Hacker News: yxwvut

New comment by yxwvut in "Iran starts Bitcoin-backed ship insurance for Hormuz strait"

yxwvut — Mon, 18 May 2026 17:53:57 +0000

More of a "Bitcoin-Backed Protection Racket", presumably?

New comment by yxwvut in "Eat Real Food"

yxwvut — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:33:14 +0000

And from the study linked, that framing/suggestion would be incorrect (at least for the numbers given). "the 12% are not the same every day" is an accurate interpretation. They asked about what people ate _yesterday_...

New comment by yxwvut in "US labour watchdog halts Apple cases after group’s lawyer picked for top job"

yxwvut — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 13:26:11 +0000

He’s right though - indifference to corruption or malfeasance begets corruption and malfeasance. Holding your government and companies to a higher standard of behavior is both possible and necessary for a functional, durable nation. Sure, you can enforce corporate morality via regulation or governmental morality via the courts or ethics committees, but that completely ignores the concept of soft power. Laws can be broken faster than they can be enforced.

'Save This Life' pet microchip company ceases operations, unlinks registry

yxwvut — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 21:02:51 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/microchip-company-closes-pet-owner-next-steps/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43018326

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by yxwvut in "Researchers to retract landmark Alzheimer's paper containing doctored images"

yxwvut — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 03:18:51 +0000

The world must be so tidy for you. Who needs actual science when we have your facile hunches?

New comment by yxwvut in "Big data is dead (2023)"

yxwvut — Mon, 27 May 2024 14:07:10 +0000

Well put. Whoever asked this question is undoubtedly a nightmare to work with. Your data is the engine that drives your business and its margin improvements, so why hamstring yourself with a 'clever' cost saving but ultimately unwieldy solution that makes it harder to draw insight (or build models/pipelines) from?

Penny wise and pound foolish, plus a dash of NIH syndrome. When you're the only company doing something a particular way (and you're not Amazon-scale), you're probably not as clever as you think.

New comment by yxwvut in "North Korean animation outsourcing for Amazon, HBO Max series"

yxwvut — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 21:22:54 +0000

I'd go further to say that rules without any verification aren't really rules. You don't make a rule without the suspicion that it'd be more efficient to break them, and if you're not verifying their adherence to those rules, your rule is meaningless.

This is the iterated game that morally bankrupt manufacturers (IE the vast majority) play to insulate themselves in these sort of scandals: - First, they get caught doing A,B,C, so they pass rules about A,B,C - Then they outsource to someone who is willing to do A,B,C, then they get caught outsourcing to violators - Then, they impose rules about A,B,C on these firms, but do no verification of the firms adherence to those rules. It insulates them of liability without ever increasing costs (because the firms still get to break the rules and the company gets to say "I'm Shocked! I told you not to do that!")

New comment by yxwvut in "The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)"

yxwvut — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 16:25:25 +0000

The total pie has absolutely grown. There were a little under 1 billion US album sales in 2000 (the peak of CDs). Spotify alone paid around $3.5B in royalties in the US last year (with similar #s for apple music and a bit less for YT music).

I suspect the disconnect comes from a) a big increase in the # of artists b) artists trying to compare apples to oranges #s as though every stream would've been an album/MP3 sale c) the timeline of revenues: an album sale is a big cash flow shortly after the album release, but streaming revenue is a slow trickle as users gradually discover the album, listen, re-listen, etc

New comment by yxwvut in "The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)"

yxwvut — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 14:30:04 +0000

I think it's worth distinguishing that 'most creators get paid a pittance' is only true on a per-view basis. The total outflows to creators is higher, but the total viewership is massively increased due to the leftward shift in where we live on the demand curve. There's no 'money for nothing' solution where everyone just accepts higher prices and continues consuming at the current rate.

New comment by yxwvut in "Bob Moore, who founded Bob's Red Mill, has died"

yxwvut — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 02:05:21 +0000

I think the broader point is that improving societal utility is rarely the north star of a startup, not that every business needs to last a century.

New comment by yxwvut in "Cummins Fined $1.6B for Diesel Defeat Devices in 630K RAM Trucks"

yxwvut — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 19:37:25 +0000

You get the climate apocalypse you deserve

New comment by yxwvut in "FBI Director: FISA Section 702 warrant requirement a 'de facto ban'"

yxwvut — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 22:11:33 +0000

The point to my post was that there's no dissent allowed from the party line of 'this is definitely kosher'. If you thought the agency was overreaching in its interpretation, you better keep that to yourself, because it was a near-heretical opinion that would be eyed with suspicion, and it's not like you, a lowly rank-and-file employee, were ever going to sway things on that front.

New comment by yxwvut in "FBI Director: FISA Section 702 warrant requirement a 'de facto ban'"

yxwvut — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:07:45 +0000

Well, I left for exactly that reason. I imagine those who stayed took an 'ends justify the means' stance that I couldn't abide. The organizations themselves are insatiable - there's no way that, left to their own devices, any three-letter-agency would ever say "Oh, this is beyond our scope, we shouldn't be allowed to access this.", and that combined with rubber stamp 'checks' allowed this surveillance creep.

New comment by yxwvut in "FBI Director: FISA Section 702 warrant requirement a 'de facto ban'"

yxwvut — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:41:21 +0000

When I worked at a certain three-letter-agency, much of the annual legal training amounted to "Here's our incredibly tortuous interpretation of every relevant term in the letter of the law. Don't like it? There's the door."

New comment by yxwvut in "Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity"

yxwvut — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:32:06 +0000

My point is that vouchers distort demand elasticity, just like unchecked student loans, employer-provided health insurance, low mortgage rates, etc distort their respective markets. The fact that costs (not even prices) may be low at present is not an indicator that prices will not balloon in the wake of a voucher system. The private education profiteers are counting on it.

New comment by yxwvut in "Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity"

yxwvut — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 17:05:10 +0000

What's your solution to stop runaway education costs in this 'voucher first' world? It's not exactly going well in secondary education.

New comment by yxwvut in "Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA"

yxwvut — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 23:06:55 +0000

Why not make Reddit itself a paid service by that logic? This whole 'Oh we need to make strides toward profitability blah blah' corporate spiel is such bullshit when they could snap their fingers and become profitable overnight by switching from an ad model to a subscription model. Further, by doing so they wouldn't be forced to gradually ruin the site with more dilution into sponsored content.

This is the arc of American business, though. A steady money printer isn't enough. That money has to grow, and it grows by reducing the surplus utility held by the users.

New comment by yxwvut in "The teen mental illness epidemic is international – Part 1: The Anglosphere"

yxwvut — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 18:36:35 +0000

This unassailable conviction that everything can always be chalked up to "more diagnosis" for every mental health trend is a thought terminating cliche. What can't be explained away by "oh, it's because diagnosis is easier and/or people are more open about their problems", regardless of whether that's the primary cause?

New comment by yxwvut in "AAA Reports That 68 Percent of Americans Are Now Afraid of Autonomous Cars"

yxwvut — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 17:27:59 +0000

As they should be. I'm afraid of what Tesla's marketed as 'autonomous' and the precedent their ability to get away with it sets for the day we hand over a greater deal of trust to these systems.

Who needs regulation when you've got litigation? Surely that's the foundation of a reasonable government - let the bodies pile up and sort it all out in court.

New comment by yxwvut in "Saying goodbye to Stack Overflow"

yxwvut — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 18:54:55 +0000

I feel like this is particularly bad for python Q+A on SO. At least it's not as bad as Quora where the top answer is invariably a grandiose answer to a different question than was asked or an excuse for some bullshit 'heartwarming' anecdote that answers nothing.