Hacker News: boelboel

New comment by boelboel in "How Semiconductors Were Made in America"

boelboel — Thu, 14 May 2026 09:06:06 +0000

I don't think the immigration policy has always been counter productive to American interests. The US has good institutions regardless of being reactionary and has many structural advantages (e.g. geology, size, good neighbours, climate, waterways ...). People want to come to the US because it's rich and their home countries have deficiencies.

New comment by boelboel in "Cisco workforce reductions"

boelboel — Thu, 14 May 2026 07:56:34 +0000

Where's the covert it's open racism

New comment by boelboel in "The 'Hidden' Costs of Great Abstractions"

boelboel — Mon, 04 May 2026 18:00:52 +0000

This has been done on purpose, look at the way governments all over pushed children to do STEM (or pretend to do STEM). The plan was never to get millions more genuine enthusiasts, this is impossible. It's just to create good enough workers.

It's a method that worked out, for those companies who needed it. There's still people who're like you they're just 'hidden'. This isn't just done in the tech industry, devaluing of workers is done everywhere. Look at the luddites or those working in older industries in America/Europe. At some point government/industry believed they had too much bargain power/there's labour shortage/it made economical sense and they could be replaced in Korea, China .... It's the same thing just in the tech industry it kept growing within the US.

New comment by boelboel in "How Semiconductors Were Made in America"

boelboel — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:05:41 +0000

Per capita far from (Australia and Canada, Israel, France, Taiwan, Switzerland , Belgium, Argentina...) on an absolute number sure because they were the most populous industrialized country. Even the latter you could argue against as west Germany had many after WW2 move from all over 'back to' Germany.

New comment by boelboel in "How Semiconductors Were Made in America"

boelboel — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:11:06 +0000

America was very much against immigrants between about 1925 and 1965. If you look at the history of the US they needed immigrants to settle the land, before their expansion westward they were quite against immigration.

New comment by boelboel in "Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results"

boelboel — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 23:14:56 +0000

I don't think anything similar can exist in the future. The reason the internet was good for a while is because before 2005 and especially before 2000 mostly intelligent and relatively wealthy people had influence. Once everyone gets access quality just goes down.

New comment by boelboel in "An open-source stethoscope that costs between $2.5 and $5 to produce"

boelboel — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:59:30 +0000

People buying stethoscopes tend to be reasonably affluent. Some of the pricier ones just look better and people usually buy them when you get into med school (at least this was the case for me), it's somewhat symbolic so why not splurge.

New comment by boelboel in "He asked AI to count carbs 27000 times. It couldn't give the same answer twice"

boelboel — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:26:22 +0000

It's like the 'enhance' bs they do in crime shows. All of a sudden the computer can make up a sharp image out of nowhere

New comment by boelboel in "How ChatGPT serves ads"

boelboel — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:20:42 +0000

There's lots of people who are willing to spend a lot of money on 'real things' while not spending anything on bytes. It's the tech companies which have created this expectation of free services. Many non-tech people I know are relatively wealthy and think likes this.

New comment by boelboel in "AI's economics don't make sense"

boelboel — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:14:34 +0000

Isn't this akin to saying Big Pharma companies could easily make money if they just stopped doing expensive research? The massive R&D spend is the core of the business plan; it's the only reason they can demand high prices in the first place. Once OpenAI stops spending billions on training, their pricing power vanishes because users will just migrate to Anthropic or whoever releases the next frontier model. Would imply there'd be space for only one to outlast them all in some sort of war of attrition (perhaps similar to silicon industry).

New comment by boelboel in "Vibe Coding Will Break Your Company"

boelboel — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:34:26 +0000

I'm guessing it'll be marginally better than their opus 4.7 or 4.6 high at 10x the cost, too costly for them to subsidize/for companies to justify.

New comment by boelboel in "Vibe Coding Will Break Your Company"

boelboel — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 06:53:48 +0000

I swear there's been like 7 (mostly positive) stories about Mythos on the FT. They add basically nothing.

New comment by boelboel in "Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)"

boelboel — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:16:36 +0000

One of the latest papers by Hanushek, the person who tends to be cited by those against public school spending "U.S. SCHOOL FINANCE: RESOURCES AND OUTCOMES" gives a more mixed overview. Basically saying it matters somewhat depending on what it's spend on and only moderate improvements.

The paper gives an overview of more recent research mostly using quasi-experiments. Before 2000 or even 2010 just doing some linear regressions was more common. Anyway my view is similar to Hanushek in short/medium terms. I do believe long term the pay of teachers, and therefore extra spending, is an important factor in keeping teaching prestigious compared to other jobs. In the US partly because of its strong private sector this is a lot more difficult/failed, I'm not sure if it's possible to fix since spending is only one part of it.

New comment by boelboel in "The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What If They Could?"

boelboel — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:23:21 +0000

I might've been exaggerating a bit, there's only one right now who's 90+, Paul Biya. Peter Mutharika will be 90+ when he steps down. Beji Esseni was 92 a few years ago. Many are 80+ and will not step down before dying

New comment by boelboel in "The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What If They Could?"

boelboel — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:52:31 +0000

Funnily enough a lot of these 'boomer' haters love to pretend the silent generation or the greatest generation were so much better. I believe a lot of this cynicism and individualism is caused by political decisions by these generations. Decisions like subsidizing the 30 year mortgage and urban design plans made it more difficult to have a 'real community', one which you would engage in politics for.

The power balance of local politics and national politics also got changed with TV and the internet, things which would've happened regardless of how good a 'generation' is.

New comment by boelboel in "The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What If They Could?"

boelboel — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:35:52 +0000

50% of highly educated women in certain countries are expected to live to 100+ years old according to some demographers, although others believe there's genuine biological limits making this unlikely (they still believe a substantial amount will reach it).

People have been reaching the age of 100 since antiquity, reaching 110 probably happened hundreds of years ago as well. Which just shows the biological limit hasn't been extended just that there's more people reaching it.

New comment by boelboel in "The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What If They Could?"

boelboel — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:22:18 +0000

Looking at heads of states in non-western countries I'm not sure why you think it's a western thing. African countries got multiple 90+ year olds as head of state for example.

New comment by boelboel in "Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)"

boelboel — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:50:40 +0000

This analysis is rather weak, just a linear regression with 2 variables it seems. I'm not saying there's a direct link of school spending and academic performance but this is barely trying. Your average undergrad could've made a better study.

New comment by boelboel in "Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft"

boelboel — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:38:34 +0000

Not even that long ago, nobility died at higher rates than normal people in ww1 and ww2. Many lines were killed during them. I still know of nobles in my own country in the army. Generals died in WW2 at a decent rate as well.

Nobility lost most relevance now so I'm sure it's different now, owning a castle or a weird last name doesn't make you rich or powerful.

New comment by boelboel in "Small models also found the vulnerabilities that Mythos found"

boelboel — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 21:28:13 +0000

Seen similar things with Openai and Palantir.