Hacker News: mulderc

New comment by mulderc in "US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly $2 Trillion"

mulderc — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:37:10 +0000

Kaiser is by far my best experience with healthcare in the US that wasn’t just a government run plan.

New comment by mulderc in "US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly $2 Trillion"

mulderc — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:17:20 +0000

It isn’t as hopeless as it looks. Places like Oregon have been long experimenting with things like coordinated care organizations to better manage healthcare. Also health system like Kaiser Permanente compare more favorably to national healthcare systems than you might think.

New comment by mulderc in "US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly $2 Trillion"

mulderc — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:56:38 +0000

Yes the US could save a ton with a more efficient healthcare system. Additionally we have shockingly high costs for basic infrastructure as compared to other developed nations which could also provide savings if we could streamline that.

For the economic impact of austerity there has been a lot of good scholarship about this recently. Check out Austerity in Crisis?: A Narrative Review of Its Economic, Social, and Political Effects in Times of Crisis https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10449

New comment by mulderc in "US federal budget deficit jumps 12% in one year to nearly $2 Trillion"

mulderc — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 16:17:49 +0000

Targeting "entitlements" as a universal fix ignores both the fiscal math and the human costs. Healthcare makes up the lion's share of that spending; cutting it just shifts uncompensated care burdens onto hospitals and inflates private premiums. Cutting programs like SNAP and WIC means pulling food support from children, which causes long-term economic damage.

If the goal is deficit reduction through spending cuts, policy needs to evaluate actual economic ROI. Programs like nutritional and income supports have positive fiscal multipliers, which is why blunt austerity measures trigger negative feedback loops and contract growth.

Spending cuts have a place, but treating entitlements as a slush fund without accounting for the economic return or impact on people isn’t a productive policy proposal.

New comment by mulderc in "E Ink Kaleido 4"

mulderc — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:28:25 +0000

You should give something like the Amazon Kindle Scribe a go. If you are just reading then it should be fine. My issue is more when it is an android tablet using an e-ink screen. When software isn't specifically made for e-ink, it is sort of awful to use.

New comment by mulderc in "Tesla Roadster"

mulderc — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:23:04 +0000

“This isn’t flying, this is falling with style.” - Buzz

New comment by mulderc in "E Ink Kaleido 4"

mulderc — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:19:12 +0000

This is just going to depend on the person. Personally I find the lower resolution and contrast to be unacceptable.

New comment by mulderc in "E Ink Kaleido 4"

mulderc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:45:36 +0000

True, although I do think people have generally thought the colorsoft was a bit better viewing experience than the Kobo color options. The QA seems to always be a bit off with amazon and I would always recommend waiting a bit before buying from them.

New comment by mulderc in "E Ink Kaleido 4"

mulderc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:00:27 +0000

I feel like amazon tends to wait a couple of years before using whatever the latest e-ink screen is and claim to do a lot of customization and calibration as compared to their competitors.

New comment by mulderc in "E Ink Kaleido 4"

mulderc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:58:44 +0000

In theory they should be amazing. Full color, looks like paper, basically an interactive magazine!

In practice the color isn't great, the screens are slow to refresh in an annoying way, and the resolution is a noticeably worse than an iPad. I also find that apps not explicitly made for e-ink are generally garbage when used on an e-ink device.

So far I have personally been incredibly disappointed with e-ink devices outside of e-readers. I want them to be good but the experience is just so much worse than an iPad.

New comment by mulderc in "Yandex outage: data shows that instead of going dark, malicious bots moved"

mulderc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 06:48:39 +0000

More that the services they were using might have been related to some part of the infrastructure that went offline. Like slack going down.

New comment by mulderc in "Yandex outage: data shows that instead of going dark, malicious bots moved"

mulderc — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 03:21:44 +0000

I haven’t seen any, but the people that would have access to that data are probably too busy to care. For example, Political Wire noticed a significant decrease in the right-wing trolls, with one longtime nuisance disappearing completely and the general discussion just being way less divisive. The site is basically run by one guy, and he doesn’t have the time or expertise to do some sort of analysis on this. Also, we aren’t talking about some huge number of people here. It only takes a couple of trolls to ruin an online forum, so if the strikes knocked out only a couple dozen trolls, it could make a noticeable difference in the online discourse while being virtually unnoticeable in the overall data.

New comment by mulderc in "Yandex outage: data shows that instead of going dark, malicious bots moved"

mulderc — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:22:16 +0000

I am in a couple political discussion groups and it was really curious how the traditional right-wing posters sort of disappeared right around the same time. There are several that people had suspected of being some type of plant that just were suddenly not posting any more and still haven't come back. No idea if it was related but the timing was so close that it raised a few eyebrows.

New comment by mulderc in "FDA may allow some toxic chemicals to be added to food without safety review"

mulderc — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 18:32:21 +0000

Everyone agrees and wants a healthier world and for people to be healthier. What RFK has been spouting for as long as I can remember would be the opposite of that. His stance on vaccines has always been clearly crazy and not based on the best available evidence.

New comment by mulderc in "Utah to let AI examine patients and prescribe medication without human oversight"

mulderc — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 19:47:51 +0000

That type of screening doesn't require AI. It would just be a form with a bunch of if/else statements.

New comment by mulderc in "Utah to let AI examine patients and prescribe medication without human oversight"

mulderc — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 17:32:25 +0000

Isotretinoin is a common acne medication and a bit of a breakthrough that also has potentially serious side effects. My take is more that if the medication is safe enough to be given out by an AI then maybe it should just be over the counter.

New comment by mulderc in "Apple Pass Designer"

mulderc — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 20:59:29 +0000

dear god no

New comment by mulderc in "SDF Public Access Unix System ... est. 1987"

mulderc — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 08:36:26 +0000

Telnet sounds cooler.

New comment by mulderc in "SDF Public Access Unix System ... est. 1987"

mulderc — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 06:04:16 +0000

Telnet is just a better name though.

New comment by mulderc in "Apple Copland D11E4 Booting in the Browser"

mulderc — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:30:09 +0000

Based on what has been reported, I don’t think it was all that tough a call to axe it. What to do after that has hard but cancelling Copeland was an obvious decision to make.