Hacker News: wintogreen74

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Europe at last has an answer to Silicon Valley"

wintogreen74 — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 17:57:09 +0000

the start-up situation sounds pretty similar

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Where Have All the Websites Gone?"

wintogreen74 — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 17:40:53 +0000

>> elite takeover of the internet.

Wasn't the internet solely the domain of the (techno) elite for a very long time? It's the masses that have wrecked what we had, the the "new" elite profiting off of them. Maybe the societal gains outweigh what we lost, but if you were part of the original elite 20+ years ago, you're now in a much worse place.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio"

wintogreen74 — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 00:04:22 +0000

what about the hardware that significantly leverages their non-game software? I think the full ramifications of what they're doing with mobile gaming have not yet been felt.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Show HN: Auto Wiki – Turn your codebase into a Wiki"

wintogreen74 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 23:33:44 +0000

Pretty big stretch to compare a massive disruption to the medium with a massive disruption to the content. The press is far closer to the web than generative content. The output from AI is closer to the unibomber's manifesto, and the only entity calling for burning detractors at the stake is vested-interest individuals like you, and AI itself.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Duolingo Cuts 10% of Contractors as It Uses More AI to Create App Content"

wintogreen74 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 23:27:00 +0000

This sounds suspiciously like some form of Stockholm syndrome.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio"

wintogreen74 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 18:02:37 +0000

Not this big, but very large with a market cap of 13B.

In tech circles, a very well known story though.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio"

wintogreen74 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 17:59:36 +0000

>> just another entitled, out of touch zillionaire,

You can level a lot of criticism at Jeff but I don't think this one applies.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio"

wintogreen74 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 17:57:50 +0000

Memories are short, but Twilio was built when doing what seemed obvious - add an API to telecom services - was really hard. It's what Stripe is (doing, not done) to banking & payment, what countless companies have failed to do with Healthcare... I met Jeff in the early days and the fact that he (a) managed to stay the CEO through this growth & timeline, and (b) gave few enough sh!ts to maintain a hacker dev mentality makes him a notable standout. I'm not surprised that lots of people with legitimate viewpoints and perspectives DO/DID NOT like him or his approach. To me, that's a feature; we need less CEOs and senior executives who try to be all things to all people.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Minimum Wage Clock"

wintogreen74 — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 22:43:25 +0000

And I think most consumers don't want these things. When given the choice they've consistently taken cost and convenience over openness, privacy or durability.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Minimum Wage Clock"

wintogreen74 — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 22:41:51 +0000

Doesn't this imply that there's an entire group of people who are now better off, if they have to choose between (a) the relatively new availability of cheap clothes or food and (b) going without? Previously they went without?

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Do It Yourself Blind Repair"

wintogreen74 — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 19:03:39 +0000

that's a different website: "Do It Yourself, Blind; Repair!"

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Do It Yourself Blind Repair"

wintogreen74 — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 19:02:07 +0000

YT is a great resource for fixing things like appliances, but the devices themselves have gotten (1) shittier, (2) harder to repair and (3) more expensive custom parts - that are themselves less durable. Example: the slide-out for the top rack of my dishwasher exploded, sending ball-bearings everywhere. The replacement part (mostly plastic) cost > $50 and to replace required I disconnect the water & power, uninstall the unit and access the 2 screws on the outside. Great for speeding up assembly in a factory, but ridiculous for any other purpose.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Online Job Posts Contain Little Wage Information [pdf]"

wintogreen74 — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 17:53:18 +0000

the only alternative for a lot of positions then, is administering a separate job for every single person. no thanks.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Most 16-year-olds don't have servers in their rooms"

wintogreen74 — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:05:19 +0000

I had rack mount equipment running in my house for a while; not sure how he sleeps with it in his bedroom. The best part of the "cloud" was getting all those boat anchors out of my life.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Most 16-year-olds don't have servers in their rooms"

wintogreen74 — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:03:40 +0000

except the ease and frictionless experience of iPads and most phones, combined with curated ecosysmtems of apps, means you never have to see how the sausage is made, or learn how to make your own

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Most 16-year-olds don't have servers in their rooms"

wintogreen74 — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 20:01:18 +0000

Kids don't really use email these days, or usb sticks. They share more than we ever did, but directly via apps or mobile which doesn't work with "files". It seems reasonable in this case the thing missing is the abstraction of a "file". Think of how your phone works, you share pictures, video, text, posts, etc. but never files. Sharing to email is my phone's 5th or 6th priority option. It comes after a boatload of social media options, messaging, online storage, even some sort of AWS application I've never even launched.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "From Nand to Tetris (2017)"

wintogreen74 — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 19:11:25 +0000

I've done this too, and it also took me multiple (3!) tries to get through the entire thing. I interleaved it last fall/winter with Ben Eater's amazing series on building an 8-bit computer on breadboards. I bought everything over several months from China, then built the subsystems as the parts arrived over the winter. You should do that next! Aside from being (maybe even more) rewarding, it looks damn impressive to see all the flashing LEDs and understand what's happening.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "From Nand to Tetris (2017)"

wintogreen74 — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 19:07:51 +0000

The book is a great example of how we do pretty much everything with computers today: abstraction. You can definitely learn how a transistor works but this book/course explicitly starts with "you've got a NAND chip - GO!"

New comment by wintogreen74 in "Tell HN: I salute everyone on call/working support through the holidays"

wintogreen74 — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 23:15:29 +0000

Saying, "I'm sorry; I've made a mistake" is the killer disarming technique for even the most emotional conflict. Not sure if it's our pride or fear of liability but western culture is very hesitant to say "sorry" - other than the fake one "I'm sorry if anyone interpreted my actions|remarks|words as ..." - that doesn't count.

New comment by wintogreen74 in "A larger family worsens kids' cognitive development, suggests 30-year study"

wintogreen74 — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 17:10:46 +0000

The key being "supported" - that definition has changed dramatically in the past 50 years, and what you're referencing in the US was the middle class, not those living in poverty (then or now).