MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by protocolture | 2025-10-28 23:31:49+00:00
>While I am not surprised that such a service exists, what did surprise me is that it's just a division of my insurance company: they literally have a division that negotiates with another part of the insurance cmpany to get better coverage for patients. I was pretty lucky to notice the mail about this- there's nothing on my employer's site saying we have this coverage(!) and the vast majority of people in the US likely don't have this service.

100 years ago I used to work for the fruit company in phone support.

My KPI's were 100% customer satisfaction. However, I needed to get approval from another team to advance any kind of free/gratis repairs replacements or gifts.

That team's KPIs were opaque to me, but my understanding is that they were find as long as they offered some resistance.

Between those two pillars we got a lot of good done for customers. I dont think theres anything necessarily wrong with having internal friction like that if its designed correctly. Its probably better than having both responsibilities in a single person.

In terms of health insurance however it seems ghoulish.
by georgeecollins | 2025-10-28 23:32:06+00:00
I have never heard this term before, but to clarify what I mean (it's so weird to bring race into this!): I have worked with dozens of native born dutch, german, french people etc. and lots of latin people etc. But I know almost very few that I grew up with, went to school with, who moved from the US to another country. I am not saying this is good, the US is good etc. I am saying you have to understand the revealed preference vs what people tell you.

I wouldn't be surprised if this changes in the future, I am talking about the period of my life to date.
by kingkongjaffa | 2025-10-28 23:33:24+00:00
I'd like to refine this a bit because I agree, but in a slightly different way.

> I understood “taste” here to mean opinions.

Good taste is the ability to have nuanced and specific opinions.

This comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45740478 said it well:

> 2. How well you're able to understand the medium and identify the differences between things.

Combining these two ideas: Taste is the ability to understand the topic/craft/medium well enough to have a strong opinion about what good is, and usually that opinion is similar to other well experienced practitioners.

In software engineering it's the ability to recognize an elegant solution that avoids pitfalls that the observer may have experienced in the past.

In other fields it might be that someone with good taste can better understand and appreciate the process or journey to get to whatever $thing is being evaluated, and they appreciate the $thing more because they can empathize more fully with the creator, compared to a layman.
by lucasban | 2025-10-28 23:34:12+00:00
One thing also to keep in mind, is that this experience is not uniform throughout the US. Many Americans like -their- employer based insurance, even if they don’t like the system. I personally pay nothing for visits and nominal fees ($1-10) for prescriptions. I have not been hospitalized while on this insurance, but my understanding is that it is relatively low cost. I also have no monthly premium. Meanwhile, my mother works at a small business, pays a significant percentage of her income for insurance from the ACA marketplaces (the public marketplaces created during the Obama administration) with the current subsidies, subsidies that are in question under the current administration. The American healthcare payment system is broken, but we aren’t all living through the worst case scenario experiences that get the attention. Add to that the amount of money and effort that went into turning healthcare reform into yet another partisan issue, and there’s a good recipe for maintaining a broken status quo for a while yet.
by bakies | 2025-10-28 23:34:26+00:00
> different cultural backgrounds and values; social cohesion; national identity; integration and social stability; nation has its values; not the right choice for everyone; American culture

I like my cultured friends. USA is a melting pot, not a white-man-country. This is all xenophobia.

> poor finances

sounds right for asylum seekers

> nation's resources, infrastructure, housing shortages, burdens public services like healthcare, and contributes to economic friction[??] amid existing downturns,

sounds like policy problems; and these are the priorities of the people i vote for too, none of this has to do with immigrants.

> Countries are not homeless shelters or free handouts

no, this is exactly what i expect my country (government) to handle

> Uncontrolled influx of millions

this is pretty tightly controlled, you can find the data from the census and see that the population is not at all fluctuating and very linear. Should be trivial to plan ahead about how many people are in the country. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

> This is why sovereign states implement rigorous and dynamic immigration controls and capacity limits based on the nation's ability at the time. There has to be sustainable absorption. vet whoever comes into your house

this is true, and I dont believe its not happening. i was asking what is happening that's a crisis. Trump's policies are _mass deportation_. They are extreme. Legal immigrants, are having visas revoked without reason, and even green card holders are being arrested without cause. Violations of the 4th amendment. Immigrants are arrested at court houses, where the vetting takes place, you know, by _judges_.

> they are the result of blood and tears of the patriots who fought and died to create, defend, and build that nation.

like my immigrant grandpop, achieved the american dream
by 3eb7988a1663 | 2025-10-28 23:34:47+00:00
Ignoring the Steam Deck, most Linux gamers are probably going to be older so that they have the funds and/or technical interest to setup a Linux machine. Which is going to remove the younger demographic which likely plays a different genre and has more available total free time for gaming.

As a young teen with nothing to do, I probably had some days in Summer where I clocked in 16 hours of gaming.
by j1elo | 2025-10-28 23:35:01+00:00
I got another way of looking at it: it's not worth it having appliances that last 20 years, because in that time the tech itself can and does improve a lot.

Ready example is my aunt: a very good and expensive Miele washing machine, that was made to last as things were before. But now 10 years have elapsed and modern washers come with bigger drums, much lower noises, optimized water and electricity usages, and more effective washing patterns.

But she's stuck with her old and trusty one, because she feels that it's working "like new". And she's not wrong, it works well, so it became a sort of a "golden cuff" so to speak (not knowing any better metaphor). So good and expensive, that now getting rid of it for a new one feels like a waste of money for not much gain.
by tempestn | 2025-10-28 23:35:33+00:00
It depends a lot on the bulbs. When we moved into our current house 11 years ago, we replaced everything with LEDs. Many of those original bulbs are still going strong, including all of the 20 or so integrated pot lights we put in to replace the old-school halogen ones. Others died within a year, and replacements have been similarly hit and miss. To some extent you get what you pay for; most of the random-Chinese-brand LEDs I've picked up off of Amazon have failed pretty quickly. Most of the Philips and similarly expensive ones have lasted. Also the incandescent-looking ones that stuff all the electronics into the base of the bulb tend to fail quickly, as do anything installed in an enclosed overhead light fixture, due to heat buildup.
by gnabgib | 2025-10-28 23:35:59+00:00
15 minutes is a short walk, bit this isn't the title (or the finding).

Title: This easy daily habit cuts heart risk by two thirds

Paper title: Step Accumulation Patterns and Risk for Cardiovascular Events and Mortality Among Suboptimally Active Adults

Finding:

> Suboptimally active adults who accumulated most of their daily steps in longer bouts had lower mortality and CVD risk than those who accumulated most daily steps in shorter bouts.
by derefr | 2025-10-28 23:36:23+00:00
It's hard to make the right boots analogy (try it yourself if you think you can), but to speak of fridges —

• The rich person's remodeller (or the developer of the house they buy) buys a commercial-kitchen prep fridge for the house's kitchen. This is a big, powerful, durable, repairable, no-frills, utilitarian fridge, that could be viewed as attractive or ugly depending on your opinion on brutalism. The rich person never sees this fridge. It's kept in the butler's pantry and only their private chef ever touches it.

• The rich person's interior designer then buys an elegant/classy half-sized in-wall glass-door fridge to live in the kitchen itself. This is intended for the rich person's household staff to keep constantly stocked with snacks and drinks for the rich person to grab. (Also, if the rich person thinks they want to cook one day, the staff will prep the exact ingredients needed in advance, keeping them in the butler's pantry until called for, but will then stage any "must stay cold" ingredients here.) This fridge is generally a piece of shit, made with huge markups by companies that make fancy-house furniture. But it sure is pretty! If (when) it fails, the staff can temporarily revert to just serving the role of that fridge, running to the butler's-pantry fridge or other cold-storage area (maybe a walk-in!) when the rich person wants something. (Also compare/contrast: in-wall wine cooler.)

• The rich person's household staff might respond to the rich person's request for more convenient access to snacks/drinks in certain areas of the house by buying + keeping stocked one or more minifridges. There'll certainly be one in the house's bar. (There's always a bar.) These are sturdy commercial-grade bricks, built by the same companies that build the ones that go into hotels; but these companies serve rich people just as often as they serve hotels, so they tend to have an up-market marque that makes the fridge look fancy while reusing the well-engineered core.
by seabombs | 2025-10-28 23:36:28+00:00
Proton/Wine is so good these days. Rarely have I had an issue running a game in the last 3 or 4 years. Sometimes EA/Ubisoft games that have their own special launchers don't work immediately, but ProtonDB and the Proton GitHub issues are great resources to get them going.

I remember when Cyberpunk 2077 came out it didn't work at first, but the Proton and Glorious Egg Roll devs got it running within a few days. Legends.

Even many games that support native linux run better under wine.
by alecco | 2025-10-28 23:36:36+00:00
https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/eic-accel...

> The EIC welcomes applications from innovators in all EU Member States and countries associated to the Horizon Europe programme. It particularly welcomes applications from startups and SMEs with female CEOs.

So that's one that strongly pushes that angle. But the one I saw I clearly remember saying "female co-founder", not CEO.
Ask HN: AI has changed my job for the worse
by yodsanklai | 2025-10-28 23:37:06+00:00
In the span of a few months, my job has completely changed. Most of the code in my team is now written by agents. And most of the focus of my team is to integrate agents in our products.

I'm not interested in the products we're supposed to build, and I don't like the way we're building them. Code quality has suddenly became irrelevant, and you have to keep up with everybody who ship twice as much code as before.

At the same time, there's more pressure on SWEs to deliver as layoffs are looming. I think leadership really believes they'll be able to save a lot by ultimately getting rid of all of us.

I'm not sure what to do at that stage but I'm pretty miserable. It's crazy that this occurred so fast.
by ben_w | 2025-10-28 23:37:17+00:00
Rockets, yes, he's good at them.

Cars… not great, but good enough to turn Tesla from a joke into an OK company selling in a "Blue Ocean"* market. Which isn't nothing, but then a bunch of other electric car companies popped up and now Tesla cars are solidly B-tier… well, except for the Cybertruck which is just a flop.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy
by no_wizard | 2025-10-28 23:37:37+00:00
>That's a fair point. But until recently you could move to a lot of countries in Europe for an investment less than a house in California.

That alone is enough to put most people out of grasp of doing this, for a multitude of reasons, of which not having the capital is only part of the equation, as you would also need to have a suitable investment on the other side to put said money, not a promise. I'm sure there are other nuances involved too.

Thats before the fact that the cost of a house in California would price most people out of the equation to begin with.
by sfRattan | 2025-10-28 23:37:43+00:00
> The latter means side loading is still viable for apps from known developers. This way anyone who is known who may create malware and will not be free from prosecution

Important corrections:

This way anyone who is known to create malware or any software which interferes with Google's current or potential future revenue, strategic interests, and unpredictable whims will not be free from prosecution in the case of distributing malware, nor from digital exile and unpersoning in the case of causing inconvenience to Google.
by mynameisash | 2025-10-28 23:38:13+00:00
A few other advantages to induction:

1. Better air quality. You don't have combustion byproducts in the kitchen.

2. More efficient than both gas and conventional electric stoves.

3. Faster to heat than gas/conventional electric (due to the efficiency improvement)

4. Easier to clean (except for glass top stoves).

I've yet to own a full-on induction stove, but I do regularly use the 120V induction hot plates in my kitchen. In fact, I use them more than the gas stove that came with my house. I'm eagerly awaiting the day that I have a full induction stove.
The spillover effects of AI on open source software development
by jennjwang | 2025-10-28 23:38:15+00:00
Stanford researchers are studying how AI coding tools affect code review and collaboration in open source software development. We're looking for developers to participate in our study, especially new open source contributors. - What you’d do: work on 4 issues from large open-source repositories, submit PRs for each, and address reviewer feedback - Time: ~8-10 hours total over 1-2 month (flexible schedule). - Comp: $30/hr. - Eligibility: 18+, fluent in English, and <2 years of professional swe experience, familiar with Git and the code review process.

Here’s more info for context: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wf67jYbqD3f1-HKkuAcyLE_P-P9cRR3Vfrxurd0CgVc/edit?usp=sharing.

Sign up here if you're interested: https://tinyurl.com/sweprod
by fallingfrog | 2025-10-28 23:38:18+00:00
No, we all hate it, but the number of senators and members of congress who would vote to replace it could be counted with one hand. The reason is simple: the insurance companies give those senators millions and millions of dollars and nobody has the cash to beat them. And we've given up at this point.

As the song goes:

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows"
by al_borland | 2025-10-28 23:38:18+00:00
The Vision Pro was still pretty recent. They also refreshed the hardware designs of everything when moving to the M-series chips.

They also made that new wireless chip recently, the chips for the headphones, and some for the Vision Pro. The camera in the iPhone also gets a lot of attention, which takes a lot of hardware engineering. In the iPhone more generally we saw fairly big changes just a month or so ago with the new Pro phone and the Air. The Pro models on the MacBook and iPad are almost as thin, if not more thin than the Air line, which I’m sure took a considerable amount of work, to the point of making the Air branding a little silly.
by phendrenad2 | 2025-10-28 23:39:37+00:00
> linux phones are comming up fast

How much does it cost to build a barebones phone that (A) runs tuxracer and (B) makes phone calls? Librem: almost as much as an iPhone. PinePhone: You have to travel to the moon to find one for sale. FLX1: Not for sale yet (so PinePhone 2.0)

Maybe when I can buy a $100 barebones board that I can hook some AA batteries up to and make calls, and develop a little flappy bird clone, people will take notice of the market. As long as every Linux phone is some dude with too much money in his pocket thinking he'll make the next Android, it's not going anywhere. Even with tech nerds.
by ludamn | 2025-10-28 23:39:47+00:00
If it helps I used to use a gaming laptop for work that had a RTX 2060 mobile version, I was able to run some recent games like Elden Ring (including mods & online play), and some older but still demanding titles like Witcher 3. All of this without tinkering too much on a oob Ubuntu LTS install (I later switched to popOS because I don't like snaps that much).
by mhitza | 2025-10-28 23:39:52+00:00
> I don't do anything illegal or plan to, but being investigated alone is enough of a deterrent

Unless you live in a fully authoritarian state, there shouldn't be a reason to be investigated for using Tor. Being put on a list is a different matter, but voicing your opinions online might also get you there. If not now, in a possible, not far away grim future.

Tor Browser is a great idea, and would be more usable on a daily basis if it'd block ads by default as well.

1. Maybe some of our Chinese peers can chime in. In such circumstances you need to take a step further and use bridges to connect to the Tor network to better circumvent restrictions. As far of deep packet inspection I'm not aware of the state of the art in China, and if it's possible to evade detection.

2. Download it from a public wifi with no cameras in sight?
by signatoremo | 2025-10-28 23:40:25+00:00
OpenAI wants to be free from MS. The cost is 27% of ownership, which is about $135B currently, plus IP access until 2032. Considered MS invested about $10B initially, that’s a big concession on the part of OpenAI.

OpenAI’s Jakob Pachocki said on a call today that he expects that AI is “less than a decade away from superintelligence”
by danpalmer | 2025-10-28 23:40:56+00:00
As with many things, in the US if you're part of the privileged minority you do well. The top 10% of earners in the US earn a lot more than the top 10% in Europe – that covers tech, high end knowledge work, that sort of stuff.

But the bottom 90% do badly. Society is very divided, and most people lack social mobility, they lack a voice on the national and international stage, they lack the security that either a social safety net or high pay would give them.

The UK is similar, although much less pronounced. I moved to Australia about 18 months ago and society here is much flatter, the difference between the top 10% and bottom 10% is much less. There are still problems here, it's not a utopia, but it's very noticeable how most people are struggling less, and how the top 10% of earners aren't living that different a life.
by anonymous908213 | 2025-10-28 23:40:57+00:00
Not really sure why you're trying to draw a connection between private servers and anti-cheat, I understand if that's your pet grievance but they really aren't related. Games were already implementing anti-cheat even when server browsers were the norm. The "anti-cheat situation" grew out of cheaters killing multiplayer games. What are you even trying to imply with "wanting to control the whole experience"? Letting your players actually play the game they paid for is a bad thing now? When cheaters are in the game, you do not get to play it in any meaningful sense, and in short order a literal sense as servers rapidly die off. Note that I'm not endorsing kernel anti-cheat, but you didn't say kernel anti-cheat, but instead went on a polemic against the concept of anti-cheat in general.
by Esophagus4 | 2025-10-28 23:41:33+00:00
> If the market dynamics do not naturally lead to this, then regulation should shape the field.

Look no further than the economies of France and Germany… both of those countries have very stringent regulations around layoffs. And none of whom have the dominance of American companies or breadth of unicorn startups.

Making firing difficult makes hiring difficult, which disincentives risk and innovation.

The leave/fire at-will contracts of most tech jobs in the US is a feature, not a bug.

> It also sucks for businesses, because hiring & onboarding is so freaking hard and expensive.

Sometimes, but sometimes not. Layoffs are important to get rid of low performers who could be replaced with better talent, and they’re important to help companies adjust their labor to market conditions.
by Terr_ | 2025-10-28 23:41:38+00:00
> Syntax highlighting is mostly a matter of taste

To quibble a bit: Color choice is mostly a matter of taste, but highlighting itself is a matter of workflows. Highlighting syntax in particular just happens to be a default most people find acceptable.

In other circumstances, the user may benefit from coloring by variable data-type, or coloring by distinct variable name, or coloring by scope, etc. Often IDEs will keep the font color, and use other channels like a highlight-box around some text, or gutter-icons.
by supertrope | 2025-10-28 23:42:04+00:00
At Costco Pharmacy I stopped using my insurance plan as the co-pay was more than the no claim cash price. I learned later that my health insurance company owns its own pharmacy and they design the claims process to bias you toward their own pharmacy. Since medical loss ratio must exceed 85% on employer health plans they realize their excess profits by jacking up prices at their pharmacy subsidiary and using their pharmacy benefit manager subsidiary and insurance product to steer you toward overpaying if you just take their suggestion (e.g. $100 if you use OptumRX mail order Pharmacy for the "savings" versus $20 cash price from Costco).
by agentcoops | 2025-10-28 23:42:59+00:00
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI has done the math and determined that even releasing frontier quality models wouldn't put much of a dent in either their B2B or B2C businesses. Or, rather, that any such dent would be vastly overshadowed by the value of fending off potential competitors.

I haven't looked too much into Deepseek's actual business, but at least Mistral seemed to be positioning themselves as a professional services shop to integrate their own open-weight models, compliant with EU regulations etc, at a huge premium. Any firm that has the SOA open model could do the same and cannibalize OpenAI's B2B business---perhaps even eventually pivoting into B2C---especially if regulations, downtime or security issues make firms more cloud-skeptical with respect to AI. As long as OpenAI can establish and hold the lead for best open-weight/on-premise model, it will be hard for anyone to justify premium pricing so as to generate sufficient cash flow from training their own models.

I can even imagine OpenAI eventually deciding that B2C is so much more valuable to them than B2B that it's worth completely sinking the latter market...
by roenxi | 2025-10-28 23:43:13+00:00
It is fun being one of the elderly who set their standards back in distant 2022. All these demos look incredible compared to SD1, 2 & 3. We've entered a very different era where the models seem to actually understand both the prompt and the image instead of throwing paint at the wall in a statistically interesting manner.

I think this was fairly predictable, but as engineering improvements keep happening and the prompt adherence rate tightens up we're enjoying a wild era of unleashed creativity.