Hacker News: raincom

New comment by raincom in "ICE denies having a protester database. A letter to Congress sheds more light"

raincom — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:02:34 +0000

Government has a monopoly on violence. It is just that the developed world hasn't seen the abuses perpetrated by the enforcers of the government.

New comment by raincom in "Nvidia partners with LG robotics to build humanoid robots in South Korea"

raincom — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:01:30 +0000

I'd love to see the cost of living go down. Unemployment raises fast; the cost of living goes down very slow, and it will take a few generations. That's why the underclass will go through a lot of pain.

New comment by raincom in "Nvidia partners with LG robotics to build humanoid robots in South Korea"

raincom — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:08:06 +0000

Nvidia needs to keep the hype train going, by throwing darts in every possible direction.

New comment by raincom in "Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers"

raincom — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:58:59 +0000

As long as they can cash out from these investments by dumping on others, they are safe.

New comment by raincom in "The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100"

raincom — Mon, 25 May 2026 18:19:05 +0000

US workers are left with almost no systemic power to fight corporate exploitation, which creates a brutal race to the bottom. That's the structural context I was pointing out. But let’s be clear: turning that frustration into killing Chinese workers is never acceptable. The issue isn't the foreign workforce; it's a broken system that exploits everyone.

So, when foreigners want to come to the US to work, these foreigners find the working conditions (say, 996 of today) is better than working for the corporate and the government exploiters in their home countries.

New comment by raincom in "Ask HN: Why do we snore? And what to do about it?"

raincom — Mon, 25 May 2026 16:36:26 +0000

There are many ways to fix snoring:

(a) if one is overweight, losing weight helps

(b) Adjustable bed bases help

(d) new drugs [1]

(e) see whether breathing exercises [2] help

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242278

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242278#48243574

New comment by raincom in "Memory has grown to nearly two-thirds of AI chip component costs"

raincom — Mon, 25 May 2026 16:33:12 +0000

Indian bureaucracy exists to enrich themselves for their next ten generations. The bureaucracy itself promotes, recruits incompetents. There is no way to reform such a bureaucracy.

The whole system needs to be dismantled while an alternative system gets built; given the nature of Indian politics (freebies/jobs/reservations to certain groups; monthly stipends to certain groups by borrowing money while at the same time looting public funds), it is impossible.

New comment by raincom in "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race [pdf]"

raincom — Mon, 25 May 2026 14:01:24 +0000

https://web.archive.org/web/20240507013554/https://web.cs.uc...

New comment by raincom in "The four-day workweek in Australia: insights from early adopters of 100:80:100"

raincom — Mon, 25 May 2026 03:48:03 +0000

Why not both? It is a feedback loop. When the US allowed railroad/mine workers from China, it is true that Chinese labor wanted a better future and that capitalists want to use Chinese labor to suppress American wages. For instance, look at the animosity towards Chinese workers in Wyoming by European workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Springs_massacre

New comment by raincom in "Memory has grown to nearly two-thirds of AI chip component costs"

raincom — Mon, 25 May 2026 03:34:05 +0000

Thanks to Indian constitution and other laws, incompetence is heavily praised and promoted. Go to any public high/elementary schools, go to any private colleges, it is rampant. It has taken three generations to produce these bad results. Of course, I am not saying that students are dumb. It is just that many smart kids in villages if given an opportunity, will leave India in a heart beat because they don't see a bright future for their future kids.

New comment by raincom in "Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)"

raincom — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:09:11 +0000

Any source for your claims?

New comment by raincom in "It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness"

raincom — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:58:09 +0000

Stipulative definition is all about fixing the reference. Or if we want to use the talk of meaning, it is abou the extension/denotation. If 100 people fix the reference of the word 'consciousness' to 100 different things, it just means that these people are engaging in philosophical discussions without having any object level theories (theories from neuroscience, etc).

If 10 different scientists who work at the object level, using the same word but with a different reference, then we have 10 different theories about different phenomena. This is what we need today: more research, not philosophical discussions.

New comment by raincom in "It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness"

raincom — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:46:03 +0000

One can build scientific theories without rigorously defining terms: a stipulative definition is enough.

Best example is Darwin's "Origin of Species"; here, Darwin didn't rigorously define "species": 'No one definition has as yet satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species.'

Many in the social sciences fetishize definitions, operating under the false notion that formulating a precise definition is the primary goal of inquiry. In reality, a robust scientific theory is a structured set of hypotheses; when combined with auxiliary theories, it derives a specific set of testable consequences.

Even within this framework, one must remain vigilant against ad hoc explanations. An ad hoc explanation fails to provide genuine systemic insight because it is engineered solely to fit the target phenomenon; it eliminates the explanatory gap by simply re-stating or absorbing the explanandum without offering any independent predictive or falsifiable power.

New comment by raincom in "It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness"

raincom — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:57:52 +0000

Eliminativism fails to 'save the phenomena.' It is one thing for a new theory to discard the theoretical entities of an old framework--in other words, to eliminate the explanans. It is quite another thing entirely to eliminate the explanandum, the very phenomenon we set out to explain.

New comment by raincom in "Illusions of understanding in the sciences"

raincom — Mon, 18 May 2026 02:55:26 +0000

The authors of this paper have not studied what historians and philosophers of science have written. They just use 'induction', 'validity', etc. They reinvent the wheel. They write "Of course the validity of that induction depends on a host of other assumptions.". Duhem-Quine thesis is better than this way of formulation, as the latter doesn't use 'validity'.

If authors ever come to this forum, please read Duhem-Quine thesis, over/under determination, inference to the best explanation, Goodman's paradox, also how various theories in philosophy of sciences: from Popper to Kuhn, Lakatos, Laudan, etc.

New comment by raincom in "Illusions of understanding in the sciences"

raincom — Sun, 17 May 2026 16:17:04 +0000

That's instrumentalism in philosophy of sciences. As long as a theory is useful and results in good predictions, without worrying about whether a theory is true or not.

New comment by raincom in "US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI"

raincom — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:36:02 +0000

I am happy to see them replace humans with AI machines. However, housing, healthcare, and other insurances have become super expensive. Who is going to buy all the stuff these companies produce? Maybe, it will become a two tier economy: wealthy selling stuff to fellow wealthy people; under ground economy with bartering their trades for food, building shacks for living, flea market dentists, old Wild West style flea market medical doctors selling potions, elixirs, dry lizard oil, etc.

New comment by raincom in "Princeton mandates proctoring for in-person exams, upending 133 year precedent"

raincom — Thu, 14 May 2026 03:36:56 +0000

I know a guy who TA'ed at Stanford in the 1970's. He said his professor told him to give students “gentleman’s B’s” even when their work was not fully up to par, because many of them would eventually become part of the country’s future elite and power structure.

New comment by raincom in "Men who stare at walls"

raincom — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:06:10 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trāṭaka

New comment by raincom in "Is Germany's gold safe in New York ?"

raincom — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:55:42 +0000

What prevents African countries that use CFA from starting their own currencies?