skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article specifially acknowldges this.

>If you consider this as a whole, the growing importance of inheritance starts to become clear. In Britain one in six of those born in the 1960s is projected to receive an inheritance that exceeds ten years of average annual earnings for that generation. For those born in the 1980s, the ratio rises to one in three. The inequality of what people inherit, meanwhile, is startling. A fifth of 35- to 45-year-olds are expected to inherit less than £10,000 ($13,000), whereas a quarter are expected to inherit more than £280,000.

Moreover, how does this fact disprove the article's thesis? Is the implication that because less than 50% of people are getting giant inheritances, everything's fine?
> That's partly because inequality doesn't fit into their models.

Well Piketty being wrong doesn't fit in many people's models either. Economists routinely do talk about inequality and I think it's intellectually dishonest to paint the whole field as wrong just because some parts of it don't agree with your pet theory.
Kind of a strange sentiment? It seems like you're willing to take a paycut, so there's no shortage of jobs that will pay you a sustainable, but not FAANG, income to work on something respectable.

I get wanting to take a break after working on something distasteful - I've been there! - but I can't say I'd give up on the field entirely after one job.
Appreciate the moral stand against surveillance-tech and totally sympathize with leaving big tech to do startups (I did the same!) but I don't get the title. Isn't OP still coding his software startup [0]?

[0]: https://www.fourplex.net
This one from Politico today kinda cemented my view on that subject:

"Russian state media enters Oval Office during Zelenskyy meeting": https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/28/tass-oval-office-tr...

> According to the White House, the Russian reporter’s presence was unplanned.

> “TASS was not on the approved list of media for today’s pool,” a White House official said. “As soon as it came to the attention of press office staff that he was in the Oval, he was escorted out by the Press Secretary."

> The White House did not address how the unapproved reporter was able to gain access to the Oval Office.

Only what's supposed to be one of the most secure sites in all of America, with one of the most difficult rooms to access anywhere. "We're not really sure how Russian media got in."
As above:

You could probably back out at least some bounds from the data here: https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/report/...

This: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00904... Suggests MEDIAN USMLE step 1 scores for White, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and Black applicants were 242, 242, 237, and 232. It's urology specific, and practice specific, though.

This: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hsr2.161 Says The mean (±SD) USMLE step 1 score was significantly greater among non-[Black or Hispanic] applicants as compared to URiM applicants (223.7 ± 19.4 vs 216.1 ± 18.4, P < .01, two-sample t-test). This is at a specific medical school.

But more generally...imagine what would have to be true for us to go from BIG differences in g-loaded test performance to small / no differences. Either people fundamentally change somehow (get smarter / dumber), people's test scores systematically differ because they e.g. got better / worse at "tests" or something, independent of their underlying knowledge of the content or abilities, or it's attrition (e.g., very many minority med students wash out, leaving only those who should have been admitted in the first place).

None of those things seem plausible to me. The little glimpse we have from the two studies above is consistent with the obvious thing happening. Things are mostly the same, though I'd bet URM have higher wash-out rates, so differences get attenuated somewhat by the time they're practicing. Of course, URM vs non-URM will sort differently into specialties and geographies so there's that...you'll see bigger or smaller differences depending on how they sorted. A good question, as well, is why the USMLE people don't split reporting by race. I bet one of the reasons is they'd get a lot of flak because there would be big disparities. And good on them (maybe!) because one reason they might care about that is they want to produce good doctors, and watering down their test won't help with that.
The oil lasts longer than Trump's presidency so hopefully the US will not become a dictatorship within that time and will be able to fix this shit before everything turns to hell.

Democrats go!<3
The word "captures" also caused my brains parser to exit trying to grok that title. Perhaps "records" would have avoided the negative connotation of the word capture given the conversational status of many whale species. Also, the recent drone headlines didn't help the situation either.
>But if the 'grunts' had the power to say 'no, I will not do this because it is insecure and my license is on the line' then that's a good thing. No?

This will never work in a global economy. If you outsource the software you're just begging companies to find someone making 15$ the fall guy.

Sounds pretty bad. Your manager tells you to do something stupid or your fired. You do so, and when it fails they blame you and your software engineering license is revoked. You can't find a job and now get to live in a homeless shelter.

Meaningful fines for companies is the only way to fix this.

Maybe... For some sensitive things like location data an expensive permit should be required. But this needs to be a corporate responsibility, not an individual one.

In your scenario bad companies are going to ruin the lives of their employees by making them risk their licenses.
I wonder if given the recent "moral" loss of US, we will see a post-WW2 Soviet vs USA style defection of scientists & engineers between USA and China?

No. The US will experience a brain drain to Europe, Canada, and Australia, but not to China. Trump still has a ways to go to match the excesses of the Xi regime.
or they will regulatory capture, that seems more likely
It’s a little bit more complicated than “are you vaxxed,” though only a little.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/21/nx...

Tl;dr: If you were born before 1968 and did not have measles as a child, you should consider getting vaccinated again.
Yeah this feels right, Americans will choose leveraging their English before seeking out needing to learn a non-Romance language, I feel.
The world is complicated and things take time. The current HORRIBLE alternative is far worse than the undesirable results from the Dem strategy your entire life.
I mean every country has their epstein. western media likes to pick the chinese ones cause they make a good china bad story.
Hundreds of chinese like myself travel from and to china each year, I'm surprised it's hard for you to imagine regular chinese people can enjoy life in china.
We have the test case for this. When one power had nukes and no one else did they weren’t used…
> I have worked at plenty of places where analytics data is used to drive decision making.

Plenty of places mask violating peoples' privacy as "analytics data" to drive decisions about how to manipulate those and other people.

> surely we can all agree that a data driven approach is better than gut instinct.

Generally, sure, but not always. How you get that data matters. Violating someone's privacy is unethical. Violating someone's privacy to make data-driven decisions is still unethical. Telemetry without knowledge or consent to it is violating privacy.
Then they should really know how dysfunctional they are
I have good news for you. DeepSeek openly bragged that none of its people have “overseas experience”. They are all local talents.
Wouldn't he be Lenin, the guy who turned the country into a cynical police state? Rather than Gorbachev, the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize and started to end totalitarianism in Russia and the Soviet empire?
For a thing I am a part of, we use templates that were written by lawyers, adapt them to our circumstances and then the board just decides whether they’re adequate or not. No AI necessary and way cheaper.
> expansive social safety nets of China

can you provide more detail on what you mean by this? Are there labor laws preventing 996, for example? what kind of medical care is there?
Man, your answer was so much more concise than mine :)
All we need is nukes?

I think you might be counting on way too many decision makers to remain rational and wise enough to avoid and defuse non-trivial situations that want to escalate.

In the 8 billion times 8 billion potential nuclear exchanges that universal nuke would enable (64 quadrillion!), there is at least one scary bad one. At any time of day. That you are standing too near.

Please acknowledge my wisdom here. (Hard unblinking stare. Wiggling finger wanders toward red button… “Kind person, I have no interest in harming you, but my sources inform me you have at most one nuke. So I must be prepared to be first. Please keep those hands where I can see them while I only, and with full peaceful intent, rest my finger here.”)
Is it any different than the US? The US considers AI national security too, which is why they banned chip exports to China.
If the author is reading this: thank you for having the strength to say no to morally wrong work, despite the money, despite pressure from your family.

Good for you. You stood up for your morals. I wish that more people had your strength.

You are experiencing an identity crisis over this, which is normal. Writing about it is good. Talking to a therapist would probably be good too, if that works for you.

If I can give one piece of advice, it would be to stop talking in absolutes. Instead of "I'm done with coding", which is final and sets a stake in the ground which is hard to come back from, why not say "I'm putting down coding for a while to focus on my startup". For many people, myself included, it's normal to have many different interests over a lifetime. This is a good, and normal, thing.
> If you seized the entirety of assets of US billionaires, you could only run the country for 6 months max.

That seems unlikely, given that we can run the country for 6 more months without doing that, which makes me suspect the rest of your revenue and spending analysis.
Yep. If oil is removed from the equation, the US would have a trade surplus with Canada, so I'm not sure what this person is on about.

The US produces plenty of conventional crude, but imports cheap heavy crude from Canada because it's cheap and the refineries are set up for it. They could eventually transition refining, but ... why? In the end it would just hurt the consumer and provide no strategic advantage.

Like many things, oil and gas pipelines zigzag across the border. Continental integration has been the order of the day for 3/4 of a century at this point.

Yes Canada protects its agricultural sector just like the US does its. We protect dairy especially, but the US massively subsidizes cash crop agri in the US. And in any case, Canada imports more agri from the US than it exports, so, again, it seems very bizarre to try to present some kind of case that Canada is some sort of protectionist parasite.

Are these the talking points the GOP is putting out to try to cover Trump's verbal farts? Because they make no sense. Oh, and governors of GOP states that trade with Canada have also made this very clear, and are not happy with Trump around this issue during this term or the last term when he played these games.
you my digital friend have never met slavers and it shows :)

more than nukes one can survive nukes the ability to completely disintegrate the planet for everyone
The apocalypse won’t be televised. Don’t Look Up was supposed to be a parody.
Everyone I know who worked at 18F is what I would consider to be a generalist. Most of them had very deep experience in specific areas, and/or were known for their contributions to F/OSS.
if you ignore WW2 for some reason?
His mom telling him he's "neurodivergent and won’t survive at a smaller company"... unfortunately I am familiar with this type of mother.
It's a nice sentiment and I agree, but I'm not sure we'll see this applied to AI going forward. These training runs cost a lot of money - at some point, every player in the game will realise that they need to charge something or they'll left without enough chips to play in the next round.

DeepSeek's altruism has taken them far, but they have costs, too, and High Flyer / their personal warchest can only take them so far. And that's before any potential government intervention - it's very likely that this will become a natsec concern for all nations involved.
This entire comment is just an appeal to emotion. There's no rationality behind it. It reminds me of Iraq/Afghanistan warmongering.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians and the potential for nuclear holocaust and you're worried that "We have never asked a fellow democratic leader to humiliate themselves to get our support"

About a guy that's 6 years into a 5 year term.

Also politicians do the fake thing all the time, in America or otherwise. Zelensky included. It's not humiliation, it's part of the job description.

I could go on and on (ie he's not just asking for a "favor", but billions of dollars, weapons, and human lives), but I'm not sure this will get any more productive. You asked me for a citation as to why your WSJ article sucks, I gave you 2.
I don't actually think that would have much impact on how realistic a civil war is.

I think that might impact the tactics of the war, or how bloody it is, but I don't think it makes it less possible to happen.

It's dangerously possible, and it's a deep concern of mine that we're headed in that direction.
Zen of Nim Programming Language (2021)
famously they were very much used
> Urban life in China, excluding pandemic times, is better than urban life in the states.

What data do you have for this conclusion?
"> I’ve decided that in the shitty job market, it’s not worth being a software engineer even if I make much less. Part of it is being “specialized” in over-glorified surveillance so even if I change employers, what’s the guarantee I won’t be working on another surveillance product. Assuming I can even get another job.

...While six figures is certainly nice, it’s only nice if it’s ethically done. I’d much rather flip burgers or bag groceries than work on surveillance for six figures.
"

Almost all companies, startups and corporations have surveillance in some way shape or form, if it is product analytics, webpage views, tracking, etc, even Mozilla has got into tracking, although the pay isn't FAANG level.

Unless you don't want to make over 6 figures in the US (assuming that is where he is from), perhaps work at a non-profit e.g. EFF or governmental work.

It's really expensive to be very principled, I'm sure your rent, family and children would thank you, especially if you leave the ENTIRE field and have no means of income other than savings which will certainly be spent on them rather than your startup.
How is that incorrect? They're deliberately being cruel to government employees so they quit and the agencies are de facto dissolved.
On Android, taking screenshots of things like Amazon Prime Video used to be possible, even on the same device, but at some point it became impossible.
Oh, they'll save real money when they make cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

That's the only place that they'll make a dent in the spending side (since they won't touch military spending).

By stealing from the people, and killing old and infirm people, they'll save a little bit of money for sure.
Beyond the basic greed which causes someone to become a billionaire in the first place, his wealth is almost entirely in equities rather than hard assets and the same volatility which made him set wealth records could easily move him back down the list. Most of his companies were substantially boosted by government funding and he has had a number of legal cases where adverse government decisions could significantly impact the share price of his companies. For example, the NTSB forcing Tesla to stop selling FSD under false pretenses or doing a safety recall; or removal of the tariffs keeping BYD out of the U.S. market would lower Tesla share prices which are ¾ of his net worth. SpaceX is most of the rest and that goes up or down based on things like whether NASA hires them or they’re forced to pay for environmental damages.

There are tons of non-obvious concerns: Starlink is in the news with the special FAA contract (part of why they want control of the GSA is that Starlink isn’t on the general Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract, making it harder for agencies to buy) but it even includes things like whether the FTC regulates or other parts of the government subsidize Bitcoin since a big chunk of Tesla’s reported profits come from unrealized Bitcoin gains.
The thing is that numbers like 49.8% are meaningless because the current system simply does not result in government that is representative of people's interests. There are large numbers of people who don't vote because they feel their vote doesn't matter, and they're right.
Its a list of service I have been working on, example: https://us.medicare.dev
As a wise man once said,

"drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"
> I’ve tried to discuss this with my mom, and she kept telling me how “lucky” I am for working at Microsoft...

I don't think I worked on any unethical part of Apple, I just worked on the indexing and caching for iTunes, but I really hated working there, and it was frustrating that whenever I complained about it, people would remind me how lucky I was to have a job at Apple.

I survived 2.5 years there, but eventually I had to quit (taking a fairly substantial pay cut in the process). I think my parents thought I was nuts, but my mood improved almost immediately.
I once worked for a start-up that perpetuated inflated social status symbols in a way I found repugnant. Transitioning to an academic non-profit environment was the best career decision I could have made for my mental health. Less money, yes. Less stress and self-loathing, absolutely and entirely worth it for me.
What? How much money did this person make working on software they consider surveillance, before deciding they were comfortable enough to leave? Looks like they made enough money to live off “dividend income.” Something about their dad? The hell is this?
I wish tech people would stop using the term "FUD". "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", or "FUD", is how you don't ruin your life in one shot: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shipscode

> I tried salvia after years of reading about people's experiences with it.

So it's all about you.
Natural selection
McCarthy accused 12,000 people of being Communists.

Of those 12,000, fewer than 1000 were actually members of the Communist Party. Many of the accused (an estimated 5000) were just gay (at a time when that was still illegal).

Of those 12,000, fewer than a dozen were actually spies for the Soviets.

McCarthy leaked more classified information in his hunt for Communists than the spies actually did.
For the longest time, Flash only ran correctly on a Mac running IE5.5 on OS 9, probably because that's what the Macromedia devs all ran/tested with. Anything else, and not only would the frame rate suffer, but Strong Bad's words would gradually desync from his mouth movements. It wouldn't surprise me if critical parts of the Flash plugin were written directly in PowerPC assembly, and then the developers sighed and said "well, we have to port this to WinDoze, so we may as well just rewrite these bits in C++" because x86 gave them the ick and all the cool kids ran a G4 supercomputer with Velocity Engine anyway.

They fixed this some time in Flash's twilight years, and CPUs got so fast that the frame rate issues kind of went away on their own. But making large chunks of the web experience depend on a piece of such flaky, proprietary software was not the wisest move the internet made.
> The study analyzed two separate phenomena - changes in engagement for Musk's posts AND changes in engagement for Republican content - occurring simultaneously

And in which political bubble is Musk popular? It's not seperate phenomena. What do you expect? That let's say republican engagement organically increases (as I claim), but Musks engagement stays the same, even though he made many statements regarding the assassination attempt and got people riled up because of his endorsement? This is ridiculous, sorry.

> Should we have abandoned Alzheimer's research because perfect data wasn't available? Obviously not.

The study authors should've been well aware of the above. They didn't care and did it anyway, because they knew fully well that people will not care, because it fits a certain narrative.

> Your eagerness to defend him

Okay I think we can stop it here then. You think I write in defense of Musk. I think you are completely oblivious to common sense. The truth is probably not that black and white though.

Nice day
Listen I'm not a supporter of this administration but what is this argument? As if there aren't also tons of tourists coming to America. Tourism has little to do with getting people to immigrate.
Despite a lack of evidence, there are still some very interesting avenues of discovery potentially applicable on the autoimmune and allergy front here based on these measles-induced immune amnesia revelations:

How measles virus specifically targets memory T and B cells through the SLAM receptor?

The mechanism behind measles' paradoxical ability to erase pre-existing immunity while generating strong anti-measles memory

Understanding the 2-3 year timeline required for immune memory reconstitution after measles infection

Developing methods to accelerate immune memory recovery after memory cell depletion

Creating targeted approaches that could mimic measles' memory-erasing effect for specific harmful immune responses

Investigating biomarkers that could predict successful immune reset and monitor recovery
I wouldn't rule it out iff the other candidates can't stump up the resources to play the game. I very much doubt AGI will come out of Canada or Australia; Europe is making some overtures, but it'll take some time to get the machinery rolling to the same extent.
history is pick and choose these days the blight is spreading everywhere :(

well it was always pick and choose but i had high hopes for the tech barons sigh
In terms of neurodivergence, I’ve found for myself over 27 years, that working at large companies is in fact the problem, and smaller places with more flexibility and broader responsibilities is far more rewarding.
It seems like the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022[1] already did this, is that right?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Service_Reform_Act_of_2...
Language? What about principles of freedom, democracy, and science? I would think that those things would be why US scientists choose Canada and Europe first. I doubt language is really high on the list.
I've run the numbers a few times for every EU tech-adjacent job I'm eligible for. Except for some opportunities in France, I'd have a lower proportional tax rate (and, except for in France, I'd have enough of a lower proportional tax rate that the free healthcare makes up the difference). The US doesn't actually have low taxes.

What it does have is extremely high wages, and despite my inclinations to the contrary I'm absolutely staying for the next year or three, but taxes aren't to blame there. A small number of tech oligarchs made that possible (FANG driving up wages for certain skillsets).
The customer service rep may be paid say $20/hour, but the cost to the company, when you include payroll taxes, benefits, office space, training, recruiting, and supervision, may be much higher.
Could you explain why you hated working there
At 3 a.m., I Turned to AI for Comfort. That Was My First Mistake