Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | tt24's commentslogin

Sorry but that isn’t your water. Do you own the Great Lakes?

The Great Lakes are part of the United States and Canada. If the United States or Canada would like to repurpose the water within them for some better use then that sucks for you


You’d have to convince a majority of the members of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. Good luck with that.

They should do this, but only because senators and congresspeople are terrible at trading stocks and they generally average below SPY.

There’s like 2 famous exceptions, other than those they are simply abysmal traders because their information isn’t worth very much. This problem is so overstated, it’s popular because it’s vaguely populist and exhibits an anti elite sentiment


I find this argument entirely unconvincing.

AWS’s massive outage lead to a significant jump in the stock price.

No single grunt level employee has the power to affect any large company’s share price.


Yeah that’s why I said prediction markets, not stock markets. In a prediction market you’re betting directly on something like “AWS has a major outrage on or before May 12th”.

Oh you're right I misread your comment

Okay but I’ll be able to use OpenAI models on bedrock now

Why would I care if AWS asks their engineers to work a little harder on a project


This is great, your suggestion to replace s3 and ddb is to run some VMs?

I don’t blame people for being skeptical


Projects like Ceph and Minio have existed for years, though?

Beyond that, I just don't understand your point of view at all. Do people unironically think there is some super special dark magic being done in the bowels of Amazon, as opposed to just...code that runs on (virtual and physical) machines? The open source community yielded Linux but it's just sooo impossible for it to yield an object storage service? What a strangely shackled view of the world.


This is great, your suggestion to replace our sovereignly hosted VMs is to run containers in the U.S.A.?

I don't blame people for being skeptical


When sovergienty comes at the expense of availability the latter will usually win over the former.

Yea, op just handwaved away all scalability. Guessing their response would be 'launch more vms'.

Scalability is great, when you need it. Most companies don’t need it.

Why does the Dutch Central Bank need scalability?

VMs scale just fine.

> This is great, your suggestion to replace s3 and ddb is to run some VMs?

Well... yes?

What do you think the AWS S3 and DDB is running on? Fairy dust?


No it’s using an army of extremely well paid engineers, something I guarantee the parent comment has no access to

> No it’s using an army of extremely well paid engineers, something I guarantee the parent comment has no access to

That's a different argument to the one I replied to, and the reply to "they have expensive infra people" is "you have to have expensive product-trained people to use them anyway".


It’s not really a different argument

The suggestion was to replace DBB and S3 with some VMs. Presumably those VMs would be managed by the engineers part of the parent commenter’s organization. They do not have access to as many engineers as AWS, nor do they pay them as well.

Not arguing about cost effectiveness here. Just pointing out how silly it is to suggest that you can replace DDB/S3 with some VMs ran by a midsize organization


It's probably 5 juniors fighting fires in reality and not giving a crap for your service. :P

Seriously

I don’t understand how this is even a remote comparison lol

If we’re worried about power there are other much scarier organizations to criticize first


I am worried about these batshit insane billionaire tech bros. They are already in the White House.

Maybe worry more about the organizations that actually have the power to do bad things rather than speculating about something that might happen at some point lol

Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious

They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol

There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them


That's not an ideal tone for here. From my perspective the most incredible thing is the concentration of IO. I might like at some point for elements of my computer usage to remain private, it would be nice if that ability were preserved. A bit hard to accomplish when 1 out of 4 bits processed globally all run through the same network

They'll buy your politicians who will give them zero checks on raising energy prices or poisoning your children's minds

Have they been doing this? Evidence?

How's a 170 million pieces of evidence for poisoning children's minds

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/...


How is this related to poisoning anyone’s mind

Looks like they collected some metrics. I’m fine with this


The trump family is literally in office and accepting bribes from every tech company in existence.

Lol how willfully ignorant can people be?


What does this have to do with my comment exactly?

Apathy is not evidence of anything, not even ignorance.

Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted? Did you forget that already?

Did you see any clips from Trumps inauguration? Weren’t the CEOs of these big tech companies sitting right behind him?

Shall we even talk about Palantir?

I think it’s pretty obvious what the power of these companies are. You have to have your head pretty deep in the tech hole to think this is just about fair ec2 pricing. What I’d do to have that kind of ignorance again.


Palantir makes dashboards haha, if anything they’re the least scary one on the list

> Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted

You’re so close! The organization you want to criticize here is the government. Hope that helps :)


I see. So your brilliant logic is to reduce the actions and impact of multi billion dollar institutions down to simplified versions of the technical solutions they offer.

“You don’t need to worry bout them Palantir boys, they just make simple harmless dashboards. Don’t worry about the deep involvement in government surveillance, military targeting, and immigration enforcement.”

“Amazon just provides simple VMs. Ain’t no need to be concerned about worker treatment, anti-competitive practices, tax avoidance, and environmental impact.”

Is that it?


They treat their workers super well, they pay a shocking amount

Everyone practices tax avoidance, there’s nothing wrong with it. If you don’t like it then adjust the tax code


When their customers start using those buildings with computers in them to autonomously determine who to kidnap and execute, I suspect you might understand their point. I’d also note we are one refusal away from the US president declaring DPA control over frontier model providers and their infrastructure a national defense necessity and under his personal control.

Then complain about the US president forcing Microsoft to do X rather than just preemptively criticizing Microsoft for doing nothing

>There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and...

Like banana companies?


No, I’m not aware of any banana companies that currently have the power to murder people.

This is the logical conclusion when you socialize healthcare.

If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.


We can just tax the rich to cover the cost of our personal decisions. Which is their fault anyway because I wouldn't have gotten diabetes if they didn't shove that junk take out food down my throat.

I assume you’re being sarcastic but just in case: the goal of single payer healthcare isn’t to spend the least amount of money on healthcare. The goal of single payer healthcare is to guarantee everyone a minimum quality of life. You can believe that the minimum quality of life includes the option to engage in unprotected sex and sky diving.

I’m not being sarcastic. If you live in a society that chooses to force people to pay for other’s healthcare costs, you must support banning high risk behavior.

Not out of frugality. It’s a simple issue of fairness. 5% of the healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. Why is it fair that the 5% that choose to engage in high risk behavior are subsidized at the expense of the 95% that choose not to?


What is this comment? Yes, society curtails behaviors?

We wear helmets and seatbelts?

Insurance is entirely about paying a small amount so that the costs of being on the wrong side of bad luck doesn’t pauper your citizenry. A single payer system wildly reduces the amount that has to be paid, while increasing service outcomes since now you can negotiate with drug companies.

I would happily pay for that kind of system as well, because I am happy to ensure that the rest of the nation is better off.


Close! Insurance is a transaction I consent to engaging in, but a single payer system is not that.

But… wait… what? Based on you what you say… why do you put money into an insurance system? It sounds like you want to make the most rational choice, but you are working off of a model of insurance that doesn’t make sense.

The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage is one that distributes costs across the largest pool of individuals. Which is a single payer system.


I put money into an insurance system to diffuse risk away from myself.

> The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage

It would be even more effective to just enslave a bunch of people and force them to pay for my healthcare, but I don’t advocate for that because it’s immoral and unfair.


You are already paying for other people's healthcare costs, whether it's private or public!

If you pay for home insurance (you kind of have to unless you own your home outright or are renting), you're paying for other people's fire or water damage. And one day they might pay for yours.

If there's a lot of fires or water damage, everyone's costs go up.


It's not a perfect analogy because of factors that affect individual policies, such as the replacement cost of the home, moving next to a fireworks store, moving into a flood zone, etc. You pay more when your home is more at risk.

That’s a consensual transaction that I choose to engage in. Doesn’t apply to single payer or the NHS

If you are housed, you are almost certainly paying for home insurance, even if you rent.

1. Many landlords don’t require tenant’s insurance. 2. If you choose to get a mortgage you have to pay for homeowner’s insurance yes. You have the option to not get a mortgage if you prefer.

Notice how in both of the above, there is no third party forcing me to pay for anybody’s bad choices.


Your landlord has insurance on the property.

You are paying for it with your rent, just like you're paying property taxes.


He’s welcome to pay for home insurance if he likes. That doesn’t mean I’m forced to pay for it. It’s like saying that I’m forced to pay for other people’s education because the Starbucks provides it as a benefit. Not really lol

Society is by definition “forcing” people to carry the burden of other’s choices. You’re drawing an entirely arbitrary line at direct taxation. Why is it “fair”? Because society isn’t zero sum. We each give and take in different ways.

Not sure how much a skydiving soda drinking drug user “””gives””” to society haha

Your perception of drug users is woefully out of date. The most “valuable” members of society by your metric (contributing tax dollars) are using a lot of drugs. The U.K. upper middle class are snorting so much coke.

Sorry I don’t believe this


Why not?

Personal anecdotes and bias. I’ve never met anyone successful who regularly consumes drugs as serious as cocaine. At worst it’s marijuana, with minor experimentation with harder substances in college or on special occasions.

"Regularly" is doing a lot of work here. Plenty of rich and successful people dabble in drugs. People with any level of wealth who can function normally in society while habitually and regularly using any substance are pretty obviously much less likely to develop a habit in the first place.

I agree with dabble. That’s not what the parent comment said though

I can’t believe someone with so little life experience would speak so confidently. You don’t know any successful drug users?

Not habitual and not anything harder than marijuana no. I don’t believe that I have little life experience, I live in a wealthy part of the United States and my circle’s median income is in the 300s, so I think I have a pretty solid impression of the type of habits successful people engage in and don’t engage in

Why must I do anything of the sort? As with all things there is a balance to be found that does not necessarily mean zero.

I can both support healthcare that’s free at the point of access (this distinction is important, because the NHS is not strictly speaking a “single payer” system, as both National Insurance and tax revenues from e.g. alcohol and cigarette sales are used to fund it) and individual liberty, even if that increases the cost of healthcare delivery. The NHS is not evidence of an authoritarian regime, it is evidence of the state playing a role in maintaining baseline standards of health, largely for the purposes of maintaining a healthy workforce.

Americans have such a wildly warped worldview in my experience.


The 5% of high risk healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. It’s not fair for the 95% of low risk people to subsidize the remainder.

Now to take the last logical step like Canada and suggest assisted suicide to the high cost patients.

Only those who have become high cost patients due to choosing to put themselves at risk for years.

Admittedly I have only read of Canadian Healthcare, but, that is not what I have read. Terminal patients and the elderly are offered death as a treatment. Cancer patients are the most common. About 5% of deaths in Canada are from the MAID program.

You are wrong. The swingeing taxes on cigarettes already cover the healthcare costs and the smokers die early saving even more money.

> smokers die early saving even more money.

I thought cancer care tended to be pretty expensive. Not sure that your math is so clear cut.


There's good news there too. Smokers don't just die of cancer. They also suffer from a variety of other fatal conditions.

Not really: you want to prevent people from being passive smokers, and add sufficient taxation on cigarettes.

Taxes as they currently exist are a bandaid on wealth inequality. Getting rid of rich people parasitism would be a better way to balance the budget than either right-libertarian principles or taxing commoners for their stress relief like tobacco.

Though judging by the amount milords in the article I suspect that is far ways off.


Wealth inequality is a nonissue. Nobody has ever been able to provide me with any evidence to the contrary.

Not an insignificant amount of ink has been spilled on this over the centuries. So I guess you will never be convinced otherwise.

Not until someone provides evidence for it no

> When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs

Look, I found the problem!


Democracy is the problem?

To a large extent yes, but more specifically the decision to collectively shoulder healthcare costs is the problem.

Why is it a problem? Why should the ability to afford healthcare determine your ability to access it?

I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's reasonable for the less financially well off to die.


Why should I ever have to pay for someone else’s healthcare lol, that seems wild to me

Yawn. I think social networks and search engines can do whatever they like, but this kind of histrionic pearl clutching is getting old.

If people choose to seek out entertainment that’s bad for them then there’s nothing wrong with providing a market for it. It’s on the consumer to know their own limits.


Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: