julesqs

sure. Not making excuses for any business decisions by newspaper management, just pointing out that that their criticism of the tech industry isn't out of character with a company that also is hostile their own workers' union.

the editorial bias from management of NYT has always been skeptical of Google and Facebook and perhaps all of big tech because big tech was a threat to their business. Most newspapers in the US have been hollowed out because of social media and the tech industry, NYT ironically has not because they hired a real in house tech team that has kept their paper relevant.

But that doesn't mean they like paying their tech workers any more than any other management. It's just about money. Big tech is a threat to management's profits, just like workers demanding better salaries is a threat to management's profits.

to be fair i would guess that a lot of the engineers there are also stuck because of visa issues. plenty of sychophants too i’m sure.

you don't think there are exceptions to the formula of LSAT/GPA? who do you think those exceptions are made for?

very funny to write an article about the crisis in the legal system without addressing how it is a pretty good example of almost complete elite capture by a few top law schools whose admissions are far from meritocratic. Or talking about Steven Donziger vs Chevron, a case so shameful the UN Commission on Human Rights has called for his release. Or talking about the basic truth of the US legal system, where the wealthiest can nearly always afford to win a civil case just through a war of attrition by hiring incredibly expensive lawyers while the bottom 50% of America could never hope to hire one lawyer.

But I don't expect much else from Bari Weiss' publication, where the scariest thing in the world is always some college kids that asked each other their pronouns or something. Why is this even on HN

more than ten tweets from Sam in this thread and he doesn't mention that public colleges used to be essentially free, but now cost enough to put students into crippling debt. And the last tweet seems to suggest he thinks the remedy is a for profit alternative. The libertarian privatization gene is strong at YC

I'm curious what people here think of all the healthcare startups that many of you likely get recruiter emails from regularly. Aside from the ethical questions of making money in the American healthcare system, a lot of them would likely have a vested interest in that healthcare status quo to an extent right? If something like Medicare for All happened, it would upend so much of the system (in a good way in my opinion) that a lot of these companies might have to pivot massively. It's enough to make me just not want to work in that sector.

Not saying this applies to all healthcare startups. There's a lot of "luxury" healthcare companies that would likely be fine because their customers are high paying companies that would still want it as a recruiting tool.

wild how different the prices are, but I guess that's what happens when a lot of buildings only have one or two providers. No fios available for me, but I'm paying $70/month for optimum "up to 300 download, up to 35 upload". Usually on speedtests I'm usually getting 15%-20% lower than that.

edit for context: in brooklyn

you get that price in NYC?

a coalition of groups in New York City is also pushing for a municipal broadband option: https://internetforall.nyc/

yeah I live in New York and I definitely went to more protests this summer because they were happening literally right outside my apartment than I would have if I had to deal with driving and finding parking (probably hard if it's a big protest).

I think generally American style suburban sprawl decreases social capital just because you're more isolated, and that includes protests. I think mask wearing is another example.

I mean we do have PBS, we just underfund it relative to something like the BBC. We probably also don't have as strong of political norms around not politicizing it so it's inevitable that someone like Trump does.

did paul graham really just imply that himself and his fellow silicon valley millionaires would have been abolitionists if they were alive during slavery

I'm being downvoted too lol, politics on HN are so ridiculous.

do you not remember when all of cancel police on twitter got mad at Bernie for accepting Rogan's endorsement in the primary? he can call himself whatever he wants that doesn't mean it's true.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/24/politics/bernie-sanders-joe-r...

"Rogan, a libertarian-leaning broadcaster with a public persona in the mold of Howard Stern"

I think the "wide spectrum" part is really important. I'm on the far left by American standards and Rogan still has a lot of interviews that interest me even though I think he's more traditionally associated with conservative-ish or libertarian-ish views.

right right, it was confusing to me that they mentioned COBRA but it does sound like Airbnb is paying, which is good.

oh I might be confused about the COBRA situation actually. I can't tell if Airbnb is actually paying for COBRA.

aside from that, assuming that non-engineers get paid better at Airbnb than elsewhere is a big assumption.

ah you might be right. wording confused me.

it's generous by startup standards, but laid off kickstarter employees are getting an even better deal because they unionized: four months full pay for everyone, up to six months of paid (not COBRA healthcare), recall rights if the jobs open back up, release from non competes

https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871

for everyone praising the severance package, laid off employees at kickstarter are getting even more severance and full healthcare (not COBRA) because they unionized: https://twitter.com/ksr_united/status/1256382357311012871

it's really rich to read a blog post from someone at YC wishing "the federal government was doing much more". YC and the extended universe of VCs have spent years providing an intellectual facade to undermine confidence in a centralized government, public funding of critical services, and promoting the profit motive in places like healthcare.

The past decade in America has seen the dominance of the capitalist tech utopians like Paul Graham, and we are seeing the results. For god's sake Peter Thiel was working with YC barely two years ago and now Sam wants to complain that the federal government isn't prepared to respond to crises?? what a joke.

The sentence that I posted is false, not biased. There is a difference.

it's always a bummer to see pseudo intellectual libertarian garbage on HN. I'll just point out this line, starting off the third paragraph:

> Wages are not determined by years of schooling but by the supply and demand for skills.

Teachers are public sector employees. There is no market, so this is just untrue (yes yes private schools but this article is about public school teachers). Wages for teachers are determined by politicians that are elected by voters.

This is stupid fucking article trying to justify teachers not even being paid middle class wages and it shouldn't be on the front page.

some new public housing, massive amounts of market rate construction that is currently prevented by NIMBY soning, increased minimum wage, better public schools, universal healthcare and better union protections should do the trick.

I literally run a YIMBY blog but cool.

> they need to figure out how to move

no, they don't.

You need to consider that telling people to leave the geographic area that is their family home is a shitty response. You need to consider whether, perhaps, there are government policies that can help these people. You need to consider whether sneering at poor people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps makes you a shitty person.

Also how is a single working mother going to have time to learn to fix her own car? you're on another planet right now.

you're not addressing the people in article at all. It literally references a single mother that works in kitchens and you're complaining about upper middle class people that sneer at Nebraska? what's wrong with you?

People live where jobs are, and a lot of them have reasons to stay in the Bay. She has children and a life. She's not a fucking software engineer that can just pick and move.

this is such a bad take. the point of public transit is not to get enough people to ride it so the system is profitable. do we expect roads to be profitable? they aren't, even if you say "the gas tax".

and lol at heavy rail can't meet needs that cars can. A single subway line in New York can carry 60k people _in each direction_ at peak capacity. Autonomous cars are years away and will never achieve that efficiency just because of space.

For everyone saying Trump is not authoritarian and Thiel is just some flavor of eccentric Libertarian, Thiel says very clearly in the first paragraph of his essay at Cato that "freedom and democracy are incompatible"[1]. Thiel's version of freedom does not involve American democracy as we currently practice it, and I think it's reasonable to assume that he hopes Trump agrees with him.

[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...