<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: joe_the_user</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joe_the_user</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 11 Jul 2026 22:29:26 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=joe_the_user" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Why American ambulance rides are so expensive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This thread is filled with strong arguments that ambulence operators do make money with medicare.<p>But even more, it's completely false that the reason an ongoing, working business charges a huge price to some people is that some other people are taking money from them. A business charge people huge prices <i>when it can</i>. Businesses make as much money as they can.<p>It is true that what health care providers charge individuals tends to be their "opening offer" to insurance companies so they do make this exact argument "we gotta make all our profits on you 'cause everyone else is denying us" but that doesn't make such arguments any more reasonable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:43:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854769</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854769</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854769</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Why American ambulance rides are so expensive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Health care in general has been solved by state sponsored medicine in most industrialized nations. And when it isn't solved by directly state sponsored medicine, it's solved by formally and informally regulated monopolies. In fact, US health care in the 1960s was made reasonable by the Blue Shield regulated monopoly.<p>The thing about unfettered private health is that it finds "profit centers" and pumps them ruthlessly. But the problem when scheme/scam gets reigned in (say out-of-plan doctors), another appears (out-of-plan ambulances) and there's no end to the situation. Only actual state sponsored health care can end this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:23:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854261</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854261</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854261</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Why American ambulance rides are so expensive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sure, in a given public discussion, lots of people saying that show up. But substantial portion of those are <i>shills</i>, not necessarily people to say but who benefit from the scam. And some people who are paid, public relations people acting on the downlow, etc.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 23:30:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48853817</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48853817</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48853817</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "How little exercise can you get away with?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One thing people out here periodically is how causation is hard to find. Someone who is dying may be not inclined to do anything 'cause they feel lousy all the time.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 22:43:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48811455</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48811455</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48811455</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Even banks and hyperscalers are now sounding the alarm about the AI bubble"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Even AI companies talk about the situation as a bubble. But the idea is this is akin to the railroad bubble or the Internet bubble. Basically, you the "frothy" development of a new technology in which you will certainly many losers but also a few massive winners. Moreover, "how do you monetize it" is not as much of a question as in dot com era.<p>Not that things are guaranteed. But the argument that a smart speculative investor should be in AI somewhere seems convincing. It's certainly "overheated" the economy but a correction based on overheating doesn't discredit things, it just shakes thing up allows the highest quality plays to double down however many months later.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:52:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810969</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810969</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810969</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "When 2+2=5"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One that occurs to me is that Roko's Basilisk makes about as much sense as the "peasant rail gun" of old Dungeons And Dragons [1]. Basically, the idea of "reality as simulation" allows you pick between different laws of how reality behaves. The "simulation" acts like reality with exceptions provided by a future AI which the "thinkers" imagine will simultaneously be "inscrutable to humans" and behave like the most petty human imaginable.  I mean, if the AI's motivations are truly out of our understanding, perhaps it would self-hating and torture everyone who cause it to come into existence instead (that been the plot of a few movies and books too I think).<p>This doesn't take from the point that putting not fully controlled things in charge of chunks of reality isn't a good idea. But I think it shows that the people who worried earlier weren't very clear thinkers on the subject and so their failure isn't particularly surprising.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/17xy69k/what_exactly_is_the_peasant_railgun_in_dd_5e_a/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/17xy69k/what_exactly_i...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:41:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808742</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808742</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808742</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Car touchscreens are cheap, not good"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I suspect that another thing that's expensive, besides analog controls, is creating and testing a new, better interface for driving ICE cars using digital controls. So the only thing old our old-tech car companies do is add ad-hoc extensions of the usual car controls. And it is economical to package all these in a touch screen along with all the standard controls they can get away with.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:18:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808435</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808435</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808435</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "AI saves about 3% of your hours, and almost none of it reaches the money"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The study is two months old (March 13, 2026).<p>Edit: Also, it's about writing not coding and it's point isn't that time isn't saved but even with time saved at the task, you don't get a broad decrease in total worked time for many/most workers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2026 18:28:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48778229</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48778229</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48778229</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most true small businesses can't exist in markets with a lot of competition. Highly competitive markets have a lot of fluctuation and businesses with little capital fold when there's a downturn.<p>In fact, most markets <i>naturally</i> go from high competition to monopoly or oligopoly. You can see this in chips, cars, airplanes, steel, ecommerce(Amazon) and beyond. Indeed, many oligopoly situations only fail to be monopolies through either antitrust activity or through nation-states supporting their competitors (chips).<p>Agriculture in particular tends to be geographically dispersed so it's harder to have absolute monopolies. But some "harking back" claim of "if we only had small business, all the predatory stuff wouldn't happen" really fails to understand the dynamics of markets. Scale in agricultural production is what allows the low prices you get in stores - But $10 cage-free organic eggs are available at my local coop for those who love small businesses (though I prefer the $2 cage free eggs at nearby Grocery Outlet).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:44:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764919</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764919</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764919</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The robot has a two pronged gripper. I wonder what teleoperating that to do complex tasks would be like.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 06:12:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757203</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757203</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757203</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think the first to use such home robots will have is people who can do the tasks but simply don't want to be bothered.<p>The aged, infirm and disabled are going to need real people for company and to deal with any crises the infirm might have. And since the real people will be there and paid for anyway, the state is unlikely to pay for robots as a quality of life improvement (they'd pay for them if they removed the caregiver but that complete removal will science fiction for a while).<p>As an example, I work taking care of a partly paralyzed man. He's tried an exoskeleton, believes it would help him a lot but can't afford the many thousands of dollars it would cost. The state pays for 18-hours/day care which is tens of thousands of dollars a month but they have to pay that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:57:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757090</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757090</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48757090</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Bring back crappy forums"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's a bit like asking "what did most books do?"<p>The whole point of forums was that it's difficult to make a generalization about them and moreover, what "most" forums did/do doesn't matter. What a particular forum might do in a particular context is what mattered.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:03:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756753</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756753</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756753</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Bring back crappy forums"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The difference between forum and a subreddit or discord isn't ultimately the features, it's localism. A forum can make it's own rules whereas Reddit ultimately makes the rules for a subreddit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 04:13:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756477</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756477</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756477</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Most rewrites serve the engineer, not the business"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yahoo bought Viaweb from Paul Graham and rewrote the Lisp application in C++ and Perl. Reports are the results were strictly inferior but it achieved the goal of not having to rely on Lisp programmers.<p>Part of Yahoo's business is/was hiring programmers reasonably cheaply and controlling them reasonably easily - to allow Yahoo itself to sell parts or all of itself.<p>So things aren't quite a simple as "this doesn't serve the product", sometimes the engineers (and their replaceability) are part of the product.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:31:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754011</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754011</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754011</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Citations? Wikipedia is full of them</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:33:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740126</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740126</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740126</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think there are problems with modern longevity science. The OP's "A fundamental challenge that longevity gurus face is that what’s true is often boring, and what’s interesting often isn’t true" is plausible.<p>But it also seems like there's a tendency for debunkers to be too categorical. It should be kept in mind that anyone aged around 110 would have gone through a variety of age and other record systems. Moreover, it's quite possible exercise and special diet as such really really aren't that useful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:14:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739288</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739288</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739288</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think the wikipedia page on Jeanne Calment actually does a good job of debunking "revisionist" doubting of the record.<p><i>After consulting several experts, The Washington Post wrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims have been dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts, and that those claims are "lacking, if not outright deficient".</i> (the entire section is worth reading) [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Controversy_regarding_age" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Controversy_reg...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:56:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739085</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739085</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48739085</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[China Resets AI Race]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinese-ai-anthropic-mythos-cybersecurity-574b02c2">https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinese-ai-anthropic-mythos-cybersecurity-574b02c2</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48710244">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48710244</a></p>
<p>Points: 12</p>
<p># Comments: 5</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:49:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinese-ai-anthropic-mythos-cybersecurity-574b02c2</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48710244</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48710244</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think it correct to refer to the models as LLMs. The references I can find for the techniques used seem to boil down to transformers + optimizations to make transformer-index larger/faster + chains-of-thought-optimization/the ability to add real time and other data to the context window.<p>See: <a href="https://kenhuangus.substack.com/p/frontier-ai-models-technical-deep" rel="nofollow">https://kenhuangus.substack.com/p/frontier-ai-models-technic...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 21:36:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48702001</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48702001</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48702001</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by joe_the_user in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nick Bostrom wondered aloud in Superintelligence (2014) why states would allow individuals and private organizations to develop AGI. If one takes the possibility seriously, AGI would a source of immense power and any state would to take that opportunity for itself.<p>Edit: Not saying whether AGI is right around the corner, that's a different discussion. I'm just saying that a serious possibility of AGI and an understanding of possible consequences will make a state act.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:40:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693891</link><dc:creator>joe_the_user</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693891</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48693891</guid></item></channel></rss>