jjav

> without a major cultural and legal shift in the US

The legal shift is the key part. We've now discovered that the US has a very well thought-out separation of powers on paper, but it only exists on paper. There is no enforcement mechanism if a president decides none of that applies to them and they can role-play dictator. That means every future president can also do the same. So there is no way to trust anything the US says or does.

Unless there is a major constitutional reform soon that assures in absolute terms that no future president can ever overstep their constitutional authority. This is the legal reform necessary for any other country to ever trust the US.

> What would even be the point?

The point is harassment, and trying to trick you into some perceived lie so they can detain you. The US is friendly like that.

Would be the cheapest LLM to train, it simply would not respond to anything, ever.

Yes, rms was always correct. Freedom must never take a backseat to convenience or this is how it ends.

> Google is notoriously bad at customer support

Had to LOL at that understatement. Google invented the ultra-aggressively non-existent customer support model.

> I'm arguing that the fair value of boring companies making reliable things should be much higher.

In theory (occasionally in practice) when you purchase a stock you are purchasing a piece of the future cash flow of that company. For a company which operates in a known environment and we can roughly predict how their revenue will grow (i.e. boring companies), the correct fair value of the stock can be easily computed.

So, no, those predictable companies should not be valued much higher, they are already valued correctly because the are no big surprises in their future, the profits and revenue are predictable.

This logic breaks down with companies where the growth can't be predicted to any reasonable accuracy. So in those you're just buying the hype, which sometimes turns out to be real, sometimes not.

Unfortunately this also incentivizes some companies to pump themselves purely on hype so they never get valued on actual revenue and profit. Tesla is a prime example of this. If you value them as a car company we can easily compute a fair value, but that number is very low. So, instead, robots! AI! self-driving! Space! That keeps the fair value an unknown, so it can ride the wave of hype for a long time.

> The total market cap

Market cap is not a useful comparison because it can (as here) be driven by hype.

A better comparison is revenue and profit, that tells us a lot more about the business each is operating.

Have not owned a tesla, but have had three EVs in the family. All three new cars. All of the EVs have spent way more days at the dealership than any of my ICE cars of the last 30+ years.

> UNIX was an extremely niche operating system until Linux won the data center

UNIX was ubiquitous in the data center well before Linus even posted his first version of Linux on USENET.

Everything ran on SunOS, HP-UX, IRIX, AIX, etc.

> It got a lot of hate for the moderation

I can say that easily over 90% (pretty close to 100%) of the most useful answers I would find in stackoverflow back in the day, were from questions/threads that were locked as bad questions (forget what term they used) by those horrible moderators.

It was literally a joke. Every good question with thoughful useful answers, was always poo poo'ed by the moderators.

The only reason stackoverflow remained useful is that those questions and threads remained available and were a treasure trove of useful information. If they'd actually deleted the threads moderators declared useless, there would have been zero useful content on the site.

It is really a monument to failed moderation policies.

> So housing in NJ is more affordable than in CA.

I don't know if it changes the result significantly, but remember the NJ has very high property taxes, more than double of California. So mortgage cost alone does not paint the full picture.

This is more significant for seniors, who likely have a paid-off home so their main expense is property tax. So being a fixed-income senior with a home is likely more affordable in California than in NJ. The worst thing after retirement is cost increases when you no longer have a salary that goes up with inflation.

> If only this were true, we wouldn't have homeowners constantly fighting against new development or construction. Many homeowners treat their primary residence as an investment.

You'll be very hard pressed to find any home owner who actually thinks in this cartoonish way.

When people oppose changing the character of their home neighborhood it has nothing to do with "treating their primary residence as an investment". It is because they selected a place to live, to call home, based on some criteria that they liked. Everyone does. A home is a big commitment, so you spend a lot of time researching exactly where you want to settle down for the next many decades. You pick an area you like, a neighborhood you enjoy.

For some people that might be quite rural, for some people distant suburban, for others near-city suburban, for others inner-city center. Whichever type of area you select, it is because that's the kind of area you personally enjoy the most. Somehow this obvious truth is controversial on HN for reasons I don't understand, but it is the truth. People select what makes them happy, no surprise.

So, when people oppose seeing their suburban area torn down to build highrises, it has absolutely nothing to do with home values or investments.

People oppose it because they very intentionally chose to live in a suburb far away from highrises and now they see those imposed on them. Of course they're unhappy. Basic human nature, nothing to do with investments.

If someone feels this is not so, I'd appreciate an explanation of your viewpoint.

I have the numbers right here. Monthly payment went up from $2455 to $2465. So that's $10.

This is not from a press release or news article, it's from the actual check that got deposited monthly.

> Rent is a function of supply and demand, not a landlord's costs

Only in one direction. If that rent, based on supply and demand, does not cover all of the owner's costs (+profit) then that rental property simply disappears off the market. No owner is going to rent out at a loss, so either the renter is paying for all expenses (+profit), or they get kicked out.

This assumes a house is nothing but an investment, like a bunch of stock.

This is far from reality. A home is family and life to most people, nobody cares if it went up or down in value, a home is about our life.

Yes, this is the actual issue with Prop-13. That makes no sense at all.

Protecting retirees from getting kicked out of their lifelong homes is a wonderful thing.

But then allowing corporations to take advantage of that is insane.

> Retirees are not on fixed income and haven't been for decades. Social Security gets adjusted for inflation.

Tell me you're not a retiree on social security (or know any) without telling me...

Social security gets adjusted up a very tiny percentage of actual inflation. Watching my elder parent go through this while managing their finances, I'm very aware.

> And California has an income tax, whereas Texas doesn't.

Which isn't just a few percent but around ~10% (depending on income).

> Most people are on social security, which is inflation adjusted.

Right. Technically. And I have a bridge to sell you!

I was managing all the finances of one of my parents until they passed away. In 2022 inflation peaked at ~9%

That same year, their social security monthly payment went up by..... $10

That for sure covered all the rising costs (/s)

> being displaced at the end of your life out of the home you already paid off due to market forces you aren't even a participant in is actually widely unpopular even if it makes better economic sense

Whether it makes economic sense or not, it is extremely inhumane and that matters (or should matter) far more.

This idea that it is ok to kick out (via taxes) someone who spent 40 or 50 years contributing to society just so someone else can make more profit on their home is very sad.

The oligarchs are above all laws. Happens to be that all the AI companies are owned by oligarchs. So they are above the law.

In a world where the rule of law makes sense and applies, you're absolutely correct.

In this world where oligarchs are immune from everything, it's a lot less clear.

Blaming OpenAI (or Claude or X-whatever) would mean blaming powerful rich people, so that will never happen. Some poor person with no influence will go to jail instead.

One has to wonder if we're seeing something like this with Mitch McConnell. It sure looks creepy.

There was never a time when Netscape Navigator, Mozilla or Firefox were not fully supported on Solaris (earlier, also SunOS).

When Netscape Navigator first came out eary/mid-90s I ran it on SunOS while working at a Sun shop, it always worked perfectly.

By the time the Netscape browser was open sourced in 1998 I was working at Sun and running it on Solaris, always worked perfectly. I attended the open sourcing party Netscape held in San Francisco, still have the autographed CD with the very first open source release source code. Netscape paid for buses from Silicon Valley to SF for people to attend the party. Fun times!!

In 1999 the Sun|Netscape alliance happened, AOL took the consumer software part including the browser and Sun continued the server product development under iPlanet brand. For a while I worked in the Netscape campus that year, and I continued working on iPlanet servers for years after that. Since the browser code had been open sourced, development continued outside AOL becoming Mozilla and later Firefox. Always first class on Solaris.

Firefox branding happened much later (wikipedia says 2004). Still working perfectly on Solaris. Only browser I ever ran, always on Solaris, until the bitter end (oracle lawnmower in 2010).

So yes I can confidently say it always ran perfectly on Solaris (SunOS in early years), having been there through all this and have fond memories of it all.

> highlighted the relative power of Sun's engineering

This is one of the top reasons I loved and love Sun. Truth, engineering, had power.

I've never experienced this in any company since Sun.

The top was ~$120 or so. Ask me how I know ;-(

> circa 2005

> I wasn't able to get Mozilla to build

You must be misremembering something. Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox had always tier one support on Solaris. You had nothing to build, just download and run, with perfect compatibility.

I only ever ran Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox browser (and still today in 2026). My desktops and servers were all Solaris from mid-90s to 2012 or so. Never a hiccup running the Netscape family browsers (and servers too).

If a truck is getting, say, 12MPG it is paying a lot more in per-gallon taxes than a car getting 40MPG. So yes.

(Trucks also pay higher registration fees, but that's separate)

> Are you sure they even will want it back? Might be better to just donate it all now and save the money.

At 20-something after college, no, they probably don't want it.

When they are 40 or 50, they will desperately want it back.

> and to wish I had more of his things to help me feel closer to him

Yes. When one is young it is difficult to appreciate this, but later in middle age this becomes very precious. Store everything, your future self will be happier for it.