bodiekane (u/bodiekane)

bodiekane commented on Amazon says it didn't cut people because of money. But because of 'culture' cnn.com/2025/10/30/tech/a... · Posted by u/jhncls

lotsofpulp · 2 months ago

That comes with high profit margin and moat (for your specific labor, not just the business's moat).

If you don't have leverage, you won't get those things regardless of enterprise or small business.

bodiekane · 2 months ago

And yet, millions of people work 40 hour weeks and take a couple vacations per year while working in razor-thin margin industries like grocery stores and low margin restaurants, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, retail, trucking and services ranging from hair stylists to accounting.

Sane working hours and vacation time should be taken as a given in the modern economy. Unusually long work hours should be reserved for unusually highly paid professions like investment banking and surgeons.

bodiekane commented on YouTube is taking down videos on performing nonstandard Windows 11 installs old.reddit.com/r/DataHoar... · Posted by u/jjbinx007

SilverElfin · 2 months ago

YouTube and other large platforms should be regulated like public utilities. Otherwise the abuse will continue.

bodiekane · 2 months ago

Regulations will just make it easier for the powerful incumbents to control what content the platforms are allowed to host.

Deregulation is the solution here- get rid of DMCA and all the other laws that are used to bankrupt any competitor to YouTube, so that instead of a single video hosting site, we have tens, hundreds or thousands.

The dream of the early web was that everything would be resistant to censorship and centralized control because it was a true network of many independent hosts, globally distributed, independent from the whims of any government. Then we let a few billionaire copyright holders and authoritarians who want to control what is published and seen gradually strangle the open web and replace it with a handful of corporate sites that can be controlled.

bodiekane commented on How do we stop AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images? redasadki.me/2025/10/23/h... · Posted by u/redasadki

gjsman-1000 · 2 months ago

HN, and tech libertarians in general, have been trying to square multiple values together:

1. Decentralized

2. Anonymous

3. Trustworthy

4. Immune (from bad actors)

History has shown that these values are incompatible. Not a little incompatible - completely incompatible. We only have three decks of cards open to us:

1. Open and anonymous (and hopelessly corrupted by bad actors to the point of uselessness - phase 1 - Google only got popular in the first place because people couldn't dig through the manure)

2. Closed (held hostage by Big Tech curation - you are here - phase 2 - but corruption causes government intervention)

3. Open and accountable (identities tied to the real world, with real world accountability - incoming phase - but at least you don’t need to worry about DDoS as much)

There is no other option that works, any more than 1 + 1 + 1 = 4, no matter how badly we wish it existed.

bodiekane · 2 months ago

> with real world accountability

So the government can neutralize every journalist, political opponent, whistleblower or whoever by whatever means are most effective in their particular jurisdiction (China- disappear, Russia- jail, US- arrests, lawsuits, firing).

We need better tools for filtering out the bad actors, not just throwing the baby out with the bath water and accepting totalitarian control from a handful of dictators and wannabe-dictators.

bodiekane commented on Peanut allergies have plummeted in children nytimes.com/2025/10/20/we... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

mauzy · 2 months ago

Bizarre that this is the top comment as this would drastically increase the frequency of peanut allergies and, more than likely, end in multiple deaths. Research strongly suggests that the key is that the child eats peanuts before being exposed via other vectors (skin/lung) to avoid allergic reactions. Arisolizing the relevant proteins around infants is essentially fast tracking allergic reactions.

bodiekane · 2 months ago

I smirked at the parent comment, and it didn't even slightly occur to me that someone might interpret its intent as serious and literal until I saw your comment.

bodiekane commented on America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

greygoo222 · 3 months ago

> One of the single largest determiners of schooling success is the number of books at home.

This "effect" is the textbook example of correlation != causation. By which I mean, it was literally in my AP Psych textbook in high school.

bodiekane · 3 months ago

Except, programs which give free books to children in households without books demonstrably improve reading.

There's a correlation component, but also there absolutely is a causal connection of access to books and parents reading to children.

bodiekane commented on America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross

orochimaaru · 3 months ago

>>>If this continues for another couple generations, we're potentially faced with an America of an educated nobility and illiterate peasantry, and the future may look very Medieval indeed.

It sort of is already. The segregation of Americans by school district based on what their property taxes are already accomplishes this. Observe the standards to which schools that are wealthier (because of better taxes) vs schools in areas with lower taxes. The parents of the kids in the former are expected to play a more imperative role, the kids are challenged a LOT more. My fourth grader was expected to do at least 3 detailed book reports, each book at least 200 pages per book, including learning to present her findings in a timed manner. They were graded informally on a detailed rubric. They advance kids to higher math grades based on the child’s skill level. So there are 4th graders doing 5th and some exceptional ones 6th grade math.

This contrasts with another school district we were in earlier. Very loving teachers. But they had no space to challenge the kids. Because the teachers had to own the responsibility of getting each kid across the finish line for the grade.

bodiekane · 3 months ago

Texas has "Robinhood" rules where property taxes from affluent areas are taken away and given to lower income areas throughout the state, so that the schools have more similar budgets regardless of income level in the area.

They still have drastically different quality of schools and student experiences though, because the kids are coming from very different home environments, parental expectations, cultural norms, etc.

bodiekane commented on EPA Moves to Roll Back Drinking Water Standards newsweek.com/epa-drinking... · Posted by u/thelastgallon

hn_throwaway_99 · 3 months ago

Jessica Knurick, who IMO posts great content on social media, has a great take on this.

The whole MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement is an absolutely brilliant masterstroke by corporate interests. Get people up in arms about pseudoscientific bogeymen like artificial dies. Then claim as a major win how you've gotten big food companies to pinky promise that they'll stop using these dyes in Fruit Loops and sodas in a few years - because of course we'll all be super healthy once we're downing naturally dyed Fruit Loops and soda. Meanwhile, gut environmental regulations that actually do have a measurable positive impact on health, make healthcare even more unaffordable, and kick lots of people off Medicaid so rich people can get a tax break. But hey, at least you'll be the beacon of health since you can now gobble your fries cooked in lard instead of those naughty seed oils.

bodiekane · 3 months ago

A minor improvement to your argument here- artificial dyes are legitimately harmful in many cases. There are good reasons why the EU had already banned multiple chemicals that were still allowed in the US, and it's a good thing to update the American standards to the EU ones (which are generally more focused on human health as opposed to corporate profits).

The focus and prioritization is definitely out of line though, and it's particularly absurd in the face of the rolling back of pollution protections and removing access to healthcare.

Basically, it's focusing on a minor problem rather than the major ones. (But the minor problem is a legitimate one, and we should be solving all of them).

bodiekane commented on Company That Bought Publishers Clearing House Won't Pay Past Prize Winners nytimes.com/2025/09/12/bu... · Posted by u/indigodaddy

abduhl · 3 months ago

There is nowhere in America where $260k/year is “barely middle class.” 260k/yr is a top 10% income nationally. Calling it anything other than upper class is ludicrous, especially since the payment requires no geographic tie like a salaried job would.

bodiekane · 3 months ago

$260k is absolutely middle class, nowhere near "upper class", by any reasonable consideration of lifestyle, freedom, power or day to day experience.

The median home price in SF is $1.3. Using the calculator at zillow (https://www.zillow.com/homeloans/buyability/) with an income of $260k, looking to buy a $1.3MM house, you'd need a down payment of over $300k.

So suppose you get your $260k payout and want to live in SF... you have to rent for what... 5 or 10 years to save up the $300k down payment (while living modestly to save tens of thousands per year). Then finally you can buy your average home, watch half your income disappear to taxes and another third to mortgage, and then you'll still have enough to live a comfortable, middle-class life.

You're not buying yachts, getting meetings with senators or buying your kids into elite schools. You're not flying private, hiring personal assistants or buying a vacation home in Aspen. You're not making dozens of angel investments or being courted as a limited partner by VCs or PE funds.

"Upper class" probably starts at around $10-15 million in liquid assets, to be able to really have the freedom, flexibility and power to live a life that's distinct from middle class existence. If you can't give your son a "small loan of $1 million" to start his business (and be able to shrug off a complete loss as a learning experience) then you're not upper class.

bodiekane commented on Tech oligarchs have turned against the system that made them liberalcurrents.com/marc-... · Posted by u/colinprince

nielsbot · 6 months ago

> the combination of DEI and immigration two forms of discrimination that systematically cut most of the children of the Trump voter base out of any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America.

What a racist idiot he is. The main problem is the cost of college not “DEI”. He’s not even using the term correctly.

bodiekane · 5 months ago

Maybe other people's usage of the term is just different than yours without either being "correct".

For at least half of America, "DEI" means "giving preferential treatment to some individuals based on their race, sexuality or gender".

That might be a good thing (at a societal level it balances historical racism, or it counteracts unconscious bias or other contemporary inequalities) or that might be a bad thing (it's unfair to the individuals, it harms trust in the system and undermines meritocracy, visible attributes are a weak proxy to actual privilege) but that doesn't mean using the term the same way as hundreds of millions of other speakers is incorrect.

bodiekane commented on US utilities plot big rise in electricity rates as data centre demand booms ft.com/content/c5f20c78-7... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7

michaelt · 6 months ago

IMHO the problem is:

OpenAI wants 3000W to run a high-end multi-GPU server to serve 1000 users paying $20/month each. They've got $20,000/month of income from the server, if they can power it.

Grandma wants 3000W to run her central AC, so she can live comfortably in Phoenix, Arizona. She's got $2,300/month of pension income.

If you try to raise the per-kWh price of electricity to reduce demand, OpenAI won't be the ones who get priced out. It'll be Grandma.

bodiekane · 6 months ago

Not the point you meant to make, but, maybe Grandma shouldn't live in a place that requires constant use of an air conditioner to be survivable.

Americans keep moving to places that are fairly inhospitable to humans - too hot, too little water, etc. It'd be nice to see migration patterns shift away from the currently popular deserts and hurricane-prone coasts.