rayiner

18 ms·

361.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> Instead a lot of Apple's software development can be summarised as resume or KPI bonus driven development. It is not as bad as Google and Microsoft, but it is clear Apple have this problem a well. When did the term “KPI” come into
362.
by rayiner 3mo ago
The problem with complex systems is that you can be dead long before you realize you're dead. Things can continue to seem "pretty good" for a long time just from the inertia of past good decisions and built-up infrastructure.
363.
by rayiner 3mo ago
The devaluation of the Yen against the dollar (from the typical 110:1 to these days 150:1) started around 2021 and has been a source of angst in Japan for quite some time. People were complaining about it constantly when I was last in Tokyo
364.
by rayiner 3mo ago
The “ism” requires something beyond simply recognizing the distinction, which OP didn’t do. Its not “elitism” to recognize that, for most people, the world around them might as well be magic. “Ism” would be if they went further and said we
365.
by rayiner 3mo ago
“Without warning or provocation” lol.
366.
by rayiner 3mo ago
More than half of Americans have employer paid private health insurance, and another almost 20% have Medicare. 82% of people report being satisfied with their healthcare coverage: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politi
367.
by rayiner 3mo ago
This is great.
368.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Thank you.
369.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> I reject your argument. It is easier to see when comparing the cost of goods. It is not a fact of life that goods in the US cost 2x the price of equivalent goods in the UK. Services aren't goods manufactured in a single place. Del
370.
by rayiner 3mo ago
People need to ditch their 1990s talking points. US military expenditures are near historic lows: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat... . We currently spend 3.4% of GDP, which is less than the
371.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Democrats absolutely do not "live in the real world" regarding taxes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/07/19/medicare-... "Taxing billionaires" is the left's version
372.
by rayiner 3mo ago
I think the more interesting observation is that neither Clinton, nor Obama, nor Biden made any effort to roll back the biggest part of Reagan's tax cuts: reducing taxes on the middle class. That's quite remarkable, because that&#
373.
by rayiner 3mo ago
I'm not denying it's more expensive. I'm disagreeing with your premise that we could reach the cost effectiveness of European countries. Europe and America aren't interchangeable. You can't achieve the same results
374.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> It’s about the whole military budget. I also thought that the military budget was too big... in 1998. But in 2026, Europe is raising defense spending targets to 3.5% of GDP, which is more than what the U.S. spends: https://w
375.
by rayiner 3mo ago
You have me confused with someone else. This was me 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47986799 > If American foreign policy was rational, we wouldn’t have been involved in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now I
376.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> If your implication is that this is a private vs public spending problem, that's not it. No, my point is that we couldn't achieve UK costs by doing "single payer." Our publicly funded systems, like schools and trans
377.
by rayiner 3mo ago
At least in part, that's because the positional status of "many places" has changed dramatically. We have a growing population with a high degree of internal mobility. That means that places don't stay in a fixed positio
378.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> That might be true, but (for example) when this youngest-of-them Boomer bought his first house, housing was much more affordable. I think my fellow millennials are overlooking something in our complaints about housing prices, which is
379.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Much less for the money than in western europe--even when limiting the analysis to systems like schools and transit that are publicly operated in both places.
380.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> Given that the US has a population of 342.7 million people [3], we could have single payer healthcare for every resident without raising taxes if it cost less than $5800 per person per year. The UK's universal healthcare system co
381.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> The problem is that half the political system thinks you can cut taxes and grow revenues. And the other half thinks you can pay for a European-style welfare state without European-style middle class taxes. Americans are Disney adults.
382.
by rayiner 3mo ago
I don't want to waste money bombing Iran either, but the total cost of the operation has been $37.5 billion. Meanwhile, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security each grew around $100 billion in the last year.
383.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Access to resources that are used in prodigious volumes, like fresh water, seems like a good place to draw the line.
384.
by rayiner 3mo ago
I enjoyed the Odyssey movie, but didn't think it looked that good. Too sharp and kind of fake looking, almost like TV. (To be fair, I don't live in a real city so we just have LieMAX.) Disappointing visually, but I did quite enjoy
385.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Thank you for the note. But the article I linked to above relies on the page you linked for the Alfalfa number, not the data center number. The data center number in my article, 6.2 billion gallons annually for Google's data centers, i
386.
by rayiner 3mo ago
You know how non-coders basically build crazy business apps in Excel? LLMs, even if they don't get any better, seem at least 10x more useful than Excel. Why do you say it's for a narrow audience?
387.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Why can't we work up the political outrage over water-wasting agriculture in California that we managed to gin up over data centers: https://finance.biggo.com/news/202508220112_Data_Centers_vs_... > Alfalfa irr
388.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Most of the southwest should not have people living in it. It's a fake place that is enabled to exist by massive and unnatural engineering projects, like dams on the Colorado river. We need to create a long term plan to relocate the po
389.
by rayiner 3mo ago
Isn’t it better to be able to quickly test ideas and see what works and what doesn’t?
390.
by rayiner 3mo ago
> There were so many things that no one will ever study and won’t give humanity any benefit but I use everyday to make my life better Agreed. I haven’t been this excited by computers since I got broadband DSL in 1998.

More ›