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Rebuff5007

Re:Hunger beats tenure: Advice for junior engineers on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @05:33AM (#50271026)
I think this is bad advice. "Does it bring you satisfaction" should not be the only factor for making decisions.

Even if you get plenty satisfaction from work, I think its important to invest in other parts of your life (family, health, hobbies).

Agreed.

Theres an alternate world where scientists use an openai product, discover a break through, make press-releases and headlines in their own communities about discovery, and open-ai is just the cool kid in the background that people will start looking into.

Instead they are always the loudest ones in the room making sure the world sees their every possible contribution on a glowing pedestal, and this makes everything feel a bit disingenuous.

Re:The Robot I Didn't Expect to Build on Thursday October 22, 2026 @11:42AM (#50196962)
It is not worth a lot. At the very least, not a single robotics has proven this by demonstration despite billions in funding over the last many years. In fact this is also true for a lot of non-humanoid "ai" powered robots.
Re:Were Software Engineers blue-collar workers all along? on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @05:42AM (#50069083)
Yea, some ties or jackets clash with a blue collar. White is generally a bit more versatile IMO.
In practice, what this means is that a relatively immature startup takes on immense technological risk by having to invest in the capex and deploy a solution, all while being at the mercy of their customers to give them enough time and access to get the solution to any reasonable production standard. Usually robotics companies never get to that mark.

I believe theres on the order of 100s of millions in losses across a number of robotics companies that have attempted this in the last 10 years.

> Robotics-as-a-Service model

Oof. Amazed that venture-backed robotics companies are still interested in making this work.

Re:America.gov – Whatever you need from government, start here on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @05:57AM (#49906648)
"at a high level" is doing a lot of work.

I know some companies that at a high level want to "organize the world's information" or "build the future of human connection", yet have done innumerable cruel and harmful things to society (at least in my opinion).

Note that "bug" came from an actual moth in a computer: https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/september/9/
We know AI has been used to do target planning: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthrop...
If highly trained folks in the military that are literally choosing targets to bomb are succumbing to hallucinated AI slop, then what hope do the rest of us (e.g. students doing homework, a corporate analyst, a local journalist) have... dark times ahead
Re:Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting on Thursday September 10, 2026 @11:05AM (#49645020)
I wish all the politicians making noise about banning data centers and "superintelligence" focus on things like this instead.
The hype has significant real-world consequences such as nonsensical amounts of funding and valuations that could crash the world economy at some point. Until there some "check" on this system, i think the anti-hype is quite valid.
Re:Software Engineering fundamentals matter more on Monday August 17, 2026 @03:43AM (#49327585)
How lazy do you have to be... within seconds of hitting ikea.com:

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/skogsta-table-acacia-black-0045... https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/hemnes-chest-of-6-drawers-white...

The wood types are clearly labeled, so its not something they are trying to hide. And i'm not sure why hollow panels in itself are necessarily a bad thing...cutting down on material without hurting design or functionality has plenty of benefits (environmental, weight, cost).

Re:Software Engineering fundamentals matter more on Sunday August 16, 2026 @06:30AM (#49318729)
What a sad retelling of reality.

A large amount of ikea furniture is not cheap particle board crap. they have a range of materials for all of their products, and even some of the medium end products look nice and hold well.

Additionally, many middle-class families have "back in the day" stories where their houses were filled with bare essentials for which i'm sure an ikea bed frame would feel like an upgrade.

I think the real IKEA problem is global homogeneity (there seems to be a MALM dresser whatever home i'm in around the world), but that doesnt mean we are collectively living with a low standard.

Re:OpenAI's Only Ethicist Reportedly Left Last Month on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @03:15AM (#49268858)
Shall we get rid of the FAA and the FDA then? Lets just have all pfizer employees make ethics their own responsibility.

What your describing is the specific case of a company so paralyzed by short-term thinking that they see regulation as a burden. Some maturity in the organization would allow reframing this to be less antagonistic.

Re:The AI Billboards Are Killing SF on Friday August 07, 2026 @12:48PM (#49213150)
Bold of you to assume they actually have products ;)
I think the good solution is to introduce a bit of "shame" into the system -- de-anonymized submissions and reviews.

You'd be less willing to publish ai slop if your name had to be tied to it for years to come.

Bizarre oversimplification.

For both manipulation and autonomous driving, google has invested in approaches with custom hardware, and off-the-shelf hardware, and a blend (which is what waymo is).

It is at least somewhat relevant.

A persons political persuasion can tell you something about their values, and the policies they would prefer enacted for a given topic.

Republicans AFAIK have not been on the crusade to end mass surveillance or promote privacy laws to regulate big tech, so seeing a republican man stand up for this right might help you understand that the sentiment of the party is not unanimous.

Re:Orion Browser by Kagi on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @04:09AM (#48989483)
The parent comment mentioned "blogs" and "everyday websites."

Do you want to make a case for why exactly a percentage increase calculator app needs ads?

Re:Orion Browser by Kagi on Monday July 20, 2026 @06:51AM (#48977000)
There is a third option, that the content does not need to be monetized.
This is the 6th blog post, making the average cost per post only $333 million! What a steal for the VCs.
I don't want to be a Zuckerberg hater, but is there any thing Zuckerberg has done or said in the last few years that wasn't mundane, reactionary or self-aggrandizing?

In other words, was there a single decision or take he made that turned out in his favor?

$80 billion written off for the metaverse.

Think about the number of kids that were harmed being fed ads and nonsense content to enable this... this a scandal IMO.

The author of this article disagrees:

> “Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan of often-referenced Googliness—it was a north star for teams making hard calls.

It definitely counts for something that at least one senior leader felt the slogan was relevant for decision making.

Sure why not. How is that any different that what already happens at airports?
Why are those things naturally "whats next"?

We allow bars and car companies to verify age before conducting business. Does that in itself lead to racial discrimination? I think not.

Re:U.S. Science Is in Chaos on Wednesday June 17, 2026 @12:20PM (#48572664)
I never said half the country is irrational. I specifically called out that people in power do not care to live in a shared reality with the rest of us. They lie directly [1][2], or dismantle the institutions that would be able to push back on their lies [2][3]. Countless examples of this in the last few years.

I do think a non-trivial portion of the population has opinions that have unfortunately diverged from what a board of climate scientists or epidemiologist would say is the appropriate state of affairs, and yes this is a problem we all need to figure out how to correct.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/06/california-s... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0z9nmzvdlo [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatori...

Re:U.S. Science Is in Chaos on Wednesday June 17, 2026 @08:08AM (#48569248)
Science being partisan right now has nothing to do with funding. It has to do with the disdain that the people currently in power have to live in a shared reality with the rest of the poulation.

Theres a monumental leap from saying "lets not invest in climate change because thats not a good use of tax dollars" to "lets not invest in climate change because its a hoax."

Re:U.S. Science Is in Chaos on Wednesday June 17, 2026 @06:49AM (#48568492)
> whether there are black holes at a redshift of 10 or not is not a partisan issue.

Anything that depends on a basic understanding of the scientific process, and resulting scientific facts is absolutely a partisan issue right now.

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