simonkafan | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Am I using it wrongly or is HN's search engine bad?
Ah I see it now: "prefix=true" is the property that apparently includes "networking" when searched for "network"
simonkafan's comments
simonkafan | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Am I using it wrongly or is HN's search engine bad?
Not for "home network": https://ibb.co/59yFDT5
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Element (Matrix chat app) suspended from the Google Play Store
It would already help if the rules of the app stores were decided by a parliament. And kicking a provider out of the store requires a court ruling.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend
It would be the downfall of the Google empire (and probably half of the Internet) if the majority of companies realized that most of their online/mobile ad budget is absolutely wasted. I don't know of any other industry where people put so much money into it only to have so little tangible evidence at the end of the day of what they really paid for ("look, X real people clicked on your ad.... at least that's what we tell you and whatever that means for you.").
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: My Experience at Apple
My basic assumption is that most people at the big IT corps either just want to a) make money or b) work on interesting things. I don't think the majority there enjoy torturing colleagues or subordinates (although it certainly can happen). That being said, the story to me sounds entirely or at least partially made up. In this story, everyone at Apple seems to have only the goal of psychologically abusing OP. Especially the passage "the note section of a hidden slide on a deck that she had uploaded and it was an indirect suicide/murder threat" sounds absolutely implausible, why would someone put a death threat in a slide deck which clearly documents said threat?
My serious (and absolutely not mean-spirited) advice to OP: see a psychologist and talk to him about it, especially about all the "hidden signs" you supposedly received from colleagues.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: OpenAI is giving Microsoft exclusive access to its GPT-3 language model
I still don't see or have read about a useful use case for GPT-3. Maybe for procedurally generated chitchat between NPC in video games or an advanced Lorem ipsum generator but that's about it.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Google sues me for using the word “droid” in my company name Orpheusdroid
Not the same story but related: Microsoft had to rebrand his online storage SkyDrive to OneDrive once because the television broadcaster "Sky" won a trademark lawsuit in UK.
Can anyone tell me how this is possible? Why am I not allowed to use the word "sky" in any product name completely unrelated to TV?
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Competition and Quarter-Life Crises
Average employee tenure at Google is a little over 3 years so it doesn't seem to be the ultimate goal in life.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Bing is now Microsoft Bing as the search engine gets a rebrand
One good thing is, you can officially use it as an API¹. I used it to automatically search for training images for an algorithm.
¹ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Show HN: Chat bot powered by GPT-3
Using chatbots to solve support/sales problems is like solving the problem of autonomous driving by putting a humanoid robot behind the wheel: It's unnecessary complex overhead, just stop that!
If I communicate with a human, sure natural language is the way to go. If I communicate with a computer, I want clear, straight facts just one mouse click away. I don't want to text my way through the bot database, I don't want to add language overhead when there is no real human on the other side.
Am I the only one?
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Google: “Any harm Epic has suffered is not irreparable and is of its own making”
It's like if you would have to ask Google or Apple for permission when you want to open a coffee shop or any other business and have to give them 30% of your profit.
App marketplaces must be a public good and under the surveillance of the public and not controlled by a few old chief executives of Google or Apple.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Google TV
Imagine you had to invert a binary tree on a whiteboard just to create something like this...
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Google TV
Does someone want to set up a stadiacountdown.com for Google TV?
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: “I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”
I would agree to work for Shibu Philip if he applies the same rules to himself and workers can see his keystrokes, mouse movements and websites visited. And if he's not spending his time looking at employees keystrokes, mouse movements and websites visited, his bonus is halved every time someone catches him doing something else.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Technical skills helpful for building a startup today
The question is: What do you want to build? What problem do you want to solve?
If you don't know yet, then figure this out first. It is useless* to spend your time reading about how blockchain solutions on AWS work when you don't have a plan what to do next with this knowledge.
*) except if this interests you personally
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up
This is an interesting general question that would deserve more attention: What do top executives in a company really do to bring the business forward and how do you measure it? How do you measure today whether the decision to invest 10 billion in drone delivery today will lead to a huge ROI in 10 years?
I think you can't because you can't predict the future which means, the high payment of executives is simply based on trust (by the company owners) that they will do the right things for the company.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Microsoft gets exclusive license for OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model
So "too dangerous to release" really meant: Too commercially important to release it for free.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Laid Off, Now What?
This sounds horrible to me. I mean, do you really want to spend your life having to deal with leetcode for several months every 2-3 years? Maybe some people find coding interviews and leetcode problems exciting, I find them tedious and want to avoid them. Not talking about the pressure to find a new job in 60 days.
So no FAANG? Indeed. You only live once and can spend your time better.
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: AWS IAM is having issues again
Maybe because the audience on Twitter and Hackernews is different?
simonkafan | 5 years ago | on: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?
The solution would be simple: Stop supporting Apple. Don't release apps on their platform. As long as everyone is just blindly following their orders, nothing will change.
And change is possible: Microsoft didn't care much about developers and users when IE was browser market leader and look what happened.
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