MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by lurking_swe | 2025-08-22 23:18:21+00:00
Good question. I actually think the US should have a healthcare system more like other countries, don’t get me wrong. But I can directly answer your question, as someone who lives in the U.S. and is very happy with the care i receive.

In the U.S. i’d consider good health insurance to be:

- low monthly premiums (majority of cost is covered by a generous employer). Say $30-50 per paycheck for a single adult.

- A PPO plan, not an HMO (HMO limits your options when picking doctors).

- A plan that does NOT require pre-authorizations for most procedures and tests. They are a pain in the butt. And many crappy insurance companies like United Healthcare tend to auto-deny many things as “not medically necessary”.

- A medical plan that covers almost every non-experimental drug prescription, at low cost ($30 or less). Including antibiotics, EpiPen, GLP-1 (Ozempic), inhalers, etc.

- A reasonably low annual out-of-pocket max, say $2,500 or less? ALL costs after that max are fully covered by insurance. So you have peace of mind if something really bad happens.

- $0 or very low deductible for seeing your doctor. Also a very low coinsurance rate, say 20% or less. Coinsurance is the % of the bill you pay before your insurance covers the remainder.

All the above basically means, “low stress” when you get sick or into an accident, or get pregnant.

What does good “care” look like? I think we all know. In the U.S. this is _very_ region dependent. Most people don’t consider this when buying a home for some reason lol.

There are many cities with excellent hospitals and medical centers and also some top notch hospitals GLOBALLY. And then there are many “medical deserts”, typically cheaper areas to live, where care is harder to come by.

Examples of good care:

- QUICK access to your primary doctor/PCP (within 1-2 weeks)

- ability to get care urgently, within a days notice, from another doctor. urgent care, etc.

- ability to see a specialist within 3 months, ideally less than 1 month. Yes this is possible in some parts of the U.S. believe it or not.

- Living near (45 min or less) a major, well-rated hospital, in case you have a heart attack, get into a nasty car accident, etc.

The unfortunate truth is a LOT of americans are in a “healthcare desert”, or they are poor and can’t afford care, or their employers are not generous and offer them crappy plans. For example where the out of pocket max is $15k lol. Or where monthly premiums for a single person are $400.

The US is not a fun place to live if you’re lower class or lower-middle class. And our healthcare system is a confusing mess. :)
by marc_abonce | 2025-08-22 23:18:37+00:00
In over 6 years of using Mailbox, I only remember one website that rejected the domain. It's a government website and they only started rejecting "invalid" (non-duopoly) domains sometime this year.

I do occasionally get emails that take longer to arrive into my inbox (between 5 minutes up to 1 hour), but the emails always arrive eventually. Or maybe I haven't noticed...

Do you remember which websites rejected your Mailbox address?
by openasocket | 2025-08-22 23:19:18+00:00
The strictness of our memory requirements wasn’t made apparent until years later. For background, the application is a system daemon running on end-user servers. So every byte we allocate, every cycle of CPU we use, is a byte or cycle taken away from our customers. We don’t provide firm guarantees or formal SLAs on our memory usage, but we do try to minimize it whenever possible. Because what we don’t want is for someone to upgrade agent versions and suddenly our daemon is using significantly more memory and causing OOMs, or using more CPU and force customers to scale out their fleet. Our p99 cpu and memory usage right now are more or less the same as they were two years ago (RSS is under 40MB last I checked)

So it’s not like we’re running on a machine with only kilobytes of RAM, but we do want to minimize our usage.
by trod1234 | 2025-08-22 23:19:20+00:00
Imagine AI telling you its safe and proper to water bath can meat for food preservation, and what that actually means when you eat the canned meat following those directions. Same goes for mushrooms, or anything else that might literally kill you.

We've reached a point where AI is not accountable for harms, while being capable of killing people through selective curation of information it provides.
by treyd | 2025-08-22 23:19:35+00:00
If a company has truly become too big to fail that it makes sense for the federal government to bail them out, then why are we even leaving the welfare of the company up to private industry in the first place? It's just asking for ways to siphon taxpayer money out of the government through their willingness to buy shares. It inflates the stock price because it shows that the government might buy more share in the future at market rate. Its operations should be required to be more transparency, since if they're large enough that their failure would dramatically impact the welfare of the whole country, their operations should be subject to more direct democratic will (at least, more direct than the many steps removed from what is happening to Intel).
by wonder_er | 2025-08-22 23:20:55+00:00
i write for me.

I don't find most people in the USA to be worth taking seriously, either. Liiiike if someone thinks the primary purpose of police is something like "protecting and serving" vs. being deputized slave patrollers.

How could I take that person seriously?

If I don't think political authority is real, and 90% of the us population does think it is real, and votes, I'm already out of sync with all of those people.

And I've got at least one or two additional hot takes that could alienate another few percentage points.

race and gender are constructs of supremacy thinking, the US government commits 100x more acts of terrorism than the next most terroristic group, evangelicalism is a cult, all religion is self-and-other harming, monogamy is way over-rated, marriage is harmful to everyone...

honestly, I'd be concerned if it seemed like lots of people agreed with me, especially lots of people in America! One doesn't get a nation that did 400+ years of chattel slavery without most people being pro-slavery.
by tomhow | 2025-08-22 23:21:46+00:00
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44990485 and marked it off topic.
by J_McQuade | 2025-08-22 23:24:01+00:00
> We're fundamentally talking about different activities here.

It seems so, and I think your example underlines this:

> Lamar Jackson doesn't get to choose who he plays against in the NFL; if he wants to win the Super Bowl he has to play against Joe Burrow. If Joe Burrow cheats by deflating some footballs, there has to be a system in place which catches him and doles out appropriate punishment.

I don't know who those people are, but I'll assume that this is a reasonable pairing of NFL players. Are you saying that there is no system in place to catch cheating in the NFL? Because I'm pretty sure that there is - it is just made out of people, rather than software.

Software anti-cheat seeks to stop everyone cheating everywhere, and this is clearly impossible. Using current anti-cheat methods in IRL sports, then in a game with as many involved participants as NFL a cheater might get away with it for a bit, but I'm sure if it turned out if the Steelberg Bunglers were deflating their balls every game, then this would be a massive scandal that makes national television. They would probably have to be audited (install anti-cheat) for a season or two before people would trust them to play a clean game for a while.
by mempko | 2025-08-22 23:24:04+00:00
On a related story. Tesla was saved by a $500 million bailout loan from the DEO loan office. Part of the agreement was that the US government would take a stake in Tesla UNLESS they pay back the loan ahead of schedule. That's why Tesla paid it back ahead of schedule, Elon didn't want the government to take a stake. But he spun it as a victory for the US tax payer.

EDIT: Before downvoting, tell me where I'm wrong.
by foxglacier | 2025-08-22 23:24:39+00:00
Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness, they're for specific reasons like preventing greater economic problems (2008) or national security (probably Intel). You might disagree that those are the best ways to address those risks but that's why we elect the government to make those decisions and act on them instead of letting the country collapse - which is arguably more important than social services which won't really matter if there's no money to fund them or the country has been taken over by some hostile enemy.
by manavsehgal2025 | 2025-08-22 23:24:43+00:00
Visual Notes on this insightful No Priors conversation with Andrew Ng, founder of DeepLearning.AI, the discussion covers the evolution of AI capabilities, the emergence of agentic AI, the transformation of software development through AI-assisted coding, and the changing landscape of startups and talent in the AI era. Andrew shares his perspectives on the vectors of AI progress, obstacles to building true agents, and how AI is fundamentally changing work processes, company structures, and founder profiles.
by andsoitis | 2025-08-22 23:24:49+00:00
> Guess what, friend. If you have neo-Nazi's showing up to your protest and people don't immediately throw them out, you are now at a neo-Nazi event.

Do you apply the same logic when people waving pro Hamas flags or chants show up at an anti-Israel rally?

If you are, you are doing the same thing as the administration! If you do not, why the unequal treatment?
by jongjong | 2025-08-22 23:25:05+00:00
It's a mistake to assume that the utility of a tool has anything to do with its adoption.

The real barrier to adoption for any tool are the network effects of other existing tools which create attention barriers and cultural barriers which may hinder adoption of superior alternatives.

A tool has to adhere and build on top of existing conceptual baggage in order to be appealing to the masses of developers.

This is partly because developers believe that the tools they're using now are cutting-edge and optimal... So a radical conceptual reinvention of their current favorite tools will look to them like a step backwards, regardless of how much further it can take them forward.
by JSR_FDED | 2025-08-22 23:25:10+00:00
Tangentially, 50% of effort goes into assembling long complex CLI commands, and 50% fighting with escaping for the shell. Adding text to a video adds it’s own escaping hell for the text.

Has anyone found a bulletproof recipe for calling ffmpeg with many args (filters) from python? Use r-strings? Heredocs?
by cam_l | 2025-08-22 23:26:02+00:00
The US has the most expensive healthcare costs per capita in the OECD, and the poorest health outcomes on average.

You might think that this is merely because so many people in the US are not covered at all. But even when you account for people who are covered, the results are mixed at best. With the US performing slightly better in some areas, but much worse across the board.

I also know a few people who have moved back from the US, even though they had health insurance, just to receive better socialised medical care in their own countries. I also know of a who went to the US to get cancer treatment. None of that means anything really. The number of people you know and their uninformed attitudes are statistically insignificant.
by recursive | 2025-08-22 23:26:10+00:00
That's your answer? We don't need the internet anymore because we have books?

My local library is great. But they don't have all books, like reference information about a particular manufacturer's product. And they're not open at 2am. And you have to go there.

Behold, this is the future. We've improved computers so much going to the library is the answer for getting information. Correction: getting correct information.
by stego-tech | 2025-08-22 23:26:31+00:00
You’re going to see more of this heavy-handed response, especially from smaller sites or decentralized services.

As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed.

For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
by Stevvo | 2025-08-22 23:27:59+00:00
In Valorant's defence:

1) There is a 100k bug-bounty on the anti-cheat: https://hackerone.com/riot?type=team

2) The anti-cheat is the game's entire reason for being. It is the main focus of the development and marketing. People buy Valorant for the anti-cheat; they are willing to accept a kernel driver as a trade off for fairer competition.
by Sohcahtoa82 | 2025-08-22 23:28:04+00:00
Absolutely still possible.

They're misinformed voters that will be told that their food is more expensive because of Bidenflation, not because ICE arrested and deported the farm workers. As health care gets more expensive, they just get told it's because of ObamaCare.

When in doubt, just cry "WOKE!" and "DEI!" and they'll bend over for Trump and any Republican that claims to be friends with him.
by spangry | 2025-08-22 23:28:08+00:00
Oh darn, I thought they'd gotten Arch running on an M1 but they actually switched to a ThinkBook.

I somewhat regret my expensive switch from Linux to MacOS. MacOS is just so weird, it doesn't make any sense to me. For the first time in my life I feel like some tech-illiterate grandpa trying to figure out how to make his blasted computer do stuff.
by mindcrime | 2025-08-22 23:28:29+00:00
What's forefront on your mind with regards to the human predicament, and how we move forward?

what's your vision for the future?

Honestly, I consider those two pretty different questions. At the very least, I'd approach them very differently in terms of time-scale. What's "top of mind" for me is more about the short-term threats I perceive to our way of life, whereas my "vision for the future" is - to my way of thinking - more about how I'd like things to be in some indeterminate future (that might never arrive, or might arrive long after my passing).

To the first question then: what's on my mind?

1. The rise of authoritarianism and right-wing populism, both in the US and across the world.

2. The increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence systems, and the specter of continued advances exacerbating existing problems of unequal wealth / power imbalances / injustice / etc.

Combine (1) and (2) and you have quite a toxic stew on your hands in the worst case. Now I'm not necessarily predicting the worst case, but I wouldn't bet money that I couldn't afford to lose against it either. So worst case, we wind up in a prototypical cyberpunk dystopia, or something close to it. Only probably less pleasant than the dystopias we are familiar with from fiction.

And even if we don't wind up in a straight up "cyberpunk dystopia", one has to wonder what's going to happen if fears of AI replacing large numbers of white-collar jobs come true. And note that that doesn't have to happen tomorrow, or next year, or 5 years from now or whatever. If it happens 15 years, or 25 year, or 50 years, or whatever, from now, the impact could still be profound. So even for those of you who are dismissive of the capabilities of current AI systems, I encourage you to think about the big picture and play some mental simulations with different rates of change and different time scales.
by hamdingers | 2025-08-22 23:28:43+00:00
> which is having police officers interact with random drivers, this time with a no-show warrant.

Impounding vehicles is an option too. Like we do for parking tickets. That is routinely done without police interaction, or interaction at all with the driver.

I know in California if you ignore a red light ticket long enough they'll pull the fines (plus penalties and interest) from your state tax return.
by baby_souffle | 2025-08-22 23:29:18+00:00
It's a talking point. His base can't think beyond "China bad" and "Trump is us". If he says $action is good for the US, and bad for China then the only question they'll have is how many of those pesky elites will be sad because of this.

If you stop thinking so critically and logically, it'll all start to make a lot more sense.
by ivewonyoung | 2025-08-22 23:30:27+00:00
One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemployment benefits, the list goes on and on.

Imagine if the DMV and passport services had even the possibility of competition like a private company has. You bet all of a sudden the service would get much faster and better and with fewer mistakes and red tape with the same or fewer number of employees. Or someone would set up a competitor and imagine how many people would even pay extra just to not waste several hours of their time.

It's tax payer money so there is a lot more waste than even at big private companies. For example, the costs to just administer and operate the social security administration(not including any money paid out to recipients) is $15 billion dollars with a big B. There is no incentive for anyone to save the tax payer any money and there would be a huge pushback from govt contractors, unions and employeees. See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

Any large IT project in the government in almost any country and at any goverment costs huge amounts while not returning much value if any. Look at the state and costs of local metro stations and trains in almost any city.
by kelnos | 2025-08-22 23:30:28+00:00
I really wish all mail providers made it easy and seamless to bring your own domain (or register and manage one in the background for you, without you having to care for the details). Obviously giving a service-tied email domain to users is a great lock-in strategy. But it's worrying that so many people have a big part of their online identity tied to Google.

(You can even sign up for a Google Account without GMail, using a third-party domain. And this is distinct from Google Workspace, or whatever they're calling it today. You get a normal, regular, personal Google Account, just without GMail and using your own non-gmail.com address.)
by harshitaneja | 2025-08-22 23:30:31+00:00
I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a linux machine. I tried Asahi Linux and also tried to find some non apple machines including with Snapdragon X Elite ones but so far I haven't found anything with good battery life and a decent linux driver support. So far Asahi linux with the reduced battery life seems to be the best bet. I don't mind tinkering. I love tinkering. I am not looking for "just works" but something which I could get to work after putting in the hours. If someone has suggestions please share. Edit: Sorry to go somewhat off topic.
by bitwize | 2025-08-22 23:31:18+00:00
My experience is just the opposite: Linux requires more up-front tinkering, but once you get it into a shape you want, it tends to stay that way and get out of your way. Windows, by contrast, requires much more ongoing active maintenance, and previous releases were prone to simply shitting the bed without explanation or recourse. MacOS is better about this than Windows, but not as good as Linux.

Now if you're talking Arch Linux... sure. The Arch devs love yanking the carpet out from under you and then telling you "you should have read that forum post from a week ago if you didn't want your system to break". But other distros, like Slackware, Debian, and Void, are quite stable across updates.
by jibal | 2025-08-22 23:31:47+00:00
It's obviously not even close to the same logic. One obvious difference is that "mom" (who gets their dinner from "mom"? Not me) pays the grocery store for the food. If I get all my meals via DoorDash, the farmers still get paid. If I get all my news via LLMs rather than a subscription to the NYT, the NYT and its investigative reporters get no revenue from me.
by bob1029 | 2025-08-22 23:31:56+00:00
Targeting perfect fairness in a multiplayer video game with arbitrary latency between participants is a waste of energy. A much better target is to make it feel like no one is cheating. I don't really care too much if someone is actually better or worse than me at counterstrike. What I mostly care about is wildly implausible gameplay. No one is going to stop the guy who is getting a 5% gain on his ELO by using a 2nd computer, machine vision and a robot to move his mouse ever so slightly faster than he typically can.

However, there are ways to detect when someone is being an absolute madman with the hacks. We're talking head snapping through walls with 100% accuracy and instantaneous displacement across an entire 30 minute match. These people can simply be banned immediately by hardware/steam ID. We can write basic rules to detect stuff like this. There's no "confidence interval" for speed hacking through a map and awping the entire CT team in 3 seconds. You certainly don't need kernel drivers.
by dathery | 2025-08-22 23:32:00+00:00
The main other problem is that the kernel doesn't register default signal handlers for signals like SIGTERM if the process is PID 1. So if your process doesn't register its own signal handlers, it's hard to kill (you have to use SIGKILL). I'm sure anyone who has used Docker a lot has run into containers that seem to just ignore signals -- this is the usual reason why.

> also, why can't the real pid1 do it? it sees all the processes after all.

How would the real PID 1 know if it _should_ reap the zombie? It's normal to have some zombie processes -- they're just processes whose exit statuses haven't been reaped yet. If you force-reaped a zombie you could break a program that just hasn't yet gotten around to checking the status of a subprocess it spawned.
by shaokind | 2025-08-22 23:32:19+00:00
Honest question: do you segment your activities on your computer on different users?

No? In which case, what practical spyware risk does a kernel level driver add that user mode software can’t do?

User mode software can spy on your clipboard, surreptitiously take screenshots, and take data out of your system. That spooks me enough that, if I don’t trust a software manufacturer, I don’t install it. Kernel mode makes no practical difference in my security posture.
by hluska | 2025-08-22 23:32:47+00:00
Intel is public and their financials have indicated this would happen. Even at my most irrationally exuberant their stock buybacks didn’t make much sense.

I’m not sure what “more transparency would look like to you, but publicly traded companies with audited financials are quite transparent. As for the part about siphoning money, history has shown that taxpayers do well. In 2008, the US government took roughly 80% of AIG, sold off their stock by 2012, made a roughly $15 billion profit and AIG is no longer considered too big to fail. It worked and did what it was intended to do. There are reasons to be positive about this.