Hacker News: diogenescynic

New comment by diogenescynic in "Anthropic/OpenAI may be spending more than $1000 for every $100 you pay them"

diogenescynic — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:36:56 +0000

So we're in the $6 Uber ride era of AI still?

New comment by diogenescynic in "Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say"

diogenescynic — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 04:47:52 +0000

It's crazy how the media just intentionally ignores Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza but cares about a billion other fake issues. Rachel Maddow gaslighted half the country into thinking Russia was controlling the White House... meanwhile ignoring that we're starting wars at Netanyahu's request/demand. Or how Israel tried to blackmail Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. We can never actually assess our relationship with Israel--anything but slavish devotion is immediately called anti-Semitism.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The American Missile Crisis"

diogenescynic — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 01:04:08 +0000

Iran has been incredibly restrained. Notice how Israel keeps attacking civilians but Iran has been attacking military targets? Iran is letting Israel know (since they know Israel is the one driving negotiations...) that Iran can still attack them whenever they want--and they know Israel is running out of missiles for Iron Dome. Iran knows they just have to wait this out. Every day American support for the war decreases and people begin to resent Israel more and more for dragging us into the war. Iran is winning the war by every metric. This is the first war where the target ended up coming out of the war more economically powerful... it's a complete backfire.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The American Missile Crisis"

diogenescynic — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:58:40 +0000

Yep, the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have shown how weak our strategy is. Iran is beating us with balsa wood drones. Cheaper is better in this case. But we still like buying the best/most expensive/most over-engineered option available. We should be figuring out how to design a supply chain that can mass produce these in the event of a real conflict from local materials... not building the most high spec exotically sourced version... which is what we are currently doing.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The American Missile Crisis"

diogenescynic — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:22:09 +0000

Exactly. Iran is beating us with balsa wood (paper airplane) drones. We're outspending them, but they can produce them faster and cheaper. We have to spend hundreds of thousands/millions per drone and missile. They are producing them for a fraction of that. We're being sold an expensive military industrial complex that actually is going to fail when put to the test of reality.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The American Missile Crisis"

diogenescynic — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:41:03 +0000

We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.

New comment by diogenescynic in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"

diogenescynic — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:47:33 +0000

Thanks, I didn't even know this existed. It reminds me of how Reddit made the entire experience hostile unless you know to use old.reddit.com instead of the default URL.

New comment by diogenescynic in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"

diogenescynic — Wed, 27 May 2026 05:19:10 +0000

Yep, the product was so much better when it was minimal and focused on doing one specific thing well. I really miss what it used to be... I hate the current Dropbox and Google Drive and OneDrive are also terrible alternatives.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"

diogenescynic — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:45:56 +0000

It's because commercial property is bought and bundled up into REITs and they would rather have a property go unleaded than to lower rates.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"

diogenescynic — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:43:23 +0000

Agree, it's almost entirely about profit and convenience but I just think there's something false about modern 'convenience' in that it actually isn't 'convenient' when you think about all the other things you lost. The tiny bit of friction exerted to actually go into a store is now gone, but now you lose the opportunities to meet other people into the same things as you... get tips from retail workers on interesting movies/music/video games. It's convenient in that one singular moment, but now you're lonely and have no friends or connections... I think that's why people are more depressed and on more depression medicine. There's a lack of just casual interaction and socialization now that we're replacing with 'social media' doom scrolling and it's clearly not making people more fulfilled--just more convenient.

I would argue a lot of this could be changed by better zoning laws and better city planning. Big box stores should be relegated to the outskirts of city limits... let local and small businesses have downtown areas. Otherwise, everything is becoming one homogenous experience across the entire country.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The death of the brick and mortar toy store"

diogenescynic — Fri, 22 May 2026 06:37:34 +0000

I miss toy stores, butcher shops, record stores, movie renal stores... everything moving online has really made culture so isolating and a lot harder to meet people. I remember when I was younger I could just go to a retail area and get some coffee, look at magazines/books, then go to a record store, then a video game store, a pet store, etc. Now everything is either a big box store in a giant parking lot or online. There are obviously exceptions, but I remember having so many more retail options and now they can't compete with Amazon and the rising cost of real estate and labor. Capitalism is strangling culture and making people more lonely and anti-social. They want us at home, buying subscription services, and getting taxis for our burritos so we don't have to actually go out and do anything or see anyone...

New comment by diogenescynic in "Apple unveils new accessibility features"

diogenescynic — Wed, 20 May 2026 01:25:45 +0000

Cool, but why is Apple making the new iPhone 17e chips in Israel when Israel just coordinated a mass terrorist attack using pagers? I personally don't want my iPhone being used as a bomb if I say something to criticize Israel. Israel is the last place I want to have anything to do with my phone.

New comment by diogenescynic in "You Don't Look Like a Gamer: On Toxicity, Gatekeeping, & Women Who Share Gaming"

diogenescynic — Wed, 13 May 2026 03:32:41 +0000

People love being the victim.

New comment by diogenescynic in "Aids Creeps Back in Parts of Zambia, a Year After U.S. Cuts to HIV Assistance"

diogenescynic — Sat, 09 May 2026 15:23:50 +0000

Same argument they make why we have to keep giving Israel money to kill Palestinians...

New comment by diogenescynic in "Nonprofit hospitals spend billions on consultants with no clear effect"

diogenescynic — Fri, 08 May 2026 03:29:04 +0000

I have never seen them consultants that provide a value commensurate with the prices they charge. They seem more like a proxy for fraud. When I worked at PayPal, there was a director who had an army of Deloitte consultants who just so happened to be from her husband's team at Deloitte. It was a clear conflict of interest and even though execs were aware, nothing was ever done. I imagine that's going on all over the place.

New comment by diogenescynic in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

diogenescynic — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:28:12 +0000

We've forgotten how to do most basic things. Roads are paved terribly, food quality is equally gross, our colleges are diploma mills, homes are built like crap... Everything has steadily been going in the wrong direction my entire life. It feels like we're almost in a dark age where basic skills from a generation ago are being forgotten.

New comment by diogenescynic in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

diogenescynic — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:35:43 +0000

The reason Toyota prices are still so high is because they're one of the only vehicles that are still so reliable (Mazda and Honda are actually great too). I think a 2025 Lexus GX 550 will almost certainly be on the road in 2035. Anything electric I am less certain of because they depreciate way faster and the build quality sucks.

New comment by diogenescynic in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

diogenescynic — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:26:06 +0000

It's for the people having affairs at work and who hate their families.

New comment by diogenescynic in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

diogenescynic — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:22:43 +0000

I think it was boomers who demanded McMansions with 3 car garages and new cars every 4 years and drove lifestyle inflation to a point it's no longer sustainable/affordable for the next generation. Millenials are struggling to afford the bare minimum. Housing used to be 3-5x your salary. Now it's 10-15x in some areas. Meanwhile our taxes are sent to Israel to subsidize genocide and we can't even pave roads in the most expensive zip codes (La Jolla). There's something fundamentally broken with our society at the moment.

New comment by diogenescynic in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

diogenescynic — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:16:20 +0000

I think you're focusing on the wrong thing and missing the point. Housing supplies have not significantly increased with population growth (demand) in decades--thus the price equilibrium has moved up. I don't care if you build up or out and neither does the law of supply and demand. The left gets all hung up on 'the right kind of housing' and doesn't realize they're part of the problem--making it harder to build housing (of any kind) is pushing housing costs up.