Hacker News: vivekd

New comment by vivekd in "Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study"

vivekd — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 23:00:25 +0000

As a Canadian, I would caution against the kind of universal health plan we have. But yes I agree there should be some kind of public healthcare. Perhaps more as a government owned hospitals and clinics alongside the private ones rather than the fully public system we have here which comes with its own host of problems.

I think it's easy to shout free healthcare as a slogan but I think the important bit is how it's implemented.

New comment by vivekd in "388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist"

vivekd — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:40:52 +0000

I don't know how convinced I am. First there were dinosaurs in the past, the brachiosaurus was 4 x as big as an elephant and there are probably yet undiscovered dinosaurs that were even bigger given discovery of partial fossils like the Sauroposeidon.

Also we know in the past there were dargonflys with wingspans greater than 2 feet and centipedes that grew as long as a car.

New comment by vivekd in "A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands"

vivekd — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 21:05:59 +0000

Construction is always boom and bust by nature. Anyone in the trades, if they have an opportunity the should just take it while it's there.

New comment by vivekd in "What if useful AI is a fantasy?"

vivekd — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:29:25 +0000

I agree. Although the author didn't delve into it he seems to hint that it may not prove useful enough to the companies that spend money on tokens to justify the huge investments in AI. For me yes, it's very useful. But what remains to be seen is is it useful to the entities and people willing and able to spend huge amounts of money in AI in exchange for increased productivity or profit... And if so is it useful to generate a cash return on the huge cost investments in datacenters that AI demands

New comment by vivekd in "Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights"

vivekd — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:51:54 +0000

>Find us a person who honestly believes there a class of citizens (other than convicted felons, minors, and mentally incompetent) shouldn't have a right to vote who doesn't want to use it for political gains.

Easy the philosophers Plato and Socrates who believed that only philosophers and those who sought wisdom should have a say in the affairs of the sate. I mean philosophy is full of ideas of how nations should be organized and it's interesting because there's no dogma around it and no villainizing disagreements

>e "nipping dangerous ideas in the bud" language relates to those ideas being implemented, not being discussed.

Great because last I checked Tobais Lutke was discussing the idea not implementing it

New comment by vivekd in "Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights"

vivekd — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:51:51 +0000

I disagree. I don't think there's any historical data showing a correlation between loss of voting rights of a % of the population with totalitarianism. I think among the few countries where it has been tried would be Canada stripping Japanese of voting rights in WWII. Of course this was bad, but at the same time it doesn't seem to have, at least not in most people's view, turned Canada into a totalitarian states.

In my opinion the real trend towards totalitarianism is inability to talk freely about ideas

It's easy and popular to talk about how important democracy or voting rights are. And that makes it a bit annoying because it deprives the possibility of freely exploring other ideas. There's no possibility of free speech or free exchange of ideas so long as portion of the population thinks we have to immediately nip dangerous ideas in the bud without exploration.

New comment by vivekd in "Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights"

vivekd — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:23:30 +0000

I think the title is inaccurate and a bit inflammatory. He's not advocating stripping most Americans of their voting rights. He's advocating stripping a tiny minority of Americans of their voting rights - specifically the minority of Americans that pay no income tax

New comment by vivekd in "Kids who own phones have poorer reading comprehension scores VS those who don't"

vivekd — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:19:01 +0000

I think he had a reasonable point, I don't know if he was mad or not but that doesn't take away from the validity of his statement.

Simply saying a confounding variable was missing isn't helpful because it's impossible to control for all confounding variables.

If however there was an important variable someone can think of, like maybe parents who control their kids phone use could also be more involved in their children's learning that could be a confounding variable worth mentioning to think about how valid the study is - but even then I don't know if that by itself would be enough to dismiss the study

New comment by vivekd in "Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone"

vivekd — Sat, 16 May 2026 21:16:53 +0000

It was compulsory during COVID and it became optional later

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArriveCAN

New comment by vivekd in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

vivekd — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 01:27:03 +0000

but I think the parents counterpoint was that the important parts of the internet (paying bills, buying things, registering for classes) don't require or presuppose anonymity.

New comment by vivekd in "Glassworm is back: A new wave of invisible Unicode attacks hits repositories"

vivekd — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:58:26 +0000

Sure, but looking at this from a purely business perspective - I wonder how many customers would panic or jump ship rather than be grateful when notified of an attack. But I think it could work as an optional feature for paid accounts if it was marketed properly

New comment by vivekd in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

vivekd — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 11:58:00 +0000

I don't think any system can do much if things have degraded to the point where armed gangs are running around with impunity. I think systems (paper or otherwise) presuppose a certain level of functional civil society

New comment by vivekd in "I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job"

vivekd — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:03:16 +0000

I think the benefit here is that bias is easier to identify in an AI and if it's easier to identify it's easier to control and implement bias reduction mechanisms. Humans are much less upfront about their biases

New comment by vivekd in "Demand for UK Food Bank Up 15% Year on Year"

vivekd — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 14:41:05 +0000

I believe your statement can be 100% true without affecting the truth of the parents statement. It's possible for a government to charge high taxes and have high social spending while also funneling larger and larger amounts from the poor to the rich through regulations and government agencies that favor and act for the interests of the rich.

110k Yo Discovery Suggests Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens Worked Together

vivekd — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 19:54:38 +0000

Article URL: https://scitechdaily.com/rewriting-human-history-110000-year-old-discovery-suggests-neanderthals-and-homo-sapiens-worked-together/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43509309

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Lunar far side samples bolster theory that the moon was once covered in magma

vivekd — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:38:51 +0000

Article URL: https://phys.org/news/2025-03-lunar-side-samples-bolster-theory.amp

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43425506

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by vivekd in "Why AI is still dumb and not scary at all (pt. 1)"

vivekd — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 22:55:19 +0000

My issue with this line of thinking is not that it's wrong but it's being manipulated by silicon valley.

Open AI is not arguing that AI is harmless they are agreeing it's dangerous. They are using that to promote their product and hype it up as world changing. But more worrying they're advocating for regulations, presumably the sort that would make it more difficult for competition to come in.

I think we can talk about the potential dangers of AI. But that should include a discussion on how to best deal with that and consciousness of how fear of AI might be manipulated by silicon valley.

Especially when that fear involves misrepresentation - eg. AI being presented to the public as self directed artificial consciousness rather than algorithms that mimic certain reasoning capabilities

New comment by vivekd in "Write to Escape Your Default Setting"

vivekd — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 15:59:12 +0000

I also find it's a great sanity check. Ideas that seem good in my head often fail when I put them into words. Especially when I outline it in step by step format

New comment by vivekd in "It's still worth blogging in the age of AI"

vivekd — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 03:30:40 +0000

I wonder if there is a practical test of this question? Are there any moderately successful blogs written purely by an LLM with a human just doing the prompts.

As far as I know there aren't any but I look forward to being corrected

New comment by vivekd in "It Took Trump Only Twenty-Four Days to Sell Out Ukraine"

vivekd — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 22:03:48 +0000

That would be a reasonable I objection if it looked as if there was a risk of that. Everything I've heard from Zelynski so far tells me that Ukraine will be involved and they will have the final say