bhelkey

Who said anything about outlawing private insurance?

The UK has a single payer healthcare system but folks may purchase (or obtain through work) private insurance.

English is descriptive not prescriptive. The meaning of words change over time.

"Disappoint" was originally the inverse of "appoint" and meant to remove from office.

Pixel Watches have an unlocked bootloader [1] and publish factory images [2].

That being said, it appears that the main open source version of WearOS (AsteroidOS) only supports watches that are 5-10 years old [3].

I suspect that if you did try to flash this watch, you would experience a whole host of rough edges.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2022/10/21/pixel-watch-bootloader-unl...

[2] https://developers.google.com/android/images-watch

[3] https://asteroidos.org/watches/

Edit: past pixels watches have an unlocked bootloader, I assume this one will as well. I don't see this information in the announcement post.

Phone manufactures have settled on the term "flip" for phones that start as a long rectangle and fold in half vertically to roughly a square.

The most popular flip phone is Samsung Galaxy Flip but other brands like Motorola and Oppo make these kinds of phones.

I didn't end up getting one but a friend with the galaxy flip 7 tells me he likes using the square screen when the phone is folded to help reduce his screen time.

I assume due to price. The 5070 Ti costs ~$1k, the 5090 costs ~$3.5k.

Ironically, Google Pixel phones are the best phones for leaving Google behind.

The have an unlocked bootloader and are the only phones supported by GrapheneOS [1].

If you don't want to go to GrapheneOS, any Android phone should be able to use F-Droid.

[1] https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Waymo has logged 67M miles in the SF Bay Area and 50M miles in LA of autonomous miles driven with a passenger [1]. It looks like the rollout is going quite well in California.

[1] https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

> Apparently NY state laws also require a human driver at the wheel.

Earlier this year, Waymo had a permit to test 8 autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in NYC. The permit was not renewed [1]. Waymo can no longer drive autonomously (even with a safety driver) in NYC.

What changed between when the testing permit was issued and when a renewal of permit was declined? NYC had a political shift in leadership.

[1] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-...

At the start of this year, Waymo had a permit to test eight autonomous vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel in NYC. The permit expired March 31st [1]. Waymo may no longer test autonomous driving (even with a safety driver) in NYC.

Waymo is not currently testing in NYC for political reasons.

[1] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-...

Why should drugs in America cost >2x the price of drugs in other countries?

Drug prices in the US are >2x the price as compared to other developed countries [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK611301/

>> Gram for gram it's better to eat chicken than cheese for the climate. reply

>IE a chicken filet is about the carbon impact of 8oz of milk.

They said cheese not milk. Note that it takes more than 1 unit of milk to produce 1 unit of cheese. From this source I found, they estimate ~10 input units of milk per output unit of cheese [1].

Assuming both of these are true, and assuming that the cheese making process produces no carbon, then a chicken filet would have the same carbon impact as .8oz of cheese or roughly a single slice of cheese.

The cheese making process does produce carbon (e.g. heating the milk) but it also produces whey as a valuable byproduct.

[1] https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_e/E216/

> Americans wouldn't tolerate the trade-offs in the British healthcare system

I do not believe this is true. Keep in mind that the UK has universal healthcare (NHS) but also has a private healthcare system.

The private healthcare system can be used to prioritize speed, comfort, elective procedures, ...

Around 12% of the UK population has private medical insurance [1].

> It's a policy determination to subsidize drug companies to make sure we get access to the latest drugs.

There are cases in which a drug is under extreme demand outstripping manufacturing capacity. In these cases, paying more can provide access to a limited resource.

However, to my eyes, this appears to be an unusual occurrence rather than the typical state of drug production worldwide. I don't see evidence that the amount the US pays for drugs results in dramatically higher access.

I believe the opposite is true. If a drug is available in a US pharmacy but it is unaffordable, does one have access to it? I would say no.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/30/almost-one-i...

I reject your argument. It is easier to see when comparing the cost of goods. It is not a fact of life that goods in the US cost 2x the price of equivalent goods in the UK.

If I compare the prices of a PS5 in the US to a PS5 in the UK (excluding the 20% Tax), they are basically the same price [1].

If I buy a pair of 501 Levi's jeans in the UK [2] and a pair of 501 Levi's jeans from the US [3] I pay basically the same price (again excluding VAT).

If I buy a Ford compact crossover in the US and buy a Ford compact crossover in the UK, I pay basically the same price of ~$33k.

Please explain why it is a fact of life that a drug in the US costs considerably more than the same drug from the same manufacturer just purchased in Europe.

Why can we not compare the cost of drugs Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, ... to the price of drugs in the US?

And again, drugs cost considerably more in the US whether they were purchased publicly or privately.

[1] https://blog.playstation.com/2026/03/27/new-price-changes-fo...

[2] https://www.levi.com/GB/en_GB/clothing/men/jeans/straight/50...

[3] https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/clothing/men/jeans/straight/50...

Again, healthcare in the US is dramatically more expensive than in other countries. This is true for publicly funded healthcare (e.g. Medicare) and privately funded healthcare.

I already mentioned drug prices, another input in the cost of US healthcare is the cost of physician salaries. Physicians in the US are paid ~2x what physicians in the UK are paid [1].

One input to physician salaries is that we limited the number of new doctors by limiting the number of residency positions.

[1] https://www.physiciansweekly.com/post/how-do-us-physician-sa...

If your implication is that this is a private vs public spending problem, that's not it. Healthcare in the US (both private and public) costs dramatically more than in other developed countries.

Why that is is a bit complicated and doesn't have a single root cause. It's also a bit tricky because every major component blames the other components for the total cost.

Part of the problem (roughly 10% by one estimation I read) is drug prices. Drug prices in the US are >2x the price as compared to other developed countries [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK611301/

The US spends $2 Trillion dollars on Medicare + Medicaid a year [1][2].

Given that the US has a population of 342.7 million people [3], those two trillion dollars divides out to $5800 per resident per year.

The UK's universal healthcare system costs ~$4700 per person per year (~£3,500)[4].

If we could spend healthcare dollars as efficiently as the UK, the current government spending in the US is enough to support a single payer healthcare system covering every resident without raising taxes.

[1] https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-repo...

[2] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/medicaid-financing-the-basics/#...

[3] https://www.census.gov/popclock/

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7zvp5xrqo

One thing I noticed is that I tended to accumulate a lot of trash in Japan. Connivence stores were plentiful and the food was tasty, but it was all wrapped in plastic.

Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.

> Equally telling is the list of companies that did not sign it -- including Google, Amazon.

Could you elaborate? I don't understand your implication.

Amazon in particular hosts open weight models via Amazon Bedrock (e.g. Ministral 14B 3.0, DeepSeek V3.2, ...)[1].

In case it changes the context of this comment, I am a Meta employee, all opinions are my own.

[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-c...

>> Codeberg was actively positioned as an indie almost drop-in Github alternative

> What on earth are you talking about? No one, no less Codeberg themselves, would make up such fictitious comparison.

Codeberg's getting started documentation has the line, "Codeberg is not a for-profit corporation but an open community of free software enthusiasts providing a humane, non-commercial and privacy-friendly alternative to commercial services such as GitHub." [1]

[1] https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/

> the problem is that it hurts legit people too.

What hurts other people too?

> Distillation is impossible to stop

Lots of things are impossible or very difficult to stop completely but measures can be taken to reduce their prevalence.

There is a brand of creatine manufactured in the US (con-cret) and a brand manufactured in Germany (Creapure). Either of those companies should address the concern around adulterated powder.

> That's why I dropped creatine since I didn't notice any benefits when I tried it for a year.

Some percentage of people (~20%) are creatine non-responders [1]. It's pretty reasonable to try creatine and then drop it if you find no benefit. I personally find the gain very marginal.

[1] https://fitchef.com/shorts/creatine-non-responder/

What continent is India in? What continent is Australia in?

I linked both prebuilt and do it yourself builds. Neither resulted in a comparable machine to the PS5 for $600.

Again, I think you are missing how much the price of components has increased.

16GB of DDR5 alone costs approximately $200 [1]. I challenge you to find a new case, motherboard, NVMe SSD, and PSU for the remaining $100 in the budget after $200 for ram and after your assumed $300 for a GPU.

[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#b=ddr5&Z=16384001,...

> $600 could get you a beast of a machine

Where can you get a new gaming "beast of a machine" for $600? In the past you could build a reasonable gaming machine for $600 but parts are drastically more expensive today.

If you go to microcenter and look for gaming PCs, their cheapest option is $800 [1]. PC Part Picker's entry level build is $780 [2].

The only option I found with these constraints is this computer from Walmart with a GPU released in 2017 and a CPU released in 2013 [3] (This is not a recommendation for this listing. Please don't buy it).

[1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/705867/powerspec-g530-ga...

[2] https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/fQscCJ/entry-level-amd-gaming...

[3] https://www.walmart.com/ip/STGAubron-Gaming-PC-Computer-Desk...

When buying a gaming console, I imagine folks think more about the upfront cost ($600 for PS5 vs $1,050 for steam machine) as opposed to the total cost of ownership.

The steam machine may be cheaper in the long run once you consider:

* Playing PlayStation games online costs $11/month.

* PlayStation games tend to be more expensive than steam games.

Because if they don't offer a used virtual marketplace, everyone has to buy new games directly from them.

A used game market provides downwards pressure on new games.

The US spent $2 Trillion dollars on Medicare and Medicaid in 2024 [1][2]. If the US spent this money as efficiently as Japan (or UK [3], ...) it could pay for Healthcare for every single resident with this $2 Trillion dollars.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/medicaid-financing-the-basics/#...

[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-medicare-cost-the...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7zvp5xrqo

If indeed the public is looking for dividends, why is Amazon, a company that has never paid a dividend, such a valuable company?

Amazon has ~10 Billion outstanding shares and the current market price for one of those shares is ~$240.

If folks only care about dividends, why would anyone buy an Amazon share at that price?