<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: zer8k</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zer8k</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:48:39 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=zer8k" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Ask HN: The Future of SaaS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> And perhaps worst of all, trust is being lost. Users are tired of bait-and-switch, surprise deprecations, and data lock-ins. There's a feeling that too many SaaS businesses are more concerned with growth-at-all-costs than product quality, user experience, and long-term value.<p>Perhaps in your corner of the industry. On the consumer side people have been very vocally tired of purchasing products piecemeal on a subscription basis for a long time now. I, personally, am so sick of everything being a subscription I refuse to participate except in one or two services I use almost every single day. SaaS vendors to me are without a doubt vultures. A good exception that makes me happy is jetbrains. They are one of the few I am happy to pay for. Most of the other consumer grade SaaS is churn and burn crap.<p>I personally welcome the death of SaaS. I hope it brings forth a new era where I actually own things and can pay a company every couple years some nominal percentage of retail for a “service pack” upgrade.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:56:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717845</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717845</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717845</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "TikTok is harming children at an industrial scale"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is decidedly not true on almost every account.<p>Europe has its own opioid crisis, and we absolutely can blame other countries who play host to the primary runners of heroin and synthesizers of fent. The pain industry is just the first baby step to hard drugs. We already handled our side after OxyContin - it’s impossible to get more than ibuprofen from a doctor without doing backflips through flaming hoops.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:50:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717738</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717738</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717738</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "TikTok Is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You missed the sarcasm. HN articles all follow a formula, almost predictably so, where they’re lazy thought pieces by a self important blogger.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:47:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717703</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717703</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43717703</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "As 'Bot' Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This might shock your worldview but cheating is absolutely rampant in STEM programs in person too. I still remember the corrupt graduate students who would circulate exam answers and/or take money to get copies of exams. Tutoring services range from valid to straight up homework cheating. Students share answers all the time, sometimes innocently, because humans want to help each other. Students are much, much smarter than faculty when it comes to stopping cheating. Good luck stopping it in a lecture hall of 100 people!<p>Every accredited online course program requires proctoring. To think in person stops cheating is naive. We need to rethink how education works if people feel the need to cheat so much. I’ll give you a hint: when people pay 5,000 dollars a class they’re going to cheat because they’re financially incentivized to do so. Administrative bloat in university needs to be done away with immediately and costs of education fixed by the government to some number that is reasonable for most people. Education should not be for-profit. Right now it is, even at public universities.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:20:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716422</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716422</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716422</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "As 'Bot' Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Remote and correspondence (the same thing really) have existed forever. There is zero basis for your statement it’s worse, and there is zero basis for your statement that there is compromise. Remote schooling allows people who wouldn’t have the means to educate themselves formally such as working people, parents, adult learners, etc to do so in a manner practical to them.<p>I have a degree I got in person and now one I am working on remote. Do you know what the difference is? NOTHING! When I went in person I was making up for the shortcomings of professors too. I was still having to teach myself a lot. The only true difference was I wasn’t able to do more than terrible part time work and I drove 45 minutes one way.<p>Malware vendors like honorlock have made remote schooling much more difficult. Not in terms of learning but in terms of overall stress level. Remote schooling itself is an incredible way to break from the aristocratic ideal still pedaled by universities today.<p>I’m envious of students whose parents prepared appropriately for their kids to go to school and focus full time. I was not one of them. My situation made worse by my parents making just enough to disqualify me from any aid despite their contribution of 0. The existence of remote schooling has allowed me to pursue my educational dreams.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:08:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716266</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716266</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43716266</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "The unsolved death of Gloria Ramirez"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't really believe the bent on this article that the hospital was at fault. There's an implication that Lawrence Livermore was in some sort of cover up and I don't really buy that line of BS either.<p>Its a tragedy someone with a horrible disease was taken by fake medicine (DMSO). I do find it weird that the explanation would be dimethyl sulfate production due to a defibrillator but stranger things have happened. If she really did use an incredible quantity of the stuff I suppose it's not entirely unrealistic to believe small quantities of gas local to the body could've been produced but not enough to spread even to the other end of the room.<p>The only thing the hospital is liable for a mistreatment of her body by not immediately getting it to a place where it could be examined before decay set in. But, on the other hand, who can blame them. All they knew is they had a biohazard of unknown capacity. Anyone with any number of unknown, horrific, highly contagious diseases would be treated the same.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2025 19:21:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43697278</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43697278</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43697278</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Show HN: I made a zero dependency Bitcoin math implementation in C"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While I agree code like this shouldn't be released fail-deadly it's also patently obvious it's not to be used. There is sufficient notice in the README. If someone uses this, it's at their own peril.<p>Would you make the same argument for reference implementations of algorithms? For example, small details leading to bugs that can be compromised?<p>At some point people have to be responsible for themselves...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:30:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43685977</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43685977</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43685977</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Ask HN: What made your favorite manager so great?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Looking back at what my best managers (I have two) had in common:<p>* Cared deeply about my <i>personal</i> progress. Not just at work but in life. Am I feeling okay? How are things going? What are your interests? Are you doing what is interesting to you? Both of them became actual friends outside of work once I left one of the companies, and the other manager left the company I was at during that time.<p>* Treated me as an equal and used their power in my favor. Bad project? Moved me off it. Salary problems? Fought for a raise. Needed to skill up? Got me what I needed whether it was books, or classes, or whatever.<p>* Didn't bother much about using 1:1s for "business". It was my time, and they made sure I used it how I wanted. If I wanted to wax poetic about my hobby project for 30 minutes I could.<p>Importantly both of them understood that what I was doing for the company was a JOB and there were no qualms about that. "Careers" do not exist anymore. This refreshing reality and human feel is something pinhead middle managers I've had since seem to miss.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 16:34:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655714</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655714</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655714</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Assuming they are akin to grad students, these "fresh graduates" likely have more intersectional knowledge than long-time deep domain experts. I've worked in grant funding landscape, and one of the biggest challenges is that<p>This is generous. I have worked with these consultants. These aren't mom-and-pop startup consultancies. These guys charge extortionate rates and provide bottom-barrel talent. One agency, who will not be named, sweet talks you with product managers and then exports 90% of the technical labor overseas to the lowest bidder. You pay <i>expert</i> prices for this. Even their MBAs are tacit manipulators. I remember one project before we canned them - the PMs were constantly revising their "go to market strategy" conveniently around the time the contract would be up for negotiation.<p>> So I'd argue that keep an abundance of "fresh grads" isn't just cynical cost-cutting, but part of the secret sauce of why these big orgs generally operate as effective institutional ecologies<p>Realistically, new-grads are willing to work 14x7 and shower and sleep in the office. That's why.<p>These consultancies are a malignant cancer on business and the health of their employees.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 15:54:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655263</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655263</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43655263</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Kids can't use computers and this is why it should worry you (2013)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not an exaggeration, I can confirm OPs story at my own university. When I was in school (2010) the first year had a drop out rate of over 80%. The first class took out over 50%. Many people didn’t have any idea how to use a computer at all. The other weed out was after all the math classes.<p>Professionally I’ve been in charge of interviewing foreign candidates from those headhunter type programs. I’ve legitimately interviewed people who claimed years and years of experience but had no measurable computer experience.<p>My high school aged family has next to no idea how to do anything on a computer but use a browser.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 14:18:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43644031</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43644031</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43644031</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>XXY was not on his card. It was YXX. Some idiot on a rumor mill website speculated it was due to this that he must have the disease.<p>It’s debunked. Further he would be an incredible case study given his stature and appearance. For calling MAGA people dummies, it appears you can’t even read.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2025 02:38:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43640117</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43640117</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43640117</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Why I don't discuss politics with friends"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Choosing the wrong partner is one of the biggest risks you take in your life, especially for a woman. This is one of those things that can easily lead to you being bankrupt with nothing. This can lead to you being abused or raped. You can end up with a child that you did not want to have. You can end up dead.<p>Meanwhile FOMO has resulted in hypergamy. Long-term relationships have been on the decline because availability has resulted in situationships with the top 10% of men has become the norm. Your statement is inconsistent with a mountain of data coming from dating apps and is an appeal to emotion.<p>This is consistent with<p>> and probably have a little less experience here than the average woman does.<p>Which you use to insult OP's experience and inject your own mind-melting BS as fact.<p>Everything you state has a counter-argument for men that is equally valid. An alleged man would know this:<p>1. False accusation of abuse or rape - have an argument a little too loud and the neighbors call the police who is going to jail? It's the man, regardless of fault.<p>2. You can get baby trapped because our "progressive" society doesn't believe in the <i>right</i> a man should have to "abort".<p>3. Family courts are slanted 80/20 towards women. It's almost universally the man who loses rights to a child and gains a subsequent extra house payment in child support. Go hang out at bars and homeless shelters and figure out how many of them have been bankrupted.<p>4. Divorce court, despite income disparity all but disappearing, still leans heavily in favor of women.<p>5. There are nearly no programs for abused men, men who are going through divorce, men who got their children taken away, men who are suffering under the boot of child support/alimony, etc. In fact, you can go to jail for not paying these! Most homeless shelters will remove a man from a bed to provide one for a woman, especially if she has a child. How is this fair?<p>The <i>man</i> takes the highest possible risk entering a relationship all other things being equal.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 04 Apr 2025 15:41:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43584021</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43584021</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43584021</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Luigi Mangione-inspired ballot initiative targets health insurance denials"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a function of limited risk pooling. Health insurance companies are state-locked. In the limit they function as options sellers in a stock market. If they can’t hedge off volatility with a larger risk pooling strategy they do something you can’t do at the market - simply deny care.<p>This problem is due to manufactured monopolies and regulatory capture. Open up cross state healthcare, allow larger risk pools, and use this to hedge off the risk of the 1/10% of customers who represent the highest risk pool. Costs go down for everyone and quality of care goes up. It’s not quite single payer but it’s simple probabilities. I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t lobby for this unless it’s vastly more profitable to stay state locked and deny care.<p>Of course though you are correct, in that a treatment still should have utility. But the average person being denied something as simple as a PET scan does not represent a maximization of utility. That is greed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:33:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529332</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529332</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529332</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Luigi Mangione-inspired ballot initiative targets health insurance denials"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Denying life saving treatment to bolster your bottom line for shareholders is also murder by any other name. If you consider murder as requiring malice aforethought then it certainly fits the bill. Just because someone hides behind legalease does not release them from the moral and ethical corruption. No different than the death penalty this is simply a form of murder society has decided is acceptable.<p>So then it should be easy to see why a large portion of Americans vocally approved of this. So much so, that the media couldn’t even run enough cover to deaden even half the sound of the cheering.<p>I don’t know a single person who has gone through, or watched a love one going through horrific health insurance “process” in order to gain life saving care, that wouldn’t want someone to be “paid in kind” for their suffering.<p>Is “murder someone” just? No. Do I agree that this was how we should’ve approached fixing healthcare? Absolutely not. But there is an interesting moral and ethical dilemma that, much like everything else in life, paints a picture that is not exactly black or white. Many people view healthcare as an inalienable right. You can see how this creates a potentially dangerous high stakes conflict. The proper solution is, of course, to use our legal system to provide safeguards for the most vulnerable health insurance customers. If we focused hard on this, as we should, this entire situation could’ve been completely avoided.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:20:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529243</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529243</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529243</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "The Software Engineering Identity Crisis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You act like software engineering is a respected field.<p>Most of our job is fixing slop. Previously this was slop produced by low quality cut rate developers in countries known for outsourcing. Now it’s just fixing AI slop and foreign outsourced slop.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:20:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462089</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462089</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462089</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "The Software Engineering Identity Crisis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AI is the only reason I’ve been able to keep up with the constant death marches. Since the job market went to shit employers are piling on as much work as they can knowing they have indentured servants.<p>The code quality isn’t great but it’s a lot easier to have it write tests, and other code, and then go back and audit and clean.<p>Feels absolutely awful but whatever.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:17:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462049</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462049</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462049</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "Ask HN: Difficulties with going back to school"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Online - This is an option. However for engineering degrees you'll be missing out on all the hands-on work. If you're an unusually dedicated student (this is more common with older students though), you can get some of this with a home lab but it won't be the same. Get internships and coops to make up for your lack of hands-on experience. Speaking frankly, I would be very disinclined to hire a student with an online engineering degree and no internships or coops in the field (I would hire them into an internship or coop program, though). The lack of hands on experience would suggest they're all theory and no practice, that's not a useful person to hire and would make you less competitive if up against candidates from an in-person program with a decent reputation<p>This is wrong. There are several ABET accredited online engineering degrees. Each fulfill the rigorous standards including labs. Some schools have you buy a kit, some schools make you show up occasionally, none of the ABET accredited schools are “theory only”.<p>Moreover all ABET accredited schools award you a full degree. Literally no one will put “completed online” on their resume and you would never know the difference. Nor should you care - an accredited degree is equivalent to an on-campus degree in every way including rigor.<p>Your lack of knowledge in this area is apparent and you shouldn’t scare OP off something you clearly do not understand.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Mar 2025 07:11:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43458338</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43458338</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43458338</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "GitHub reveals how software engineers are purging federal databases"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The silliest.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2025 19:53:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937677</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937677</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42937677</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "The US government's open data on Data.gov is currently being scrubbed"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's upsetting to the progressives but Biden and Obama both deported far more than Trump did.<p>Thankfully we have archives and youtube, entirely searchable, where from 2008-2012 the democrats were strongly for sending people back home.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jan 2025 22:00:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42882603</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42882603</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42882603</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by zer8k in "The AI bust is here"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>On the contrary with cheap LLMs this practice will be more prevalent. If you lift the cost barrier the McKinseys will be attaching all sorts of AI to everything.<p>All the AI bust means is that for engineers working at companies that invested too far into AI they're going to be looking for jobs. ML departments will be culled too. Just like the dot-com bust.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Jan 2025 23:00:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872437</link><dc:creator>zer8k</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872437</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872437</guid></item></channel></rss>