koolba

> There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

Sure. But let’s get rid of all early voting and mail in balloting. No excuses right? Throw in voter id too.

> We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.

I never quite understand why mandatory participation is a meaningful goal. If people are neither informed nor interested, why do you want them to have a say at all? At best they’ll be picking a last name that sounds pronounceable. Or going with whichever first name sounds more (or less!) male.

> Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.

We already strip them of their freedom of movement. Why do you want everyone up to and including rapists, pedophiles, and murders voting? Is there a particular voting bloc that you think would add value with their point of view?

> Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state.

I’m generally for this though there are a bit of logistics when you’re dealing with preprinted paper ballots and some expectations of processing quantity. Prior registration also addresses people showing up at the wrong polls in advance.

> But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen.

Not always a bad thing either. If all it took was the stroke of an executive’s pen, you’d see a lot of things I bet you would not be fond of rather soon.

> But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results.

The electoral college is a feature. It forces you to win across large and small States.

> That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place.

Lower courts. The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

> They started cooking because feeding the family of 5 at McDonalds cost close to $80.

How much would they eat from McDonald’s? And what size appetite are the kids?

Fast food has definitely gone up in price, but if you’re spending $80 at McDonalds you’re either a glutton or you don’t know what to order.

A “Big Mac Bundle Box” is $15-20 depending on region. It has two Big Macs, two Cheeseburgers, two fries, and a 10-piece nuggets.

If three of the five are kids (vs say 16+ boys lifting weights), I’d be curious how two of those wouldn’t feed the entire family for $30-40.

I’m not suggesting cooking at home is a bad thing nor that eating McD is a good one. But the details matter when you’re spending 2x more than it could be.

Or they beat your loved ones in front of you. No physical damage or misremembering passwords due to blunt force trauma to the noggin.

“So how did you scam that guy out of all his money?”

“Easy! I sent him a one line email that told his AI agent to send me all of his money.”

> Waymo said its robotaxi struck the child at six miles per hour, after braking “hard” from around 17 miles per hour. The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post. Waymo said its vehicle “immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle.”

As this is based on detection of the child, what happens on Halloween when kids are all over the place and do not necessarily look like kids?

$100K in 20 years is worth about $37K today (20 year STRIPS pay about 5%). Nobody is making long term or short term financial plans based on this. It’s just a nice bonus to honor dedication to a sport.

There are two separate needs here. One is a language that can be used for computation where the code will be discarded. Only the output of the program matters. And the other is a language that will be eventually read or validated by humans.

> The classic example here is what happens when someone is being stalked by an abusive ex-partner who works in law enforcement and has access to those databases.

There’s a world of difference between a government using legally collected data for multiple purposes and an individual abusing their position purely for personal reasons.

Slamming the brakes and going teeth first into the handlebars.

You probably can’t repair it yourself either.

> AT&T’s policy allows unlocking of phones on postpaid plans after 60 days if the device has been paid in full, or after six months for phones on prepaid plans. T-Mobile’s policy allows unlocking of phones on postpaid plans after 40 days if the device has been paid in full, or after 365 days for phones on prepaid plans.

If the phone is paid in full, what is the justification for not unlocking it?

What is the actual assignment here?

The README only gives numbers without any information on what you’re supposed to do or how you are rated.

> One of the questions of the 2026 acx prediction contest is whether Nvidia’s stock price will close below $100 on any day in 2026.

Maybe I’m missing something, but isn’t this just a standard American put option with a strike of $100 and expiry of Dec 31st?

It’s hard to put an exact number but it’s on the order of $500-1000 billion daily.

So a drop in the bucket, but we’ll have to see if it’s a domino.

> And Trump did what, exactly, make something already illegal even more illegal?

That’s the best part! There’s no new laws necessary. We’re simply enforcing the laws on the books and means of enforcement that we as a nation have already agreed upon!

> And now that you are ruled by a de facto fascist with the rule of law only applicable to his enemies, how is the payoff? On the upside, illegal immigration is no longer a primary concern, I guess.

I fail to see how a democratically elected President that won both the electoral college and the popular vote is a “de facto fascist”.

> Better to let everything be run by cartels instead, surely they will have your best interests at heart. There's not a single example of a functional and effective government out there, so why even try?

There’s plenty of examples of functional governments and plenty of dysfunctional ones. There’s functional programs and dysfunctional ones.

And just because something may work for a small homogenous population in close proximity of each other doesn’t mean it would work or make sense for a heterogeneous population spread across thousands of miles.

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious.

I’m adamantly against all forms of illegal immigration. There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration.

I’m in favor of doing whatever we can to increase our manufacturing base for the future. I’m perfectly fine with paying more for imported goods that I don’t actually buy anyway. Paying 95% for crap from China that I have no intention of purchasing does not impact me.

I hate all taxes and do not consider it charitable to spend other people’s money. Taxes are a necessity as we need to fund government functions. But it is those functions that should be limited. Because government is generally terrible at most of them.

> A billionaire congressional candidate can’t just send a check to Quinnipiac University and suddenly find himself as the polling front-runner, but he can place enormous Polymarket bets on himself that move the odds in his favor.

Maybe not with a specific pollster depending on their scruples, but you can definitely pay to be part of the poll. And that’s the first step to getting any stats whatsoever.

> I cannot recall Obama doing one single thing for peace internationally? Which conflict did he help stop?

It's an interesting choice for sure. In 2009, he had only killed 50-100 civilians via drone strike by the time they awarded the prize. And he didn't kill US citizens via drone strike abroad until 2011.

Being realistic about things, it's because he was black.

Even if that happened I don’t think the USA would have a shot at the trophy.

Framing all of us who voted for and support the President’s actions as ignorant is lazy and inaccurate. There’s plenty of us that objectively analyzed the state of the country, the state of the world, and agree with the vast majority of these actions.

Just wait till these whippersnappers find out about man page.

> The problem with "let the parents decide" is that if all other kids in the neighborhood have phones and are on social media then unless you want your kid to grow up with no friends you don't have a choice but to let your kid also use social media.

This is why you find a circle of friends and like mind neighbors who raise their kids in a manner that makes you comfortable. It’s never 1:1, but it doesn’t have to be you against the entire world either. (Though it can certainly feel like that at times)

> Back to the stock market.

It’s a very different calculus when nominal bonds are paying 5% and TIPS are paying 2.6% above inflation.

The nowhere to go but the stocks holds more water when the ten year was paying 0.55%.

The real way to use this site is to be the one that makes it and then measure the pause between user clicks. The longer the pause, the more worthwhile the idea. So the “users” are really your compute engine.

Reminds me of Lincoln being called "two-face" by Douglas and replying “If I had another face, do you think I'd wear this one?”

Self deprecation can indeed be disarming. But it must never cross the point of eliminating self respect. That's when you go from easy going to pure loser.

> icloudpd/icloudpd:latest

Passing your raw iCloud creds into the unverified latest tag is fine until it’s not. Better to pin to a specific tag or hash.

The two word description for iceberg lettuce is “crunchy water”. Works great when you want the crunch and nothing else. So perfect for sandwiches or a classic wedge salad where you are tasting the bacon and blue cheese.

People who think it can be used for a “real” salad are usually same ones that think that tomatoes are supposed to be tasteless too.

How long till one of the LLMs makes calls out to the other LLMs to evaluate how to play the hand?

> and doesn't make everything it touches taste like beef.

That last one is not necessarily a bad thing. You haven’t truly had popcorn till you’ve had beef tallow popcorn.