Hacker News: yellowpencil

New comment by yellowpencil in "I Stopped “Creating Content”"

yellowpencil — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:27:06 +0000

Im not the OP but most people outside of HN don't have multiple offers to job hop between FAANGs so the choice becomes "make money to survive or not".

New comment by yellowpencil in "US High school students' scores fall in reading and math"

yellowpencil — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:25:27 +0000

A positive change for sure but what about the kids who were stunted developmentally during that time?

In a nearby elementary school they are now touting teaching kids “AI literacy”. At an age where they don’t even have enough of a world view to understand anything related to it. Such an asinine idea, and of course it will be at the expense of something non-trendy.

It seems like public education suffers from so much “idea cascade” now and jumps from one fad to the next. Educational paths are more and more left to chance than organized thought.

New comment by yellowpencil in "Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything"

yellowpencil — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:44:46 +0000

A friend of a friend has been in a rough patch with her spouse and has been discussing it all with ChatGPT. So far ChatGPT has pretty much enthusiastically encouraged divorce, which seems like it will happen soon. I don't think either side is innocent but to end a relationship over probabilistic token prediction with some niceties throw in is something else.

New comment by yellowpencil in "Dark Visitors – A list of known AI agents on the internet"

yellowpencil — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 21:28:15 +0000

Them being a charity isn't an automatic license to use anything on the internet?

New comment by yellowpencil in "U.S. students' math scores plunge in global education assessment"

yellowpencil — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 18:31:13 +0000

I'm in a big city and that is certainly not the case. I can submit preferred locations but ultimately there is a very opaque selection process and there is no guarantee made other than a seat somewhere in the system. I know some families who were on a waiting list for years to go to a school in their neighborhood (less than a half mile walking) and were only able to get in this year because of seats opening up due to city exodus.

EDIT - to add, what does this solve in the Cambridge, MA situation where the entire district has removed advanced Algebra?

New comment by yellowpencil in "U.S. students' math scores plunge in global education assessment"

yellowpencil — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 16:03:17 +0000

In public schools the only way to "vote with your wallet" is to relocate, the next best option which is less disruptive to a family is to opt out of the school system if the means are available.

What other options are there?

New comment by yellowpencil in "U.S. students' math scores plunge in global education assessment"

yellowpencil — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:58:27 +0000

Dogma I'd guess.

New comment by yellowpencil in "U.S. students' math scores plunge in global education assessment"

yellowpencil — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 15:28:56 +0000

See Cambridge, MA as an example.

https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/camb...

New comment by yellowpencil in "Firefighters are leaving the U.S. Forest Service for better pay and benefits"

yellowpencil — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 13:42:58 +0000

The US federal budget deficit for the month of June was $228 billion. Money is being spent and the money printer is running no problem. The administration clearly does not view this as an important issue.

New comment by yellowpencil in "Men Without Full-Time Jobs Are 33% More Likely to Divorce"

yellowpencil — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:24:48 +0000

Who is “we”?

New comment by yellowpencil in "Men Without Full-Time Jobs Are 33% More Likely to Divorce"

yellowpencil — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 21:24:17 +0000

If there are “externalities” brought upon the state due to separations, ie strain on public services (crime, welfare programs, school, healthcare, etc) doesn’t the state have an incentive to do so?

Playing devils advocate here.

New comment by yellowpencil in "Twitter Lost $60M a Year Because 390 Telcos Used Bot Accounts to Pump A2P SMS"

yellowpencil — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 16:25:38 +0000

Which company does Twitter use to send these SMS messages, Twilio?

New comment by yellowpencil in "Companies save billions of dollars by giving employees fake “manager” titles"

yellowpencil — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 16:28:19 +0000

Somewhat tangential but an acquaintance at a Fortune-500 level company mentioned to me they are converting tons of currently salaried employees to hourly. These are white collar desk jobs at corporate HQ. I have to infer theres some sort of cost-cutting (wage theft?) motive behind this. Are these types of tactics becoming more prevalent in the white collar world?

New comment by yellowpencil in "The CPSC is on a mission that has nothing to do with safety"

yellowpencil — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 15:37:10 +0000

Agree - any propagandist paying attention the last couple of years is acutely aware of the contemporary efficacy of labeling "Science" as a manipulative stiumuls. Run a few biased "analyses", pay for placement in a journal and/or get promoted in a few clickbait news rings, syndication through social media...inception into the minds of millions with relative ease.

New comment by yellowpencil in "[dead]"

yellowpencil — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 19:07:35 +0000

I think you're conflating short stints/job hopping and resume gaps. How does a "temporary period of non-employment" preclude someone from "providing more value to your company"?

There are infinite reasons why someone might take time off. Its arguably far more responsible to do so than continue employment and lower the priority of employment obligations in your life while you tend to other aspects.

New comment by yellowpencil in "[dead]"

yellowpencil — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 16:38:48 +0000

That's true to some extent but has nothing to do with "resume gaps".

New comment by yellowpencil in "[dead]"

yellowpencil — Sat, 07 Jan 2023 15:28:43 +0000

> a long gap is a warning flag on a resume.

Sorry but it's not at all. How dare they not spend every waking moment wage slaving away!

People live their lives, this type of thinking shouldn't be normalized. What other subconscious biases are lurking here? I assume the follow up to this is "Hiring is hard, there's not enough good candidates".

New comment by yellowpencil in "Red meat is not a health risk. New study slams years of shoddy research"

yellowpencil — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 16:43:50 +0000

Not op - think it’s more along the lines of “humans evolved with nature as a constraint” and industrialization has the ability to remove that constraint.

New comment by yellowpencil in "‘I’d rather eat an actual burger’: plant-based meat’s sizzle fizzled in the US"

yellowpencil — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 12:39:37 +0000

VC got their IPO, thats all that ever mattered.

it was kind of funny to see the PR campaigns ramp up - placement in news articles, podcast interviews with the founder, partnerships with fast food chains.

after the smoke cleared there was never any real demand, just hype. a bunch of people made money, rinse repeat.

New comment by yellowpencil in "Why Figma Is Worth $20B and Other Observations from the Adobe Acquisition"

yellowpencil — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 17:02:55 +0000

because they literally can't. ignoring the $1B budgeted cost, they are also facing massive execution risk. adobe is signaling their confidence in their ability to innovate/execute with the acquisition price - zero confidence.

even in the very unlikely event they were able to build a product with feature parity, with little operational blunder, on budget/on time, they still need to market it and get enough paying users to match the $400 million in revenue per year which Figma currently makes.