austinl

5 ms·

1.
by austinl 1mo ago
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
2.
by austinl 2mo ago
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 ma
3.
by austinl 2mo ago
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
4.
by austinl 4mo ago
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
5.
by austinl 4mo ago
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
6.
by austinl 1y ago
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.
7.
by austinl 1y ago
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 translucen
8.
by austinl 1y ago
"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 the
9.
by austinl 1y ago
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 fr
10.
by austinl 2y ago
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 ba
11.
by austinl 2y ago
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
12.
by austinl 2y ago
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
13.
by austinl 2y ago
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
14.
by austinl 2y ago
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
15.
by austinl 2y ago
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.
16.
by austinl 2y ago
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 F
17.
by austinl 3y ago
I think the 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
18.
by austinl 3y ago
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 l
19.
by austinl 3y ago
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
20.
by austinl 3y ago
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 toward
21.
by austinl 3y ago
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 acco
22.
by austinl 3y ago
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].
23.
by austinl 3y ago
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. Relate
24.
by austinl 3y ago
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
25.
by austinl 3y ago
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.wi
26.
by austinl 3y ago
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.
27.
by austinl 3y ago
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&#x27
28.
by austinl 3y ago
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 cru
29.
by austinl 3y ago
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 a
30.
by austinl 3y ago
I've lived in SF for almost 10 years, and it saddens me to live in such low trust community because of all the crime. It changes people. I've had my car stolen once and broken into several times. I've had two bikes stolen, on

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