and analyzed. A tenth of a second faster sprint time might be more valuable than even a top-tier socioeconomic background.

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

winterbourne — Sat, 30 May 2026 05:20:39 +0000

The IQ loss from neurological damage caused by COVID wasn't helpful either. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330

New comment by winterbourne in "Claude Opus 4.8"

winterbourne — Fri, 29 May 2026 10:18:15 +0000

Interesting to search this page for "4.5".

I'm happy to move to a superior model, but I'm not really hearing enough about significant improvements, and the obvious pressure to release the latest and greatest model makes me hesitant to upgrade. I've been satisfied with the results I get using 4.5 with an "ask ChatGPT" skill that runs the code by ChatGPT 5.4.

New comment by winterbourne in "Can we have the day off?"

winterbourne — Thu, 28 May 2026 01:57:24 +0000

It's a modern version of: "we're firing you, but your last task will be to train your lower-cost replacement".

New comment by winterbourne in "Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)"

winterbourne — Tue, 26 May 2026 09:55:44 +0000

Your comment made me look up "shower phone holder" on Amazon, and I regretted it.

New comment by winterbourne in "Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds (2014)"

winterbourne — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:58:13 +0000

Possibly related to "showerthoughts", in that removal of stimuli allows for latent realizations to surface.

New comment by winterbourne in "Why Japanese companies do so many different things"

winterbourne — Sat, 23 May 2026 04:23:33 +0000

The article doesn't address branding very much, but one of the theories for why laser-focused American brands (like Starbucks, KFC, or McDonald's) do so well in Japan is that Japanese mega-companies are too brand-diluted to compete with them.

New comment by winterbourne in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

winterbourne — Fri, 22 May 2026 00:58:06 +0000

That's true, those numbers don't work out for Google. But they have essentially unlimited resources to discover the exact threshold at which that person is just barely incentivized to keep their site active. $100K/year, reduced 80% to $20K/year? Still enough for them to keep their site up part-time? Etc.

The bulk of the traffic they're referring is essentially residual profitless goodwill left over from their "don't be evil" days.

New comment by winterbourne in "Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations"

winterbourne — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:19:54 +0000

AI verbosity is similar to AI sycophancy: a dark pattern, disguised as earnest assistance.

New comment by winterbourne in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

winterbourne — Wed, 20 May 2026 22:48:08 +0000

> If Google cuts that out completely, what incentive do websites have to not block the Google crawlers?

Completely, yes, that destroys the incentive. But they can reduce it 80% or 90% or so, to the point that it's just barely worthwhile to allow their crawlers.