smsm42 (u/smsm42) - Readit News

smsm42 commented on Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings antirender.com/... · Posted by u/iambateman

b450 · 9 days ago

I ran it on the "society if..." meme lol

https://imgur.com/a/nFQN5tx

smsm42 · 9 days ago

Ugh, this looks way too real...

smsm42 commented on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun

nobody9999 · 13 days ago

>If a state bureaucracy doesn't explicitly check for legal immigration status then yes the policymakers in that state are trying to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration.

When it comes to healthcare, many states don't care if you're a tourist or a resident or a one-eyed, one-eared, horned purple-people eater. They (because their constituents -- you know, the folks who pay for this -- believe people shouldn't be dying in the streets because they can't afford basic care, regardless of who they are/where they came from) provide healthcare to anyone who needs it because it's the compassionate, humane thing to do.

That some states do not do so says a lot about the folks who run and live in those states -- partly that they have little empathy for their fellow human beings. Which seems weird, given that many of those states have "leaders" and vocal residents who claim to be Christian, yet they are unwilling to engage in the very things that Jesus Christ prescribes[0][1][2] that they do.

I'm glad I'm not a Christian. If I were, I don't think I could abide such evil, selfishness and hypocrisy.

[0] https://www.borgenmagazine.com/9-quotes-from-jesus-on-why-we...

[1] https://jesusleadershiptraining.com/charity-what-did-jesus-s...

[2] https://christ.org/blogs/questions-answers/what-did-jesus-te...

smsm42 · 10 days ago

I've seen a lot of people living in the streets when I lived in California. From my (then) house I could walk at least to a half-dozen places where substantial amount people lived right in the streets. I've never seen people dying in the streets in any state though. Given that only 7 states (and DC) allow Medicaid for illegal immigrants, this must be happening an awful lot. Strangely, I never heard about such cases, let alone a massive number of them. But you evidently did.

I would like to ask you instead of the Word of Jesus - which is surely fascinating, but bears little relevance for the topic at hand - provide some authoritative data as to how many people actually died in the street in those 43 terrible states, for lack of Medicaid coverage, say in the last 5 years? Was it millions? Thousands? Hundreds? How does it compare with the record of California and those living-on-the-street people I am seeing there every time I visit? I think discussing actual data would be better than discussing Jesus.

smsm42 commented on Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic cnbc.com/2026/01/27/mozil... · Posted by u/donutshop

smsm42 · 10 days ago

I think "reserves" and "extremely risky investment fund" are supposed to be different things?

Then again, given Mozilla Foundation's stellar record of taking on massive corporations and crushing them, and given that they themselves not owe their very financial existence not even a little bit solely to donations from a certain mega-corporation, maybe it's not that risky - more an assured success.

smsm42 commented on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun

jayd16 · 14 days ago

Look up Jim Crow. It's not hypothetical.

smsm42 · 13 days ago

What's not hypothetical? Sure, there once existed racist laws in the US. How does it relate to establishing citizenship or presumedly some documents proving citizenship being considered "not legit enough"?

smsm42 commented on Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology theconversation.com/europ... · Posted by u/DyslexicAtheist

sunshine-o · 14 days ago

Let's not forget Big tech is also fueled by the rest of the world and Europe.

If you walk into a bank in Europe and have some money to invest they will sell you mostly debt and the "Magnificent Seven" or a funds with those stocks inside.

The EU is ridiculous when it says it want to built an alternative because it's entire financial/banking system end up fueling the saving of its citizen into those companies.

This is also why we end up in that absurd situation where the Mag 7 make up 1/3 of the S&P 500 market cap.

If the EU is serious about offering an alternative (which I doubt) it needs to offer a sustainable path for its people to invest in it. Not do another fake program where insiders will grab some public money and get nowhere (it has been tried for 25 years).

smsm42 · 14 days ago

> If the EU is serious about offering an alternative (which I doubt) it needs to offer a sustainable path for its people to invest in it.

Did US government do something like that? If US has some attractive investments and EU does not, why don't they? I mean, EU citizens would probably like to invest in EU companies, much better than in US companies, they are not some self-haters to refuse a good investment just because it's in EU, right? So why don't they invest there? Why do they invest in US instead and there is a need in a special action - not taken prior to now - to enable them to invest in the EU?

smsm42 commented on Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology theconversation.com/europ... · Posted by u/DyslexicAtheist

dns_snek · 14 days ago

> So why US has "big tech" and Europe does not?

Because having "big tech" is a sign that the government has completely failed to enforce anti-trust laws and allowed dangerous concentration of power to occur. It's a symptom of a disease not some desirable goal.

The EU doesn't need or want "big tech", it just needs "tech". It needs generous public funding for infrastructure, open source, and it should aim to build upon open standards whenever possible.

We don't need domestic monopolies that are just going to fuck us in the same way that US corporations fuck Americans while we all pretend to enjoy it for the sake of looking superior to the other camp.

smsm42 · 14 days ago

> The EU doesn't need or want "big tech", it just needs "tech".

Why doesn't it already have "tech" and has to resort to governmental action to procure one? I mean, it is obviously very easy to acquire just "tech" without government completely failing to enforce laws and population being fucked by corporations, and it is a testament to how dumb Americans really are that they failed to do that. But Europeans are not dumb, so why they didn't do it by now? Why we are discussing the matter now instead of just pointing to clearly superior open-standard non-fucking European "just tech" as a superior alternative to American "big tech"?

smsm42 commented on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun

nullocator · 14 days ago

Are you a citizen, can you prove it at the polling station? I am doubtful you are, and your documents if you have them don't seem legit enough, so I think we'll set your vote aside, or possibly prevent it from being cast; we can't be too sure!

smsm42 · 14 days ago

> Are you a citizen, can you prove it at the polling station?

Yes, I have multiple documents proving my citizenship. Never been asked though, ID always sufficed.

> so I think we'll set your vote aside, or possibly prevent it from being cast; we can't be too sure!

I have voted in more than one state (legally, I moved) never seen any voting place asking for any documents except for state ID and voter roll check. I don't think there is any voting place where local state ID is not "legit enough".

smsm42 commented on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun

cthalupa · 14 days ago

No.

There are not non-citizens on voter rolls. They want the rolls to get data on voters.

When you ask yourself why the ultra-politicized DOJ (which isn't even the DHS...) from an administration that has explicitly called liberals the enemy is asking for voter rolls, it becomes pretty understandable why people might come to the conclusion that it is to suppress the people that have already explicitly been identified as targets.

smsm42 · 14 days ago

> There are not non-citizens on voter rolls.

That is incorrect, there are actually non-citizens on voter rolls, especially in the states with automatic voter registration. Example: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/scotus-al...

Of course, actually voting would be a crime: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611 but it doesn't stop everybody: https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state-more-than-100-non...

smsm42 commented on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun

loeg · 14 days ago

Why would Medicaid have the data of anyone who is at risk of immigration enforcement? The reported connection seems tenuous:

> The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources.

So, they have a tool that sucks up data from a bunch of different sources, including Medicaid. But there's no actual nexus between Medicaid and illegal immigrants in this reporting.

Edit: In the link to their earlier filings, EFF claims that some states enroll illegal immigrants in Medicaid: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/eff-court-protect-our-...

smsm42 · 14 days ago

> EFF claims that some states enroll illegal immigrants in Medicaid

Actually they don't. They say "Some states, using their own funds, allow enrollment by non-citizens" - but they never say if it's legal residents or illegal immigrants. I am not sure whether it's part of the ongoing attempt to blur the line between legal and illegal immigrants, or all the states that allow that genuinely do not distinguish between legal residents and illegal immigrants, but we can not assume it by default.

But I am not sure if the states use their own money for this - why would they send this information to HHS?

smsm42 commented on Europe wants to end its dangerous reliance on US internet technology theconversation.com/europ... · Posted by u/DyslexicAtheist

sarchertech · 15 days ago

It’s not really comparable though. The EU isn’t a unified single language market, and its GDP and per capita GDP are much smaller.

smsm42 · 15 days ago

Language is not a huge deal - if the French and the Spanish and the Dutch can use Facebook, they could use Eurobook if that existed, as well. The problem of course would be, if they made a committee to build Eurobook, they'd spend 5 years in meetings to ensure every country and every language is absolutely equally represented and then would build something that no speaker of any language would use.

As for GDP, EU overall GDP is only slightly less than US GDP, so it could very well sustain the industry of comparable size. Per capita GDP is indeed lower, but I'm not sure how that precludes creation of something like Eurobook.