skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's interesting seeing GoDaddy/Gitlab lay off so late in the game. Jeff Lawson (TWLO) who is a fantastic financial and product focused CEO did his prep work in September last year with 11% of the company. I find it pretty hard to grok what your FP&A team must be like if you're a b2b supply chain business thinking about this stuff Q1 in global economic downturn.
Same albeit smaller company
Layoffs typically go like 7%... then you get another 1-2% of people who jump from the sinking ship. Then you get another round of 5%.. and another 1-2% who jump from the sinking ship and end up at a nice round number like 15%. Looks better than laying off 15% at once (although Zoom is doing great?)
> It’s no longer a theoretical discussion; Americans have lost their lives because they believed the politics, and to be able to articulate that is really threading a needle there.

> But others are real people tuning into Fox News every night who totally fall into the rabbit hole because they seem to worship these contrarians. The other piece to this is a lot of Nazi imagery and fantasies, a lot of antisemitism, because they know I’m a Jewish scientist. And that’s yet another dimension to all of this.

Watching Scientific Materialists trying to unravel metaphysical causality is a sight to behold.
Some companies care, and people don't leave because of that. Some don't care, and people leave. Nobody writes a blogpost saying: "i got a raise so I didn't quit", because noone reads that... a blog post saying "company has huge profits, only offers small raise, so I quit and find a better job" is a whole different thing.
I have the feeling that these announcements never specify that it's mostly programmers or technical people, but HN reacts like it is.

Maybe they don't need as many secretaries and gophers as before?
Belgium no longer holds the Congo. The US still holds this huge chunk of North America. It's easier to be moral when it's not in conflict with your own selfish interests.
> I work really effectively at home", it doesn't mean that there are people who are not taking multiple trips to the shops, to school etc. since they can

If you don't pay hourly, who cares how people manage their salaried time? You should measure by outcomes whether people are sitting there all day in the office too.
I think it’d be wise for more companies to employ an executive data scientist.
Another day, another horror story about the American health & care system.

I'm just speechless about all of that at this point and very glad the I live in Europe, where we have things like these figured out.

(edit: yeeeeaaaaaah, not everything is perfect in Europe, either, but nobody will be left with a bill of 150k € if your grandmother wants to die in her home.)
Because you always need to find some reason why you lay of which is satisfying for various parties (through not really the people fired, but investors both current and future, people with shares, companies you sell to, the public, etc.).

And "currently everyone does so and the economy is bad" is a good excuse.

And there are many reasons why a company might lay of people even if it's currently not strictly necessary:

- you don't really need that many people (anymore), common for small companies which grew to fast

- you want to restructure your company majorly and doing it will less people is easier

- you prefer to go a bit slower, so that e.g. current investment money lasts longer

- you want to be more robust to a potential economic dive, so you reduce money cost at the cost of going a bit slower and in turn can compensate hits in actual revenue better (at least for some time)

- you have accumulated a bunch of people which are not bad enough to fire them because of performance but also you know you can get better people, so you use it as an excuse to let people go, go slower for a "not short but not too long" while and then rehire. Alternatively companies like Amazone do that every year fire bottom x% then rehire roughly the same amount.

- you expect salaries to fall in the industry as a whole by quite a bit

- financial distress (e.g. interest rates and/or profit)

Lastly group dynamics to affect Investors, CEOs, Board Members, HR people etc. too, so it might be a "everyone does so so we better do so, too" situation (potentially forced onto the company by the board of shareholders).
Listened to a great podcast about layoffs yesterday (https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/02/why-many-companies-get-layof...)

The takeaway is that layoffs are extremely trust destroying for employees NOT laid off, and in the end not clear they're a financial net positive. Both with direct and indirect costs (lack of engagement from employees, etc).
Burning discs, even from an M1 Mac, works just fine. I burned a CD just the other day.
I think there are several reasons to do it this way:

- Effective number will be higher because some employees will be disgruntled because of the layoff event and will leave on their own. It's usually estimated that the effective number is twice as high

- By doing a layoff you can quickly get rid of people who are overpaid. The attrition would take much longer. And with the regular performance review process you can only get rid of under-performers

- With a layoff you can get rid of entire teams, wouldn't happen normally

- Finally, and probably most importantly, shareholders expect a layoff, especially if other companies had already done it. Cargo cult CEO thinking. You could see the stock price rising for some of the previous companies announcing layoffs
Consider the vague line between "free speech zone" and "dictated speech zone". It isn't like the dictatorships advertise the fact. And even ostensibly "free" zones tend to have that charming "voting" system, where too much deviation from the popular view means censorship.

So you could be in the middle of a conversation, thinking it's a free exchange of opinions, when it's actually an insidious patchwork of censorship and manipulation.
For me this almost completes the use case. The only sad part is that there is no 2-way sync for the mobile apps. It's a 1-way sync, where pics on your phone get pushed to the server but whenever you delete them from your phone, they stay in the server, effectively making you do double clean up. Ain't nobody got time for that.
My ISP has a package mirror. Maybe you can find someone closer on the internet who has one?

Lots of projects have a way to set up your own mirror, but they are all different :(
LocalBitcoins will close in 12 months
> One's ability to "trust" a patient isn't a factor here, and is, frankly, pretty condescending.

I suspect you haven't worked with elderly patients.

I help a relative manage his care. I keep having to hide the DayQuil so he doesn't take it alongside his arthritis medication and overdose on acetamenophin. He "knows" he's not supposed to, but it doesn't click when the pills are in his hand and his nose is running (because he took it for decades prior to the arthritis prescription and deeply-ingrained habits are not easily replaced). He definitely tells the doctor he understands, and the doctor believes him, but it's not like the doctor is in any way responsible for verifying that information.

Drug interactions are way past the maximum complexity capacity of the median patient at high risk for death by COVID.
Happy to find a fellow soul. I'm fatigued of the complaints of AI fatigue - especially where the complaints aren't based on recent (last year or so) first hand use.

It's bold (to put kindly) how lengthy some of these critical comments are from folks who later in the thread admit to not personally used Copilot (for example) much themselves.

The quality of LLM output can wildly vary based on what prompts (or series of prompts) are used.
Our banking corporation did that some... 7? years ago. Instead of random firing rounds happening locally and globally few times per year, where even locally best people were sometimes let go ie due to current under-allocation, and everybody would be nervous for months afterwards... just nothing.

Helped morale tremendously. Don't treat your employees like numbers, it will bite you back eventually, in all aspects including finances. Even most cold-hearted sociopaths on the top should grok that.
In my case, I just work less. If my kid wants to play I just drop wtf I'm doing and go with her.
The grandmother required 24-hour care, which they received for $13K/month.

For a 30-day month, that's $16.77/hr to the worker plus $1.28 to SS/Medicare if you allow for 0 minutes of shift-hand-off, PTO/sick, etc.

How much less than $16.77/hr do we think that care should cost? (Note that Massachusetts has a $15 minimum wage. This care cost less than 12% over minimum wage.)
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve toned it down.

However I want companies to understand how terrible that malpractice is.
We are a SaaS tool and we've has to justify our value to customers as everyone is looking to cut expenses. We also did cut our own spending on SaaS tools. So I think that this is sort of percolating through the industry. There is a real contraction in SaaS spending.
I've literally never heard about sexism directed their way, but given you worked there I'm sure you know better the story of treatment they get. What was the sexism, who was it directed against and why do you reckon they recieved it?

The only experience I have with GoDaddy is their awful support, and predatory practices. Ditching them has been the biggest single improvement to our IT practice.
you're not kidding. I just did an internet search for "7% layoff" and it's staggering how many results there are.
I dunno. Hero worship of magical people is weird. Same kind of things happens all the time with 'real' people, not gonna write a miniseries about it.
The tech sector didn't start layoffs early last year because they forsaw a possible recession more than a year ahead. Moreover, layoffs are still contained within tech. It's time for a new theory.
> Our Linux product is currently focused on big budget post facilities which often use Linux.

What's the value prop for a studio to run something on Linux vs Mac / Windows?

This is interesting to me to hear as the trope for Linux is that it's not used for audio/video work (and couldn't find much online about real world professional usage without pulling up reviews of best video editor / etc sort of results).

Also, congratulations on the release - rewrites are a huge undertaking.
Generous severance, half the layoff size of other firms by percentage, particular attention paid to health care. I have always admired GitLab, and I remain impressed.
I think that's the part why your story didn't make any sense to me. I am not questioning its truthfulness. Just, why?

Why even go thru the hassle of using bitcoins? You could just exchange it with the guy on the street for pesos. Not sure about ten years ago. Right now, you can even western union money to yourself at the blue rate. I am sure you can even just pay people in USD in many cases.
Seems like it. Professor Paige Harden, who is a progressive herself, has gotten into all sorts of controversy by arguing that genetics do play a role in outcomes and society would be better off recognizing where genes matter for student outcomes and what not instead of pretending they don't. Then you can tailor your approach accordingly. The thing is she isn't arguing for genetic supremacy over environment, only that they play some percentage of a role. Which seems entirely reasonable. It's an interplay with genes and environment.
Provide a solid source with a link, please.
Wait a minute... a conservative author from a conservative organization writing in a paper with a majority-convervative base...THAT article's source study found that there was a liberal bias in COLLEGES?!!?

Sorry; I know HN isn't kind to sass. But, sass aside, look at the details and it's obvious this is propaganda. Yes colleges (and life) have a liberal bias. That doesn't mean asking people to promise not to be racist (with a signature) is a fascist plot to indoctrinate orthodoxy. It just means that if you can't even promise to not be racist, there's a high likelihood there will be problems in your tenure, vis a vis how you respond to reasonable assurances of common ground.
Nope. In fact the highest concentration of prions is in your tongue.
Yes Phoenix is ideal, that is why they've been using it. I think it indicates they are more than 5% done though, is my point. Also they are operating fully autonomous public taxis in San Francisco, but not the run of the whole city, I think its just airport to downtown. But even navigating downtown SF I think is an accomplishment.
Another day another layoff

Another day no reply to job applications sigh
Can relate to TFA. Cost near the end of life are eye-popping the in the US, but the alternative is murky too. Just let elder relatives live in your home? Likely won't last 3-4 days, its hard. Cost of these facilities is astronomical and ironically the staff is usually underpaid and overstressed.

Assisted death will get a lot of callout as its becoming popular but its not 100% the answer either. Legitimately wondering how older generations dealt with this problem. Did old people just die randomly and then they were buried and that was that?
According to the Russians it was the Ukrainians helped by the Brits https://youtu.be/STqoHnV5cDM?t=69
Teaching at the Brain’s Tempo
In US, it is relatively easy to commit fraud. The question is: what happens if you get caught. Is it a slap on your wrist or a catastrophically failure (termination, prison time)

You can, for example, get employed at 10 companies and then outsource all the work (someone got caught doing it and it was in the news).

If you want to cheat, you can, but you probably should not be discussing it on hacker news.
In other countries it could be different, but in the US: Redistribution of wealth and access to opportunity such that those things are not concentrated in one demographic group, the result with also theoretically will redistribute power.
A short story on how imgproxy helps Photobucket save money
From a cost basis, this could possibly be true. But, with that type of attrition, you would probably see a greater percentage of high-performers go because they have good options. Then, you not only have lower producing staff, but it also becomes more difficult to hire top level talent back, because they want to work with other folks like themselves.
I agree that in an ideal world, drs would recommend your course of action. I am not debating that statins can be stopped and paxlovid taken, with statins resumed after the disease has run its course. that doesnt change the fact that doctors will still hesitate to prescribe paxlovid if their patient is on statins. This could be for a number of reasons - but consider for a second that up to 55% of seniors are already noncompliant in listening to their drs and taking their medication.

When you are asking a patient to stop taking a drug that they have habitually taken for potentially decades, and they have shown hesitancy or inability to comply in the past, maybe prescribing a drug with a potentially serious interaction isnt the best course of action.
Being a CTO (doing manager stuff), regular coding. By moving away I also meant I don't follow along anymore and don't contribute to the projects I did so in the past. I just lost interest.
Find me all GPUs sorted by price desc, where the max depth is 12 inches that get great reviews. They should all be NVidia.

Good luck wasting hours of your time googling for that by hand.
base64 is a very well known function and included in a fair number of languages (e.g. in Python you can use the "base64_codec" or "hex_codec" as an encoding parameter). Given the other things people have gotten tools in this class to do to convert or even eval() things I would not bet against someone coming up with a clever dodge around rules — these systems are non-deterministic and there are a lot of motivated people in the world.
Interesting point - what is the noise in each one of them:

- chatGPT - 10% hallucination

- Google - 50% spam

Which is better - the "honest hallucination" from AI or the "spam for profit" human operation?
Why do you cut time going to shops or whatever out of work time, but not commute times? I have a feeling in a lot of cases the two balance out. And one of those things doesn’t make people miserable and obese. You also make the claim that your teams remote work has been less productive and in the same breath that there’s no good way to quantify it. It’s entirely possible your gut Feeling is just wrong.
And in only 3 lines of code!
mpsh it's interesting.

https://www.cca.org/mpsh/
Even if you do manage to "change the government" in your country to prevent all financial crime and enable all legitimate business people to trade without graft or fear of criminals, I don't see how you can possibly accomplish doing that in some other country where things have been on the same cycle of graft and corruption for 150 years. Do you think that before Bitcoin, criminals had no access to the international banking system? My family's gold tooth fillings in a swiss bank vault would like a word.

You believe you smash graft by smashing the means, but you don't stop it. It's the same with Americans who think that by banning firearms, they'll stop criminals from shooting people. Quite the opposite is the result. Ban guns, and you end up with an unfree society and the criminals have all the weapons. Ban cash and ban crypto, and you end up with an unfree society in which the ruling class are the criminals, and they have all the levers to control and steal the wealth of individuals.

Look, I'm not making this up. Check out the litany of polities that restricted the movement of money (or the ownership of firearms) in the 20th Century. They can be ranked on this axis alone as a reasonable proxy for their degree of totalitarianism. Let's say from the outright banning of money under Pol Pot up to the Cultural Revolution under Mao, Stalin simply deporting millions of people who had any money at all...

And guns are just a sideshow. Money is the individual's only defense against the State, and against the state of nature that exists in the vacuum where the State does not exist.
> Why if an AI does it (copy paste), it is somehow now a lesser accomplishment than when a human does it.

Because the kind of 'art' the AI will create will end up in a Canva template; it will be clip art for the modern Powerpoint or Facebook ad. Because corporations like Canva are the only ones that will pay the fees to use these tools at scale. And all they produce is marketing detritus, which is the opposite of art.

Instead of the "Corporate Memphis" art style that's been run into the ground by every big tech company, AI will produce similarly bland, corporate-approved graphics that we'll continue to roll our eyes at.
I think you're reading the parent post the wrong way around: in many cultures, paying for your relatives is an honour and obligation. i.e: Paying a lot of money for your grandmother's end of life care is the bare minimum, not something to complain about or expect the state to handle.
A tool for teachers to grade essays with AI
A tool built for teachers to grade essays with AI. Get feedback reports, error reports, essay summaries and AI detection that's coming soon. Meant to assist not replace teachers.
Same here. They require real mail (ISP, water, gas bill) with the identical name on it as on my ID. That does not happen, no one sends me bills with my full name, just first and last.

No Coinbase for me.
Extension methods are "I want a function whose first parameter is this type defined outside, but the programming language shoehornes me so much into classes and objects that I have to do all this extra ~bullshit~ boilerplate to have a function whose first parameter is this type defined outside".

Imagine having to create a monad, including the `pure` and `bind` operations every time you want to increment a variable. That would be bullshit, well, because it's bullshit. Even the haskell guys figured out it's bullshit and implemented types and operations (IORef) to simplify it.

C# hasn't figured out yet you should not have to wrap your function in a namespace and a class.
Unity asset files killed my attempt at a comprehensive binary encoding format spec language. There’s a header containing a list of block pointers. The blocks are compressed and the (several) files are sequential. Typically the first file is a resource containing a block of metadata describing object type formats, then object references keyed to the specified formats. The objects can have transparent references (PPtrs) to other objects in the resource file, or other files in the asset, or other files or objects in in other asset files. One asset file usually contains the master list of what object is in what file.

None of this is a true blocker, but your format has to contain sigma types and at that point you’re just writing a parser normally.
Could you share what you use?
> Burning a CD was an expensive operation (both in time and compute, as it slowed the machine down, plus it tied up your CD drive)

Discs were also decently expensive then as well, so financially expensive too. Not prohibitively so, but not like today where a failed disc is just a coaster not a headache. This may have been near the cusp of when that balance shifted, but I remember quite a bit of angst when I was a young'in burning mix discs for my Discman.
Good luck, man. Tough times.
I don't like how they're trying to pile everything on top of their V8 runtime
You are probably right, kinda sad.

My last resort is to just remove all AI references from my marketing and just deliver the product.
Seems like an Elon bootlicker babbling more than anything.
Love that reference to the Vision Quest scene. It's a great scene (embedded in a great movie!) and was very on-point for what he was saying.

As an aside, if you haven't seen Vision Quest, I can't recommend it highly enough.
I've been reminded of the "Up in the Air" film from the last recession, where George Clooney flew around the country firing people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkX-TPaodoM

The film included a lot of people who had really been fired and what their honest reactions were
I dunno, the NIH literally suggests using this website to check for interactions:
https://covid19-druginteractions.org/checker

Managing drug interactions for paxlovid isn't much more complicated than inputting meds into a web form and looking at the color of the box that pops up after. I think most providers can handle that if they know these tools exist and get past the reflex of "paxlovid has drug interactions, you don't want to take it."

Managing drug interactions is part of ordering medications, and if it's really taking that much time (i.e., the EHR isn't just doing all the work for you), then it'd result in a higher E&M code when it's billed out. Medication management, in some cases, can also be billed and reimbursed by the pharmacist.

So, totally agree that the US medical system is optimized for billing. I don't think those of us in the US should be ok with that, and I don't think it's an excuse in this case to not prescribe paxlovid to patients who want it and would qualify for it.
Was the severance written into their contract or was it just a nice thing the company did?
On the Road – An Interactive Map of Jack Kerouac's Journey
You're missing the point - the point is to send a message, to employees and to the investors. That they're SERIOUS COMPANY that does the right thing. Follows the market. Listens to economy. That won't hear complaints from the entitled lazy overpampered engineering workers. That they need to get back to the factory and be like all other quiet labor. That HARD DECISIONS can be made without regret when bankers ask for them.
The Future of Thunderbird