austinl

In SF, there's a crosswalk on a street near me where cars regularly go 35 mph, so they rarely stop for pedestrians. A few days ago, I was waiting on the sidewalk to cross, and a Waymo stopped. I was so surprised, at first I thought it was letting someone out. It took a few seconds to realize that no, it was stopping for me to cross the street.

Having recently bought a house, I love thinking about things that increase perceived value relative to cost (more so because they're nice to have, not because we plan to sell any time soon).

A few things we changed right away: - new mailbox (replacing a rusted 30+ year old one) - lots of landscaping work (the majority of which I can do myself) - installed a wine fridge (I always felt it gave the sense that the kitchen was upgraded when we were touring places) - replaced old door knobs with modern matte black levers; ~$50 each

The house was built in 1968, so it's been interesting to think about all of the small things that make it feel dated that can be changed for not much money.

I recently rented a new car, and just wanted to sit with the windows open while waiting.

After I shut the engine off, the interior lights and dash display would remain on for 5+ minutes. If I locked the doors, the interior lights would shut off, but it would automatically roll up all of the windows. Examples of "features" that are infuriating.

I'm not sure how feasible this is, but I love the thought experiment of limiting a training set to a certain time period, then seeing how much hinting it takes for the model to discover things we already know.

E.g. training on physics knowledge prior to 1915, then attempting to get from classical mechanics to general relativity.

Feudal Japan had a measurement called the "koku", which is roughly the amount of rice needed to feed a person for a year: about 330 lb. You can now buy 50 lb. of rice at Costco for $30, which is a few hours of work at minimum wage.

To me, that is a modern marvel. I don't want people to buy things that they don't need, and I also don't like the crowds, but I can't help but feel grateful for a stocked grocery store that is accessible to basically everyone—isn't that the dream?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku

It's possible to lock pages in Notion (from the ... menu on the page), which prevents editing without unlocking. Most org-level pages in our workspace are locked. People also typically lock project pages after they ship, for example.

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices.

At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

"Be careful… about this reading you refer to, this reading of many different authors and books of every description. You should be extending your stay among writers whose genius is unquestionable, deriving constant nourishment from them if you wish to gain anything from your reading that will find a lasting place in your mind."

- Seneca, Letters

I was surprised to learn that the temptation to read too many things was also a problem 2,000 years ago. This inspired me to work on a short list of books that I know deeply.

During COVID, the block I live on in San Francisco started doing outdoor happy hours every Saturday afternoon. People weren't traveling much then, so we had near 100% attendance of every person on the block for almost a year. I went from knowing none of my neighbors to knowing all of them quite well, and it has surprised me how much it has improved my day-to-day happiness.

Since then, we've hosted a "progressive" Thanksgiving dinner, which moves from house-to-house on the block for different courses. We shut down the street one day each year and set up bounce houses for the kids. I've made pint glasses with the name our street engraved in them, and given them to my neighbors. It's shown me that there really can be something valuable outside of your immediate family and circle of friends.

One thing that struck me when visiting Tokyo (as an American living in San Francisco), was that it was not uncommon to go to a restaurant or bar on, say the 3rd or 4th floor of a building.

In America and Europe, restaurants and shops are basically all zoned to be on the ground floor, with residential or office units above. This gives the density a different feeling, because commercial/dining space extends upward.

I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere.

Has anyone made the switch from digital to physical and loved it? What kind of notes are you taking, how did you get it to stick?

Banks' work assumes that AI exceeding human capabilities is inevitable, and the series explores how people might find meaning in life when ultimately everything can be done better by machines. For example, the protagonist in Player of Games gets enjoyment from playing board games, despite knowing that AI can win in every circumstance.

For all of the apocalyptic AI sci-fi that's out there , Banks' work stands out as a positive outcome for humanity (if you accept that AI acceleration is inevitable).

But I also think Banks is sympathetic to your viewpoint. For example, Horza, the protagonist in the first novel, Consider Phlebas, is notably anti-Culture. Horza sees the Culture as hedonists who are unable to take anything seriously, whose actions are ultimately meaningless without spiritual motivation. I think these were the questions that Banks was trying to raise.

Their sailing videos are very inspiring—from what I remember, they sailed from Vancouver to Japan, then down to New Zealand and back to Vancouver over the course of a few years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTCjpNXing

If you enjoyed this essay, I would recommend reading Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks by Prof. Joseph Heath (https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-c...)

Among other things, it compares the Idirans—who have what we consider a more traditional, modern-day culture—with the Culture. For example:

"The war between the Idirans and the Culture is peculiarly asymmetrical, since the Culture is not an empire, or even a “polity” in any traditional sense of the term, it is simply a culture. It has no capital city, or even any “territory” in the conventional sense."

I also love Heath's criticism of Dune (I appreciate the series, but now can't help but notice how often sci-fi series use regressive social structures).

"In fact, modern science fiction writers have had so little to say about the evolution of culture and society that it has become a standard trope of the genre to imagine a technologically advanced future that contains archaic social structures. The most influential example of this is undoubtedly Frank Herbert’s Dune, which imagines an advanced galactic civilization, but where society is dominated by warring “houses,” organized as extended clans, all under the nominal authority of an “emperor.”"

The Foreign Service Institute training is also full-time, 8+ hours a day, working with dedicated tutors in small groups. Basically, it's your job to learn the language.

I've honestly found German to be easier than French, specifically in terms of listening comprehension. It can take a while to get used to word order in German, but I've found it much easier to pick out discrete words compared to French.

Maybe it's because elision is so common in French? e.g. "j’aime l’hiver". I find it hard to decouple those things quickly enough in my head. Most words in German, on the other hand, are spelled exactly as they are pronounced.

Curious if folks have had other experiences with these two languages.

I think sweet spot of company size for an IC software engineer is between 50 and 500. It's small enough to have autonomy, learn, and build good relationships with the people around you, while not getting overwhelmed by bureaucratic processes.

50-500 is also large enough to where you, ideally, don't have to worry about the company's runway, have work-life balance, get decent compensation and benefits. There's typically opportunities for upward mobility as the company scales if you want it.

I think I finally come to peace with idea that's it's okay to be in tech and never work for FAANG.

There was a popular submission to HN a few years ago that really opened my eyes to how having a low income can cause problems to compound, making things exponentially worse.

An example the author gives of this is car problems: people with low incomes often have older cars that are more likely to have issues. If their car breaks down, there's a chance they can't afford repairs, which means they're unable to commute to work. Perhaps because of this, they choose to stop making water bill payments or buying as much food while saving for repairs. Everything is very precarious—you're essentially one or two unlucky incidents away from ruin. That, to me, is what it means to "be poor" in the US.

https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/on-the-experience-of-be...

Github was the first thing I thought of when reading this. My only use case for the commit date is to quickly check if a certain commit merged before a branch was automatically cut, so I need the day of the week and time, not "11 days ago."

Fortunately, if you hover over the relative date, it will expand to show the exact date time, but it would be nice if this were swapped.

There's been a general trend of grade inflation in U.S. universities, accelerating in the 1960s (during the Vietnam war), and then again in the 1990s [0]. In some sense, this might be because the role of the student shifted more towards that of a consumer purchasing a product.

Harvard average GPA was a 3.0 in 1967, now it's a 3.45 [1].

There are some universities that have tried to actively prevent inflation (e.g. Purdue with a 2.73 average in 1986 to 3.09 in 2012 [2]).

[0] https://www.gradeinflation.com [1] https://www.gradeinflation.com/Harvard.html [2] https://www.gradeinflation.com/Purdue.html

Spam teams at social networks typically shadow-ban spammers. The goal of this is to make it as difficult as possible for the spammer to determine that they've been caught (which is why I think the frustration techniques, or simply account suspension aren't widely used).

The field of spam-prevention is fascinating because it's essentially an arms race between companies deploying tactics to detect spam and sophisticated spammers using increasingly complex methods to avoid detection.

So there's an advantage gained by companies if spammers believe they don't need to evolve their methods.

Reminds me that SpaceX has now landed rocket boosters successfully over 200 times. Landing just a single rocket was huge news a few years ago.

The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2].

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

[2] https://orbitalindex.com

I love this story [1] of how folks in Jalandhar and north India were able to see the Himalayas for the first time in 30 years due to the lack of traffic pollution during the COVID lockdowns. It gives some hope as to what is possible.

Relatedly, I'd recommend watching the documentary The Year Earth Changed [2] which is about several environmental systems that recovered to some degree during COVID.

I don't think we should necessarily aim to restrict commuting to protect the environment, but now there's evidence that WFH + transitioning to cleaner energy sources can make a significant impact.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/himalayas-visible-lockdow...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswV_yqPq28

Staying outside of SF itself is probably the easiest way to save money. Somewhere that's either close to a CalTrain or BART station. It may be a hassle getting in and out out the city depending on where you find a place, but much more affordable. Start there, then look into co-living in the city while you're here—that's usually a longer-term commitment.

This makes me feel a bit old and out of touch—when I came to the city ~10 years ago, I remember knowing a few larger houses (e.g. Negev). But haven't heard of any since then—beyond private houses set up by friends with a smaller number of people. Are the larger houses still a thing?

I can't blame medieval scholars for believing that flies spontaneously generated from things like raw meat (instead of reproducing). I would guess that fruit flies played a major role in supporting this theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation

If you don't mind sharing, where did you find a therapist, and what is their background? It seems like there is such a wide range of options, and I'm a bit hesitant about the online platforms.

I've noticed this as I've gotten older, but I think it's me—not the games. I can point to two reasons:

* I have less time or patience to invest in learning the intricacies of complex games that used to be so rewarding. I've been a big fan of Paradox games over the years, but man, the amount of time needed to really appreciate games like Hearts of Iron or Crusader Kings isn't worth it to me anymore.

* I feel less capable of "suspending reality" in RPGs. When I was a kid, I feel like I could get super immersed in things like the Elder Scrolls games—I probably have more hours in Oblivion than any other game to date. But I don't quite get that same feeling anymore. Adulthood, I guess?

Now, I almost exclusively play relaxing games that don't require too much mental overhead (like Diablo). I'll still pick up indie games that get a lot of traction (enjoyed Hades and Disco Elysium), but rarely touch AAA games.

I’d recommend reading Skunk Works by Ben R. Rich for more on the engineering of the Blackbird and other special aviation projects.

I knew the Blackbird was fast, but didn’t quite realize how fast until reading this book. The SR-72 would cruise at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound. It would do this at 80,000 feet, over twice the traditional cruising altitude of a 747. Even at this height, where the temperature is -60°F, friction would cause the fuselage to heat to 600°F. This would melt traditional aircraft, so the plane was built with titanium (ironically supplied by the Soviet Union). The Blackbird used to overfly North Korea five days a week in just ten minutes.

In U.S. policy debate, this is also known as “winners win”. In other words, if a resolution passes Congress successfully, the proponents of the policy are more likely to be able to pass another piece of legislation. Whether or not this is actually true in Congress is debatable.

However, there are other systems where winners-win is more clear-cut. For example, college athlete recruits want to go to programs that are already successful (thereby increasing the likelihood that the team will continue to be successful), or F1 teams that do well in the constructors championship get a sizable payout (which helps them to continue winning).