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david38

1,423 karma · joined August 28, 2015

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david38··on I failed a take-home assignment from Kagi Search
Seriously? A candidate puts in a week of work and he can’t be guaranteed a 30 minute discussion?

Nobody is getting a few hundred or few thousand submissions to evaluate. Nobody. If you are getting 1k applicants, at best 50 are asked to do a take-home and even then, not all at once.

If by some miracle 100 people did this to completion at the same time, there should be a notice to the effect that due to high volume, blah blah blah.

david38··on CT scans could cause 5% of cancers, study finds; experts note uncertainty
Why would you go to the doctor for that instead of first trying one of the many known solutions?

* a tablespoon of epsom salt * a tablespoon of mineral oil * several OTC products

david38··on Why Is Africa Poor? Economic unfreedom, not slavery or colonialism
In my experience from a poor Latin America country, rich people rob those far away, poor people rob those close.

If there is no obvious diversification in the path forward, then the resources of wealth are few and easily identified. Ex: oil, banana plantations, etc. These countries are more likely to be like this. With a colonial past, there is a view by the strong they can only steal. It takes an exceptional leader who is strong, cares about his country, willing to kill to defend, and willing to not be bribed by the global powers to turn a country around. And he may still fail.

david38··on U.S. cites its power to deport people for beliefs
This applies to non-citizens only. In principle, the second generation should be fine
david38··on What if we taxed advertising?
Like how whenever they want to introduce gambling, they always tie it to school funding, as if magically, it’s the only way to pay for schools
david38··on Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Rear-Ending Motorcyclists More Than Any Other
A narrow case easily accounted for
david38··on Baldness? UCLA's New Molecule Could Revolutionize Hair Growth
I fail to see how this is gender affirming care
david38··on I don't like traveling anymore
I disagree. I despise pampering in a country where everyone makes a pittance and slaving over some rich American is a more lucrative career than most others. I come from such a country.

It’s possible to have fun very easily, even a very relaxing vacation and not have most of the money siphoned away by some corporation like a giant resort company that plays fast and loose with local resources because the government is desperate for employment

david38··on Major endometriosis study reveals impact of gluten, coffee, dairy and alcohol
It is 100% irrelevant that a doctor “experience” a disease. They should have training / exposure to it though.

I constantly hear non-medical people talk about how “only female doctors understand because they’re women”. What crap.

The very same people when facing cancer magically don’t require a doctor who has had cancer. Suddenly they just want the most qualified.

The problem lies much more in over-specialization, rapid patient turn-around, patient demand that treatments be easy, pills, and yes, training in how patients (fe|male) communicate and feel pain, illness, etc

david38··on Appeals court rules that Constitution protects possession of AI-generated CSAM
This is bad. The Mere-Exposure Effect can increase the number of victims as AI CSAM can act as a gateway drug so to speak.

This is the justification for keeping the ban on legally culled elephants. Yes, a percentage of elephants are legally hunted to control population and fund national parks, but you cannot import that ivory because the thinking is it will create a market and that market will quickly turn to pouching.

david38··on Ask HN: Are you afraid to travel to US to tech conferences?
You can’t even guarantee the safety of your family where you live 100%. Why the fear of guns specifically? Have you ever fired one? Best way to get over the fear is just get some training. I view guns as just a slingshot 2.0. Take a class and get over your Hollywood and fear mongering news led view of them.

Literally the only guarantee you have is that on a long enough timeline, you will die.

This is what happens when you get your information from entertainment media masquerading as news. Sure, there are shootings. What is the distribution? Shootings are not randomly distributed.

Some quick stats from Pew Research in 2023 there were 46,728 gun deaths. Sounds like a lot, right? Remember though the US is BIG. A full 58% were suicides. That’s 6/10!

A distribution map is available at https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-...

And finer maps are available too.

I have lived here over 40 years and never such as heard a gunshot outside of the range. I have lived in New Jersey, Illinois, and California. I have never been threatened with any kind of weapon.

I spent six months in England though and was threatened with a knife.

david38··on Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
Have you ever worked at a university?
david38··on Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
These don’t even remotely compare. In academia, timelines are long, failure is extremely high, total team involvement on a project is small, motivation is different, as is team selection criteria.

Just look at a large project for academia that requires lots of people and is a deliverable. It reverts to standard practice

david38··on Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 managerial positions to save $3.5B yearly
I have done both and agree
david38··on Extreme poverty in India has dropped to negligible levels
This shows you don’t know what extreme poverty is and how horrible it is.

What-about-ism is an elitist way to pretend to care yet do nothing.

Imagine it was your country and your project which eliminated extreme poverty. No doubt you would be bending over backwards to listen to someone who “read an article” on the other side of the world

david38··on How to know when it's time to go
You think most hoppers are walking away from life changing money?

You think hoppers aren’t calculating it’s in their interest to hop?

david38··on I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats
Cheating != permissive.
david38··on After 120 years, Yellowstone bison are a single breeding population
This is not true. An officer from the US was sent to protect the Yellowstone herd at some point. IIRC he had previously been assigned to fight Indians and had a track record for “effectiveness” aka modern day war crimes. Apparently this was more a personality trait than particular hatred of the tribes of the plains because when he was ordered to protect the bison, he did it with the same energy and “effectiveness”.

Not claiming he was the only one, but possibly the only one with enough guns, soldiers T his command, the backing of an executive order, and a dim enough view of human life to move the needle as much as he did.

I need to go research this again and erase this comment if I’m talking trash or update it if I’m not.

david38··on Y Combinator deletes posts after a startup's demo goes viral
You can’t be this blind to not know the difference between.
david38··on Y Combinator deletes posts after a startup's demo goes viral
There are all for the most part special cases. Most people aren’t homeless, in prison, illegal immigrants, etc.

This is just what-about-ism.

Clearly what the person was talking about was how PEOPLE tend to treat others, in vast numbers, so that it’s common to be an offender and even more common to be on the receiving end.

There are not 100 million people in the US actively poorly treating 250 million others like cattle.

david38··on Show HN: My new wiki for Silicon Graphics stuff
Wonder why other companies didn’t do the same.

I recall the snobbery of the other companies who thought you should go to them hat in hand for the pleasure of giving them gobs of money.

david38··on US friendship is in freefall – shredding bonds and cutting lives short
It’s not because friendships are largely made from shared suffering.

In a time of further independence, over choice, and tech to hold onto previous friends, making friends who actually will physically meet up with you frequently is definitely harder.

david38··on Larry Ellison's half-billion-dollar quest to change farming
As if he personally ran this without people who knew a few things?

Go look at the success rate of university research. This sounds like someone who hasn’t been part of research.

david38··on So Many Unmarried Men
Life as a single man in his 20’s is very different from a single man in his 60’s.

Not sure why you thought you had to solve all these other people’s problems, but it seems to be a strong reason why you divorced - unrealistic expectations on you without them taking any accountability for themselves.

I’m going through a divorce right now, just a couple years older than you. My family is very collectivist, hers individualist. They are so individualistic in fact that they literally don’t see a problem with getting pregnant by other men (gay friend for example) because “her body, her choice”, even when married.

That said, I refuse to believe this is the large majority. Billions of females in the world, millions of potential matches. The chances that there aren’t many many good ones I can match with are vanishingly small. Granted, the effort in finding them … that’s another story.

david38··on RFK Jr Will Be Confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services
These two things are orthogonal.

You can not be pro DEI and still find competent people. Just by the numbers, it’s possible.

To be “most unqualified” you can select from DEI or not, as any group will have horribly qualified people.

There are many in the medical field that aren’t DEI that care deeply about, and are knowledgeable about the major health issues in this country - vaccines, obesity, malnutrition, mental health, fertility, cancer, food supply (and its poor quality), environmental, activity, elder care, dementia, early childhood health care, just to name a few.

I am unaware of his qualifications to lead such an org, but at that level, he’s mostly a political talking head anyway. Still, I agree it’s quite bad. We’ll know in a few years the outcome.

All that said, “could not be more embarrassed for humanity and my country” - really? You think this is worse than the Great Depression when security forces were paid to guard piles of rotting fruit so the starving couldn’t eat them? The rise of the KKK? The horrors of the civil war?

Inflationary language might feel good, but its effect is it encourages the forgetting of worse things, increases internal conflict, and makes reconciliation and course correction even harder. So the next time you read how someone is “the worst” or a Nazi, ask yourself if you are truly aiming for the erasure of Nazi crimes and further fracturing of society or simply exaggerating to highlight a point. One person’s exaggeration becomes someone else’s truth.

david38··on A16Z hires acquitted former Marine Daniel Penny as an investor
They should. The practice of bankrupting people if you can’t get a conviction is a disgrace.

I know a few people this has happened to. Well off family, two doctor parents. Police get their panties up in a bunch over trying to look hard core, trump up charges, next thing you know they’re on the verge of losing everything. Even when being declared innocent and the newspaper publishing the criminal misconduct of the police, including the mysterious losing of evidence that would show their innocence.

david38··on Milei shuts down museums memorializing victims of Argentine dictatorship
So you live in Germany? I would say it’s important to for the government to fund memorials of atrocities if the government was responsible for them, even if it’s an entirely new government.
david38··on Stop Trying to Schedule a Call with Me
Anyone who doesn’t have their head up their ass would realize this.

Better to not tell them and just boycott them.

Those companies who don’t push the boundaries on how bad they can treat their (potential) customers deserve to be rewarded.

david38··on Americans Are Tipping Less Than They Have in Years
Why is ice cream not deserving but coffee is? Coffee isn’t carried out to the table.

For that matter, why are bartenders tipped? They can turn around a drink in seconds. That being said, I also tip bartenders

david38··on A three month review of kagi search and the orion web browser (2024)
Is $10 really expensive?

For most people, no. Can you think of $10/m you spend on something less important than search? A couple coffees, a sandwich, HBO, Netflix, a drink, using two gallons of gas recreationally, etc

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