programmertote

FBI ignored a tip/report I filed about the corrupted residency program director at one of the biggest (probably the biggest in NY metro area because they accept like 30+ PGY-1 residency spots each year) training hospitals in Brooklyn, NY. It is well known in the medical community that if one wants to get into that residency program, one needs to approach a woman who has a good connection with the program director. Then one must pay up and get accepted in the residency program (from the rumors, I hear that it costs about $60K). I shared FBI the Facebook profile of the woman and the name of the program director along with other detailed information that I knew. It was enough information for any ambitious FBI agent to start investigating and easily catch the corruption (residency application cycle is short; it starts in September and last until about January/Feburary and one can easily track the communications between that lady and the program director). I also told them that they can contact me if they want more details.

I presume they receive thousands of reports like mine, so my tip/report was probably ignored. I wonder how many people are tasked to filter such reports at FBI and how many credible tips slipped through the cracks.

I can confirm about the rising property insurance rates. My Travelers home owners' insurance (for my two bed-room apartment) has risen up by ~11% from last year. In the past years, it was just about 3-4% YoY increase. When I asked them, they answered that part of the increase is to protect for the inflation. Inflation hurts everyone especially for people who will not see a lot of increase in their paychecks. It also seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy and I personally believe it'll be sticky (meaning, YoY inflation much higher than 2% will be with us for quite a while).

Myanmar military (which receives/buys arms from Russia mostly) is using the same tactic to squash the civilian uprising lately. They formed an armed "civilian" group called "Pyu-Saw-Htee" (one of the heroes in Myanmar's early history) and have these guys kill and arrest civilians who fight against the military rule. The military seem to think that they can avoid the blame from international observers when time comes, yet kill and jail as many civilians as they want.

I commented similar before. Starting a couple of months ago, I noticed that four slices of the bread, which I buy every week and used to overflow an IKEA FÄRGKLAR plate, now fits perfectly within the circumference of the plate.

I also bought some Nongshim’s Neoguri ramen packets from Amazon a few days ago and received it yesterday. I paid slightly higher than I used to, but more importantly, I can tell that the size of the noodle in each pack has shrunk because I have left over packets that I bought from last year.

I subscribe to this channel on YouTube and thought it's pretty helpful. But the content creator just uploaded this video today and I figure I should share this on HN for visibility (in the hope that someone from Google will see this and can do something to help).

Thank you for sharing this nifty work of yours. I wonder if it's possible to give a score based on all-year-round and a few specific criteria that the user care about.

For example, I personally found that I'm the most comfortable when the temperature is 23-26 C and humidity around 30-40%. If I could search for cities in the US which meets the above criteria (temperature and humidity) for as many month as possible in a year, that'd be a very useful addition to this already-impressive work.

Again, this is just a suggestion in case you pick this up again to develop more features. :) Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for sharing your experience with Kia. If you don't mind me asking--how long have you had it?

Thank you for sharing your experience with Hyundai/Kia. I'll definitely keep that in mind when I decide to buy a car in the future (I unfortunately would have to buy one if I were to move to suburb some day...)

Thank you for sharing your experience with Hyundai. I'm seriously considering buying Hyundai car IF I were to buy a car in the future. :)

Just out of curiosity, do you like your Kia? I see that cars from Korean manufacturers tend to be very competitive in terms of pricing and/or feature. But I am not sure if they are as reliable compared to, say, Japanese cars.

An anecdote of why I'm asking -- I have Samsung dishwasher, for example, and it broke less than two years for very, very minimal use (I use it like once every two weeks). Based on that experience and having owned a Samsung galaxy phone that slowed down significantly after about 2-3 years (again, I installed almost no apps other than essential ones like Gmail and a couple of bank apps), I am not sure if Korean manufacturing has matured enough for me to consider buying a car made by one of the Korean manufacturers. This is, of course, not to diss on Korean manufacturers. Just wanted to explain why I am asking this question to begin with.

Is there a service you used to do that? If so, could you please share?

I am thinking of moving out in about a year and I would love to donate my belongings to someone in less-developed world instead of donating it to places like Goodwill (and I'm afraid that they'll send most of my donation to landfill)

It seems like there are quite a lot of relatives/family members of doctors on HN. My wife is a doctor (and she hates most f what she sees in the way the medical field is run/operating these days), but I try to be impartial about judging them. The general emotion toward doctors on HN or any other Reddit forums is like they can't do no wrong or they are not evil or that they are smart (smarter than average) people (example that I just ran across today on Reddit's front page: https://i.redd.it/bjhk6ozyj7x61.jpg). That assumption/belief is very different from the reality. After observing and hearing so many stories about doctors (I have quite a lot of doctor friends/acquaintances in the US), my conclusion is that most of them are complicit in some of the things that is wrong with the US medical system these days.

A quick anecdote - my wife used to volunteer at a clinic in Chinatown. The doctor always get invites for lunch/dinner from medicine companies and she'd sometimes invite my wife to attend. I was extended an invite to one of them (the doctor knows me via my wife). It was hosted by a rep from Sanofi for the staff of the entire clinic (about 6 people) plus their SOs (including myself and the doctor's husband). There were a total of ~10 people at the dinner and the doctor gets to pick the restaurant so she picked one of the most expensive hotpot restaurants in Chinatown. We ordered lots of grade A beef slices and other expensive goodies. The rep, who is white, curried favors with the doc and the nurses/staff members all evening (to the point that I felt cringe at one point when she says something like this to an asian nurse, "I really like your Asian skin and hair; it's so smooth and glowing"). My estimate is that the dinner bill came out to at least $2000. That dinner, according to the doctor, happens every year with this particular company. Of course, I had to sign on a sheet (roll-call if you will) to acknowledge that I attended the dinner (I presume it's for the rep to reclaim expenses). I can only imagine how much/many drugs from Sanofi that the doctor is prescribing to her patients throughout the year.

Another anecdote - my host-family mom is a psychiatrist (the doctor type; not the other psychiatrist kind). She worked for a private mental institution near Philadelphia. There, they have about 20 mentally-challenged patients, 4-5 nurses and my host-family mom. I have accompanied her to there a couple of times and spent ~6 hours while she was touring and meeting with the patients. Both times, a rep from a medicine company brought lunch for the host-family mom and all the staff. Once was just pizza. Another time was some sort of sandwich and stuff. According to my host-family mom, that's pretty typical and they have about two or so such lunch from medicine company reps every week.

Anecdotally agree 100% with this. I notice that the grocery prices for food that I typically purchase have either risen noticeably (by as much as 12% for certain Asian food items) and/or are suffering from shrinkflation (e.g., when I make breakfast for me and my wife, I was not able to fit four bread slices on an IKEA plate that I use at home; but starting a couple of weeks ago, the bread slices--same brand and still paid the same price of $1.50/bag--now fit perfectly on the IKEA plate and this is not just because of the abnormally small batch of bread. I have bought bread two weeks in a row to know for sure that the sizes have shrunk).

Somewhat related question: where/how did you acquire that data? I have been meaning to run some simulations on the S&P 500 historical daily closing data, but I can't seem to find a place that provides the data covering for the last 40-50 years.

Thanks in advance for your answer!

100% this. As a supporter of Manchester United 35 years, I get the upset toward this Super League plan. But I, on the other hand, couldn't look away at the fact that UEFA is trying to expand Champions League participant list in 2023-2024 in ways that are questionable. This is not to mention that football (soccer) has become very mercenary in the three decades that I've been supporting.

Just look at the players' transfer fees, agent fees and weekly salaries. Where are all these money coming from to pay for such inflated expenses? In the end, it is us, the average football fans, who end up paying for all this greed (I pay $40/month in cable to get NBC sports to watch SOME of Manchester United's English Premier League games; $5/month to watch Peacock, which is owned by NBC, to watch SOME of Manchester United games in Premier League; $6 to ESPN Plus for FA cup; and finally $6/month for CBS Sports, which has now become Paramount+, to watch Manchester United in Champions League, which is what the super league is trying to supplant). These fees will only keep increasing every two years or so. Of course, I do not live in England and if I do, I might end up buying match day tickets, which could easily cost me ~$100 a game. If I buy a Manchester United jersey (not including the shorts), it costs ~$120 (it used to cost $90 ~4 years ago when I last bought one).

So yeah, it's greed all around (after all, we live in a capitalistic society) and UEFA doesn't have much to hold itself over the super league group to taut its virtues in my opinion.

I don't own a Surface laptop, but my sister bought a Surface Pro (2 or 3, I'm not sure) a couple of years ago. She has already replaced the original charging adapters twice. The batteries also don't work unless they are plugged in. I think she also complains about wifi connectivity issues.

I thought Surface devices are built well, but after seeing my sister struggle with her Surface Pro, I have decided to not take the risk.

Somewhat related - pots made out of the earth/clay are very good at keeping the temperature cool. I wish we see more of them being used in western countries.

I remember my family in Myanmar storing water in big pots made out of clay like this one [https://images.app.goo.gl/hG4bDGtn34QhmdxP8]. The water that is stored there is super cold and very refreshing for summer use. People use similar, but smaller pots for storing drinking water in parts of the streets so that anyone can take a sip if they are thirsty: https://images.app.goo.gl/hG4bDGtn34QhmdxP8

I wonder if my country, which is now undergoing a brutal military coup, still makes such pots these days....

I agree. It goes both ways. I think the above commenter is either a Chinese or an empathizer. I recent had a back-and-forth conversation with someone from China on Reddit and it really surprised me that the person seems to think his government's actions are all good/fair: https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/m535p0/at_least_...

A few of my friends from Myanmar are descendants of Chinese families, they say that whenever they read Chinese online forums, they see this selfish/apathetic approach (only my business/my money/my family/my race matters) again and again. I think a lot of people in China are brainwashed to see both sides and they are now conditioned to take the side of "the west is always blaming us" (which is partly true, but partly false as all things go in life).

Thank you. The Myanmar military is no different than ISIS militia in that they have makeshift trucks loaded with guns and they roam around the city shooting anyone randomly on sight. I have made a comment with the pictures as an example here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26562272].

One thing you could do is to raise awareness about this and maybe donate, if you can, or support these groups: https://www.mutualaidmyanmar.org/ https://www.justiceformyanmar.org/

Most Myanmar people are hoping that there will be some UN peacekeeping troops so that the military cannot just load up machine guns on the truck (e.g., https://scontent.fewr1-5.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/163001326_10...) and shoot people randomly (e.g., NSFW image of a 7-year old boy shot and killed today https://scontent.fewr1-6.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/163537200_24...).

I personally don't trust in UN and don't think of them as an effective organization.

I have replied to someone who asked similar question [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561860]. Hope this is helpful. Please talk to local/native workers of the organization (not as a stranger because they may not tell you everything at first) and see what their grievances are about the NGO that they are working for.

I would say one has to volunteer as a native person (not a foreigner who usually "oversees" the projects and operations there) to see how lazy and incompetent the people there are. For example, the country director is usually not in the office (in my three months of volunteering there, I saw her maybe twice; mind you, she is not traveling to the project sites because we have logs showing exactly who is traveling where at what time), but she would show up though at the social events like the party hosted by the US embassy or the high-class society there.

The pay disparity is very stark between foreign directors/managers vs. the local/native managers who actually have to do the grunt work. The foreigners are provided with very good housing allowance (my mom rent her home and she always says her dream is to rent it to a foreigner from an NGO because they pay the most money), car+driver, education support for their kids, plus a annual salary of $100K+ (that was 2004 when I volunteered) which is very good for the amount of work she actually puts in. In contrast, the average local/native manager's annual salary in the office ranges between $4000 and $6000 (maybe at most 2-3 local managers earned $6000 per year when I volunteered there).

In my opinion, the foreign managers/directors never took the time to understand what the local population needs and make decisions on what projects to do based on their biases (and what will look good for photo-op). They sit in their air-conditioned offices or houses and do bare minimum. The most important thing for them is to look good in front of donors and to be able to move to a better country (new country director arrives every 2-3 years). Since donation is important to them, they spend more time soliciting money than actually doing the job.

Please always keep in mind that these NGOs and UNGOs live off of donations and the more conflicts/issues they can conjure in the photos/news/media, the better it is for them. I volunteered at World Concern and World Vision as well. Same experience. My sister worked at a French NGO called ACTED [https://www.acted.org/en/] for 2+ years as a logistics and administrative staff. Same experience. That's why I never trust anything that the NGOs say and I always donate directly to local NGOs/groups.

Thank you. I worry very much about my mother and everyone there. Today, the military just wantonly shot and killed a 7-year old girl who was sitting on her grandpa's lap. The military is doing what it can to intimidate citizens.

For anyone interested, this site documents SOME of the business interests of the military junta and its cronies.

https://data.justiceformyanmar.org/

It always has been a powerless organization. I'm a Myanmar citizen and I grew up thinking naively that one day, the UN would come and free us from the military dictatorship. It never happened and I eventually got scholarships to study in the US. Before I left for the US, I learned more about the UN and how its affiliated NGOs work/function (e.g., UNICEF) when volunteering at a couple of NGOs that work with the UN. Since then, my impression on UN has never been lower.

Now that the military coup happened a couple of months ago, and seeing the UN being the same old, I am not surprised. Most of Myanmar people, including my mother who is living there, are pinning their hopes on the UN to save them from this coup. I feel really sorry for them about believing in such a false hope.

I sincerely hope someone from Apple sees this post on HN and escalate this to resolve the issue.

I'm a Myanmar citizen and I have my mother and other relatives living with fear there. The only way I can talk to my mother every day (to check in and see if she is okay) through internet VoIP calls (e.g., we use Viber and sometimes, Messenger if it's not overloaded/slow) is via VPN. I just realized that it's very likely ProtonVPN that she has been using (She refers to it as the 'VPN'. She is not a tech-savvy person, but the tech-savvy people there shared info via Facebook so she was able to figure out how to use the VPN to get around the internet restrictions).

I'm 100% for doing everything we can to reducing the environmental impact of ICEs. I try to live minimally and reuse everything I can everyday to reduce my personal (negative) impact on the environment.

With that said, I can't help but wonder if the significant majority of our cars become EVs and the batteries for them are made using rare earth metals and more importantly, are recycled poorly afterward, what's the added benefit of switching to EVs (in other words, what's the sweet spot like how many years would one need to use his/her EV to offset the environmental impact of batteries used in EV)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e...

If anyone has a credible study comparing on the net positive impact on the environment by transitioning to all EVs compared to say ICE, I'd love to read that. Thanks in advance!

That is likely the main reason. In Myanmar, they did the same a little over a decade ago. By moving up north to a newly built city with 20-lane highway and lots of bunkers to hide (I only saw photos of them being built and they are most likely for the military government and their families to hide out before they move away if something happens), the military thinks it can buy some time and defend better in case of civil war or foreign invasion.

> Note: The hostess and her husband were both doctors. They had a combined income somewhere upwards of $200,000 a year

I find this a bit puzzling. If the couples are both doctors in the US, they certainly are making much more than $200K/year. The median salary of a generic doctor (internal medicine) in the US is ~$250K. I really wonder where this couple doctor is practicing at.

Other than that, I agree with the whole post. I came from a lower-middle class family (my dad died when I was 12; my widowed mom worked very hard and earned as much side income as possible--I remember having to send baked goods to nearby stores for my mom before going to school at 8am--to give me and my siblings as good an education as one can reasonably get in our third world country). Even to this day, I don't own a car. I live by $600/month budget for food, entertainment and other necessities. I am always saving and investing at least 50% of my income in case I become poor again.

I started paying attention to ARK funds lately because of seeing it here and there online. Then I subscribed to their YouTube channel last month and listened to this month's update from their fund principal manager (Cathie Wood). I have to say I learned some new stuff about Macro econ from listening to her video, BUT her talk about AI innovation [https://youtu.be/uwajUw4RFVk?t=1207], just convinced me that she is overestimating the potential of the AI's impact at least in the near term.

My late father is a psychiatrist. My wife is a medical resident. What you said is fairly accurate. Both my wife and late father say if someone shows up with acute mental problem, you prescribe lithium-based meds, sleep-inducing meds and/or in extreme scenarios, shock (ECT) therapy. For mild forms, it's one-on-one therapy (most listening what the patient says). Psychiatry, as it is now, is more of an experimentation than it is a science.