HN user
Happy 10-year anniversary to this repo being shared on HN.
Most significant discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12048945, 652 points, 145 comments on July 7, 2016
All previous submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/chrislgarr...
Can't help but see hurricane-prediction spaghetti plots in those charts.
It's wild how differently the press release you linked to frames that.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Nearly half (49%) of cancer patients and survivors report being burdened by medical debt alongside some (13%) who report expecting to incur medical debt as part of their treatment plan, according to a new Survivor Views survey by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). Interestingly, nearly all (98%) were insured when medical debt occurred.
Among those with cancer-related medical debt, nearly half (49%) have carried more than $5,000 in debt, a majority (69%) of whom have carried this debt for more than a year. Respondents also reported most commonly owing their medical debt to a hospital (76%).
...
According to the survey, an individual with cancer-related medical debt was three times more likely to be behind on recommended cancer screenings in comparison to those who have been able to pay for their care without accumulating debt. Nearly half (49%) saw their credit score decrease with 30% having difficulty qualifying for loans.
Cancer-related medical debt is also not felt equally and further deepens disparities. Black (13%) and Hispanic (14%) patients and survivors with medical debt were twice as likely as White respondents to report being denied care due to their debt. Black respondents were also more likely to report being contacted by collections agencies (66%) and to feel harassed by them (44%).
Insurance refused to cover imaging to identify my spouse's squamous cell carcinoma on an ovary because initial bloodwork didn't come back positive for ovarian cancer (squamous cell required different bloodwork, at least at the time).
It took a doctor offering to misdiagnose it as a dermoid cyst to get the imaging and hysterectomy ordered and approved, and that still took 2 months. By the time it happened, the cancer had metastasized.
The imaging would've cost a few thousand dollars. The hysterectomy would've cost about $20k-40k. Chemo was unsuccessful, and she died 9 months and about $2 million in medical bills later.
So effectively a downtime session of D&D where everyone levels up and goes shopping for gear.
Couldn't find a discussion yet on Wikipedia about how slop books with ISBNs and publishers are more authoritative sources than primary sources by the letter of its rules, but I expect there'll be one by the time I finish popping a bag of popcorn
Beyond previous submissions, this includes further confirmations of the layoffs' scope and more detailed claims on the departments affected.
In particular, this unconfirmed but detailed tweet of layoffs by number per position: https://xcancel.com/TheDoomDominion/status/20749017055823998...
The Frankfurt team, which works on the id Tech engine, doesn't appear to be affected at this time: https://xcancel.com/Gabriel77690206/status/20749272107003743...
Sounds like Digital Foundry's also looking into it, without much detail or confirmation: https://bsky.app/profile/dark1x.bsky.social/post/3mpyvnrbwds...
We might not hear much on that until tomorrow, since most iDTech development was out of the Frankfurt studio. If they're shutting down Frankfurt, it'd be worth getting antennae out.
Looking at LinkedIn, I see mostly people from tech (design tooling, game AI, QA), art (modeling, mats, UI, character), design (levels, gameplay), and production roles in DFW being cut, but haven't seen engine roles or Frankfurt-based employees.
ZeniMax's QA team was notably unionized in 2023: https://cwa-union.org/news/releases/quality-assurance-worker...
ZeniMax, the parent holding company of Bethesda Softworks/Bethesda Games, bought iD in 2009.[1] Microsoft bought ZeniMax for $7.5B in 2020 and assigned it to the Xbox division.[2] ZeniMax's board was subsequently dissolved, so it's entirely Microsoft.[3]
1: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/bethesda-parent...
2: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/09/21/welcoming-bethesda-to...
3: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/zenimax-board-of-directors...
I've seen Brandon James (KillMe) credited in multiple places.[1][2] James left iD mid-development of Quake 3, so the rest of the level design team likely also contributed after that point.[3]
1: https://www.quora.com/Quake-series-Who-was-the-level-designe...
2: https://www.shacknews.com/article/101156/rocket-jump-quake-a...
3: https://www.shacknews.com/article/181/more-on-bjames-id-depa...
"Sorry, Sandy"
Sandy Petersen's side of it comes out in a few interviews, like https://medium.com/@unkndoomer/back-to-the-past-e3c421fb2e70 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUeu96TKQwU (especially 14:17 onward)
About half of Americans lack any access to intercity transport that isn't a private car.[1]
About 15% of rural Americans aren't within 25 miles of any intercity transit, much less interstate; low-income residents are disproportionally represented in that group. That figure jumps to 25% if you exclude suburbs, and in some states that figure is as high as 62%.[2]
Even as intercity bus demand has increased due to the declining quality of air travel in the US,[3] rural intercity bus access has declined. Greyhound served many rural routes until its slow collapse before being acquired by FlixBus, which is more focused on urban access than Greyhound was. The deregulation of intercity bus access in 1982, which led to the closure of many intercity routes (disproportionally in the rural Midwest) that required subsidization from more profitable routes, was a major factor.[4]
So "what percentage of Americans can't afford a bus ticket to the nearest city in an adjacent state" is a non-starter of a question, because most of the Americans who'd _need_ an interstate bus ticket can't even get to a bus stop without first owning a car... with which they could simply drive to another state.
1: https://itdp.org/2024/01/24/high-cost-transportation-united-...
2: https://www.bts.gov/data-spotlight/85-rural-residents-have-r...
3: https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/travel/bus-travel-tickets-airl...
4: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/greyhound-bus-tran...
The ESA, which covers only the US ages 18+: 53% male, 68% white, 87% straight, median age 37. https://www.theesa.com/resources/essential-facts-about-the-u...
A female share of around 40-48% has held steady in this report since around 2007.
Quantic Foundry's research largely backs that women prefer more casual-genre games like match 3, with a mobile bent that wouldn't show up in Steam data: https://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre...
But they also show a heavy preference for third-person MMOs that are also less likely to show up in Steam data: https://quanticfoundry.com/2023/01/27/perspective/
All of the films without spine numbers, see https://www.criterion.com/shop/browse/list
More specifically:
Eclipse Series films i.e. https://www.criterion.com/films/2959-a-colt-is-my-passport, https://www.criterion.com/films/27516-come-on-children, https://www.criterion.com/films/12521-sanshiro-sugata - these stand out the most since several actual Criterion Closet picks are from the Eclipse Series, and most (all?) of them lack spine numbers because their cases are slimline and lack spines altogether
Films in similar box sets like The Ranown Westerns that don't have standalone releases, i.e. https://www.criterion.com/films/32211-comanche-station
The demo widget right now is botted with people spamming nonsense to the point of breaking browsers, much less the intended use. "let people talk" is not the same as "give disruptive people the tools to prevent others from talking"
Missing quite a few compilations,
Not rumors: https://www.theverge.com/games/816118/valve-steam-frame-vr-h...
The Frame’s four outward-facing monochrome cameras and IR illuminator seem to provide excellent tracking, though in a brief demo, the black-and-white passthrough view wasn’t useful for much except getting a general idea of my surroundings. Rowe says sticking with monochrome passthrough was an intentional choice because color passthrough would have added to the Frame’s price. “The core focus of the device is the gaming,” Rowe says.
For those who want color passthrough and other changes to the headset, Valve has made its headset modular, including a dedicated expansion port in the nose piece designed to support extra cameras. The expansion port offers 2.5Gbps of bandwidth via MIPI and one lane of PCIe data.
I've heard about the Document Foundation from HN three times this year, each time through some supposed drama presented devoid of useful context that never seems meaningful enough to follow up on
you'll hit the RAM limit at some point, and you'd almost certainly want to mod it to alleviate the heat issues that kill sustained performance
some of these genuinely excite me, like the slate recognition (chore-reduction), clip search (although I'd want to see how reliable it is), and deblur (a typical PITA post fix). anything that makes masking, tracking, and level-matching easier saves hours on hours, but only if they're either reliable or easy to fix what the automation gets wrong (and it'll always get something wrong by the director, no matter how good it is, because telling editors what they did wrong is how directors make money).
the more SFX-end ones like facial aging and face reshaper, or the talent-replacing ones like speech cloning/ADR, feel both too prescriptive for a director to dial in what they aesthetically want, and also not good enough for the final cut. so I struggle to find where they'd be actually useful in a workflow as opposed to being a trap, looking just fine enough at a glance to sneak into a final cut while looking poor when viewed by the audience.
likewise the focal adjustment and upscaling just feel gross. the kinds of things a good cinematographer can already do, and it'll be so so tempting to use tools instead of taking time to do it right in camera because it'll look good enough in the editing bay, but I feel like it'd really stand out as fake in the final cut unless you're targeting like, heavily compressed social ads. the less you use them the better they'll work, which isn't ideal for a marquee feature.
if the blemish remover really does respect continuity it'd be a nice-to-have, but it also feels like another trap to be careless/cheap on things like makeup or lighting at the shoot, at the expense of looking fake in post
I think that's the broader angle that bugs me the most. all of these tools are convenience tools for editors, but in the end they'll really be justifications for directors/producers/studios/agencies to cheap out and do shittier work faster on the shoot. a cheap, shitty shoot covered in AI bandaids is still going to hit an audience like a cheap, shitty shoot.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/napa-mountain-...
Napa Valley’s most contentious political battleground — winery and vineyard development — has potentially reached a significant turning point following a series of key victories for proponents of limited expansion, leaving continued growth of Napa’s prized wine region uncertain.
While final votes were being cast in the midterm election on Nov. 8, (2022,) Napa County’s Board of Supervisors voted to revoke a permit for one of the largest winery development proposals in the region's history, the Mountain Peak winery, following nearly nine years of opposition. ... locals fiercely objected to the project’s scale, voicing concerns over water supply and quality, increased fire risks and potential environmental and biological harm.
https://www.newtimesslo.com/sucking-air-how-one-vineyard-cau...
The first phase of Coakley Vineyards is what was the most distressing to neighbors: the construction of an irrigation reservoir—also known as an ag pond—to hold 3.3 million gallons of water when full. The pond would be filled (and replenished after depletion and evaporation) with groundwater from three wells on the property.
To the locals surrounding the property, the plan posed a very real threat to their water supply.
Steve and two other concerned landowners met with one of the Coakley project leaders, Randy Heinzen, the chief operating officer of local vineyard management and consulting firm Vineyard Professional Services, to discuss their qualms about the project.
Neither Coakley nor Heinzen responded to requests for comment from New Times for this story.
According to Steve, the meeting only exacerbated their fears about the pond’s potential stress on surrounding groundwater levels.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article306005076.html
This isn't new. 2005: https://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2005/2005_05_04.clos04.sh...
It also isn't limited to the US. Mexico: https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/protesters-occupy-coahuila-...
Protesters in Coahuila have occupied the winery of Mexico’s oldest winemaker since Friday night, accusing its owners of using too much water from a shared source, leaving them with too little to irrigate their crops.
Communal landowners took over the Casa Madero winery in the town of San Lorenzo, 140 kilometers west of Saltillo, to demand that the owners reduce their water use. They first arrived at the winery on Wednesday but left when state police arrived, only to return to enter the property two days later.
The company accused the protesters of violently installing themselves on the property and blamed municipal police for failing to take action, despite being present. The newspaper El País reported that the protesters were armed with machetes, picks and shovels.
There are also protests of entities, including Harvard's endowment, that purchase vineyards specifically to economically exploit their groundwater rights: https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/28626-harvard-quietly-amas...
On the other end, local governments can raise excess water usage rates on farms, golf courses, and wineries, instead of giving them offsetting tax or rate breaks and subsidies to attract them: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article...
Or incentivize water conservation: https://nypost.com/2026/05/25/us-news/napa-valley-wineries-f...
Which some wineries have proactively done for more than a decade, via wastewater irrigation and recycling post-irrigation water for cleaning casks and other surfaces: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/10/07/446096090/ca...
But that's also been protested, for polluting groundwater reserves: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article306005076.html
Dry-irrigated wineries that only use rainwater or mountain runoff also exist, but unlike a data centre, they can't close up shop and move when drought hits: https://www.eenews.net/articles/water-shortages-force-a-reck..., https://triplepundit.com/2022/washington-wine-climate-change...
Data centre noise is a mix of low- and high-frequency intake and exhaust fan noise at the structure level, diesel or turbine generators for the centres supplementing their own power or running backups (sometimes with cooling towers), and no real investment in sound damping.
Combine them with the tendency to build them in open, flat rural areas that have few or no trees or other buildings to baffle the sound, then run them 24/7, and it becomes a chronic issue for people who live nearby (even miles away, if the acoustics are just right).
That shouldn't have been as much of a problem in the US as it's become, but data centre projects get built near where people live because the infrastructure is already there. That naturally raised it as an issue in the UK, where there's less unpopulated space, before data centres of that scale were built: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/31/data-centre-...
it's not, at all
this is the entirety of what this extension does, from its code:
// Extract the search query from the DuckDuckGo URL
const url = new URL(tab.url);
const searchQuery = url.searchParams.get('q');
if (searchQuery) {
// Create the Google search URL
const googleUrl = `https://www.google.com/search?q=${encodeURIComponent(searchQuery)}`;
working at a fully remote company, this happened all the time in slack. people used slack constantly, socially and professionally. channels filled up with context, and it was not only easy but asynchronous to search or even just go back through a day's unread posts in a channel and see what things happened, reply about something, copy it over to a colleague and get them involved, hell even spin off a ticket from it with an automation. people were in hundreds of channels, and it was a firehose, but teams helped each other make the most of it
then we got acquired by a much larger onsite-first company, and their slack is dead. nobody posts anything unless they absolutely have to (i.e. "the men's toilet on the 3rd floor is overflowing" at least twice a week, or that some printer needs paper or toner). there aren't slack bots because nobody checks slack. everything else happens in person, in a servicenow ticket, or at most via email
their IT team has no idea how to support how we used slack before. in one case they told us to stop posting in a channel used by other parts of the company because we were generating too much disruptive activity. I can see the team cultures around it eroding week over week, but we're not in any office, so there aren't any in-person behaviors replacing it. we're all simply becoming increasingly isolated, losing track of each other both as people and in the work we're doing, and becoming unhappier and less effective
this shit isn't hard, but it requires effort and people who see the benefit of it. there's a perception that people with remote work skills can just roll up into an office and be as effective without changing any fundamental aspects of how they work, and vice versa, and it's all bullshit
it's an 8BitDo product in the Framework store that wasn't designed or manufactured by Framework
my partner is a non-tech woodworker and fucking brutal on hardware, so she was addicted to Chromebooks. they cost nearly nothing, they came in weird small form factors, and they had a knack for lasting forever.
she had a day job that required her to use an older Mac and it was a relative pain in her ass that put her off Macs at home. I had a pile of retired laptops and kept trying to find one that would sway her off google.
she expressed interest in drawing functions so I started with a Lenovo Yoga. Windows wasn't an issue as soon as she figured out that she could sign into Chrome and just stay in it like a chromebook. but it was too big, too heavy, too glossy, and crashed too often. she also ended up cracking the screen in 2 months, and while the display was replaceable, the stylus digitizer part never worked again, which eliminated the one compelling feature.
next one we tried was an M1 MBA, which had all the things she hated about her work laptop. she also destroyed one of its USBC ports after 3 days, despite getting a protective cover for it, and it never consistently charged again after that. got donated in the end.
during this time I decided to upgrade my FW13 mainboard and instead picked up another full DIY kit to get the updated hinge, screen, and bottom chassis. The old Ryzen mainboard got the SSD and 2 x 8GB RAM pulled from the Yoga, and I offered it to her as an interim until she found something she liked.
she was mixed on it, but it stood up to her. what sold her on it was that when she dropped it on a concrete floor and bent the bottom chassis near the expansion ports, I just bought her a new bottom chassis and linked her to the replacement video. She had it swapped out in an hour and a half, her first solo computer repair.
so now her top two laptops of all time are:
- that shitty 10" Acer chromebook, still, because it was 10" and matte and about $60
- the FW13, which she's since added about 2 pounds of stickers to and also upgraded the hinge and battery on herself
most people are buying the idea, yeah. we have to, in order to show other people what the idea means in practice
it remains my pet peeve that the 12 and 13 didn't find a clever way to share a mainboard by ditching the expansion cards on one side and just exposing the USBC ports. I would've sacrificed a lot to be able to just move my mainboard intact to another chassis if I needed the features. (which is exactly what I'll be doing with the 13 Pro, and IMO should've been a top goal of the 12)
so, so close to having people legitimately and earnestly start saying "we don't serve their kind here" while gesturing to humanoid robots
I also took Uber in India, where you have to share a one-time password with the driver for example, which I've never seen in any other country.
I was prompted for this on the US west coast this week. If that feature was ever India-only, I don't think it is now.