fatnoah (u/fatnoah) - Readit News

fatnoah commented on GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation theverge.com/news/757461/... · Posted by u/Handy-Man

meindnoch · 16 days ago

Microsoft being the cool guys? The cool guys? Mwuhahahhaa.

This gave me the good belly laugh I needed.

For the last 25 years, Microsoft was known for:

- being the no. 1 enemy of free software

- shipping the worst web browser in existence, despite 80%+ market share

- making corrupt deals with governments around the world to tie them to their office software suite

- creating vendor-locked proprietary extensions to kill open technologies (ActiveX plugins, Silverlight, C++/CLI, MSJVM, etc.)

- making cringe hardware that basically noone purchased (Zune, Windows Phone)

The last time they might have been considered the "cool guys" was sometime in the 90s.

fatnoah · 15 days ago

> Zune

The Zune was 100% uncool, but man did I like the hardware and software sooo much better than the iPod / ITunes. I was just sad that I never found anyone to "squirt" at.

fatnoah commented on “No tax on tips” is an industry plant newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/littlexsparkee

NullifyNAN · a month ago

You’re not paying for a service, you’re bidding in an open market. They don’t tell you this but it’s the reality.

Drivers can tell if you don’t tip and all of the experienced ones will decline your order.

Though these apps have done a lot of work to conceal the amount the driver actually gets until delivery is completed.

fatnoah · a month ago

> You’re not paying for a service, you’re bidding in an open market.

IMHO, this isn't a new phenomenon. Close to 18 years ago, I lived in a city with a popular pizza spot that was about a 10 minute walk away. Normally I'd walk, but having a newborn make that challenging, so I'd get delivery.

Typically, the delivery would take 60+ minutes on a busy night, but after a few consecutive Fridays of a decent tip for the order, the pizza would arrive "burn your fingers" in about 20 minutes.

fatnoah commented on "Just Fucking Ship It" (Or: On Vibecoding) coal.sh/blog/pandu_bad... · Posted by u/coal320

wibbily · 2 months ago

> At first, I was wondering how he managed to even publish something like this, but I'm starting to think that Apple just got tired of rejecting it over and over.

Another reminder for the pile: the app store rules don't apply if you'll deliver them their sweet sweet 30% revenue cut

> Nearly a thousand children under the age of 18 with their live location, photo, and age being beamed up to a database that's left wide open. Criminal.

Hope that $750 was worth it.

fatnoah · 2 months ago

App Store rules are completely arbitrary. Many moons ago, I worked at a startup that made a mobile messaging app (back when SMS cost money). We were mostly a consumer app, but had a trio of businesses that wanted white-label versions of the app for their own employees, and we naturally obliged.

The white-label versions where 100% identical in appearance and functionality except for name in the app store, startup logo, and color scheme. Our original app had been in the App Store rules for many years. Our results in submitting the three white-label apps to the App Store for review were: 1 approved immediately, 1 approved after some back-and-forth w/explanation of purchase model, and another that never got approved due to every submission receiving some nonsensical bit of feedback.

fatnoah commented on Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872... · Posted by u/stephen_g

vishnugupta · 2 months ago

> You can't just skim a math textbook and know all the math. You have to stop and think.

And most importantly you have to write. A lot. Writing allows our brain to structure our thinking. Enables us to have a structured dialogue with ourselves. Explore different paths. Thinking & pondering can only do so much and will reach the limits soon. Writing, on the other hand enables one to explore thoughts nearly endlessly.

Given that thinking is so intimately associated with writing (could be prose, drawing, equations, graphs/charts, whatever) and that LLMs are doing more and more of writing it'll be interesting to see the effect of LLMs on our cognitive skills.

fatnoah · 2 months ago

> And most importantly you have to write. A lot. Writing allows our brain to structure our thinking. Enables us to have a structured dialogue with ourselves.

I feel like to goes beyond writing to really any form of expressing this knowledge to others. As a grad student, I was a teaching assistant for an Electrical Engineering class I failed as an undergrad. The depth of understanding I developed for the material over the course of supporting students in the class was amazing. I transitioned from "knowing" the material and equations to being able to generate them all from first principles.

Regardless, I fully agree that using LLMs as our form of expression will weaken both the ability to express ourselves AND the ability to develop deep understanding of topics as LLMs "think" for us too.

fatnoah commented on Startup Equity 101 quarter--mile.com/Startup... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

mvkel · 3 months ago

So what is your equity really worth?

"The difference between the most recent FMV (409A) valuation and your exercise price."

This will almost never be the case. This doesn't account for different share classes, liquidation preferences, preferred stock, all of which get exercised before common shares.

A better description would be "the most recent 409A valuation, minus preferred treatment, and your exercise price."

All of that is moot though, as an employee wouldn't have access to the cap table or liquidation stack. The short answer is you'll have no idea how much your equity is worth until you get the wire transfer into your bank account.

Equity as an incentive truly favors the employer. With vesting, equity rarely works out to be better than having a market rate salary, unless the company becomes a household name.

fatnoah · 3 months ago

>This will almost never be the case. This doesn't account for different share classes, liquidation preferences, preferred stock, all of which get exercised before common shares.

>Equity as an incentive truly favors the employer. With vesting, equity rarely works out to be better than having a market rate salary, unless the company becomes a household name

I've worked at 4 different startups. Two were acquired and two are still going, with one making a small profit and being a lifestyle business for the founder, and the other having a great product and still growing.

For the two acquisitions, one of which I held 1% equity in, the value of my options was $0, which was very disappointing. In that case, I did get a cash bonus as the VP Engineering and an offer from the acquiring company that was 3X my cash comp, but the stock was worthless.

At this point in my career, I value stock in private companies at exactly $0 and treat it like a nice bonus should it ever amount to anything.

fatnoah commented on Microsoft announces new European digital commitments blogs.microsoft.com/on-th... · Posted by u/mweibel

benterix · 4 months ago

Interesting how this trick plays out. After drastic changes on the part of Trump, it became obvious Europe needs, among others, strong EU-based datacenters for public use ("European cloud"). Now, a big American cloud claims they will build an European cloud.

Who's going to buy it, though? AWS, Google and Microsoft do have European datacenters and many users here use these regions but the whole point is to be politically, financially, and "privacy-ally" completely independent from the USA. Not to mention Azure might not be the most secure of public clouds.

fatnoah · 4 months ago

> Who's going to buy it, though? AWS, Google and Microsoft do have European datacenters and many users here use these regions but the whole point is to be politically, financially, and "privacy-ally" completely independent from the USA.

This is the real issue, IMHO. I work for a European SaaS and we've had a small number of customers ask about our plans to host our services in datacenters not owned by US companies.

fatnoah commented on CT scans could cause 5% of cancers, study finds; experts note uncertainty arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/pseudolus

miiiiiike · 4 months ago

I don't like this coin. Sorry about your dad.

fatnoah · 4 months ago

Thanks, and I was trying to highlight the challenges of any situation like this. I do agree with the fundamental premise that we need to get better and deciding when to scan and coming up with non(or less) destructive techniques.

fatnoah commented on CT scans could cause 5% of cancers, study finds; experts note uncertainty arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/pseudolus

miiiiiike · 4 months ago

Yeah, no. A doctor that I had a feeling wasn't paying too close attention to what I was saying ordered a pelvic/abdominal CT with and without contrast, ~30-40 mSv. Nothing turned up on the scans. When I went back he said "nothing's wrong" and, confused, I described my symptoms again. He just said "Oh! You need physical therapy."

Two weeks of physical therapy and I was fine.

At the time I was mad about the money, now I'm just thinking "what a dumb way to (maybe) get gut cancer."

I was young. I thought I was scheduled for an MRI like the one I had for my sinuses. I didn't even know what a was CT at the time.

fatnoah · 4 months ago

On the other side of the coin, my always healthy dad did 6 weeks of physical therapy for hip joint pain that turned out to be cancer, which was immediately detected when they finally decided to perform a CT scan. He passed away almost exactly 1 year later at 46 years old.

fatnoah commented on Googler... ex-Googler nerdy.dev/ex-googler... · Posted by u/namukang

acjohnson55 · 4 months ago

Up in the Air was another great depiction of the most cynical mode of doing layoffs. And, of course, Office Space.

fatnoah · 4 months ago

I was laid off by a consultant. It was somehow even worse than Up in the Air since they made my manager sit in on the call.

fatnoah commented on Ask HN: I'm an MIT senior and still unemployed – and so are most of my friends · Posted by u/MITthrow123

laidoffamazon · 5 months ago

MIT students expect (not unfairly) to work at Jane Street/HRT/Jump/Citadel Securities/OpenAI/Anthropic and then "settle" for Google or Facebook. They're not going to work for Fidelity or Raytheon.

fatnoah · 5 months ago

As an MIT reject (technically waitlisted), my very first post-graduation job was at Raytheon and much later in life, I ended up at Facebook, where I managed a team that had several engineers that joined directly from MIT. While I can't speak to the entire MIT grad cohort, fFacebook was the first-choice for everyone in this particular group.