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amradio1989

Re:Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic? on Thursday January 15, 2026 @06:18PM (#46640830)
Its mostly social anxiety. Which makes sense. Children have progressively been raised more and more on screens and devices. Teenagers rely more and more on technology to solve problems. Adults do too. No one has to interact anymore, which means many people no longer know how. Cue the anxiety.

In previous generations, you had to interact with others to get anything done at all. Kids had to play with kids, parents had to talk to the postman, the milkman, the newspaper boy, the telephone operator, the neighbors, you name it. It was a necessity for a functional life, so people did it.

Re:Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year on Thursday September 18, 2025 @02:07PM (#45292928)
Way to go Rob! Thanks for owning up to it. And for being persistent about correcting it.
Ah but you see theres the rub. It’s not factual. It’s almost all supposition. I don’t think he should be pulled from the air by the way. Let’s go line by line.

> We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately -snip-

Pretty loaded statement. Desperately? On what basis?

The “fact” is that MAGA didn’t have the slightest fear the shooter was one of them. They all assumed he wasn’t bc it made the most sense given context and available evidence.

Anger? Sure. Desperation? No lol.

> trying to characterize this kid

That shooter is 22. That’s a full blown adult. Calling him a kid is not only false but also gross in this context. It’s an attempt to evoke sympathy for a murderer.

> as anything other than one of them

Another false supposition. They are actually trying to characterize him as a far left nutjob. Not just “anything”, but “Liberal”. The thing about propaganda is certain words aren’t allowed in certain contexts.

Second, it implies the shooter was likely one of them which was highly improbable to all concerned — most especially to MAGA.

> and doing everything they can to score political points for it

What political points Jimmy? It’s more likely they are just upset that a good friend got shot and killed in broad daylight for speaking his views. Charlie Kirk was a huge ally of MAGA and a friend to many of them. So they want justice.

Of course Jimmy can’t say that (propaganda has rules), so here he is acting saying it’s about vague political points (sounds convincing) and not genuine grief/outrage.

ABC was certainly complicit in what Jimmy Kimmel was doing. But they are now throwing Jimmy under the bus.

Jimmy was wrong to say what he said. At best it was a bad-faith assertion, at worst it was propaganda. It wasn’t even true, or likely to be true given what we knew.

The fact is that someone is dead. That is the strongest form of censorship. That is the strongest attack on “free speech”.

Jimmy pulled indefinitely? In my opinion it’s unfair. ABC is not innocent here.

But at least Jimmy didn’t have a bullet put into his neck.

Re:The Murder of Charlie Kirk Didn't Help Anyone on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @08:10PM (#45269959)
To be clear, are we talking about agitators the likes of Martin Luther King? Or something else? Because I fail to see how anything in politics changes without agitators. Without agitators, we'd all still be living under monarchies, dictators, and who knows what else. I'm curious about what you mean.

As for taking sides, I'm not sure why taking the side of a man who was wrongfully murdered irks you. Its basic ethics. You don't have to agree with him, or even support their views, to denounce his murder.

Unless you have an issue with people like Kirk being allowed to live, I'm not sure where the conflict is.

Re: on Tuesday September 16, 2025 @08:03PM (#45269919)
Okay, you disagree with him. I get that. But why are you telling us? Are you venting? Are you responding to an experience you had in another thread?

Right now it feels like you've dropped us in the middle of an argument without any context regarding 1) who you're talking to 2) what you're responding to.

You've quoted the OP, but your response seems directed to something else. I don't think the OP lionized anyone, or at the very least, they didn't discourage discussing Charlie Kirk's views. I'm not sure what prompted this response.

Are you saying you don't agree with civil discourse? That you don't believe we should learn to talk to each other without vitriol, poison, and anger? That we shouldn't be able to listen, and say what we mean, without being mean?

The key takeaway is: we are all human. And humans are easily hackable under the right circumstances.

Your story is humbling, and a good reminder that anyone can get “got”. We shouldn’t think ourselves above such incidents.

Shocking. Kidding, of course. People have been shouting about censorship from social media companies since COVID.

Ostensibly, that’s why Elon Musk bought X. Ostensibly, that is why Rumble rose as an alternative video platform. I say ostensibly because the truth is often different than appearances.

So no, this article did not uncover a social media censorship crisis. That was uncovered years ago, and roundly ignored by at least half of the country.

This too, will probably be ignored as well. The unfortunate truth is that people tend to silently — or not so silently — support censorship of views they don’t like. The irony is that this empowers censorship of views or ideas that you DO like.

We would be better off if we divorced ourselves from these social media platforms. They are shaping public discourse in unhealthy ways.

I suppose we disagree. It requires effort, but I couldn’t call it difficult. What’s your experience?

You can pull unprecedented amounts of information about nearly anything. It’s easily accessible.

It was not even possible to verify the kind of “facts” we can today, much less at the speed we can do it now.

Correct; however, in the internet age it is all too easy to verify information if you are remotely neutral. It would be nearly impossible to be ignorant of facts that contradict a story.

Generally, these news publishers are more interested in entertainment than truth telling. They get paid for monetizing attention, not telling the truth. They can’t outright lie, but they are certainly not bound by facts.

As the old saying goes, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story”. A newsroom mantra if there ever was one.

All that to say defamation suits are always a risk. The bar is high, but most “victims” are not rich enough to fight them. Those that are get settlements.

Re:The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991) on Monday September 15, 2025 @04:06PM (#45254315)
Let’s talk about it. What are “left wing issues” and what are “right wing issues”?

We can probably agree on what an issue is. But I’m not sure we have any idea what right wing or left wing are.

How far right is right wing? And right of what, exactly? What about the left? Where is the center point?

Here’s a fun one. To whom belongs the issue of racism? Is that a right wing issue or a left wing one?

It’s neither of course. It’s a human issue. And you have victims of racism across the entire political spectrum who care deeply about it. Yet discourse would have you assume it’s a “left wing” issue, when it’s anything but.

Re:Trump Calls for Ending Quarterly Earnings Reports on Monday September 15, 2025 @11:32AM (#45250904)
WSJ click baited me so hard and I can’t even be mad about it.

Semi-annual seems reasonable. I never found a single quarterly report to be useful.

Re:U.S. Added 911,000 Fewer Jobs in the Year Ended in March on Monday September 15, 2025 @11:12AM (#45250635)
The period covers March24-March25. Two years prior to March24 is March22. It would have been the 2nd year of Bidens presidency.
Re:The Obsolescence of Political Definitions (1991) on Monday September 15, 2025 @10:50AM (#45250388)
I’m starting to think political definitions only have use as propaganda. Definitions are definite, yet political definitions are anything but.

In the US, much is made about “the left” and “the right”, but we can hardly describe what these things mean. “The left” is simply more liberal than I, while “the right” is more conservative than I. On what issues, no one knows, because we hardly ask.

The point, I think, is simply to label the opposition while hiding any commonality or points of agreement. Useful for propaganda, but useless for substantive political discourse; you know, the kind that underpins a healthy democracy.

AGI is where the real money is. Gen AI is okay but mostly benefits the consumer.

Gen AI is not nearly powerful enough to justify current investments. A lot of money is going to go up in smoke.

Congratulations!! That’s a big achievement.

Maybe you know this, but trading signals are a dubious avenue to investment returns. They are, universally, all garbage.

Idk who your customer is, but this is useful for “traders” who sell e-courses and trade picks to the naive. I imagine they’d like it quite a lot. You could even run an affiliate program to get to their customers.

Now I wouldn’t recommend that personally. We have enough unscrupulous behavior going around. Instead I’d apply those statistical analysis capabilities to things that actually work.

Re:Charlie Kirk shot at event in Utah on Thursday September 11, 2025 @02:05PM (#45214389)
First, my bad. I owe you an apology. I'm sorry for treating you like that.

There are millions of eyewitness accounts and personal testimonies about prayer. They are exceedingly well documented (esp. in books) and span nearly all of human history. Whether you believe them or not is a different matter. But at the very least, we can't easily dismiss prayer as something that "doesn't work".

Second, even if we accept that "prayer" works, there's a ton of questions that raises. Does all prayer work? What if the prayers are contrary? And who are people praying to? And do all receivers of prayer actually have the power to answer prayer? For those that do, what happens when prayers are contrary to each other? What happens when the prayers are contrary to the will of the one being prayed to?

I'm only bringing up these questions to illustrate that we can't say "prayer doesn't work" as a matter of fact, even in instances where it doesn't seem to work.

Re:Charlie Kirk shot at event in Utah on Wednesday September 10, 2025 @06:52PM (#45205204)
In light of the top post by "dang", I'd like to apologize for my own comments. Forgive me brothers and sisters, I was obviously on edge.

In particular I'd like to apologize to one individual whom I insinuated was posting rage-bait.

To close, this is a tragic time in America. Each act of violence is one act too many.

Re:Charlie Kirk shot at event in Utah on Wednesday September 10, 2025 @03:57PM (#45202775)
Its not reasonable at all. I wouldn't downvote it, but its devoid of facts and is loaded with false premises.

I'm tempted to call it rage-bait, but I choose to assume the poster meant no harm.

Re:Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office on Wednesday September 10, 2025 @10:41AM (#45198475)
Generally I believe RTO is about control. Secondarily, I believe that the corp office culture is still a thing many execs take pride in.

Most of them have dedicated their lives to getting that sweet corner office with the mahogany L-desk. Then theres that sweet nameplate.

I don’t think there’s any reliable data on RTO vs Remote productivity.

Re:All vibe coding tools are selling a get rich quick scheme on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @10:38PM (#45192490)
Actually, I think hand-coders will still be around in future generations. There are still people who hand sew, weave baskets, and blacksmith. You will still have people who code by hand.

Coding is at the stage of maturing from commodity to a craft. This generation will pass it on to the next generation, and so on.

As with all crafts, there will be a great demand for quality craftsmanship. And it will command a much higher price than whatever comes out of the factory.

I generally foresee most AI generated things becoming worthless. It’s basic supply and demand. When copycats and crop up overnight in droves, whats the differentiator? The value goes way down.

I believe that winning differentiator will be quality. Uniqueness. A level of craftsmanship that an LLM can’t copy without knowing the secret sauce.

Re:U.S. Added 911,000 Fewer Jobs in the Year Ended in March on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @06:20PM (#45190135)
The economy is not great and has not been great for years. That has been the reality for almost all Americans.

It’s very odd to make this about Trump vs Biden. This has been brewing for nearly two decades. Forever-QE made us forget about the real health of the economy.

Re:U.S. Added 911,000 Fewer Jobs in the Year Ended in March on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @04:22PM (#45188333)
Not to pile on, but there is a huge public misunderstanding when it comes to economic data.

The data is lagging, usually by a full year. The policies that lead to that data are from the year before data collection, at a minimum, more likely two+ years.

Economic policies generally take time to ripple through the economy. Generally. There are exceptions. Interest rates tend to affect things pretty quickly relative to other changes.

Re:We All Dodged a Bullet on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @03:59PM (#45187933)
Great write up. I can understand the indignation at the exploit, but I believe it’s an A+ exploit for the chosen attack vector.

Not only is it “proof of concept” but it’s a low risk high reward play. It’s brilliant really. Dangerously so.

I agree with this sentiment actually. Now if Meta gets a "slap on the wrist" that, says a lot.
I think the jury is still out on how fair use applies to AI. Fair use was not designed for what we have now.

I could read a book, but its highly unlikely I could regurgitate it, much less months or years later. An LLM, however, can. While we can say "training is like reading", its also not like reading at all due to permanent perfect recall.

Not only does an LLM have perfect recall, it also has the ability to distribute plagiarized ideas at a scale no human can. There's a lot of questions to be answered about where fair use starts/ends for these LLM products.

Re:Age verification doesn’t work on Friday September 05, 2025 @09:47PM (#45145845)
It's not really a good point. Yes it's more difficult, but that doesn't exempt them from complying. And they've made basically zero effort to comply.

You could argue quite convincingly that the explosion of adult content sites is due largely to evading regulation and reaching a wider (ie: illegal) audience.

Re:Age verification doesn’t work on Friday September 05, 2025 @09:13PM (#45145643)
An adult content provider is legally bound to not distribute to minors. Its not even debatable.

Your local adult video store can't sell to minors. They have to check id. If they don't, and a minor buys some goods, the store is liable.

Your local strip club can't let minors into their doors. They have to check id. If they don't, and a minor gains entry, the club is liable.

The same applies to all age-restricted products everywhere, online or offline. I can't buy liquor on doordash without showing ID for crying out loud.

But for some (probably nefarious) reason, online adult content providers want to pretend the rule doesn't apply to them. Device-level controls? Hilarious. What... are we going to add device-controls to a teenager's car to prevent them from driving to liquor stores too?

Don't get me wrong, there's some shady stuff behind AV. But I strongly disagree with the notion that an adult content provider isn't responsible for restricting their content in a way that works.

Re:Ask HN: Why is ChatGPT worse now? on Wednesday September 03, 2025 @06:21PM (#45121012)
The models are being tweaked for purposes other than usefulness. Its a product after all. It's not really a tool in the conventional sense of the word.

Sure you can use it as a tool, but you can also use it as an experience, or even a companion. But that requires it to be "not boring".

Quite frankly, "useful" is the least profitable route for this technology. It's all about the experience. People pay way more for that.

You know the answer. The best way to prepare for any job market is to meet the demand. The demand right now is for AI knowledge and skills. There's no way around it if you want to be employed in a well-paying job with benefits and paid time off.

If that's not important to you, you can do whatever you want. Build systems, do contract work, join a small dev shop that shares your values, work on open source projects, etc. You don't have to touch AI if you don't want to.

There's more risk in that second option, and probably a lot less money (though not necessarily) but you'll be happier.

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