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doom2

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The problem is that someone in their 20s can't even envision a realistic path to where people in their 60s are. And for me personally, being somewhere between the two, I think I'm mostly doing things "right" and still am not optimistic I'll get to where my parents are. I don't even think I'll see all of the money I've paid into Social Security back, given the political rumblings about "reforming" that program. Which is to say that I can see why younger people might feel hard done by.

The hyperscalers building AI infrastructure are willing to pre-commit to HBM and DDR5 capacity through the decade because they cannot afford a repeat of the 2024 shortage.

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the article makes it seem like all that new capacity will be reserved for AI infra, not consumer electronics or personal computing, which is what my comment was specifically about. Happy to be proven wrong if Micron has said anything about reviving the Crucial brand or Sony committing to lowering console pricing because they (or their memory supplier) secured capacity.

In a working economy, an increase in demand for electricity would be met with an increase in investment and capacity, and (at least in the long-term) would benefit all electricity buyers.

The same should apply to memory and GPU manufacturers and yet I have seen no commitments from them to increase supply, so the end result is that consumer electronics are becoming ever more expensive compared to even just a year ago. That doesn't feel like a working economy to me.

For reference, the PS5 Pro has more than twice the number GPU CUs, an 8-core CPU, a 2TB SSD, a controller, and costs $899.

PS5 Pro had a launch price of $700, which already felt steep. How is $900 not even worse value? Even if it's "better" than the Steam Machine, let's not pretend that it's actually a good value for the hardware.

I think it'd be an enormous endorsement of Cursor/xAI and proof of improvement if SpaceX started using it to code the mission critical software running on Falcon 9. Which other AI company can say their models powered a rocket launch?

(mostly /s but I know I'd give it another look if it was that good)

Politics is also about compromise and managing a bunch of differing opinions/desires

Except, it seems, when it comes to the current AI zeitgeist. Then it feels a lot more like CEOs are taking a "my way or the highway" approach. Maybe they can compromise on just how necessary it is for all employees to use AI?

Maybe I've chosen hardmode to learn C with LLM assistance

May you speak a little more about how you're approaching this? I was thinking of doing similar

The annoying thing is how many businesses and communities rely on Meta platforms instead of their own websites and sometimes it's the only way to contact them. If I want to check if the small neighborhood grocery has something in stock? No phone, only Instagram DMs. When I was on vacation abroad and wanted to see if an out of the way farmers market was still happening despite rain? Only Facebook.

The good thing is that it isn't everywhere: Taiwan, Japan, and China usually have apps like Line or WeChat as options. In Europe there's more usage of WhatsApp (which is still Meta owned but also not social media). But in the US (and countries in the Americas), I still see a heavy reliance on Instagram and Facebook.

There's no room for a middle ground or nuance anymore. You are either entirely in one tribe, or entirely out.

A question I find myself selfishly asking a lot is: why do I have to be the one who is accepting or tolerant of others when they may not be accepting of me or my friends and family? I should speak respectfully of rural areas and their inhabitants but cities are free game to be portrayed as dens of crime, drugs, filth, and illegal immigrants? I should respect evangelical Christian communities but my transgender friends can't enjoy the same rights, benefits, and protections of society as cisgender/heterosexual people anywhere they go in the US? To make it explicitly political, Democrats are being asked to moderate and not be so intolerant but no such demands seem to be being made of Republicans or their voters.

I'm not sure what to believe. If the AI craze is what people here say it is, then RAM producers should be eagerly planning new fabs to spin up (you know, economics 101 increasing supply to meet demand). If RAM producers aren't planning on capacity increases, then maybe the AI craze isn't that real. If RAM is a boom/bust industry, then shouldn't we be anticipating a bust in the next few years? Or is the industry not as cyclical as people make it out to be?

The bad PE phenomenon buyout is annoying, but businesses that become miserable for the customers and employees are not stable long-term businesses

What happens when those businesses are hospitals, for example? I've read too many stories of hospitals getting bought by PE and either shutting down or staying (while offering increasingly poor service). In one outcome, it reduces the accessibility to healthcare. In the other, it forces those most unable to choose to stay with subpar care. In both cases, it's not like other health systems are rushing in to replace what has been lost. We just end up with fewer and shittier hospitals.

This has been us the past few years: * Fall 2024: we had to get star bolts[1] installed to reinforce our front wall - $24k * Spring 2025: our (finished) basement flooded, requiring a French drain to be installed and the basement restored - $18k * Ongoing repairs to our roof to address leaks - $8k

Just a seemingly never ending stream of major repairs, which is taking up money we could have used on actual improvements (HVAC upgrades/mini split installation, reinforcing insulation, kitchen upgrades, etc.) that might actually raise the value of the home. Instead, I'm just hoping the repairs will keep us from losing money on the house when we sell.

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/article/tying-architecture-to...

It might kill the console gaming market, too. Typically consoles get cheaper over time post-release. Instead, all the latest gen consoles are getting price hikes and at least one company is potentially pushing back the next gen release (PS6). A PlayStation 5 for $900? I'll just wait and be happy with my perfectly usable Switch 1 (since the 2 is also more expensive than it should be).

Democracy is more or less giving us what we vote for, we just vote for dumb things.

Sorry, when did I vote in favor of the Citizens United, McCutcheon, or Buckley outcomes, all of which are tied to our current predicament of money in politics? And how is my voice, through my vote, able to change and possibly overrule those decisions? Until that happens, even the ballot box won't give me negotiating power versus the wealthy.

many of the public libraries around here are morphing into indoor playgrounds.

If this is said as a negative thing, maybe we could mitigate it by having more free, publicly accessible third spaces. Or accept that libraries can also serve that purpose: as a place for community members to gather as well as the other services they provide.

It doesn't help when a political candidate campaigns on promises of "radical transparency" and breaking up "corruption" and "the deep state" in DC and then gets in power and is even less transparent, more corrupt, and filling the DC bureaucracy with more yes men than the person before him.

How are you supposed to build trust with those kinds of outcomes?

I don't think this is quite accurate advice. Go where the activity is. Around me, in a city of ~1.5M, the Meshtastic community is quite active. They've worked with local ham radio clubs. They have members setting up a larger mesh that stretches the state from north to south. Meshcore isn't as active, although people are experimenting with it just like Meshtastic. But because Meshtastic has more local users, that's what I would recommend to people here. Meanwhile, places like the PNW and Boston have adopted Meshcore. So I might recommend new users there to try Meshcore. It's okay to have both.

This us vs them/there must be a winner attitude that I see in both communities is really toxic and unnecessary. Look at ham radio: some people use CW, some people use SSB, some people use SSTV, some people use FT8 (but not everyone! There are still hams using other digital modes), many operators dabble in a mix of the above. There are a variety of options and nobody is pressuring other operators to use a particular mode or band.

Not directly related to your comment, but I'm confused why so many people say "BYD is subsidized by the Chinese government" as some kind of gotcha for why they're "bad". The US government subsidizes farmers. Companies like Intel, Ford, and Boeing all get federal or state subsidies. Tesla's growth can in part be attributed to favorable tax credits. Should we qualify statements about how successful they are with an asterisk that they got favorable treatment from the government?

From personal experience, I'd just say that the number of emcomm-focused hams I've encountered in the hobby has been quite small but even when I have, they are no more or less annoying than anyone else I've met who are involved in emergency management. I guess I don't understand where people get the impression that the whole hobby is focused on emcomms. Do people really think every American amateur radio operator drives a Ford F-450 packed to the gills with antennas and radio equipment?

I really don't understand this line of argument and why you seem to be taking offense at an entire hobby. It's like asking why people who maintain home networking labs spend so much time and effort doing that when they could be putting those skills to better use at companies like Cisco. Or why people assemble computers at all when you can just get one from Best Buy. Why do people waste time with Raspberry Pi when you could do something cool with a real, existing exascale supercomputer?

There are many different niches in the amateur radio hobby. Some people want to buy off the shelf radios and antennas to make contacts over the air. Some people want to experiment with their homebrew designs and see how far their signal reaches. Some people want to experiment with very low power radios. Some people (including a Nobel prize winner!) want to experiment with new digital communication protocols for amateur radio use. And yes, some people want to use amateur radio for emergency communication purposes.

Why is it so wasteful for any of these groups to do what they're doing instead of applying their skills to something "useful"? Why is it any more wasteful than participants in other hobbies? That also ignores the fact that many amateur radio operators _do_ apply themselves to "useful" things: they're electrical engineers, physicists, software engineers, educators, military or emergency personnel, etc.

I wonder how the dynamic between members of Congress and their constituents would change if we had a larger Congress. Instead of the ~786k people per representative, having ~107k like the UK. Would it be feasible? Probably not. But Congress is way too small and it results in some poor incentives.

I've skimmed the thread here and I am now seriously considering leaving HN for the first time in about 15 years.

I'm finding a lot of the comments here pretty reprehensible, but no more reprehensible than the collective shrug the community gave towards murdered Palestinians, or threads about dead Iranians as a result of American bombs that get flagged off the front page. That doesn't make them acceptable or okay.

Those people's lives are/were valuable, too. It's disgusting that we try to keep HN "clean" of those horrors and the people that flag those threads should be ashamed. Ditto those who think the killing of innocent civilians is okay.

If we want men to take up certain roles, we need to pay more.

Why is it only now, when employment rates are seemingly a problem for men, that we need to pay more in these professions to attract men that might otherwise not have considered them? Why shouldn't we have paid more earlier?

The framing of the article and discussion around it is a little bizarre to me because it ignores the decades or longer of (American) society effectively pushing women into industries like education or nursing and subsequently devaluing them.

I don't quite understand why society has to step in and try to fix this for men who are feeling insecure about their job options while simultaneously actively avoiding trying to help women and minorities.