skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Tragedy of the commons, the lobbying edition: Everyone pays a little more, so that a small group can enjoy a nicer life.

This is a recurring pattern, and once you start paying attention, you see it everywhere. Everyone pays more for goods, so that longshoremen can enjoy union rates. Everyone commutes 10 minutes more, so that the lucky few get to live in a non-densified neighborhood next to downtown core.
Nice! Yeah, the images are manually added in; in fact, all of the book's metadata is.
Not sure how hard you looked but:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Automatic-Dishwasher-...

https://www.target.com/p/lemon-scented-dish-detergent-powder...

Maybe you were looking during peak shortages?
I truly disagree with this statement. I do not think a blanket ‘any decline is good’ is a morally and worldly positive attitude to have.
I've been using a Philips electric razor that someone didn't want and gave me for the past 15 years. The battery (I think it's still a NiMh, that's how old the thing is) is getting bad, but it's still OK. Never changed a blade.
The free market is great at solving problems. And then afterwards, it's great at problematizing the solution so profit margins can be maintained.
It makes my blood boil to think these frequent flyer politicians are the same people demanding action against climate change.
I personally used to get really bad irritation on my neck, ingrown hairs, etc, that completely went away after I switched to a double edge safety razor. I can't stand the cartridges anymore and it's been a long time since I have cut myself.
> Nespresso machines, and other coffee pod brands, replace many styles of coffee brewing. Provide much worse coffee, at a higher price but are superficially convenient.

Nespresso virtuoline machines produce (arguably) better coffee than many cafes. In terms of consumer sentiment, they also perform amazingly compared to other at home brew methods.
a flap disc.

Seems like overkill though. You could probably just hand sand it to be honest.
What a mindset. "Foreigners are coming here to destroy our culture, we can let them work for us but never give them full rights".
> Gillette claim that each blade can be used for 15 shaves.

Just because Gillette claims you need to replace the blade after 15 shaves doesn't mean you need to. If you shave regularly, one of these five-blade heads will easily last you 50+ shaves. You may have to run it over your skin a couple more times with an old head - whereas with a new one just once would be enough.

If you let your hair get long then yes, it does get stuck in the razor sometimes and then may get plucked out - which is painful and can lead to infections as well.

Even an old Gillette Fusion is way safer than a double-edged blade or a straight razor, but if you really want to save costs one of those would be the way to go.
I've posted this quote before, but still think the concept stands:

"There's trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy. Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."
This is a great example of Chesterton's fence.

Predators keep population numbers low. Which prevents overgrazing, which protects the environment, which ensures herbivores can survive.

The Yellowstone park's reintroduction of wolves is a pretty good example of it.

It's really just arrogance to assume we need to or should interfere with nature, but I appreciate the good intentions and don't mean that in a negative manner.
Yes, the horrible horror of living in the place often called "the most livable country".

(e. g. http://www.worldcitiescultureforum.com/cities/stockholm/Pers... https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/sweden https://www.studocu.com/blog/en/why-sweden-is-the-best-count...)
I think there's an accidental old-vs-new comparison which is causing a conflation between the (a) low up-front cost vs low per-use cost and waste (b) convenience and ease-of-use vs products that require slightly more attention from their users.

E.g. some here are saying "multi-blade cartridges are easier and faster" ... which is true. Users of old-fashioned safety razors often have a little learning curve when they adopt, and have to be a bit more careful even after they've on-boarded. But that ease of use doesn't come from the cartridge per se -- it's from the multiple blades and pivoting head. Recognizing this allows for the possibility of low-waste multi-blade pivoting-head safety razors (e.g. leafshave.com but I think they're not alone).

Lower cost-per-use and lower waste doesn't have to get rolled up with some nostalgic return to products as they existed decades ago. But I think both consumers and systemic corrections (e.g. we should tax externalities associated with waste streams, and with carbon) need to nudge companies away from making disposable or short-lived products.
With respect to 1, the principle of increasing the anonymity set, and thereby facilitating criminal concealment of funds, is the same, when using cash, and it is on this principle that the parent comment suggested companies that use privacy smart contracts could be sanctioned.

2. is a different issue. Yes the War on Cash is real, and it is extremely dangerous.
If immigrants replace Japanese in the country of Japan, is it still Japan?
the best tip i ever got was to learn to code 'assembly' (for some platform of your interest. - i just picked PC as i had a PC at home) even though it's not a super practical skill usually (most platforms bootstraps higher level languages, especially if uefi etc. is involved) it taught me tons about computers, code and operating systems etc. that i would not have learned otherwise, and benefit from daily. (programming). i dont code actually ever in assembly anymore, but i am happy i went down that rabbit hole at some point.
US Treasury sanctions cryptocurrency mixer for first time, citing Ronin hack
IMO, and IME, the secret sauce is their education curriculum.

Japanese schoolteachers and the Japanese school curriculum spend a lot of time drilling correct social behavior in the classroom. You are socialized to obey the rules. You are socialized to think its bad to not follow the rules. You are socialized into being cohesive with the group.

I mean there is more to this. Their society as a whole has decided this is an acceptable task for schools to undertake and participate in it actively. But it’s the machine that keeps it going.

Also bullying is a feature not a bug, despite all modern attempts to squash it.
What’s special about 8 billion? Granted, it’s a very large number, the largest human population the Earth has ever seen. 50 years ago we were only half as many.

But 50 years ago someone could say (and it’s virtually guaranteed someone did say) that 4 billion is too many. Because 4 billion at the time was the largest number of people simultanously alive on our little planet. It was twice as many as there were just 50 years before.

And I bet in 1922, people were thinking that 2 billion is to many. We had just left behind a devastating war and an even more lethal pandemic. It mustve appeared that the planet just cannot bear 2 billion of us.

So, when you say the world population should go down a bit, do you mean down to 7, to 5, or to 1 billion? Why not 200 million. We were about as many during the Roman Empire and still perfectly capable of astonishing feats of war and devastation.
It says that there are 3m foreigners living in Japan tho, not insignificant?
I have been exclusively shaving with a double edged safety razor and hard soap/brush for about 2 years. My skin is in much better condition now than when I used either a 5 bladed monstrosity or an electric shaver, an I generate less waste. I used to get a lot of red blotchey rashes on my neck, no more. The blades I use cost between 7 and 14 cents each and last a full week of shaves. I did accumulate about a half dozen handles, some vintage and some high quality modern ones, but one of the most comfortable and reliable has been the Qshave Adjustable, which is a clone of the Merkur Futur after it’s patent expired. It costs $10-$15 dollars from the usual online retailers. Throw away the blades it comes with and buy 100 Astra SS for $10 and you have 700 great shaves for $25.
Well, that's just the thing.. We pay for healthcare already.. There's just this middleman in the way (insurance) taking the money instead of allowing us to pay directly to the government.

The more layers you put in between a patient and a rendered service, the more money you're wasting at each tier. Insurance doesn't make sense for anyone except the people selling it, and they've gotten so rich now that they're entrenched and won't dare let that change.
Assuming people are interchangeable, sure. But I would imagine Italians are biased towards fellow Italians. They don't view Italy as just a landmass, but as the people living there.
How does Denmark require this? You can buy a SIM for cash from a kiosk, or a vending machine in the airport.
It sucks precisely because there’s so many ppl
What supporting citations would you like? There are 121 million unintended pregnancies globally annually. 2.7 millions children in foster/institutional care. 689 million in poverty and destitution. Rainforests are being clear cut, the planet is well beyond its carbon budget (and Herculean efforts will be required to pull us back from 2C), and there is ample evidence climate change is going to cause famines and heatwaves that will inflict suffering on wide swaths of the global population (with the developing world being hit particularly hard). This is not the fiction that religion is, these are verifiable facts (ourworldindata.org, UN reports).

Isn’t it dangerous to have large numbers of people we’re going to just let die when resources are further constrained? It seems a lot safer to argue for family planning for all but the most capable and emotionally invested parents and let everyone else age out with a decent quality of life to responsibly transition to a lower human run rate. No one is arguing for eugenics, family destruction, or similar distasteful policies.
I think the risk C.S. describes there is the endless nature of the torment, not the severity. Stung by gadflies, not dismembered by a nemesis.
I recently incorporated a variable font into a web app at $WORK (as in less then 6 months ago). And I remember seeing some issues like that Using google hosted variable fonts just didn’t seem to work in firefox. There was something about defining the range in the @font-face rule which google font omits (or does differently), or how variable fonts are consumed (font-weight vs font-variation-settings).

My conclusion was—if my memory is accurate—that there was no way we could use google hosted fonts (you should always self host your fonts anyway if you can) and you needed split files for italics (the italic axis simply doesn’t work consistently across browsers).

EDIT: Here is an article describing the current state of the italics axis in browsers: https://rwt.io/typography-tips/getting-bent-current-state-it...
Of course it does. Labor increases production and therefore GDP. If people are leaving war torn or destitute parts of the world and finding available work (perhaps from the government if not private industry) and housing made available and its in supply owing to a shrinking population, social safety nets for once, etc, where would they move to? Germany to spend more for basically the same set of circumstances you'd have living in Italy? America to pay for healthcare and education out of pocket? Italy has plenty to offer a lot of people in this world.
I actually machined, de-oiled, and polished a cast iron skillet I bought in the the supermarket. After seasoning with flax oil it was effectively non-stick. I would use a single pat of butter for 3-4 eggs. Regular use with heat control and edged steel spatula are essential to maintain seasoning. Also make sure helpful people don’t try to wash it in the dishwasher. I would just wipe it out with a paper towel and soft salt, sometimes heating it the oven with a bit of oil to restore surface smoothness. I also have a ca 1875 Swedish manufacture cast iron skillet which didn’t seem to need any machining.

Cast iron doesn’t seem to work as well on electric stoves: Temperature control is problematic. Perhaps induction heating would be more effective?
Is there a sociological reason why Japanese people are not having children at rates that sustain the population?
If immigrants replaced Americans in the country of America, is it still America?
Nice video to show people who are tripping but I prefer YouTube links to wooks giving live birth in rivers

Really connects people
I was under an impression from Internet forums that massive cast skillet will have some benefit while dealing with larger pieces of meat, so the skillet will not drop the temperature the moment product touches it. Then I refreshed my memory on some thermodynamics, but it was too late.
> I’m always curious who downvotes these opinions

The expanionists that recognize some of the ponzi qualities of how a lot of the modern welfare states are stacked. That those systems will begin to fail if populations don't perpetually increase enough. They dread that population decline is going to wreck how the welfare state functions (lie to voters, over promise on entitlements, pray population keeps expanding forever so new workers can pay for retiring workers, kick the can down the road; Japan has done this for two decades for example, the US is actively doing it, and lots of affluent European nations are doing it).

It forces a reckoning with very poor decisions from the past, the bill comes due, and almost nobody likes that.

Predictable population expansion helps politicians paper over a lot of various fiscal mistakes (they rely heavily on fiscal lies to function, telling people things that are irrational fiscally but popular). Britain, France, Japan, the US - four of the world's largest economies, and they all function by using the same scam (pull future potential output forward, eat it / distribute it today, fake the present standard of living for re-election at the cost of the future context). These are things for example Macron has wrestled with frequently in France, and absolutely no politician in the US wants to go anywhere near talking about how the trajectory on entitlements is going to bankrupt the US Government de facto (requiring forever low rates from the Fed, $50t in new debt over the next 30 years, and leading to a raft of bad follow-on things economically).
Yeah it was a bit crazy. A lot of people seem to think that South Africa is a "communist" government, which it really isn't. Some of his other comments were also outlandish.
Can you explain "another Sweden" more please?
OT: the quotes had me very confused for a second.

Who uses single quotes for this purposes? Why wouldn't you use double quotes?
Yeah, I know at least a handful of people who would take every last bit of this at face value. Even early gems like "The world must be covered with beautiful, black asphalt." and "1.2 Why asphalt? Simply put, everything else sucks." would not throw them off.

Just last week, I was told that if we were to place the entire human population next to each other, we would take this and this insignificant space on just one continent.

Apparently, overpopulation is a myth perpetuated by a shadowy group championed by Bill Gates himself, and they are the ones responsible for my disagreement with the fact that "they" (said group of global elite) are trying to reduce the population in order to control the world.
Thank you for writing this out. I was not aware of these issues including the housing depreciation. My mind first jumps to incorporating a more euro centric style of living with six weeks minimum time off in full time positions. But, we see how that is working for the birth rate in those countries.
SoulCycle Without the Bike: Here Comes Peoplehood
My blood boils on receiving the bamboo or papper drink straw, which immediately soaks and becomes useless. Wonder if they use them on these flights that would surely help limiting the carbon footprint.
well my app sucks and this should have been a top level reply. My bad
Care to submit it to HN?
I wonder how has the English speaker developed the weird idea that immigration brought Sweden and Germany on the brink of civil war.
Archived: https://archive.ph/2022.05.07-115454/https://www.nytimes.com...
What is this fascination people have about preserving culture as if that's reasonable or even possible? How many countries across history have preserved their culture (culture meaning food, music, art, political opinions etc). From the Roman empire to today it's the norm for culture to change.
Nobody pays 55% in income taxes in Italy, the highest bracket is 43©, and of course that only applies to the part of your income above €75k.

Possibly they were receiving 45% net, which is plausible but that is because you are paying for pension and social security, not income taxes.

It is true anyway that IT is vastly underpaid in Italy compared to the rest of the world, and that the agenzia delle entrate is insanely harsh.
That’s essentially my own question. It’s not specific to Japan. Do you want to answer it?
back in the 70's there was a US program "Trapper John M.D."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_John,_M.D.

one of the characters lived in a camper [caravan] out in the parking lot.

the concept has been _normalized_ over here for some time.
Any country investing in another does so in their own self interest. The reasons are seldom altruistic.
Absolutely. You can walk into any medical clinic without having to check networks or get referrals. Procedures are relatively affordable and there is enough supply of local doctors (which from my observation seem to be a lot of doctors who got tired of the hospital grind and “retired”) where small ailments get looked at quickly and affordably.

The only mind-boggling thing about their system is that hospitals close on the weekends. Like…???????
If the robot deposited genetic material over in that system then there would still be genetic material from our solar system in this universe after our sun inevitably explodes, or some unforeseen catastrophe occurs.
> Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

Why not? It's not a problem. Before internet era people spent much time on useless things like reading books (mostly fiction), watching TV, playing video games etc.

Internet is just a communication tool people use to exchange information.
I started shaving a few years ago with a cheap Chinese electric razor. It needs cleaning occasionally but is otherwise trouble free. It shaves close enough to get a good respirator seal, which is close enough for me. It's impossible to injure myself with it, and it's so easy to use that I can literally shave while browsing the web.

Unless you are concerned with getting the closest shave possible, electric seems the obvious choice.
For the same reason Europeans left their continent and chased distant lands - enterprising people will go anywhere where there is economic activity.
Can you speak to why Wi-Fi in particular, is suspect? CW GSM handsets held close to the head, CB Radios, 433 garage door openers or RC cars, DECT cordless phones, microwave ovens, Bluetooth 3G/4G/5G cell signals, ...all surely should be equally concerning if the RF is to blame.
Ah, PPP, so these are adjusted numbers, not actual.

I am talking about young professionals, they make a lot more money than that in Norway, Switzerland, USA. We know a Yoga teacher in Switzerland who makes 150 eur/hr, for example.
Same, had my Philips for over 20 years.
Also Gillette Blue II (now even cheaper clones) + same kind of brush + cream. The rest I don't feel the need for it.

And an electric shaver for the days I'm too lazy. With both methods, it's fast and convenient.

I can't understand why anybody would waste so much money and then complain.
Some of the 808's instruments/parts have trimmers, as mentioned below.

But generally for analog, component tolerances are either 1, 5, or 10%. 1% is pretty audible on oscillators, and 10% is pretty audible on filters.

So each instance of an untrimmed analog synth and drum machine will sound slightly different, even if they're coming off the same production line and using the same circuitry.

Component values also drift over time, so a contemporary 808 is not going to sound the same as it did when it was shipped in the 80s.

Basically analog's inaccuracies add character, detail, and interesting distortion. You can emulate them digitally, but emulating all of them accurately and convincingly is really quite hard.
> See what happens if you allow mass immigration.

Sweden, Canada and others have already done that experiment.
It really is impressive how much a cheap computer can do with the right software now a days. Cheapest I see glancing at amazon right now is $75. Chump change in the first world.

Probably even the cheapest part of schooling equipment too now. Never seen a textbook go for less than $100, at least in my experience.
The US has 47m (2015) at about double the population. US is a outlier though
In pure land there is no need for a teacher
Almost. `ps ax` was original Unix form (BSD did add `u`, and later accepted `-` on the flags). `ps -ef` was AT&T System III and descendants.
Holy crap, that's beautiful and way better than mine! Any idea how they made it?
> smart TVs are cheaper than dumb TVs because they're subsidized by ad revenue.

What if you count having to view ads, and having the tv spy on you as a cost? RN,for many TVs you can just not connect to wifi, but how long until the TV won't work unless it is connected?

> Also, the claim itself doesn't really make any sense. Even if you stop getting software updates, that doesn't prevent you from using it as a dumb display.

Perhaps a better argument is that a bad software can brick the TV, or the components of the smart functionality break in a way that prevents you from using it as a dumb tv (i.e. it has more "moving parts"), and if you don't use the smart functionality, then it is a waste of the materials to make those components, and probably electricity running through the circuits. And it isn't too hard to imagine a future where the tv just stops working if it can't phone home.
The same as its always been. A handful of people on top of some arbitrary social hierarchy in charge of the lions share of available resources. I believe this type of social organization is in our innate behavior like how insects form colonies and fish school.