HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

31835843

76 karma · joined June 22, 2022

submissionscomments
31835843··on Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds
> For me it’s just the fact I cannot state any opinion at all because of the controversy it might cause.

Years ago I would have rolled my eyes at this comment. As someone who is liberal and runs in liberal circles, it seems ludicrous to me that any sane person would get called out for anything not overtly racist or mean spirited.

Then one time I asked in a group chat — with people I thought were my friends — about where I could read about trans kids getting hormone blockers, because I wasn’t really sure about giving kids (who generally don’t know what they want) the kinds of drugs that alter their bodies.

The rebuke I got was swift and severe. For reference… I’m a mid-30s gay man who lives in the Bay Area, and I wasn’t even expressing an opinion.

Yeah; I’m out.

31835843··on Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds
There is no hiring process that is perfect. Plus, people burn out, organizations shift focus, etc. People who shouldn’t have been hired in the first place make it in, and people whose skills no longer match the job hang on.
31835843··on Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds
I mean, isn’t that always the case though? That lots of people don’t belong there? It’s just the law of large numbers + the ever shifting lives of people.
31835843··on How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
This seems so sensible to me that I’m curious why the hell it wouldn’t work.
31835843··on How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
And this is only true in a markets that are easy to enter. Starting an insurance company isn’t easy.

Why are profit margins only 5%? Could be many reasons, including collusion. Insurance companies have teams of lawyers whose job it is to navigate existing regulation, lobby for new ones and to push for ones that hurt competition.

Given how shady and complex the entire industry is, we don’t really have a reason to believe that 5% is an accurate number.

31835843··on How much health insurers pay for almost everything is about to go public
This would be true if there were a reasonable amount of market understanding by customers and the friction to switching were low. Neither are the case. Most of the time, it takes a qualifying life event or open enrollment (once a year) to switch. And then, understanding the trade offs between plans, which are difficult to understand on a good day, is another barrier.
31835843··on Meta slashes hiring plans, girds for 'fierce' headwinds
People who work at FAANG calibre companies are professionals, perfectly capable of finding new positions that suit their skills and level of commitment. I think it’s infantilizing to take the CEO’s comments and imply that those employees are being mistreated.
31835843··on Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions
If your question was intended to claim that the Article you quoted gives The Supreme Court ‘the final say on legal interpretation,’ I’m interested to know which words in that Article you believe gives that say.
31835843··on Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions
The Constitution doesn’t say any of that.
31835843··on Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions
The Supreme Court can just ignore its own precedents, so this doesn’t really help.
31835843··on Amazon bows to UAE pressure to restrict LGBT search results
Tolerance and diversity are not absolute.
31835843··on Amazon bows to UAE pressure to restrict LGBT search results
I wouldn’t consider those “American values,” except in the sense that those companies are trying to protect their interests by having a platform that appeals to a wide variety of people.

Which, come to think of it, is itself a distinct value: compromise of free expression for money.

You have a good point here.

31835843··on Amazon bows to UAE pressure to restrict LGBT search results
> If not, then it would seem to imply that we are OK with western powers using their capital (instead of gunboats) to impose their ideology on other cultures in the world.

“impose their ideology” is a disingenuous frame for this situation. They are censoring search results. As in, the customer, who Amazon makes money off by showing them what they want, is not being shown items that relate to what they searched for.

That’s not a pop-up that says “Muhammad was bisexual.”

In any case, cultural relativism is a liberal cop-out. American companies should use their capital to promote American values.

31835843··on Pokemon Go Creator Niantic Cancels Four Projects, Cuts 8% of Staff
Always glad to see spyware companies struggle
31835843··on Increased Subscription Pricing for IDEs, .NET Tools, and the All Products Pack
Good point. While the interest rates are “high” now (prime rate is 4.75?) that is actually a regression towards the mean, and definitely not 1970s hyperinflation territory.

I wonder though — given that we can’t go to that 15% rate (because then servicing public debt would be too expensive), what other tools do we have left to tame inflation?

31835843··on Increased Subscription Pricing for IDEs, .NET Tools, and the All Products Pack
>Well when 80% of all US Dollars were "printed" / created in the last 2-3 years massive inflation will follow

Be careful. This theory tracks for regular currencies, but gets distorted (note: I didn’t not say that it doesn’t apply, only that it isn’t as strong as you say) when the currency in question is the reserve currency for the world.

Classic Model didn’t predict this, because “this” is a totally bonkers scenario. Inflation is running hot (additionally) because supply chains have been torched (China and Russia) just at the time when demand came roaring back (the world minus China gave up on lockdowns).

You’re not wrong, but I encourage you to resist the temptation to simplify the story down to “classic” vs “MMT.” It’s tempting, but the world is very very complex and it ain’t getting any simpler.

31835843··on Increased Subscription Pricing for IDEs, .NET Tools, and the All Products Pack
>This is the first time in my life (34 yo) that price changes have been so large that they’re apparent to me.

We lived through a unique time in history, and that unique time has lasted for our entire adult lives. I’m also 34. I graduated college right when the low interest rates were juicing the economy. But the party had to come to an end sometime.

Ask your parents what it was like in the 1970s. Oil shocks, interest rates at 15%. History rhymes.

31835843··on Gun owners’ private information leaked by California Attorney General
Thanks! I’m trying to round out my understanding. I’m not too big of a fan of textualism/originalism, but it’s a major judicial theory (obviously).
31835843··on Gun owners’ private information leaked by California Attorney General
Do you have a source for this? My understanding of the second amendment comes from reading America’s Constitution: A Biography by Akhail Reed Amar. I’m trying to find reference to this meaning you cited, but coming up short. I also don’t find it in the article by him in The New Republic:

https://newrepublic.com/article/73718/second-thoughts

31835843··on Gun owners’ private information leaked by California Attorney General
Well regulated militia
31835843··on Gun owners’ private information leaked by California Attorney General
There are so many guns in this country (far more than people) that criminals don’t need this database and don’t need to rob someone to get a gun.
31835843··on Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries? (2020)
When looking at statistics like this, it’s somewhat unhelpful to consider the US one country. Because of the low density of the population + essentially no federal government, the US is really a few different regions with vastly different outcomes.
31835843··on It is your responsibility to follow up (2019)
Agreed. I wish I knew what the solution was. I used to be very anxious about following up on everything. But burn out has made me more resigned to the fact that it’s just impossible
31835843··on It is your responsibility to follow up (2019)
I go days without opening my inbox. When people send me emails I assume it’s like, FYI type stuff that I’ll find… someday?
31835843··on It is your responsibility to follow up (2019)
Hm, not quite. Email at my company is also used as a catch-all notification bucket. That’s what the filters are for.
31835843··on It is your responsibility to follow up (2019)
That is until the inflation forces a shift to another medium of higher value. It goes like this at my work: email -> Slack -> Meeting invite > Text Message(!) -> phone call (!!). If it gets to a phone call it better be the CEO stuck in a well and I’m the only person limber enough to pull him out, otherwise I’m just going to be mad.
31835843··on Tech Companies Won't Say If They’ll Give Cops Abortion Data
Yes. What I want to hear from any company that stores health data is “Health data, including period tracking, is 100% end to end encrypted. We don’t have the keys to this data and are unable to provide it to any law enforcement.”

Short of that, I don’t trust them.

Having said that, I’m not sure at all how Snapchat, etc enter into this. They are platforms where people post about themselves to the world. If I had a post saying “I am on the way to get an abortion” I am not sure how or why the company would get between me and the law.

31835843··on I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
This is my experience with every “Linux works on…” post. It’s always caveated down to an unreasonable definition of working.
31835843··on Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade
>I also think it’s pretty clear that, when one side believes abortion to be a totally unrestricted right despite never appearing in the constitution

The Supreme Court ruling on the Constitutionality of laws isn’t in the Constitution.

You’re describing a judicial philosophy (textualism) as if it were law, or some sacred edict from above. It’s not.

You’re pretending the “democratic process” isn’t broken. It is.

Remember: the legislature could have banned abortion outright, at any time. We didn’t need the courts to do that. It would just take an amendment to the Constitution.

Remember: a majority of people in the US want abortion to be legal. The court overruled that based on its own fetish for textualism.

It’s great that you want people to talk to each other. In the mean time, women will die.

31835843··on Google says US employees can relocate to states with abortion rights
>To support Googlers and their dependents, our US benefits plan and health insurance covers out-of-state medical procedures that are not available where an employee lives and works. Googlers can also apply for relocation without justification, and those overseeing this process will be aware of the situation. If you need additional support, please connect 1:1 with a People Consultant via [link to internal tool redacted].
Page 1 of 2Next →