skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
+1. This.

As an alien you would have generally been extra wary of your behavior. Civil disobedience and dedication to political action is not what you should expect of an average alien.

Some natural born citizens seem to have been introduced to the immigrant experience yesterday.
I got an x220 jumping onto the hype but it was too small and too slow to use. Even though I'd maxed out the RAM, replaced the solder paste and was running a lightweight i3 environment.

I've only ever personally owned second hand Thinkpads and they're so great. But you should get the newest, reasonably priced one you can. There are so many affordable T480s/T470s out there or even the newer T14 models. They're still very serviceable and many still allow expansion with unsoldered RAM.
they like to call it "impact"
Agree social media is a big problem. It lets people live in an imaginary reality echo chamber.

However in the real world and 1:1 you can still have good discussions with smart people who disagree with you. And we need to have those.
> the national debt is still increasing, although the administration is counting on tariff funds to supplement revenue

Not the debt, the deficit. The debt is the card balance. The deficit are new swipes. Nothing in the current policy package is about deficit (let alone debt) reduction.

(Valid on trade deficits. I guess we can run trade surpluses if we give up dollar hegemony. That, of course, means no more deficits.)
Don't worry, tariffs will reduce that comparative advantage by lowering Americans' standard of living.
News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World
Full paper: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/20...
A good discussion. I've personally thought of political adherence similar to football teams. Fans are fans. That's it.

Escaping that tribalism or fandom is important, but you need to hold fast to your own sense of morality along the way.

Applying your own sense of right/wrong to political arguments and policies is a useful way to cut through the noise and distraction that accompanies political discourse.
Okay, that's a nice econ textbook hypo that explains the trade deficit with Bangladesh. But why do we have huge structural deficits with the EU, Japan, China, etc? Those are big, diversified economies. You'd think those factors would average out.

Germany is a big, rich economy. How do they manage to run large trade surpluses? They seem to do this quite deliberately. So why is it a bad idea to try and make our economy more like Germany’s? Japan has a large trade surplus. The EU as a whole is basically evenly balanced, tending towards a small surplus. Are our Reaganite overlords smarter than the guys who run those countries?
The USB-C ports are relatively easy to swap thankfully. What scares me is that on non Apple laptops they are sometimes soldered onto the motherboard which is asinine for such a high wear item. I heard it's prevalent in modern ThinkPads but I am not sure if it has changed recently
Ladybird browser update (March 2025) [video]
This is a fundamental difference with how people on the (American) left and people on the right view politics. Those on the right frequently vote based on a single or a few issues, ignoring the rest of the platform that may be unpalatable. While those on the left frequently view voting as an endorsement of the whole person. Any unwanted policy tends to be a turn off. It's why you say "you don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies" while the right does just that. You would be better served understanding the values and motivations of your opposition rather than projecting your values onto them and judging them based on a strawman.
How do you think that LLMs will help that?
I do know of one guy who took a pay cut because unless he hamstrung his own team badly he was looking at needing to lay off about 2.3 people and so he cut his own salary to make it 2 instead of 3.

That's one story surrounded by a hell of a lot of shitheel stories.
Scale down-to/up-from zero is a helluva drug. You're describing poor engineering within the cloud itself. If you're using cloud, use it for the right things. Container-as-a-service is awesome. SaaS databases are nifty. Build up your startup on the cloud, then save costs by migrating off.
Back in the day, I heard all sorts of great things about how durable Thinkpads were, I bought one with my hard earned money in ~2004 when doing contact web development work. It was my least reliable laptop I've ever had.

My Vaio notebooks always lasted quite a bit longer. Eventually got a macbook and haven't gone back, but yeah, the one Thinkpad I owned was the least reliable computing device I've bought in the ~40 years of my lifetime.
The Zhihu answer linked, which supposedly has over 20 million hits, has less than 7,000 people who clicked on “Agree”.

And someone decided to make a sensationalist news article out of it.
Seems but isn't due to the way taxation/jurisdiction/licensure works. Where you are doing your work from and where the benefactor of that work are make a big difference. Example: Doctors can't telehealth over State lines. Lawyers likewise. Employers aren't supposed to allow migrant workers to work from across state lines from their address of record.

A great deal of draconian control is actually implemented through employment and licensure law, and as with most things in real life, come bundled with a surprising amount of detail. Part of why I've become particularly dissatisfied with the U.S. as of late, as so much of it is predicated on actually keeping you locked into one geographical location.
in my experience people who are on the political left are very rude and dismissive of any heterodox position as some moral sin
Probably worried about tariffs. Now they know.
> The meals for kids at schools is a “dei” program

I have never heard of such a thing, can you link to where such a program existed?

Free or reduced cost school lunch is a very common program, but it's based entirely on income, not race, gender or sexuality, which is what everyone means when they talk about "dei programs".
I recall McCain in 2008 telling a republican supporter that Obama was a decent person and they shouldn't be afraid if he won.

Things have escalated quickly and recently.
Keeping secrets from the public is a good way to lose the public trust which they’ll need to stay in power. Otherwise their replacements will have their own secret reasons to be deporting people.

I’ve already resigned myself to the reality that freedom of speech no longer exists and hasn’t existed for some time. I think only the times when we thought we had freedom of speech was when information was very tightly controlled and the few cranks in the periphery were not a threat to government legitimacy. An increasingly weak and illegitimate government cannot afford to allow free speech.
Something about the font on this blog is not friendly to my eyes.
Brexit is a good example. I think many people just can't extrapolate/predict the results of their actions and understand the policy (assuming politicians are even honest about it in the first place). For most objective smart people Brexit seemed terrible (hey lemme reinforce my ego a little) but expecting your average person to be able to understand that is tough. Also there is a parallel universe somewhere where Brexit maybe has a positive outcome. These things aren't fully deterministic. Similarly people always seem to buy the immigration crime and jobs schtick. And it's also not false that if you open your borders to a stream of people it is likely to change what your country looks like. There's a reason most countries don't have completely open borders and give everyone citizenship the day they set their foot past the border.

What's so bad in America? You'll be surprised how many people have hard lives in America. A lot. And I think when it's bad there, it's really bad.
> Things are changing and they're changing fast.

What has changed?
Stupid company!

I keep a machine which has sshd listening on the IMAPS port (993) for when I'm traveling. It's amazing how many free networks don't allow ssh, but with -J and sshd on port 993, that really doesn't matter.
I have friends all over the political spectrum. I've read political philosophy ranging from Hegel, Marx, Foucault, Butler, Crenshaw, Gentile, Locke, Rawls, Friedman, Mises, Rand, ect.. I find myself actively engaging in political discussion frequently with these friends. The only friend I've stopped talking over politics were black block during the antifa riots. I viewed his actions as ultimately misguided and dangerous. I ultimately forgave him and now we are friends who actively debate policy in good faith.

It's easy to spot political tribalism - just reference the comments here. They ultimately misrepresent, and have never tried to understand, their opposition's political position. It's kind of sad because it allows them to be manipulated by propaganda and political powers much like my antifa friend.
Code isn't an output, it's just the final form of requirements. The software engineer job is just going from the informal talk about the feature to the formal nature of code that implements it. Yes, you can have an experienced person that broadly strokes the direction and have another less experienced programmer implements it, but there's no clear demarcation for the separation of role.

The real output is the shipped project, and sometimes your own code is only a tiny part of it.
At the risk of sounding very arrogant, I've found this incredibly obvious even when I was just 18 years old. Decades have passed, plenty of my beliefs have changed, but this one hasn't.

The chance that one "ideology", whether it's liberalism, conservatism, anarchism , fascism or any-ism is always the right answer to every single societal question, is 0. It's comparable to the idea of exactly 1 of the (tens of) thousands of religions being the true one, correct in everything, with all of the others being wrong.

And this extends to politics. Where I'm from, the political landscape is very different from the US, with at least 5+ different parties that support different policies in various ways. At the same time, it's similar - there isn't a single one that approaches things on a case-by-case basis, each of them being ideology-based.

> So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.

Absolutely, "centrism" is an ideology in itself. This is also why the usage of the word "moderate" in the article and by PG is very unfortunate. That word too comes with a whole lot of baggage, and saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong. We need a different word, but I'm not great at coining those. "pragmatic" is the best one I can come up with. I can feel a "pragmatism is an ideology!" coming, but "the ideology of not looking at things from an ideological perspective" is entirely different from anything else. I'm sure the bright minds here can give better words.

> In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.

Very much so. And as the article points out, this is unfortunately a very lonely experience, so it's completely logical that most don't opt for this, instead choosing the warmth of a dogmatic community.
I emigrated to the US as a fiancée. It was not necessarily easy or cheap (I'm agreeing with you) and I came from a "low visa fraud risk country" (Australia). Some of the challenges faced:

It probably cost around $30,000 all up. Every visit to a consular office or USCIS cost about $100 in biometrics alone (each time). Fees for applying, fees for adjustments.

My partner and I had an issue where I was supporting her (she was in school). The system is not set up for that, and expects the US citizen to be financially supporting their prospective spouse. I realize that there are challenges around our situation in terms of providing a financial benefit to a USC that could be construed as paying for a visa.

I was interviewing for jobs in the US from Australia as my move date got closer (after the visa was approved). Siemens nearly torpedoed things when they wanted to start a H-1B or other visa app for me even after being repeatedly told I didn't need one.

My fiancees family ended up having to sponsor me, signing declarations of financial responsibility, that they could be made to repay any government benefit I claimed within the first 10 years of living here (tied to that previous issue).

Some of the evidentiary requirements (bona fide relationship) were reasonable and actually quite clever (separated, and asked questions like who usually does dishes, or takes out trash, and what day is trash day for that matter, and beyond) and others were onerous (I had to pay BoA an exorbitant amount to get all bank statements for 3 years, copied and notarized).

In the end, ironically we determined I would have been "adjusted" to a unconditional LPR more quickly, and more cheaply, if I had come here on a visa waiver, promising not to get married, and just got married and said "oops, my bad, can I be converted anyway?" than actually doing it the right way.
I’d love to see a write-up on that.

Especially in the unlikely event that you used Nix for the deployment.
They will hang you out to dry.
Unless there is an imminent threat or you want to send a message and act as a deterrent.
I run NixOS on a coreboot-ed T420 and I absolutely love everything on the outside, but it really shows its age when compared to the display on my Macbook or it comes to running heavier software ie. rust-analyzer, Chrome, or Nix builds.

If Lenovo were to release a modern T420-like, with identical chassis, battery system and similar IO port variety, but a modern display, modern internals (replaceable SSD! soldered RAM at least has a case for performance) and a modern camera, cash would evaporate out of my wallet.

I remember there was a person [1] modding T60/T61s into "T700"s with 11th gen Intel chips. Unfortunately it looks like the project's been quiet since 2022. Hopefully there'll be more who try.

[1] https://www.xyte.ch/t700-crowdfunding/
Yep, stainless steel cap
It's not uncommon for people who decide they have "discovered" the "real political spectrum" by simply adding a new axis to the traditional left-right spectrum to coincidentally idealize one pole on that new axis, viewing all variation on the left-right axis as indicative of distraction from what is important.

Asserting that people varying on the left-right spectrum also cluster around the anti-ideal pole of the idealized axis while everyone closer to the ideal pole clusters around the left-right center is not as common, but reflects the same cognitive bias, though it is particularly amusing when that axis independent thought (ideal) vs. groupthink (anti-ideal), such that freethinkers are asserted to by ideological uniform even outside of the shared commit to "free" thought, while sheepish adherents of groupthink are more ideologically diverse.

(And, yes, that graph is deadly serious -- as well as, IMO, hilariously wrong [0] -- and fairly central to the theme of the post.)

It's even more funny that this "free thinker" is decrying tribalist groupthink, asserting (as already discussed) that free thought exists only in an extremely narrow band in the center of the left-right axis, and talking about how they can't talk politics with anyone outside their group and are "desperate for like-minded folk". The lack of self-awareness is...palpable.

It's even more funny that all the ideas he embraces and purports to have trouble finding people he agrees with are the standard doctrines of the rationalist/EA/longermist faction that is so popular in the tech/AI space (and the conceit of being uniquely free thinking is also common to the faction.)

[0] Actual free thinkers are, IME, distributed widely -- not necessarily evenly, but certainly not clustered in one spot -- across both the left-right axis and a number of other political axes [1][2], such as the authoritarian-libertarian axis, so both the distribution shown and the assertion that the "real" political spectrum is two dimensional with only freethought vs. groupthink added to the classic left-right axis are incorrect.

[1] For a number of reasons, including both differences in life experiences and thus perceived probabilities on various factual propositions, but also on fundamental values which life experiences may impact, but not in a deductive manner, because you can't reason to "ought" from "is".

[2] Free thinkers do differ from groupthinkers in that their positions in the multidimensional space of political values are likely not to fall into the clusters of established tribes, but to have some views typical of one tribe while other others fall out of that tribes typical space (and possibly even into the space of an opposing tribe.) But there are enough different tribes
In general, you can’t.

You could work for a company that open sources your work. You can consult. A very few people can make enough to live off from donations or support contracts.

But … ultimately I think it’s the wrong approach. Open Source isn’t a business, it’s a community commons. You contribute to the commons and use what others have contributed. Making it about money just means it’s now about the money, not doing something you enjoy as a member of a community.
i think this is a key point, and this is why this problem will remain until we make some drastic changes.

to look at a completely different example: the internet was designed on good faith. year after year more things have been put into place to protect against those not operating in good faith. proof of work against AI bots is just the latest example.

what is really needed is a change in education. we need to teach the next generation that operating in good faith is absolutely essential for the future of mankind. we can no longer assume that good faith is the default. it isn't any more.
I don't have friends for the sake of "having friends". I choose the people I want to hang out with because I enjoy their company and like/respect them. Being around them makes me happy.

Similarly, people I dislike (rude or mean people, for example) make me unhappy when I'm around them. Cutting them out of my life is a net benefit there too, because I'm happier without them.
There is one in the Three.JS example suite with source:

https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_loader_usdz.html
It's also a security risk though, as in someone could take it over and push a bad update at any time... I have a few extensions installed but I'm terrified of adding more, even though there are parts of my browsing experience that could be significantly improved.

I really wish there were a middle ground, like an external extension manager where you could opt into updates, with reproducible builds, changelogs, etc.
https://www.silvercrestgroup.com/do-the-budget-and-trade-def...

> Government budget deficits are part of national savings. When Washington runs a larger budget deficit, national savings goes down. In a closed economy, interest rates must go up until households save more (and consume less) and fill that gap. In an open economy, the needed savings can come from abroad instead, and as a result we end up running a larger trade deficit.

This would suggest that if we eliminate free trade, inflation will force us to manage our budget deficits.
> how are they going to develop a new mail competency in such a complete way that they can take on gmail?

They're likely not taking on Gmail, they're taking on Mailbox.org, Proton and Tuta.
The GitHub notes they were required to remove any nsfw content, or unlabeled content.
I mean, I think most people who say this do think the Republicans are more to blame. It's just that they also think the Republicans are beyond hope so there's no point attempting to make them feel guilty.

Also we as humans tend to assign a different flavor of blame to people who do bad things than to people who claim to be preventing them while not actually doing so. If a criminal is holding a victim at gunpoint and then they drop their gun and a bystander picks it up and hands it back to the thug, we tend to view that as wrong act even though it's dependent on the criminal's earlier wrong act.

Likewise when Republicans do bad things over and over and then Democrats argue that they'll do better but they just hand the same system back over to the Republicans, people are going to be dissatisfied with that. Added to this is the perception that Democratic politicians do this to protect their own political position and preserve what power they individually have, which makes Democratic inaction even more irritating.
I've worked at a couple consultancies who played themselves by investing too heavily in one or two customers.

Once a single customer is 1/3 of your revenue they can start extracting considerations from you that may not be what your employees thought they signed up for. It's a good way to end up being a body shop. I don't have a philosophical problem with body shops per se, it's just that I don't want to work for one, so I pick places that should know better, but sometimes don't.

It can also be problematic if 2 customers account for 45% of your revenue and they both get the same idea, which can happen particularly when the market shifts. You have no way to call their bluff and move enough people to other projects to make it stick.
Why SDF over a free limitless VPS?

I joined SDF last year and was disappointed. I was willing to tolerate the limitations (eg. can't change your shell unless "validated"; can't even 'touch' a file...) in exchange for community but it's a ghost town. To make matters worse, IRC for new users is only available on a Sunday!

I would love to give it another shot but I don't understand what its value is in 2025.
Vana is letting users own a piece of the AI models trained on their data
For the unaware (or under-aware): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi

Probably apocryphal. A lot of people these days only know it from Star Wars.
Services that take on Google can not just win over some user base but even become profitable (see Kagi's example), so it's not strictly about $0 price tag. But they gotta be really good (for some target audience), and the hard part is beating the already established offerings, of which there are plenty and covering for every kind of crowd I can think of. I wish MZLA luck, but given all the Mozilla Foundation history (which started amazing but is less than stellar in terms of recent PR) I'm quite skeptical.
Exactly. It's discretionary, but for reasons I won't go into here, I had to have an immigration attorney for my green card adjustment. Her constant refrain was that I was not to worry as it was "discretionary but presumptive" - my previous efforts and process laid it that the onus was on the USG to show that my green card was or might be fraudulent or in bad faith.

Now? The same applies, but the current administration's attitude is "So stop us."
There's an amazing ability for people to not believe Trump is going to do the things he says. See Venezuelan immigrants getting screwed over or the recent tariffs.
> What has changed?

From the freaking title: “Tech companies are telling immigrant employees on visas not to leave the U.S.”
Could you give an example of behavior that "directly" harmed yourself or others which caused you to sever ties?

Politics is almost always indirect, usually with multiple levels of indirection.
I would kind of like to see some more point-and-click adventure games. There's nothing really fun about walking in games and point-and-click means that every moment of the game can be a perfect painting exactly as the artist visualized.
Yes that's true, I really don't know what the endgame is for this new admin. Growing up south of the border we always knew the beauty of this country was richness in cultural diversity. It seems like we're going backwards now?.