Hacker News: wobbly_bush

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Ford's battery flagship socked by mold sickness, workers say"

wobbly_bush — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 22:42:20 +0000

BRICS and OPEC are two very different things. Except one country in BRICS, the remaining ones are oil importers. They would gladly get rid of that dependency for national security reasons alone.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets"

wobbly_bush — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 18:56:26 +0000

> How often have you read a headline, and then not clicked on the link?

Somewhat related - I have clicked a lot more on Axios articles which I know are 2-5 minute reads, compared to other long form articles where the author wanted to write a novella. Infact I look forward to reading Axios articles which I know are well written, compared to others which are of varying quality, so less inclination to click.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Mental health in software engineering"

wobbly_bush — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 21:43:33 +0000

Same thing doesn't happen to say lawyers? Or any of the other white collar jobs?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Big Tech's underground race to buy AI training data"

wobbly_bush — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:57:30 +0000

I'm genuinely curious how does that data help. What would the prompts be like? "Help me design an addictive UX"? How do comments like birthday wishes or people posting their beach pictures and people replying with how good they look add any kind of value to the ML model training? Those conversations would be in larger quantity than any that discuss anything meaningful.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Big Tech's underground race to buy AI training data"

wobbly_bush — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 17:01:59 +0000

Whatsapp chats are encrypted, how can they be used to train the models? Also what kind of training can be done on Instagram data, is there anything of value there?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "US court blocks EPA order to eliminate PFAS in plastic containers"

wobbly_bush — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:03:34 +0000

In Parliamentary system this is somewhat equivalent to "hung parliament" and usually results in re-elections. Governments must prove minimum support to pass legislations before they can claim to be "in charge"

New comment by wobbly_bush in "The Crime Rings Stealing Everything from Purses to Power Tools"

wobbly_bush — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 18:47:19 +0000

Don't bank apps require logging even explicitly even if the phone is unlocked?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Why are most sofas so bad?"

wobbly_bush — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:38:43 +0000

Can you elaborate on why you chose Macy's over others?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions"

wobbly_bush — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 20:48:32 +0000

I used to own a pixel phone and loved it. What made me move was the data collection, and to some extent lack of security updates on older models. Feature wise, I still like Android over iOS.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Meta's new AI image generator was trained on 1.1B Instagram and FB photos"

wobbly_bush — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 18:25:37 +0000

Aren't Insta images heavily edited?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Why I always hit the crosswalk button (2015)"

wobbly_bush — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 18:57:43 +0000

> hoping that turning cars will see you and not mow you down. Pretty sure this is what is going to kill me

I saw an accident in front of my eyes where this played out - a turning car mowed an elderly couple crossing slowly with the help of walking sticks. It was not pretty.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Your small imprecise ask is a big waste of their time"

wobbly_bush — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 22:45:04 +0000

> Maybe you come back saying "it's somewhere in this eldritch spaghetti, and when I stared into it the abyss starting back at me sent chills up my spine and the pictures on my walls wept blood, please don't send me back there" and it's clear it's not worth pursuing any further and we drop it.

I wish I could give my status updates like this.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Airbnb is broken, CEO says – His plans to fix it"

wobbly_bush — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 00:27:04 +0000

> For larger groups and families I have used other services where I can communicate directly with the owner

Which are those services and how do they differ from Airbnb?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "My Caste"

wobbly_bush — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 22:55:42 +0000

Two points - legally, caste based discrimination is illegal. From a cultural aspect - cultural changes are much slower in non-western countries. For example, compare how quickly the culture around marijuana & same sex marriage changed in US, and the laws kept up. But similar change probably takes 10x longer in "older" cultures. As an analogy, the left wing party of India which is supposed to be liberal, opposed legalizing same-sex marriage[1]. This attitude extends to all issues of reform in the entire political class.

[1] https://www.opindia.com/2021/09/377-decriminalisation-congre...

New comment by wobbly_bush in "My Caste"

wobbly_bush — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 22:48:16 +0000

> Why don't people just change their names to the caste they want to be

For an over-simplified explanation, substitute caste with race/nationality and rephrase the question in a setting you might be more familiar with. For example "if people face racism/discrimination due to their nationality, why don't they just do X", where X is to obfuscate their race/nationality. It might work sometime, it might not work most of the times and the real answer is complicated and depends on the details. If you consider everyone in India to be culturally homogeneous, then it's just a matter of saying someone isn't caste X but Y. But if you consider every caste/subcaste to be distinct culturally and linguistically (almost like they are their own countries), it's not trivial to replace surname X with Y as other factors give you away.

> Is there a reason that such a backwards obviously oppressive system persists to this day in 2023?

Similar mental analogy helps understand a tad bit better - why do oppressive practices like racism/discrimination based on nationality exist today? At that, exist in some of the more developed countries. FYI - caste based discrimination is illegal in India, kinda similar to how racism is illegal but that alone isn't sufficient to remove it from the culture.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging"

wobbly_bush — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 22:57:42 +0000

Isn't the opposite also true?

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Uber posts first quarterly net profit"

wobbly_bush — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 17:53:46 +0000

Add to that if you have food restrictions, the $40 meal might not even taste worth it but you have to order for some reason (like not being able to cook on that day, etc.)

New comment by wobbly_bush in "How too much daydreaming affected me"

wobbly_bush — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 19:16:09 +0000

There is LitRPG genre in which tension is not as key an ingredient. Also, there can be consumers of the writeup who don't particularly "buy" a book - so the writeup doesn't have to follow a typical book structure.

New comment by wobbly_bush in "How too much daydreaming affected me"

wobbly_bush — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 19:14:14 +0000

If they don't involve you at all, perhaps you can convert it into a LitRPG novel - something like CivCEO [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/CivCEO-Lit-Accidental-Champion-Book-e...

New comment by wobbly_bush in "Bed Bath and Beyond files for bankruptcy"

wobbly_bush — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 19:11:18 +0000

> If I make a trip to (for example) Target, it feels nothing like Target of 20 years ago.

I'm curious how did Target feel like 20 years ago?