AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: Boring but important tech no one is working on?

Top comment by iammjm

Educational games. Hear me out. The way we teach us basically how we did it 500 years ago. This is stupid, boring and not scalable. We dont have enough teachers, attention span is short, education is costly. So we need something that scales, is fun and involves all types of media plus gamifies education. Think Skyrim or GTA meets MS Encarta

2. Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?

Top comment by Apreche

I just recently started a 32 hour a week salaried job. Here’s my story.

I was at a very good job. My ultimate goal is to just go to the beach and not work at all. I realized that’s too big of a leap, so I set a shorter term more realistic goal of working 4 days a week.

My employer at the time rejected the idea, so instead of ignoring recruiters like usual, I answered them. If a job wasn’t immoral, the interview process wasn’t arduous, and I felt I could do the job, I went through with interviews in good faith.

Every time I did this, I got to the offer phase. With nothing to lose, at that moment I asked to work four days a week. I didn’t demand it. I just asked for it. I think I even said the exact words “I know you’ll probably say no to this, but I want to work four days a week.”

One place made an offer that wasn’t better enough compared to my existing job. I didn’t accept and moved on.

Eventually a place made an offer I couldn’t refuse. I have been here almost two months. Have yet to work on a Friday. I’m actually working harder than ever on Monday through Thursday. I am motivated to make this last, because honestly it is just as fantastic as I imagined. My life is so good right now despite the world being terrible.

My new salary is higher as well.

3. Ask HN: DALL-E was trained on watermarked stock images?

Top comment by dlg

I am not a lawyer, but I've had to argue about copyright with several.

In the United States, there are two bits of case law that are widely cited and relevant: In Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp (9th), found that making thumbnails of images for use in a search engine was sufficiently "transformative" that it was ok. Another case, Perfect 10 (9th), found that thumbnails for image search and cached pages were also transformative.

OTOH, cases like Infinity Broad. Corp. v. Kirkwood found that that retransmission of radio broadcast over telephone lines is not transformative.

If I understand correctly, there are four parts to the US courts' test for transformativness within fair use (1) character of use (2) creative nature of the work (3) amount or substantiality of copying (4) market harm.

I'd think that training a neural network on artwork--including copyrighted stock photos--is almost certainly transformative. However, as you show, a neural network might be overtrained on a specific image and reproduce it too perfectly--that image probably wouldn't fall under fair use.

There are also questions of if they violated the CFAA or some agreement crawling the images (but Hiq v Linkedin makes it seem like it's very possible to do legally) and whether they reproduced Getty's logo in a way that violates trademarks (are they trying to use it in trade in a way there could be confusion though?)

4. Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

Top comment by bloqs

Your generation is taught to be unreasonable in their expectations, this website is basically made up of prodigal children who all missed some substantial developmental milestones but who ended up being rewarded for years of interest in very specific topics. Bertrand Russell correctly stated that time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. If you have now decided you want change, then great. However, you have played so much World of Warcraft, you are beginning to view life as some sort of RPG you need to min/max. You don't. While removing distractions can be useful, your interest led you where it led you. I'm much the same and am now happily employed as a dev and I still game in my 30s. I have fantastic and substantial memories of virtual worlds and summers with amazing people and alone. 23 is ridiculously young, by western european standards these days you are effectively still an adolescent.

In terms of comparisons, John Carmack made some decent contributions, but you have zero insight into the costs of it. Much of compulsive recreational thrill seeking is due to emotional instability from childhood, so I think a small amount of therapy, and cutting yourself some slack is in order.

5. Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

Top comment by edent

I have three rates.

You are a charity, or other worthy cause, or someone I really want to work with - 50% - 100% discount.

You are a normal client - 100%.

You are either an arsehole or have asked for something very last minute - 150%-200% depending on the mood I'm in.

The last one, colloquially known as the fuck-off rate, is probably the best bit of contracting advice I ever got from a colleague. He hated the gig we were doing, utterly despised the boss, and walked away smiling every day because he was one week closer to retirement. It's only really sustainable for your mental health in short runs.

Oh, and never charge per hour. It isn't like you can do an hour for client X and then the next one on client Y. You're not a bloody lawyer - you're a professional!

I sometimes split jobs into half-days, if the client prefers it. Although that's more like 66% for each half.

Oh, and finally, you don't customise Salesforce. You help your clients solve a problem. That may usually involve Salesforce, but most of your potential clients probably don't know what SF can do. So what you're actually selling is a way to optimise the client funnel (or whatever).

6. Ask HN: So, what's up with Phoenix (web framework)?

Top comment by chrismccord

Creator of Phoenix here. I was delightfully surprised to see Phoenix as most loved on the survey since I forgot SO survey was a thing this year. So we can rule out some coordinated voting effort. Truthfully, while we’re still a smaller community, the folks that find us tend to love us and stick around.

7. Ask HN: Are we building a tech dystopia?

Top comment by igammarays

Yep, that's why I started working on Indie SaaS and am trying to go live on a farm, and will never work for a FANG (except Apple, because its hardware is mostly neutral), even remotely. I don't want to contribute to the dystopian machine, but I still want the real benefits that technology provides (both for myself, and for others, through the product I build).

The original purpose and true benefit of computing is in math (e.g. accounting), simplifying logistics, and enabling communication at a longer distance. Anything else is dystopian, socially-destructive garbage that I won't touch for the sake of my own well-being, which is why I'm not on any social media (except highly selective communities like HN or strictly for work purposes) and I strictly limit entertainment that arrives through a screen.

My yardstick for determining whether a particular pattern of use of technology is "good" or "bad" is by considering its effects on my base human faculties (eyesight, hearing, memory, physical strength and wisdom), and its effect on my relationships with others. Any pattern of use that improves my bodily faculties or my real-life relationships is good, otherwise I shun it.

8. Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?

Top comment by telman17

I am currently the main provider and my wife works part time while in school. All money is our money no matter who earned it. It’s never been a point of debate or emotions other than “oh we got more money this month, cool!” in the event of a bonus or extra income. We have a budget and try to stick to it and have occasional vacations or upgrade something in the house. When it comes to finances we are a single unit and we will remain that once she earns a full time salary as well.

If I get a big raise or promotion my wife is excited not jealous and I have never felt like she was using “my” money.

9. Ask HN: Will AI-generated images flooding the web pollute future training data?

Top comment by pjc50

Yes - and not only that, but AI-generated art will start affecting how humans make art, and possibly even how they take photos. I wouldn't like to predict how, though.

Especially with text there's an arms race to make undetectable AI text for blogspam and similar purposes. It's going to end up like carbon dating: once nuclear weapons were used in the atmosphere, everything ended up contaminated and had to be accounted for. https://www.radiocarbon.com/carbon-dating-bomb-carbon.htm

The future will include humans claiming AI art as their own, possibly touched up a bit, and AIs claiming human art as their own.

10. Ask HN: I automated part of someone else's job in my free time – how to proceed?

Top comment by twblalock

The first person who needs to know, and approve, is your manager. Don't blindside them. Managers do not like that, and your manager is definitely going to find out if anyone else does.

After you tell your manager, you won't be in control of what happens next. Consider whether or not you should just keep this to yourself and treat this as a fun learning experience. Perhaps you can gauge their potential reaction by asking, hypothetically, whether or not they think working on automation might be a good idea.

I've done something like this before, but with the knowledge of the other people on the team, because we didn't like the manual work we were doing and felt that it was taking time away from other things we needed to do. Hopefully that is the case for your colleagues, or this will not be well received.