Hacker News: erentz

New comment by erentz in "The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced"

erentz — Fri, 01 May 2026 23:40:48 +0000

> What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism.

To me it felt we were slowly making the world better for all. Progress was happening and would continue to happen.

Now it feels like we are rapidly on the path to a dystopian Elysium like future. A dystopia for everyone but the sociopathic ultra wealthy that want to rule over us. And they’re not even hiding their intent from us anymore.

New comment by erentz in "U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official"

erentz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 22:35:17 +0000

This is where the media (or your media bubble) failed you. Trump was always this way. In his first term he significantly increased the amount of bombs dropped and number of countries bombed over previous presidents.

New comment by erentz in "U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official"

erentz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 22:30:00 +0000

Democrats shouldn’t have wasted effort on trying to reduce student loans simply because the constituency (students) didn’t even give them recognition for it. They simply blamed Biden when SCOTUS blocked it.

But more generally we shouldn’t do one off things like this when we still haven’t fixed the cause of the problem. A better policy would be to start by making community college or first two years of college free or something like that.

New comment by erentz in "U.S. war in Iran has cost $25B so far, says Pentagon official"

erentz — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 22:22:24 +0000

> our politicians seem entirely unwilling to do anything about colossal expenditures on this "expedition"

Not all politicians. Most democrats have tried to do something about it with the help of just one republican. They aren't the same.

New comment by erentz in "Do I belong in tech anymore?"

erentz — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 05:35:02 +0000

The way AI is being used feels like it is proving that, in many orgs, what has always mattered has been the appearance of work, not results of work. Will we wake up in a few years and find out we’ve fired all the doers and are now overloaded with the fakers?

New comment by erentz in "Refuse to let your doctor record you"

erentz — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 23:57:58 +0000

Be warned though that life and disability insurance will absolutely use errors in your medical records to refuse your coverage or claims.

New comment by erentz in "Mexico's President Sheinbaum Decrees Universal Healthcare for 120M"

erentz — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 06:48:14 +0000

I rely on Medicare as a disabled person. I love it. The reduction in stress I experienced when I got to transition from my former employer plan to Medicare is pretty indescribable. I want every American to have at least this as a baseline.

Most of the complaints around Medicare come from those who get sold (conned) on takin Medicare “Advantage”, which is a privatized option for Medicare that denies a lot of coverage.

New comment by erentz in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

erentz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:11:55 +0000

> Website operator: I do not care about serving UK citizens and am now blocking UK IP addresses. Thank you for notifying us.

Wait did 4chan actually block UK addresses? My understanding was it hadn’t which makes your story fall apart.

The idea that a router is responsible for the packets it forwards rather than the person that made the content and put that content in those packets is getting silly.

New comment by erentz in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

erentz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:31:45 +0000

In the original example the Parisian bars sells and sends the alcohol.

You’ve modified that to introduce a proxy, DoorDash, that now sells and sends the alcohol. If DoorDash sells it they’re the ones in trouble in your example.

New comment by erentz in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

erentz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 05:54:07 +0000

If that were true why is everyone so irritated by this? Just ignore it in that case. But for those people that may want to become subject to British jurisdiction in future or do other business there in future, they will take requests from Ofcom seriously.

New comment by erentz in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

erentz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 05:51:02 +0000

The Parisian bars are the ones writing the address on the package not the courier.

New comment by erentz in "4Chan mocks £520k fine for UK online safety breaches"

erentz — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 05:41:07 +0000

Why should it be done that way?

If a country has media or broadcast standards laws, and you distribute or broadcast content in that country that violates those laws, that’s on you. The country can just fine you if you chose not to comply. Just the same as they would if you were doing it while living in that country. You’re not obliged to care about the fine if you don’t live there and never intend to travel there. But if you do then you’re going to be subject to their laws at that point, for violating those laws when you distributed that content in that country.

New comment by erentz in "Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock"

erentz — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:51:23 +0000

The founders mistake was creating a presidential system.

New comment by erentz in "Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock"

erentz — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:45:32 +0000

You have to couple that with their use of STV voting and lack of a presidential system.

New comment by erentz in "Tinnitus Is Connected to Sleep"

erentz — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:19:20 +0000

Hearing your heart beat like this can be a sign of an arteriovenous fistula in the brain.

New comment by erentz in "US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives"

erentz — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:30:28 +0000

At this stage tech companies should be pushing for very strong legislation that makes the US a bastion of data privacy to restore trust. But they are still pushing in the other direction.

New comment by erentz in "US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives"

erentz — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:27:40 +0000

The people in this regime and their supporters really seem surprised to discover that actually other countries do have agency and national pride. Serious empathy gap in these people.

The US owned the world’s tech stack and countries let it because it was convenient and despite its problems people mostly trusted the US was on their side. In one year we’ve utterly destroyed that and made ourselves enemies of the democratic world. That Silicon Valley did not see this would threaten its global business says something.

New comment by erentz in "Attention Media ≠ Social Networks"

erentz — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:34:57 +0000

The adult engineers and adult managers responsible for such things should get the same treatment as any adult having such conversations directly. You can’t just say “wasn’t me, it’s the AI layer I built to do the abuse for me”. You’re actively choosing to abuse and groom children. Sick stuff.

New comment by erentz in "One Guy Crowdsourced More Than 500 Dashcams for Minneapolis to Film ICE"

erentz — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:16:13 +0000

https://archive.ph/ZBjKV

New comment by erentz in "A $20 drug in Europe requires a prescription and $800 in the U.S."

erentz — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 23:03:21 +0000

Depending on your situation, if non emergency and you were able to ask the cash price beforehand you might be surprised that you can get the same CT scan for less than what insurance ultimately paid. At least that’s my experience ($450 vs $1200). You may have to ask at a diagnostic imaging place, not the hospital since the hospitals can never tell you what anything costs they aren’t set up for it. (Of course I went through insurance since I didn’t want to pay out of pocket, but it was an interesting lesson in one of the reasons why healthcare is unnecessarily expensive in the US.)