Hacker News Reader

YellOhon Moderna Melanoma Vaccine Cuts Death Rate in Half

This is very neat! The effect has only been observed up to three years out, but this seems like it could become a pretty cost-effective option?

Also, misc side note: I keep reading the words "Madonna" and "Cults" in the title even though they're not there. Was very confused when I first clicked the link.

YellOhon Indian-American engineer fired for speaking Hindi during dying relative's call

I know this is written like it's supposed to make us sympathetic, but the engineer seems completely in the wrong here for reasons unrelated to his ethnicity or what language he was speaking.

A video call in the same area as classified info, where presumably classified discussions could be happening in the background, seems like such a massive security issue.

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

Are you replying to the link I posted? One of the summary bullet points: "More than half of young women not employed or in school (54 percent) fall into one of three categories related to disability and potential care obligations — have a disability, live with a disabled adult, or live with at least one of their children — compared to just over one-third of men who are not employed or in school (35 percent)."

The male NEETs in CEPR data were less likely to have a traditionally "good reason" for being a NEET.

NEET men were only slightly more likely to be disabled themselves than NEET women, and given the higher total count of NEET women, I'd guess this breaks out to about an equal number of each gender being NEET for reasons of their own disability.

I agree there does seem to be a disparity in resources for NEETs, though.

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

I don't think it's mostly a male phenomenon. The original article says hikkikomori are about equally likely to be male as female. There are also more female NEETs worldwide, though female NEETs are more likely to be disabled and/or caretaking for dependents.

See https://cepr.net/report/are-young-men-falling-behind-young-w...

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

I agree on indexing retirement age to lifespan, but I doubt that would get much support. See ex. the protests in France. In the U.S., the elderly are a very powerful voting bloc.

I'd argue another concern could be useless/harmful interventions. Like taxpayers paying 82k a year per person for Leqembi treatments, which seems useless at best. There are also a lot of interventions that drag on terrible-quality lives in an attempt to forestall death as long as possible; I have personal experience with elderly family members who expressed a preference for death over their treatment plans (but were no longer able to choose). If I retain the ability to choose, I would go to great lengths to avoid some of modern medicine's pallative care.

I don't know. It's all hard. Obviously I want elderly people to be healthy and cared for as much as possible, but not at infinite cost (to the taxpayer or to their own quality of life).

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

Can you expand on the family court claims? From what I've heard, fathers who ask for custody are slightly favored over mothers in family court. Women only end up with custody so much more often because very few fathers ask for custody (and custody is usually not given to the unwilling).

Unfortunately most of the papers I can find are locked behind paywall (ex. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.174-1617.1...)

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

The original article here also says "The largest proportion of people affected [by being a hikkikomori] were in their 40s or 50s and roughly equally divided between men and women."

The Center for Economic and Policy Research actually notes significantly more female than male NEETs, though the female NEETs were also more likely to be disabled or caretaking for dependants. [0]

I doubt this is misandry in any meaningful sense.

[0] https://cepr.net/report/are-young-men-falling-behind-young-w...

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

Social security is almost double the outlay of Medicare. We should definitely be looking at decreasing medical prices (especially for enraging subtopics like insulin), but I imagine supporting non-working elderly is going to be an increasing slice of the federal budget regardless.

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours

Looks like Japanese people worked significantly more hours than Americans in the 80s and 90s, the gap narrowed in the 00s, and the U.S. just (barely) passed Japan starting in 2015. I could be outdated in my understanding of Japanese work culture.

Japanese people seem to stay in the workforce a few years longer, but given the older population, I'm not sure how to weight this.

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

In at least my bubble of the US (Republican ~40yr old family members), there's starting to be some grumbling along the same lines, too.

Although I don't usually think of the U.S. as particularly generous to the elderly, social security and Medicare spend ~$2 trillion of the $6.3 trillion federal budget. I've heard complaints that it's squeezing the young too hard to pay for (increasingly longer & sicker) retirement for the old.

I don't understand the alternatives well enough to have a strong personal opinion, though.

YellOhon How Japan is tackling a syndrome that creates recluses

Japan often faces claims of especially harsh work culture with terrible hours/overtime expectations; I would expect that to contribute more than things like grandmothers being cruel. (Being unable to keep up with work culture ?=> perceived burdensomeness ?=> less social connection?)

I'm a little worried that this will become more common in aging countries as they place higher demands on the working-age population. There's that saying about Japan's social issues being a look at the issues the rest of us will have in a couple decades.

As a side note, if anyone's looking for an indie psychological horror game related to the discussion of hikkikomori, Omori was pretty enjoyable.

YellOhon Online Safety Bill – Some futures

Maybe a dumb question, but to implement pay-per-mile, why not just increase the gas tax? I'd love there to be fewer (unnecessary) cars around, but dislike the idea of ULEZ CCTV expansion.

YellOhon The magnificence of the bluefin tuna

Unfortunately I've spent time on Reddit, where people in a controversial conversation would sometimes drastically edit or delete their messages (or mods would delete them), making the conversation unreadable. I hope your comment stays up; it doesn't seem like HN has the same problem.

Theoretically, even if I gave up on the entire project of ethics, there would still be self-interested reasons to be kind to humans. That's what your previous comment was pointing out, right? If I stopped caring about my current ethics, you'd only have to get along with another person with similar thoughts.

Also, as a side note, I don't particularly care whether something is a person or not. I only care whether it's capable of feeling pain. Even if we somehow "discovered" that plants were people, I have zero moral feelings about plants since (as far as I'm aware) they are incapable of pain. I don't think mice are people, but I care about them because I think there's a reasonable chance they can experience pain.

YellOhon 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

I think "the kind of person unwilling to be a doctor without [some level of] protection from medical malpractice lawsuits shouldn't be qualified to be a doctor" would be false - there's a lot of reasons someone might want protection from constant litigation in a high-stakes job, even if they are trying to do it well. What do you see as the key difference between doctors & cops here? Other jobs don't have qualified immunity per se (except other governmental jobs), but there are plenty of jobs with specific licensing/insurance that seems to be trying to do something similar.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Police and sheriff's patrol officers and transit and railroad police have some of the highest rates of injuries and illnesses of all occupations."[0] It's certainly not the deadliest job, but I'm guessing it is vastly overrepresented in deaths & injuries compared to most jobs (and many potential officers' next best option).

In 2021 police & detectives in the U.S. had a median wage of ~$66k[1], lower than the national median of ~$71k[2]. Again, not the worst paid by far, but below median.

Obviously a lot of this depends on location; different areas have vastly different crime rates, and police in a wealthy suburb probably are very well-off compared to the night shift in inner cities.

Police work is far from the worst job you can get, but it still seems harder than a lot of (most?) other work. Though I don't feel qualified to make a subjective comparison to other jobs of similar pay & starting requirements.

I'm not sure what you mean by police unions trying to stop car chases. Presumably chasing criminals through sometimes-dangerous situations so they don't get away is a core part of the job description?

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detect... [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detect... [2] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-27...

YellOhon 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

I'm wary of kicking the hornet's nest here, but just as a note, a lot of the highest-profile "just cause" cases have a lot of disagreement around the actual details. Thanks to the PETA principle[0] (section III is about exactly this), the events that make it into mainstream media almost always have intensely divisive details that do make an impartial ruling a lot harder. People that disagree with you would probably also disagree with how innocent/guilty you find the people involved.

I think pretty much everyone wants police accountability, but the cases where the police are most unambiguously & egregiously wrong on every level aren't divisive enough to stay in the news as long as divisive ones. (Not necessarily always true! Please do not take any of this as a strong personal opinion any any particular case(s)!)

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

YellOhon 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

I think approximately everybody agrees with these ideals, but approximately nobody agrees on how to achieve them in the real world. Or agrees about comparative importance - ex. weighing being culpable for breaking the law against ability to enforce the law, if you see the discussion below about qualified immunity.

YellOhon 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

We might have a genuine disagreement then, because I have a very strong preference against police being "dangerously understaffed".

Given other societal forces (i.e. decreasing mental health care for those with the greatest need, since about the Reagan era), in my understanding we rely on cops to hold together denser areas. If policing were to substantially decrease, I'd want to be as suburban/rural as possible (whereas currently I'd like to be more urban). I might be in favor of less policing if it came after we had better services for the homeless & mentally ill.

Not claiming my viewpoint is morally or practically correct, only trying to give a better view of my perspective. I'm sure views on the police differ greatly by group membership (I am likely biased by police having low suspicion of me by default; I am also ~never going to "win" a physical interaction without backup.)

Could you expand on where & why we differ?

YellOhon 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

Ah, this I agree with. Qualified immunity has protected police in a few way-too-shady circumstances.

However, as a side effect, I think a lot of police would leave their jobs (or less people would join the police force in the future) without qualified immunity. In some cases this is good as it removes or prevents bad apples in the force, but in other cases I imagine perfectly good potential-cops are not going to put up with a dangerous, low-paid job that they can also be sued for doing at any time.

Sort of like aggressive medical malpractice lawsuits discouraging actually good/useful medical treatment as bycatch. Maybe there's some free-market equivalent of malpractice insurance for police (where the shadier they've acted, the more they'd have to pay for insurance)? Not sure the market is the right approach here, but I'm not familiar with any specific alternatives.

Or, to make everything a lot easier, just give every cop a bodycam and ~80% of the ambiguity disappears.

YellOhon Modern tourism makes it difficult to appreciate the Sistine Chapel

I've read that when visiting the Vatican, you can pay extra to be allowed to walk through before regular admission starts. Which seems totally worth the cost, but a) keeps it out of reach of most people, and b) kicks the can down the street until there are enough people willing to pay the higher cost.

But overall the system seems like the best we can get... one portion of the day with limited admission (maybe a cap at a very small number of visitors), auctioned so that those who are willing to pay the most get in. Then that money is used for upkeep & supporting general admission, where anyone can pay a low price to come in with ~no cap.

I die a little inside to discuss limiting a full experience of some of the world's best-known works of art to the wealthy, but I genuinely don't know of a better way to allocate a scarce good.

YellOhon 'First Amendment Auditor' Sues NYPD over Right to Record in Police Stations

Is this your actual argument? You will accept nothing less than literally zero? Surely you realize that this is impossible among any group of people (including police) in literally any place on Earth.

What would your proposed policing system look like?

YellOhon Kids Online Safety Act is still a danger to our rights online

I think it would be more similar to prohibition than pineapple pizza, at least to people who care about it.

Presumably less alcohol/less gay marriage is expected to help save people from the temptation toward grievous sins (at least in Christian settings), and help support the traditional family unit in its duties to raise the next generation (less alcohol = less domestic abuse and financial stupidity / less homosexuality = more straight relationships, more children, and partnerships more likely to follow a traditional division of labor & have a woman to raise the children).

I'm in favor of equal rights to marriage, I just think your comment would badly fail the Ideological Turing Test.

YellOhon Florida ocean temps surge to 100F; mass coral bleaching event is found in reefs

Wood decays when there is sufficient air and moisture. Wood used for construction is dried before being used, and unless there's a leak / excessive humidity, should be able to last a very long time without substantive decay. Wood in stuff like furniture is also often sealed with a specific wax/oil layer to keep out moisture, further preventing rot.

Theoretically it will decompose someday, but at the point where we have significantly less buildings I assume either other bad things have made this less of a concern, or we'll be advanced enough to recapture that carbon in other ways.

...but yes, if you're willing to "waste" the resources, just thoroughly burying wood away from air should also work.

YellOhon The magnificence of the bluefin tuna

If the only reason you are kind to humans is because it's practically useful to you, I can understand why you don't care about animals. While I'm sad I have to exist on the same planet as this kind of thinking, I'm glad someone is at least saying the quiet implied bits of the human-centric mindset out loud.

(Just in case you edit/delete your comment later... my current favorite quote is "Please note that if torture pigs made the bacon even 3% tastier, I'd be calling my senator right this minute to demand that he allow farm workers to tasering them for shits and giggles.")

YellOhon The magnificence of the bluefin tuna

> Happy, well fed, cared for animals are the tastiest and healthiest

Surely you don't think the masses buying big macs give half a crap? Meat just needs to be cheap and edible, and apparently animals raised in horrible conditions are the best candidates on both counts. ~99% of U.S. meat comes from factory farms.[0]

[0] https://www.humanesociety.org/news/facts-about-factory-farms

YellOhon The magnificence of the bluefin tuna

I'm usually not bold enough to publicly say I'm vegan either, but come on, the person you're replying to clearly cares and has more of a spine than either of us. What would you prefer - we just don't talk about it ever, and let everyone act like the current atrocities we're committing don't exist?

YellOhon Florida ocean temps surge to 100F; mass coral bleaching event is found in reefs

Pretty sure what y'all are talking about already exists and it's called running bamboo. Grows aggressively fast, spreads quickly, and pretty successfully invasive.

YellOhon Florida ocean temps surge to 100F; mass coral bleaching event is found in reefs

Fun fact: you don't have to bury it, you just have to not burn or decompose it. Hence why wood used in architecture functions as a carbon sink. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink#Artificial_carbon_...

YellOhon They took blockbuster drugs for weight loss. Now their stomachs are paralyzed

21k gun homicides, 43k car deaths, according to your links. And I'm guessing there are orders of magnitude more life-destroying non-fatal car events than gun events.

Also, maybe this is what I get downvoted to hell for, but I'd prefer we focus on making peoples' lives better so that they want to live; banning their access to quick & painless deaths (of which guns are the ~last; most good suicide drugs have already been throttled, helium is now cut with oxygen, and hanging has only a ~70% success rate) seems like focusing on the wrong side of the equation. I want people to want to live, not be forced to continue existing because of the extreme pain of the dying process.

YellOhon A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

Does someone occasionally getting small satisfactions equal them thinking there is meaning in life? If so, we're using very different definitions of meaning. I think people can think there is no meaning and also be capable of occasional positive experiences.

(I don't understand the second quote so can't comment on it.)

One of my favorite poems is Be Drunk[0]. Would you take someone agreeing with the "thesis" of Be Drunk (thinking it's necessary to numb yourself against meaninglessness through diversions like alcohol or poetry) as unable to be a nihilist, because they are capable of distracting themselves from meaninglessness?

[0] https://poets.org/poem/be-drunk

ETA: I don't think "is there anything meaningful in your life" uses the word "meaning" in the same was as the question "does life have meaning." Maybe the below commentor was totally correct about us all talking past each other, because the first question seems to ask "does anything reliably bring you joy" while the second asks "is there a purpose to existence." Someone could have things that matter to them while still thinking existence is purposeless.

YellOhon Guam: The America that Americans forget

On a historical level, I agree it's unfair. The Chamorus should never have had your land taken against your will. However, there are now a lot of Americans born on Guam, and it's to the point where it seems like it would also be unfair to kick out those people born there, with their families living on Guam for decades & who are now the majority.

I'm not arguing against you, necessarily. It's a hard situation and maybe Americans leaving is the better solution.

How far "back" do you think it's fair for decolonization advocates to go? Do you think the same argument you're using here, applied to other places (ex. the continental U.S.) is also correct?

Addendum via Wikipedia: "The United States Department of the Interior approved a $300,000 grant for decolonization education" in 2016[0]. No idea what to make of this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam#Government_and_politics