Hacker News: bitsage

New comment by bitsage in "From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown"

bitsage — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 07:27:28 +0000

Venezuelans voted for the party alliance led by Machado and support the removal of Maduro [1].

Iran looks more complicated. Pretty much the only insight we get is from the diaspora and cosmopolitan people from Tehran. There seems to be a very significant armed force clearly in favor of the Ayatollah, so removing him without their complicity will likely lead to turmoil.

1. https://x.com/atlas_intel?lang=en

New comment by bitsage in "Cheap solar is transforming lives and economies across Africa"

bitsage — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:08:11 +0000

Found a gift article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/climate/solar-south-afric...

New comment by bitsage in "Cheap solar is transforming lives and economies across Africa"

bitsage — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 17:37:42 +0000

I can’t read the article. What are the stats provided?

New comment by bitsage in "Say No to Palantir in the NHS"

bitsage — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 19:22:26 +0000

This comment isn’t as much of an exaggeration as it seems, at least regarding engineering. At a previous job, I was tasked with helping a product line achieve certification to a government standard. The public facing government contact I interacted with was just a middle man with the consultancy, ICF, who actually developed and maintained the standards, to government specifications. Also, those government specifications had significant input from industry.

New comment by bitsage in "Tennessee man arrested, accused of threatening a shooting, after posting meme"

bitsage — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 20:04:29 +0000

This thread is looking at this from a political angle, but he was arrested and charged for threats of mass violence. This seems to be a case of over zealous policing regarding school shootings in a very tense environment rather than a guy arrested over offensive memes.

New comment by bitsage in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

bitsage — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 03:00:38 +0000

The cost of hiring in the US versus elsewhere is already greater than $100k for the type of tech firm that can just open an international office. I took the base salaries of Google SWEs on levels.fyi for NYC, London, Bengaluru, and Toronto, multiplied them by the standard 1.4 for overhead, and realized the US is already significantly more expensive than most developed countries, let alone the Global South. Companies clearly value employing in America despite the cost.

New comment by bitsage in "Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says"

bitsage — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 02:38:13 +0000

Immigration has always bolstered the American tech industry, but the bulk of the industry has always been American. Just look at the distinguished members of Bell Labs. Many are immigrants, but most are American. The reason why immigrants come here is that American industry is already very strong. It’s not mutually exclusive to claim that Americans build a strong tech industry and that skilled immigrants have invented many new technologies here in America.

New comment by bitsage in "U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier"

bitsage — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 17:48:36 +0000

The revisions cover March 2024 through March 2025. While his policies may deliver turmoil in the near future, I don’t understand why most of the discussion here is about Trump. Furthermore, these revisions are at the high end of estimates, so it’s not a complete shock. The Fed and financial institutions must have already had an idea that the job market could be this bad.

New comment by bitsage in "U.S. added 911k fewer jobs in year through March than reported earlier"

bitsage — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 17:31:15 +0000

This data is mostly from last year, during Biden’s administration.

New comment by bitsage in "Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds"

bitsage — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 18:49:03 +0000

The highest marginal tax rate in the US was 94% in the mid 1940s, and that doesn’t even mean people were paying 94% of their income to taxes. If you look at federal revenue as a percentage of GDP in decade intervals, starting from 1944, you’ll find that the ratio hasn’t changed much since then [1]. Funny enough, it has actually crept slightly upward.

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

New comment by bitsage in "US Administration is considering stake in Intel"

bitsage — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:02:53 +0000

In the USSR, the state owned the means of production. That isn’t the desire here, economic nationalism is. We’re reverting back to the American School of Economics. Someone in Trump’s group of economic advisers must be a big fan of Friedrich List.

New comment by bitsage in "‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]"

bitsage — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 13:03:18 +0000

Israel clearly isn’t above letting Gazans starve, so it seems like a viable option, even if not ideal. Perhaps air drops should be the way forward to supplement whatever on ground aid is actually delivered. I think the outside world needs to stop posturing on what Israel should do and just get aid there however possible.

New comment by bitsage in "H-1B program grew 81 percent from 2011 to 2022"

bitsage — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 03:48:29 +0000

Paying prevailing wage doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the salary a company would have paid/are paying to American workers in the same role. Three-fifths of h-1b jobs are certified at the two lowest prevailing wage levels and the median age of an h-1b beneficiary is 33 years old.

New comment by bitsage in "Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites"

bitsage — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 23:23:26 +0000

I still consider the main report to not be substantiated. Israel claims that they know where the stockpile is and that they have been monitoring sites[1][2]. Some official even claimed it’s mostly under the rubble. Not sure why one is to believed and the other not when neither have hard evidence.

1. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858895 2. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619

New comment by bitsage in "Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites"

bitsage — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:58:12 +0000

Iran was objectively not in compliance though [1]. The IAEA just didn’t know they weren’t so they gave Iran a seal of approval. Israel had always claimed that Iran was hiding material, which convinced Trump to leave the JCPOA, but the IAEA could only corroborate it later.

Perhaps we should be making the argument that Trump shouldn’t have only gonna off of Israeli intel, but he ended up being correct that Iran wasn’t correctly reporting their enrichment stockpile, which was a provision of JCPOA. The reason why JCPOA wasn’t revived is actually because of Iran refusing to cooperate about what they did with the undeclared nuclear material.

1. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25.pd...

New comment by bitsage in "Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites"

bitsage — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:23:45 +0000

Iran was hiding nuclear material during the duration JCPOA was active. They were declared in violation of the NPT by the IAEA recently for actions undertaken between 2009-2018.

New comment by bitsage in "Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites"

bitsage — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:20:04 +0000

I find this argument hard to believe. Israel had complete air superiority for a week and was monitoring all the sites, routinely hitting the above ground nuclear facilities. I’m skeptical Iran could transfer anything significant from Fordow and not be immediately spotted by Israel.

New comment by bitsage in "Early US Intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites"

bitsage — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:16:14 +0000

Are people really going to pick and choose which unsubstantiated reports[1] to believe instead of just waiting for actual proof? The narrative has shifted with breakneck speed from “WW3” to “it was pointless anyways”.

1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-intel-a...

New comment by bitsage in "Huawei launches first laptops using home-grown HarmonyOS"

bitsage — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:25:57 +0000

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-...

New comment by bitsage in "Intel to announce 20% workforce reduction"

bitsage — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:12:08 +0000

Unfortunately, most of that will go towards developments that won’t be realized for years. More importantly, I’m not even sure the subsidies for manufacturing would help Intel’s financial situation — they’ve been exploring spinning off manufacturing for several months now.