ccorcos
ccorcos on Hacker News
The legal implications here aren't what people think.
As an employer, you can be compelled to reasonable accomodate these people. But that doesn't mean you need to accept inferior performance.
If your colleague is able to do 10x more work than you with your religious exemption, then you can still get laid off – not on the basis of your religion, but on the basis of your performance.
I really with these bots would be more portable. I'm fine with paying for a close source option, but if I'm going to make this such a critically important part of my life, then I need to know that I'm not locked in to an opaque system.
I'm confused why systemd would even do this? I'm not advocating for "breaking the law", but it's just completely absurd that this project would be prosecuted for anything... The general public as no idea what systemd even is and nor do they care. And 1st amendment free speech seems like enough to protect them.
What am I missing here?
While I'm a big fan of open source, I don't understand what the alternative is for this dilemma...
Is it supposed to be illegal for me to create my own homegrown database with the same API as MongoDB? If not, then when people start using it, can I offer a hosting solution?
I feel like that should be allowed. It's just not always a happy outcome for everyone...
Next thing you know, someone on hacker news will be posting about how they reverse engineered their iPhone so they could charge the battery 10x faster! Everyone will complain about Apple being a walled garden and how regulation nerfed their batteries and how we should be in control of the things we buy and be able to modify them…
Its worth checking out a recent interview with the Flock CEO on Cheeky Pint (Stripe's podcast with John Collison) [1]
As much as I fear the Orwellian future this could turn into, I think its important to recognize that the burden of preventing that is on lawmakers, not companies.
He explains in the interview that he would love for laws to be passed to create tighter controls over how these systems are used. The problem is that police departments don't want it! Perhaps they can elect to do it themselves, but then they expose themselves to competitors who have "more powerful features".
Something like 70% of homocides go unresolved! I think its cool that Flock is trying to help police departments fight crime. But it's time to yell at your lawmakers. Don't hate the player, hate the game!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYm2nXFDaB0
> But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.
Perhaps it's irrational, but I have this viceral feeling that refuses to allow me to believe that people don't have agency.
Who is her manager? Tell them how stupid this is! When they say "there's nothing I can do about it", then talk to their manager!
I recently left Chase bank due to this same kind of helpless attitude they have toward you. And then they ask "have I addressed all of your problems today?" lol
I grew up in Sacramento and I remember when my parents were had a flat rate water bill. Those were the good ol' days!
It frustrates me how everyone moralizes water use rather than accepting that free markets allow for people who are simply willing to pay for it. For example, if you live in Sacrmanto and don't have a pool, you're just doing it all wrong (in my opinion, of course).
I watched my friend's family farm in Modesto flood their fields to irrigate them. No meter, just a valve off the canal and they pay a flat rate. So it offends me that my shower head is legally required to restrict it's flow. Or that neighbors decide that a pile of rock in the front yard is "better for the environment" as it radiates heat on a 105°F day...
I might be missing something because I don’t really understand why you mean by “health” related deaths…
But it seems like you’re making Dan’s point for him. “We need to adapt our lifestyles to climate change” is not an acceptable answer to someone dying of heat stroke who would very much prefer (out of self-interest) air conditioning and a higher standard of living…
Perhaps he could have been a bit more charitable with his attitude, but do you disagree with his premise?
20k people died from heat exposure last summer in Europe! That seems crazy to me, though what do I know? What am I missing?
This is awesome. Can I do this myself? Or does this need to be implemented in their backend?
I’ve never understood why time is the metric people are using here. If LLMs get so much better we can “run them overnight”, what makes you think that they won’t also get faster and so they accomplish exactly what you’re talking about in 5 minutes?
Posted by
ccorcos on Wednesday September 17, 2025 @12:48PM
from the show-hn dept.
https://ccorcos.github.io/geocalc/
I often find myself trying to solve a geometry problem where the constraints are really simple to understand, but solving it algebraic is really hard and tedious.I built this whole thing from scratch with Claude Code. It's my first time trying it and I literally did not write a single line of code...That said, it still would be hard build this as a novice. I had to guide things along the happy...
I think these numerical constraints are because range trees use numerical averages to construct themselves. This is important for OVERLAPS queries common with dates. But you could construct interval tree indexes lexicographically using text but they are quite uncommon. It’s something I’ve experimented with a decent amount though.
https://github.com/ccorcos/database-experiments/blob/master/...
Seems like this logic could all be represented in Claude.md and some agents. Has anyone done this? I’d love to just import that into my project because I’m using some of these tactics but it’s fairly manual and tedious.
I think cars and urban design are too often used as a scapegoat.
Whether living in an apartment building in a city or a house in the suburbs, I’m frequently surprised how many people never introduce themselves to their neighbors. And that has nothing to do with cars.
People want some external system to construct a social environment for them and often blame everything but themselves when they could easily arrange a neighborhood get together by passing out some flyers…
Very insightful. 1965 was an interesting time to write this book too with welfare being passed around then.
Sounds like you need a constitution.
This happened this morning. What are the odds that next week this will be fixed and this whole enragement and speculation was a complete waste of time?
This is why I don’t read the news anymore.
Can people help to fill in some of the gaps in this article? There are some striking claims that seem to have some basis in reality. But the article leaves a lot questions.
The the US dollar safe for now because of the lack of a viable alternative?
Seems like lowering interest rates and raising inflation is the only viable political solution. Sure, it causes issues with people financing our debt. But also, where else would they put their money?
Are there winners and losers here? Or does everyone lose?
How would the world work in an idealized free market without a reserve currency?
I do something very similar but I add to the bottom instead of the top. It keeps things chronological which is nice when referring back to things.
It’s also much more similar to how you would take notes on paper or in a notebook.
I just wish some note taking app would have a setting that allows me to open a note at the bottom instead of the top!
I think what he’s saying is if the police department is trying to identify a person in a photo, then anyone from the public can try to help them out.
Whether those people use facial recognition software or not isn’t exactly relevant to the law because the police didn’t use it. And it’s legal for other people to use it. As far as the police are concerned, they could have just been the person’s neighbor…
I’m always surprised that banks don’t have a better way of authenticating themselves to their customers (Chase and Vanguard, in particular).
They call, they say I can call back and wait in a queue, but that’s stupid.
Also crazy they don’t have a TOTP (e.g. Google Authenticator)based two-factor authentication. It’s just way more secure than email or phone number.
I want an iPhone Mini-sized iPhone! You can’t buy them anymore and now I have a big phone!
A weird correlation I’ve observed is that many tech savvy designer folks have iPhone mini’s. I think partly because they do their main work on a computer and don’t lean on their phones as much.
Regulation to provide a de-orbiting plan. I assume there something similar for oil wells and mining…
What kind of solution you’re proposing? Why can’t we suffice with just regulation?
Side story regarding roads: I was recently in Shelter Cove, CA and was thinking that the is road probably exceeds the entire economic value of the town… Why is this road even here? It turns out, they used to harvest tan oak bark for the tannins to tan leather in the late 1800s which was a huge industry back then. Lots of logging roads out there since then… Free markets do build a lot of roads!
Insurance companies have the right incentive but they don’t need to be the ones building it. Safer cars get cheaper insurance, so there’s clear market pressure there without insurance companies having to build their own cars…
Pollution, kinds that suffer the “tragedy of the common”, are a good example where regulation is necessary to prevent a race to the bottom. But that’s a pretty simple and straightforward thing to democratically vote on without government spending.
I think the solution is fairly simple: private companies build these capabilities and offer them as a service. The idea that there won’t be a marketplace for this service seems misguided too. Adversarial militaries will want their own systems, likely contracted out to private companies, which will likely offer civilian use around the world…
Why isn’t the free market capable of doing this? Seems odd to spend money just to spend money. There’s plenty of incentive for other people to be doing this already…
I’m not sure it’s that clear…
Take an application like Slack and consider how to scale it local-first for a team with 1000 people.
And then consider how to coordinate deployment of new features and schema migrations…
Compare that with running a centralized server, which is going to be much easier.
You should add time dilation to your list of statistics! You’re probably around 5 microseconds younger than someone who stayed in Earth!
Their choices led them to get stuck and their choices are the only thing that can get them unstuck. Maybe they don’t want to get unstuck, who are we to tell people how to live?