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kochb commented on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow   bbc.com/news/articles/cy7... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
didibus · a month ago
What COVID vaccine side effects? The only one I know apart from just mild reactions in the week that follows is the minuscule increase in myocarditis in young males, and the increase in myocarditis is even higher from normal COVID exposure, so it's arguable vaccine actually lower your overall chances.
kochb · a month ago
The J&J vaccine (which I received) was ultimately pulled due in part to blood clots which resulted in one documented death [1]. The AstraZeneca vaccine suffered the same fate.

It has been affirmed that the risks of the vaccine are less than the risks of the virus. Still, we shouldn’t shout “the vaccines are safe” so loudly that we can’t document and discuss real side effects and relative risks between competing solutions.

We’ve ultimately reached the correct outcome here, removing an inferior product from the market.

[1]: https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/coronavirus-vaccine-blood-...

kochb commented on “Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps   smithsonianmag.com/smiths... · Posted by u/arbesman
kochb · 5 months ago
LeVar Burton hosted a podcast marketed for adults where he read short stories. Though it ended last year, there are almost 200 episodes in the archive.

He’s still been at work encouraging lifelong reading all these years later.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/levar-burton-reads/id1...

kochb commented on Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students   nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us... · Posted by u/S0y
kochb · 7 months ago
Don’t miss this bit. Currently enrolled students are going to need to find a new university.

> In a news release, the Department of Homeland Security sent a stark message to Harvard’s international students: “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”

kochb commented on E-COM: The $40M USPS project to send email on paper   buttondown.com/blog/the-e... · Posted by u/rfarley04
j_w · 7 months ago
USPS doesn't technically need to be profitable. It's a service guaranteed by the Government. Government services do not need to turn a profit.

Yes, currently the service is expected to fund itself. This is short sighted and has progressively made one of the greatest public services worse.

kochb · 7 months ago
Either it is able to fully fund itself through sender fees and other operations, or the net losses are ultimately paid for by other government revenues, primarily taxes.

I enjoy Christmas cards and personal letters as much as anyone, but with electronic payments and telecommunications taking more of the volume, it is increasingly becoming an advertising service. If it is operating unprofitably, we are paying a form of subscription fee to receive those ads.

kochb commented on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU   bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy... · Posted by u/belter
_heimdall · 9 months ago
> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.

Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't have federal subsidies propping up a domestic olive industry that can compete with corn and soy?

I ready don't know the details well enough there, but it feels like this could just be selection bias at play.

kochb · 9 months ago
The exact growing conditions for olive production aren’t common in the US, so most of the production comes from California - west of Sacramento and south along the San Joaquin river. There are a lot of barriers in bringing specialty crops to market related to know-how and contracting sale of product, so even in other areas where growth may be possible it may be infeasible.

https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/olives

https://croplandcros.scinet.usda.gov/

kochb commented on Megachurches are getting even bigger as churches close across the country   text.npr.org/1187460517... · Posted by u/rntn
stuartjohnson12 · 2 years ago
As a cynic, it would genuinely change my view in a significant way if you could highlight examples of some megachurches whose owners don't seem to be psychopaths out to exploit as man vulnerable people with religion as possible.
kochb · 2 years ago
While I’m not personally familiar with them, Redeemer Presbyterian Church[1] in New York City (previously pastored by Tim Keller[2]) comes to mind.

[1]: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/life-and-times-of... [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Keller_(pastor)

kochb commented on Ask HN: How is your Apple WeatherKit transition going?    · Posted by u/kochb
kochb · 3 years ago
Here’s where we ended up:

Apple resolved the issue after 48 hours of performance disruptions. Though I further noted one five minute disruption on 4/3 at 6pm ET. They still haven’t responded to our initial ticket.

We’ve worked around this by implementing Pirate Weather as an emergency fallback (it was an easy option since they are fully compatible with DarkSky’s API). But Pirate’s baseline performance is worse, and they don’t have a plan that supports more than 250k requests/month.

We may have to eventually switch to a different provider.

kochb commented on Ask HN: How is your Apple WeatherKit transition going?    · Posted by u/kochb
runalyze · 3 years ago
Catastrophic since the beginning. Has not the same historical data like Darksky and the initial setup was annoying.

It's annoying that one needs an apple device to pay for an subscription of that API..

Because of that having a fallback for all the outages.

kochb · 3 years ago
The historical limitation should be emphasized - requests for dates before August 1 2021 will return a success status, but always with the data for 8/1.

u/kochb

KarmaCake day845October 6, 2011
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Co-founder, FarmLogs (YC W12). https://farmlogs.com
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