Hacker News: emodendroket

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:14:24 +0000

AI threatens to obliterate white-collar work entirely (whether it'll actually play out that way it's a possibility constantly talked about by executives and in the news), and that would plunge previously secure people into precarity. The idea this only applies to software engineers isn't true either.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:40:57 +0000

You’re being pedantic about the literal wording and missing the intended meaning even though I just spelled it out for you.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:28:41 +0000

Well, if you've seen photos of Mishima, he is not really a "regular middle-aged man."

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:21:43 +0000

Actually much of the work to produce your clothes is done by hand because mechanizing it makes no economic sense when you can pay someone in Bangladesh next to nothing to do it. But regarding the other point, that has put people off things too -- Lee Sedol famously quit playing go after losing to Alpha Go, because he reasoned there was really no point when no matter how good he got he'd never beat the machine.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:18:32 +0000

I don't know, I think if you are a body builder or elite athlete there is plenty of difference even at 45.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:17:32 +0000

What's different is that people who thought they were basically on the "golden path" suddenly have no idea what their job looks like in five years or if it exists.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:16:13 +0000

Yeah, that's an adaptive use for the impulse. Sometimes people go for destructive ones instead.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:15:28 +0000

Yes. Come on, I love my kid, but you can't seriously be asking this question. Fatherhood is in fact sometimes part of what they're so dissatisfied with.

New comment by emodendroket in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

emodendroket — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:13:47 +0000

It seems unlikely "physical AI" will be a complete bust but the post you're replying to is positing that fewer people will have money to spend on their services.

New comment by emodendroket in "When LLM judges agree, should we believe them?"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 19:08:12 +0000

It depends what we're judging, doesn't it? If it's "is the formatting in this document compliant with our standards?" I think it's reasonable. If it's like, life-altering if it's wrong I'm less sanguine.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 17:54:04 +0000

Well I’m not sure you will find many people who feel the program is perfect as-is but the natural interpretation of what you said in context seemed to be that we should at least temper our criticism.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:39:09 +0000

Well, I’m not making a claim about people showing up to argue on Hacker News so much as the people making the policy. But anyway I anticipate the result of this policy will be economic harm to everyone including people anticipating it will help them.

There’s not much you can do about jobs just moving abroad unless you start some kind of tariffs or import bans on software, which is a self-defeating choice for a massive net exporter of tech services and software.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:37:03 +0000

Just because the status quo isn’t good doesn’t mean we should blindly support anyone changing it even if their results will be even worse.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:34:13 +0000

Well then it’s not working; they’re just hiring people abroad. That outcome would be a disaster if your goal is helping American workers but a success if your goal is just reducing the number of foreigners in the country without regard for American workers. Between the results of the policies they’ve chosen and the types of rants they go on television or social media to make that interpretation suggests itself.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:25:38 +0000

You may well be right but that’s where the urgency for massive action comes from.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:23:20 +0000

Put another way I don’t think this policy is a good way to address the issues you’re talking about because it’s just moving jobs out of the U.S. altogether.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:14:51 +0000

What do you mean it is a distraction? I don’t think the fact that people at the highest level of power go on TV and give racist lectures about how Haiti had problems because Haitians themselves are defective should be ignored when we look at the policy the same people are making and tell us it’s motivated by something else.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:12:01 +0000

If you look at it in a vacuum sure. When the same administration is actually floating the idea of making the program more coercive by making it so you can be deported immediately after losing your job I think it’s pretty reasonable to recognize the coercive nature of the program isn’t their concern.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:06:23 +0000

They’re doing the opposite and floating the idea of making the program more coercive by ending the grace period to find a new job, so that essentially ICE could wait outside an office after layoffs and start cuffing people. This is because “protecting workers” is a pretext and not their actual goal.

New comment by emodendroket in "New $100k H-1B visa fee pushes tech jobs offshore"

emodendroket — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:05:18 +0000

Nobody is willing to state this but it’s pretty clear if you look at the way officials behind the policy talk: they’re OK with this. They don’t mind economic harm. The purpose has nothing to do with protecting workers and everything to do with creating a more ethnically homogenous country.