Wait, sorry - what’s the controversy regarding DHH? Others don’t surprise me.
3,714 karma · joined December 30, 2014
How doge isn't a plain dictionary definition of corruption? A private citizen given a power to destroy organisations that overlook that citizens businesses?
It used to be that in such cases that private citizen then must give up their rights to their businesses (or some other way of avoiding conflict of interest).
i.e. doge says they saved some insane amount of money for some program, but most importantly, for many cases:
- most of the money have been paid already, so almost nothing is saved (imagine 5 year program for 10B, but 4 years have passed, 8B has been paid and now it will not be finished);
- program brings more business than it costs;
- or both;
It grinds my gears when musk, trump and the like bring their “run government as a business” attitude. Government is a “meta-business”.
It takes care of things that businesses won’t. Roads, trains, growing and educating new generation of workers and businessmen, army, etc.
thiel’s technofascist libertarian dystopian city states will crumble from lack of infrastructure or if not - more powerful states (China?) will eat them up one by one.
What other commenter said, plus covering bachelorette/bachelor parties (groom and bride don’t pay). Wedding gifts. Where I am from and you’re being accommodated- it’s kind of expected (and part of etiquette) to include cash with your gift to try to cover hotel and dining costs for yourself.
Video clearly states - factories did not care about cleaning it as it was uneconomical. I assume with existing “chemical whack-a-mole” current plant will not care as long as substance is not obviously banned. Secondly, video also states that even if those products are collected - they leach from landfills.
Personally I could bet that trace amounts of chemicals from “manufacturing process” still end up in final product anyways.
> Or only the non-dangerous long chains are in products?
IMHO, we should drop “non-dangerous” as a myth from teflon commercials of the 70s. As also from the video - due to heat you can consume harmful chemicals, even with acute consequences.
PFAS, from my understanding is a group of thousands of chemicals, most of them with no research on harmfulness. Though we know that some of them are directly linked to increasing some cancers or some other illnesses.
> they're not dumping gigatons of this stuff and the ocean is infinitely large in volume.
As per videos - we are talking about ridiculously miniscule amounts. Amounts in terms of couple parts per trillion of PFAS are considered harmful.
There were examples - PFAS is everywhere. Food packaging, hygiene products, tooth floss, fire extinguishers, clothes, kitchen appliances, etc. It’s manufactured all over the globe in multiple factories for seemingly everything.
It gets into the water cycle and trace amounts of PFAS is now found in polar circles and remote mountain tops from rain and snow.
We are exposed to it through water and through the things we use that contains it.
If you look for it in Mariana trench - maybe you won’t find it, but everywhere we do find it and that’s just a fact.
My personal biggest takes are:
- It’s not only c6/c8 that are harmful, there’s GenX and others thar also are and a plethora that haven’t even been tested, and they all are under PFAS umbrella;
- Most of those chemicals accumulate and don’t deteriorate. You get part per quadrillion there, part per trillion there, maybe permille next to a factory or a landfill. Give it 70 years and all animals and humans have >1 ppb of most harmful known PFAS in their blood. When we know that at 30ppb you get double chance of getting kidney cancer (and that’s just one cancer);
- The nature of indestructability is the main problem of cleaning it up. It doesn’t matter if something is “only used in manufacturing process”. It’s already somewhere, in the product, on the packaging, in the water that cleans the factory, in the landfill that collects it;
Give it couple of decades of these cycles and you get trace amounts of those chemicals everywhere. Even where human may haven’t been.
Same as CO2 (and other gasses) affect not only immediate area of the factories and cities, but globally.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=windows+phone+google
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Just one more lane, bro.
You don’t need to know all the laws of Mississippi to serve such customer, or any laws from anywhere else other than Italy.
But the biggest gripe for me - it greatly shows how much meat and dairy farming is subsidised (at least where I live). When chicken meat is 4-5€/kg (i see ofen discounts on chicken breast/wings for 2-3€/kg) and grains (rice, buckwheat) are ~3€/kg it just doesn’t make sense to me. Similar with milk vs alternative milks.
Hence it doesn’t at all surprise me if you do some “lab grown” meat alternatives from plant proteins - you will have 5x more expensive product (if not more).
With all this technological advancements it seems bizarre that we as a humanity still spend so much earth resources on growing animals for slaughter. I know it will not disappear and I don't wish that, but the amount of problems it causes is insane. Diseases (swine flu and avian flu are never ending problems, mad cow disease is one of the scariest things), completely destroyed water sources from pollution, overuse of antibiotics (because of prevalent infections and unsanitary conditions), etc.
In MAGA terms - if your business cannot survive in free market competition without scam schemes - it’s “unamerican” and shouldn’t be a business.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
Most recent I remember UPS firing 20 000 people.
> Yet another example of how <startups/stock brokers/etc> serve no purpose in real life. Yes, there have been ground breaking innovations and discoveries from <startups/stock brokers/etc> folks but that's likely 10% of the good ones. Rest is just pure misery, like the one OP describes
They are called “essays”. /s
I’d argue that leadership of ycombinator is glad where this boat is sailing. Just look who are they inviting to advertised AI startup school at the bottom of this site.
I wonder what is worse with the current USA administration? The policy itself (e.g. blanket tariffs) or unpredictability of their actions.
Will tariffs for country X in a week will be higher or lower? Will they be paused/cancelled? Nobody knows - even Trump and his cronnies don’t know.
Should I build a factory within USA, which will take 2 years to build and 10years to reach profitability in this political uncertainty?
How come dismantling education, medical, various protective agencies and services will help with that?
Though last one shouldn’t be surprising as it was endorsed by YC 10+ years ago.
Hence - people are now much more critical of him.
It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/02/sergey-brin-says-agi-...