MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by pembrook | 2025-12-02 01:21:27+00:00
I call this the "Karl Marx Fallacy." It assumes a static basket of human wants and needs over time, leading to the conclusion competition will inevitably erode all profit and lead to market collapse.

It ignores the reality of humans having memetic emotions, habits, affinities, differentiated use cases & social signaling needs, and the desire to always want to do more...constantly adding more layers of abstraction in fractal ways that evolve into bigger or more niche things.

5 years ago humans didn't know a desire for gaming GPUs would turn into AI. Now it's the fastest growing market.

Ask yourself: how did Google Search continue to make money after Bing's search results started benchmarking just as good?

Or: how did Apple continue to make money after Android opened up the market to commoditize mobile computing?

Etc. Etc.
by dh2022 | 2025-12-02 01:21:32+00:00
$200 seems valid - it comes from the linked article [0] and it includes home internet (I pay $110 / month Comcast just for home internet in Bellevue. In Seattle I paid $130 / month). Maybe Aaron could have phrased it better. (I also recommend to read the linked article as it is a phenomenally well done financial analysis.)

[0] https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie
by dboreham | 2025-12-02 01:21:58+00:00
Background for the uninitiated: the USA is not quite a real country. It's 50 states that agreed to cooperate in various ways, and share a common army/navy.

While the US government issues documents that work for identification everywhere (called passports) approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.

So when planes began to be attacked by bad guys some decades ago, the aviation industry (regulated at the federal level, because it doesn't take long to fly out of the state you start in) decided to use the identification document that everyone does have: the drivers license.

But those are issued by the states, not the federal government.

And the states don't all do a great job of the surveillance state stuff, so it's pretty easy for a budding Mr Terrorist to get a drivers license, and for his state to not bother keeping much in the way of records to find him if he ever hijacks a plane.

The solution to this falls under the category of the US "trying everything before they get it right" -- the federal government (via congress) decided that only drivers licenses issued by states that get the surveillance stuff right to their satisfaction would be usable to get on a plane (passport always worked and still works, fwiw).

Some states said "ok, that's fine". Some states said "nope, not doing it". <insert years of wrangling> The final solution was that the "not doin it" states were told they could issue two kinds of drivers license (real-id and...un-real-id).

Since you have to explicitly request a real-id license in those states, which costs more, and because people are lazy and ill-informed, there are still people with no valid id document to get on a plane.

So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let them on the plane. Oh...wait, no, the solution is to charge them $45.
by Aaronontheweb | 2025-12-02 01:22:03+00:00
1. I mentioned, in multiple places, that this is the cheapest PPO offered to me through a limited selection of potential brokers / marketplaces - and that's important because it covers our current health care providers AND child birth as a benefit.

2. If we weren't trying to have kids, our options for purchasing health insurance expand drastically. Individual marketplace plans become a viable, for instance, since the "not covering childbirth" issue goes away. I mention the short-comings of the individual health insurance marketplace at least twice in this regard, including a big pull quote explaining the ACA work-around with child birth coverage.
by abdullahkhalids | 2025-12-02 01:22:35+00:00
The default Right Click Menu in Firefox is

- Icon bar: Back, Forward, Reload, Bookmark

- Save Page As...

- Select All

- Take Screenshot

- Ask An AI Chatbot

- View Page Source

- Inspect Accessibility Properties

- Inspect

I would bet that 99% of Firefox users have never ever even once clicked on any of the options besides the first one (icon bar).
by ecshafer | 2025-12-02 01:22:37+00:00
I kind of have to disagree. I have really learned to love the explicitness of a big ole' switch statement. Its fast, no misdirection, all available in one place, and its easily readable where you need it. All of the "clean code" options for something like this I have seen that used more abstraction ultimately just split up the fact you have to keep a list of 100 something hex code values and some value there.
by earthdeity | 2025-12-02 01:22:57+00:00
While I agree a lot of information is conferred, most of it is not useful. I'm quite a fan of not attending meetings where I don't get specifically invited (as in, directly, not as part of a group). This may or may not fly at a given organisation. Anyhow, my main learning has been that:

1. All truly important information will be repeated (in the form of tickets, slack messages, further meetings). Usually several times.

2. Most useful subordinate information (the kind that doesn't get repeated) only needs to be related to 1 person 80%+ of the time. It's vanishingly rare 3 or more people need some information that isn't ever repeated elsewhere.

The only really useful work in meetings is making decisions. This is an essential feature, but a big problem is often many "spectators" are invited (attendees without decision power or context). Being a pure spectator in a meeting is almost always completely pointless. Also, people like to make decisions/input so meetings are rife with bike shedding (most people have decision power + context for low importance items usually).
by tuxracer | 2025-12-02 01:23:02+00:00
Because it's not just a $45 fee and you're on your way.

You can actually board a domestic flight without any ID at all, for example if you lost it before your trip. But you'll have to go through a manual identity verification process. That includes giving fingerprints and answering personal questions only you should know, like past addresses.

It takes around 30 minutes and if you don't answer correctly, you could be denied boarding. This process already existed before the Real ID requirement, but it used to be free. Now, you're forced to go through the same manual verification steps and pay $45 on top of it.

You're being treated the same as if you have no ID with you at all.
by wisp558 | 2025-12-02 01:23:24+00:00
This really resonated with the way I feel about Ruby. I haven't had the opportunity to seriously write Ruby in years, but I measure every development environment against the classic ruby/rails/rake/gem/bundler experience and I always find myself missing how productive Ruby was to work with, inside and outside of Rails. I think Ruby particularly excels in its ability to mold itself structurally to match its problem domain. Rspec and ActiveRecord and to a lesser extent Bundler and Rake are still the most ergonomic versions of tools in their class that I have used to date, and they all expose some sort of powerful DSL that feels magical in just the right way.

These days I mostly use more "serious" languages (python, Java, C#, C++), but it's because I want to work on a domain within those languages and I don't have the time to commit to bringing the domain to Ruby. I should call her...
by kcplate | 2025-12-02 01:23:24+00:00
> and that are much further ahead of where we are

I’m not so sure. Life might be out there, but intelligent life capable of even wondering what those blinky things are in their sky seems exceedingly rare. Just in the one place we know it exists and took about 40% of the age of the universe and about 5 billion different tries just to get us to the point of looking up and wondering.

Someone needs to be the first or most advanced. So why not us? Maybe the answer to the Fermi paradox is: ”There just isn’t anyone out there, yet and may never be.”
by hedora | 2025-12-02 01:23:29+00:00
We’re paying Cal FAIR about 10% the value of our house per year, despite having best possible fire safety for come construction and the area surrounding the house.

So, in your example, thats 175/10/12 = 1.5K per month, leaving $200 for the mortgage. So, $175K is unrealistic.

In related news, Cal FAIR is lobbying for a 60% increase in rates this year, because, apparently 16% of rural houses in California burn down each year (it’s either that, or they’re unbelievably corrupt/incompetent, since they’re somehow losing money).

Note that people in flood planes (much of the cities) have similar issues.
by Aaronontheweb | 2025-12-02 01:23:31+00:00
> the $14300 is the family out of pocket max

You know they charge you, separately, for both the mother's care AND the infant's during a delivery right? Those count as two people. I am, with 100% certainty, going to hit the out of pocket max - I have every time.

Like I've paid for three kids all on the same plan, including one born in January so my deductible got spread over two different billing years.

I have to ask - why are you defending this?
by deaux | 2025-12-02 01:24:09+00:00
Ah, so exactly like Uber, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and so on have done to the rest of the world over the last few decades then?

Where do you think they learnt this trick? Years lurking on HN and this post's comment section wins #1 on the American Hypocrisy chart. Unbelievable that even in the current US people can't recognize when they're looking in the mirror. But I guess you're disincentivized to do so when most of your net worth stems from exactly those companies and those practices.
by AnthonyMouse | 2025-12-02 01:24:21+00:00
Suppose you want to remove the profit motive from healthcare.

If doctors would still get paid above-median wages, you would still have a profit motive. Their lobbyists would want to limit the supply of doctors or simply lobby to have the government pay them high wages, to require that things be done by a doctor instead of a nurse, etc. Likewise the drug companies would lobby for the government to pay them more for their drugs, and when the government is captured then that's what happens. The same problems we have now; you haven't solved anything.

If doctors would get paid a lower wage but still have to attend 8 years of medical school, there wouldn't be a profit motive, but then there would be a shortage of people willing to become doctors, patients would have to wait a long time to get an appointment as they do in places like France, etc.

The profit motive isn't the problem, that's the thing that causes anyone to want to (and be able to) provide healthcare. The problem is the corruption. You have to stop limiting the number of medical residency slots and allowing drug companies to patent trivial changes to preexisting things etc.
by autoexec | 2025-12-02 01:24:35+00:00
It's still better to take a stand even when there is a risk of being wrong because there is always a risk of being wrong. Don't let fear of being wrong or not knowing everything (which is impossible) stop you from standing up for your beliefs. Instead, stand up for what you believe, but be open to having your mind changed. If new information comes to light which changes your position that's perfectly acceptable.

It's a lot easier to live with yourself when you act according to your best understanding of the situation than when you allow fear to paralyze you into inaction at a time when you should have done something.
by themafia | 2025-12-02 01:24:38+00:00
> the new fee is intended to encourage travelers to obtain the ID.

They're flat out telling you it's not about safety. It's merely about forcing total compliance. Which is almost certainly why the price was raised.

The real question is, since this is apparently also required to enter any federal facility, can I pay the $45 fee to enter those location as well? If not, then it's obvious what they're doing here.
by mamcx | 2025-12-02 01:24:53+00:00
Location: Colombia (UTC-5) Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: - Primary: Rust - Secondary: Swift, Python, Web (HTMX, TailwindCSS, JS/TS) - Databases: PostgreSQL, SQLite, SQL Server, SpacetimeDB - Systems: macOS, Windows, NixOS, Debian-based Linux, iOS

About me:

30+ years of experience across business software, databases, and language tooling.

Worked professionally with around 10+ programming languages and ~8 RDBMS systems.

Built Colombia’s leading school grading software around year 2000. Since then, developed ERP and business apps for SMBs and local governments.

Past 3+ years:

Database and compiler engineer.

---

Active member of communities around Rust, Databases, Compilers, etc

Résumé/CV: Available on request Email: info@elmalabarista.com
by wolrah | 2025-12-02 01:24:58+00:00
About six months ago I had a Dell Optiplex motherboard fail and they attempted to schedule a tech to come out the following day. I was not available for that and scheduled it a few days later but they did make as full of an effort as can be reasonably expected to make it happen within one business day.

The default warranty on at least the Optiplex line is one year of next business day service and upgrading to three years is cheap. I've never had a situation where same day service was worth the extra cost but it is an option.
by brigandish | 2025-12-02 01:25:15+00:00
> It has always received weirdly vitriolic push back.

Because, as the Home Secretary herself observed, it would fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state.

> What really is the Government going to do with a digital ID service that they can't do already?

This gives the impression of having done no research into a topic of which you now opine opposition to be "weirdly vitriolic". We live in an age of search engines and GPTs, free encyclopaedias and entire lecture series online, and even libraries are still open and free, but you've done nothing to get past the very first thoughts you've had on the subject.

Was that weirdly vitriolic, or someone pointing out that an argument to undermine everyone's rights should have some effort behind it?
by lmm | 2025-12-02 01:27:33+00:00
> Because all people everywhere are psychopaths who will stab you for $5 if they can get away with it?

Not all people everywhere, but most successful businesspeople.

> It'd be so much more efficient to just stab-stab-stab and take the money directly.

It isn't though? If you do that then you get locked up and lose the money, so the smart psychopaths go into business instead.
by PunchyHamster | 2025-12-02 01:27:43+00:00
It's a cool idea but tools are not compressed nearly enough; look into how maxpedition organizer does it https://www.maxpedition.com/cdn/shop/files/0246B_a07_4a2d1c0...

it essentially have "a strap on a strap" (and a pouch behind it), which means tools can be interleaved in position, leaving far smaller gap between the tools while still giving each one its own mounting.
by RNCTX | 2025-12-02 01:28:35+00:00
In the same post where the author of this blog article says they "don't like getting notifications about activity in my repo, and instead prefer to 'work offline' and 'only check in when I want' to... the author also details how they lost their domain which was bought by an ad spamming site guy.

I mean, are the scripts writing themselves here, boys?
by james_marks | 2025-12-02 01:29:10+00:00
You could tackle it like network news and radio did historically[0] and in modern times[1].

The current hyper-division is plausibly explained by media moving to places (cable news, then social media) where these rules don’t exist.

[0] Fairness Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine

[1] Equal Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
by FridayoLeary | 2025-12-02 01:29:16+00:00
What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely? Do other countries have similar problems?

The system is interesting that the 2 branches of government responsible for doing things are often in a state of open conflict and the main job requirement of the judiciary seems to be an ability to maliciously misinterpret the law in a way which most benefits the group who appointed them.
by ProllyInfamous | 2025-12-02 01:29:34+00:00
If you liked the Snake Bridge, check out US 441 as it passes (around itself) through Great Smokey National Park (Newfound Gap). The road literally underpasses itself in a very tight loop.

[•] https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/hhh.tn0278.photos.3658...
by granzymes | 2025-12-02 01:29:37+00:00
I’ve gone through this process before and while it was more work it did not take 30 minutes.

I presented a student ID and was escorted through the security line. My baggage was selected for additional screening and I received a pat down search.

I went through an identical procedure on the return flight, right down to the exact words the TSA agent spoke to me while conducting the pat down.
by Aurornis | 2025-12-02 01:29:54+00:00
> And then you risk people making stupid decisions, which you have to fix later on, because you didn't attend the meeting.

If you are the one responsible for the work to fix something, you need to be the one driving the meetings or pushing alternative communication.

This is why all of the generic “just say no to meetings” advice is useless: It’s all dependent on the context. You can’t just decline meetings from your boss’s boss without good reason, for example.

A lot of snarky internet advice about saying “no” at the office is just people venting or doing imaginary role play. In a real office you have to push for communication, pull details out of people, identify who you need to report to and who you can safely decline.

If you get in a situation where you’re declining meetings and the responsibility for content of that meeting lands in your lap, you have made a severe misjudgment. These things are easy to clarify with a little proactive communication, but you get nowhere if you just say “no” or send off a singular “agenda plz” email and then forget about it. People are busy. You have to push and make it clear what you need from them, following up if it doesn’t come.
by blackqueeriroh | 2025-12-02 01:30:42+00:00
Fun story-

Worked at Sonos for several years. Was an IC4. My boss empowered me to say no to meetings whenever I wanted, and she was a new manager!

Sometimes all it takes is someone with a tiny bit of courage.

Literally nobody but people who want to waste their time and not do work or PMs who don’t know how to communicate want to have all these meetings.

I zealously avoid meetings and now that I’m a team lead at my new job, I’ll be encouraging my team to do the same and covering their asses when needed.
by SV_BubbleTime | 2025-12-02 01:31:06+00:00
That’s a fancy “no u” but it doesn’t make any sense.

I have remote employees, and I have people I would never allow WFH because they can’t handle it.

I don’t care what you do. I’m explaining from the position of someone responsible for a team that MANY people who are strictest about WFH being absolute are the people abusing it. This shouldn’t even be remotely controversial… yet… all I see is more protest and digital foot stomping.
by irjustin | 2025-12-02 01:31:08+00:00
> The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic.

Personally for me, while less important, I really appreciate the investigation into the narrative.

I agree that the science is more important and the results don't care about the story.

The balance is that we don't need to go around correcting everyone, but knowing more about the details of the story is worth my time in reading this piece. I think the article strikes the right tone.
by deathanatos | 2025-12-02 01:31:38+00:00
Okay, so on the non-budget side, I pay ~$64/mo for T-mobile's "unlimited[1]" plan and a Google Pixel phone. ($57/mo for the service, and I've amortized the phone price to ~$7/mo based on my lifetime average phone lifetime. Even if you amortize the phone over only its ridiculously short warranted lifetime, that's $42/mo for the phone, or $99/mo, but that implies purchasing a new phone yearly, which most people do not do (the average phone lifespan is just under 3y).)

[1]: (n.b., the plan is not truly unlimited.)
by dboreham | 2025-12-02 01:32:01+00:00
I've had similar experience using LLMs for static analysis of code looking for security vulnerabilities, but I'm not sure it makes sense for me to found a start up around that "product". Reason being that the technology with the moat isn't mine -- it belongs to Anthropic. Actually it may not even belong to them, probably it belongs to whoever owns the training data they feed their models. Definitely not me though. Curious to hear your thoughts on that. Is the idea to just try for light speed and exit before the market figures this out?
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-12-02 01:32:10+00:00
> I worked on systems that were allowed 8 hours of downtime per year -- but otherwise would have run forever unless there was nuclear bomb that went off or a power loss...Tandem. You could pull out CPUs while running.

Tandem servers were legendary for their reliability. I knew h/w support engineers years ago that told me stories like your recounting being able to pull components (such as CPU's) without affecting system availability.