Hacker News Reader

michtzikon Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?

The article at one point says "No two members of the 26-man roster play on the same club team" about the USMNT.

However, it seems that these two players both play for PSV Eindhoven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergi%C3%B1o_Dest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Pepi And also these two players both play for Borussia Mönchengladbach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Scally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Reyna

Is the article wrong? This is the only claim I bothered to check. Should I assume the rest is wrong, too?

michtzikon PM Carney declares U.S. ties now a 'weakness' in address to Canadians

> Canada honored its commitments.

Two decades ago: "in 2006, NATO Defence Ministers agreed to commit a minimum of 2% of their GDP to defence spending."

Canada has not remotely upheld this agreement.

michtzikon Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack

Literally all of your comparison events are so newsworthy that they have individual Wikipedia articles.

michtzikon EFF is leaving X

TFA mentions that EFF continues to post on Facebook and Instagram.

michtzikon Nasdaq's Shame

Who is contractually obligated to buy?

michtzikon If you tax them, will they leave?

> I explained that anything less than a progressive tax was going to make the poor pay more and the wealthy pay less.

Here's a formally-verified proof in Lean that with a flat tax, if you have more income, then you pay more tax: https://live.lean-lang.org/#codez=JYWwDg9gTgLgBAWQIYwBYBtgCM...

The theorem uses one important assumption: that the flat tax rate is positive.

michtzikon U.S. government has lost more than 10k STEM PhDs since Trump took office

Yup, this inspires great confidence in the source.

> 10,109 ... left their jobs

> departures outnumbered new hires last year by a ratio of 11 to one

That means that there were ~919 new hires, and thus it seems that 10,109 minus 919 equals

> a net loss of 4224

It appears that the "11 to one" ratio is the average, across agencies, of each individual ratio. It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether that average has any meaning at all.

michtzikon Recovering Anthony Bourdain's Li.st's

If you only eat it when you have a grandma that remembers how to make it, I would consider that the very definition of "traditional". And also interesting to hear about!

(But yea, perhaps not "everyone here eats" in that case. And yet, if everyone knew what it was -- even if it's "what grandma used to eat" -- I'd even let that slide. I don't eat what my grandparents ate, but I know more about it than a foreigner.)

michtzikon Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

Previously in the United States, schools taught "all men are created equal" to people that could see that they weren't being treated that way.

Similarly, today we teach the importance of "universal suffrage" to kids, an entirely disenfranchised class.

Apparently you think there are some characteristics of children that should disqualify them from voting. Others think similarly of other groups.

michtzikon Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It's Hiring High-School Grads

Of course this is just a snide remark that doesn't contribute to the conversation, but it can be interesting to dive deeper:

For example, why don't the kids themselves have the right to vote?

michtzikon YouTube says it'll bring back creators banned for Covid and election content

Looking at the flagged comments throughout this thread, perhaps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45354759 is the closest to being flag-killed for a different opinion.

michtzikon Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

The Caspian pipeline you mention (CPC) goes through ... Russia. And CPC Blend again blends in Russian oil.

So we find that, once again, Germany is buying "Kazakh" oil that is transported by Russia and mixed with Russian oil.

michtzikon Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

Here's a news story about how Druzhba supplies to Germany weren't particularly interrupted by recent attacks you may be alluding to: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-kazakh-oil-...

And here's KazTransoil themselves reporting how much they supplied through Druzhba recently: https://www.interfax.kz/?int_id=21&lang=eng&news_id=75303

> ASTANA. Sept 4 (Interfax-Kazakhstan) - The volume of Kazakh oil transportation to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline system in August of this year amounted to 190,000 tonnes, which is 18.7% higher than the level of July 2025, Interfax-Kazakhstan was informed by the national company KazTransOil (KTO).

michtzikon Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

Your parent comment is correct. Germany buys millions of tons of "Kazakh" oil via the Druzhba pipeline, arriving at the PCK refinery in Schwedt. This oil is "blended" with Russian oil, and in any case is transported by Russia.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kazakhstans-january-...

michtzikon Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

> I've never seen 2k+ comments nor posts about other shootings on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42370622

(also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 was even more discussed, but it was a stabbing)

michtzikon Calling your boss a dickhead is not a sackable offence, UK tribunal rules

What did she say?

michtzikon New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

B-29s dropped the atomic bombs. The B-29 project was also more expensive than the Manhattan project: > The $3 billion cost of design and production (equivalent to $52 billion in 2024), far exceeding the $1.9 billion cost of the Manhattan Project, made the B-29 program the most expensive of the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress

michtzikon Trump Orders National Guard to Washington and Takeover of Capital’s Police

I did some minimal searching for Seattle and explosions in 2020 and I found plenty of sources reporting on different supposed explosions, at different times and places (within Seattle). Seems perfectly plausible to me.

https://mynorthwest.com/local/peaceful-protests-planned-in-s...

https://projects.seattletimes.com/2020/local/protest-timelin...

https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/09/24/police-arrest-13-d... https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2020/07/26/officer-injuries-p...

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/07/28/44178586/so-what...

michtzikon NSF has suspended Terry Tao's grant

From Wikipedia right now:

2024: Trump 77,302,580

2020: Trump 74,223,975

michtzikon The fish kick may be the fastest subsurface swim stroke yet (2015)

I'm intrigued as to which comment this was supposed to be a reply to, and how it got here.

michtzikon ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral

For the reader curious why the woman in [0] didn't get permanent residency via marriage:

> Milne was divorced from the nonimmigrant student she married prior to 1983. She then married a U.S. citizen but we found, in our above-said unpublished opinion, that she had admitted that it was a marriage of convenience. After another divorce, she married her current husband, a marriage that is uncontested as "bona fide." Her request for legal permanent resident status based on this marriage was denied under INA § 204(c) which precludes approval based on even an admittedly good-faith union if the petitioner had previously contracted an improper marriage.

michtzikon Estrogen: A Trip Report

The study also doesn't include the successful suicides.

michtzikon The first big AI disaster is yet to happen

https://www.cpsc.gov/About-CPSC/Commissioner/Richard-Trumka/...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/business/gas-stove-ban-federa...

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/13/nx-s1-5003074/climate-gas-sto...

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-01-15/gas-stoves-...

michtzikon RFK Jr.: HHS moves to restore public trust in vaccines

Suppose you actually had some data to back up your comments, and you made a graph for "blindness caused by measles" over time. Do you have any reason to believe it wouldn't look just like the mortality rate graph linked above?

michtzikon The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

Some number of years ago, I looked at the map on this page and tried to find the eruv on the west side, near 14th St and a few streets below.

My conclusion was the eruv wasn't there (despite the green checkmark on the website), making this whole thing even more fun than people find it here! :)

michtzikon Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

The page I linked to has a top-level section called "Infertility". It has a table with a column called "1 or more births". The data in the table say that a positive proportion of those women are infertile.

As I said the first time, there's a sense in which such a woman can be infertile and it is NOT the sense your parent commenter means.

michtzikon Denmark to raise retirement age to 70

> What part of 1/6 the population don't you understand? Is this ignorance willful?

The 1/6 number is made up. Here's an example source: https://www.who.int/news/item/04-04-2023-1-in-6-people-globa...

The first red flag is they use the Newspeak "experience infertility".

If you look at the data sources, they're calling women (and men) with children "infertile": https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/key_statistics/i-keystat.htm

Obviously there's a sense in which a woman who's had children and now can't is "infertile" (though FAR more than one-sixth of women experience menopause). But it's not the sense being used by you and your parent commenter in this thread.

michtzikon The group chats that changed America

The FIRE Campus Deplatforming Database claims to collect 769 successful deplatforming attempts.

michtzikon Manufactured consensus on x.com

https://www.foxnews.com/world/spanish-politician-suspended-b...

michtzikon The Truth about Atlantis (2019)

> nobody is perplexed about how they moved stones

Plenty of people, including myself, are perplexed about how they moved stones. Specifically, how 60--80 ton stones were moved up.