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

The vast majority of poor people are poor due to their own actions. Low impulse control.

"I opted to be fun in high school, now I get up at 4am in the morning" is fun meme that cuts at the heart of it. Instant vs. delayed gratification and its consequences.

Source: I grew up in social housing, served in the army. Plenty of poor people around.


Have we tried putting them on Ozempic and amphetamines? They'll get impulse control then.

The GP comment (that just got banned) claiming the only two choices are "work hard" and "UBI" is a working-class class marker. Higher paying middle class jobs are universally easier than working-class ones. But they're more specialized, less predictable, and require you to have trained for them and have appropriate class markers and social skills.


Come on, you are blaming them, like it's a choice to be poor. Just have more impulse control... Probably they need medical help for some condition? But no, it's their own fault..


So its protection money. Give money to the poor so they don't kill you.

Awesome.


Yes, in a way, but I think the person you replied to said it better!


Nah you gotta work for the rich or they WILL kill you by denying health care, shelter, and food.


There’s a Just World Fallacy if I ever saw one.


It's also literally true. Violent revolutions in history come about when the people are fed up with the king and also have the means to do one.

It's also true the other way: you have to pay rent (poor pays rich) or else their thugs come and beat you up.

Pretty much everyone wants your money or they'll do what you can to make your life worse. You'll also do what you can to make other people's life worse if they don't give you enough money, like not working for them.


Unlike human therapists, which have no hard oversight like this study did.


> Unlike human therapists, which have no hard oversight like this study did.

What do you mean by that?

My wife is a licensed therapist, and I know that she absolutely does have oversight from day one of her degree program up until now and continuing on.


There are plenty of shady, ineffective and abusive therapists.


Sure, and there are systems that work to prevent or those people from practicing. Imperfect systems, to be sure, but at least I as a citizen can look up the training and practice standards for therapists in my state, and I have some recourse if I encounter a bad therapist.

What safety systems exist to catch bad AI therapists? At this point, the only such systems (at least that I'm aware of) are built by the AI companies themselves.


This could be said about anything.

There are plenty of shady people commenting right here right now.


Surely they're vastly outnumbered by A) legitimate therapists; and B) the sheer number of people carrying around their own personal sycophants in their pockets.


They actually tested the human specialists in case you didn't notice that bar in the data.

They are not perfect either, but are statistically better. (ANOVA)


People said the same thing about the horseless carriage in the early days of the automobile; they could cite evidence of the superior dependability of a horse and buggy. Things eventually changed. Let's see how things shake out from here.


You can say this for almost any new thing, it doesn’t mean anything


It means that you should be careful to not judge too quickly. Because there are many examples in the past of people clinging to the status quo and refusing to believe that new technology could actually supersede human capabilities.


it's fair to judge their current abilities. guessing about potential futures to stick up for their current inadequacy doesn't make a lot of sense, imo.


Except we've already seen people who do exactly that, and being wrong about the future over and over. I'll agree with you that it's fine (and helpful) to point out all the failings of current LLMS; the mistake is extrapolating that out too far and making a prediction about the future. Granted, it's just as common a human mistake to predict the future too optimistically, by believing there are no impediments to progress.

All i'm really arguing for is some humility. It's okay to say we don't know how it will go, or what capabilities will emerge. Personally, I'm well served by the current capabilities, and am able to work around their shortcomings. That leaves me optimistic about the future, and I just want to be a small counterbalance to all the people making overly confident predictions about the impossibility of future improvements.


There's no chance LLMs have a sufficient training set of effective therapists-patient interactions, because those are private. Ergo, there is no need to wait, it's DOA. Anything else is feeding into LLM hype. It's that simple.


Heh, it's that simple for someone who thinks the training regime and AI technology will not change further. The early horseless carriages had all kinds of stupid problems, and it would be very easy to pronounce them DOA. "Nobody is going to want to ride something so prone to breaking down", "a horse only needs food from the farm, not stuff drilled from the ground", etc. People don't have much imagination in such situations, especially when they feel emotionally (or existentially) attached to the status quo.


DOA doesn’t mean forever and always. But certain claims like the advent of living beyond 200, humans on Mars, etc can just be immediately dismissed outright for several decades. What you’re talking about is unsupervised LLM therapy. Even when my dentist used AI to read my X-rays, he’s overseeing everything. I’m fine sticking my neck out to say LLM therapy is DOA for the foreseeable future.


Your pronouncement goes against evidence cited in the article:

"people have reported positive experiences with chatbots for mental health support. In an earlier study, researchers from King's College and Harvard Medical School interviewed 19 participants who used generative AI chatbots for mental health and found reports of high engagement and positive impacts, including improved relationships and healing from trauma"

And that is about the present, not even what may come in the future. Not all therapy is life and death, and there are already signs that it's a good thing, at least in some limited domains.


I think this is the biggest grift of AI: Laundering responsibility. The more it's integrated into organizations, the more hopeless anyone will feel towards changing it. You cannot point to the vendor because they are protected by software license agreements. "Whelp, sorry for your loss but ya see the algorithm did it.." is going to be the money making tune in many industries.


Canada: January 2026(!)

Novo lawyers messed up, didn't renew the patent filing over a payment dispute. Hilarity is ensuing.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/09/hims-hers-generic-semaglutid...

And once generics for GLP-1s are going in Canada, Section 804 of the FD&C act becomes VERY interesting: https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/reports/importation-program-un...

Reimports of generics from Canada into the US here. we. go.


All over 250 CAD

>Novo Nordisk’s lawyers requested a refund for the paid 2017 maintenance fee of $250 Canadian dollars ($185) because the company wanted more time to see if it wanted to pay it, according to letters included in the documents.

>Two years later, the office sent a letter saying the fee, which now included a late charge bringing the total to CA$450, was not received by the prescribed due date.

>Novo Nordisk had a one-year grace period to pay, but never did, and so its patent lapsed in Canada. It lapsed in 2020 when the fee was not received, but it doesn’t expire until January.


LOL, that must be one of the biggest fuck ups in pharmaceutical industry.


Perfect for a real life DDOS.

Want empty parking at a Dodger game? Use the ICE app.

Also a great honeypot to query out all the users of this app and schedule them for a visit.


FTA:

> The app does not collect or store any user data, which TechCrunch confirmed by analyzing the app’s network traffic as part of a test.


It's just one auto update away from changing


> Also a great honeypot to query out all the users of this app and schedule them for a visit.

In other threads people have noted that the Dev's decision to be iOS only means Apple has a complete list of users but the Dev does not.


This pairs well with:

1 - Microsoft investing 3bn USD in India-based developers: https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-invest-3-bln-ex...

2 - Microsoft having 4700 H1B filings for fiscal 2025: https://www.myvisajobs.com/employer/microsoft/

Utterly predictable behavior by Satya Nadella.


Not to hate on immigrants… but shouldn’t H1B’s be the first on the chopping block of layoffs? Hard to imagine all those H1Bs are so unique that others already employed can’t replace them.


You don't need to pay H1Bs as much. They're a bargain deal.


Yep, you need to get sponsored to work so we have thousands and thousands of workers trapped with low salaries. Nothing they can really do. It’s too risky trying to find another company to sponsor you because otherwise you get deported back


They also can't as easily job hop.


And so they can't push back on a crazy workload.


The spice must flow.

Preferably at a lower cost, though...


I was on L1 (with Canadian PR, so it wasn't totally critical for me) during 2010 or so layoffs/firings, and I've heard rumors that they were trying to spare H1s/L1s because it's a giant pain to get fired as one. I don't think it's related to paycheck; after being encouraged to relocate from Canada (on PR i.e. not dependent on the job) to the US (on L1 i.e. worse than H1) my paycheck went up a bunch for the same job.


So you are hating on immigrants…


It's not quite that reductive.

If the point of the program is A, and you think it's being used as B, it's fair to ask if the point of the program is really A or if it's actually B.

Just pointing that out or asking the question does not mean you "hate immigrants".

You might! But I don't think it's guaranteed.


> Hard to imagine all those H1Bs are so unique that others already employed can’t replace them.

I think the language speaks for itself


Yes, it’s pretty clear that MS is abusing the H1B program. Which is supposed to be used only when no local talent can be found… if you’re firing 1000s of local people I have a hard time believing they are truly less skilled than the H1Bs being hired.

Most engineers (H1Bs, and not) I’ve met aren’t exceptional. Saying that isn’t xenophobic.


They are firing people in the sales, gaming etc and the H1B hiring is in other orgs. AND the layoffs are global, not just in the US.


It's also bizarre...all those american-indian or indian CEOs firing americans and replacing them with indians.

I mean lol..have u heard of american-czech CEO doing that to americans with czechs. Not really right...


American-Whatever CEOs cut American jobs and ship them abroad all the time. For software American-whatever CEOs use India as a hub for offshore hiring, because that’s where they have options. If tomorrow Mexico or Latin American countries have a lot of software engineers available and are cheaper than India, the jobs would go there.

What’s really bizarre is that when the CEO happens to be Indian American, there’s a problem and a conspiracy.


Nope this is not the case.


I will just comment that MSFT felt the need to get 1264 approvals for NEW H-1B petitions THIS year.


The layoffs are mostly in the sales division as pointed out by other commentators. H1B filings most likely would not be in sales.


How does that even work? You take away thousands of people in the market selling (presumably these were enterprise sales, not low end consumer stuff that "sells itself") and what happens to revenue? This strikes me as classic bean-counter logic that sees all sales and marketing effort as pure cost and assumes it can be eliminated while simultaneously viewing revenue as a constant, with no relationship between the two. Really an extension of the view that you should just eliminate all of the engineers first, because they're the most expensive. Too many people in the C-suite detached from their products and their customers, who see their company as just numbers in a spreadsheet.


Maybe they think the enterprise software growth opportunities are drying up? When youre already in every single conglomerates tech stack theres no one else to sell to sop you dont need as many salespeople.


Also: Microsoft India untouched by layoffs, actually hiring

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/mic...


This is the future for all tech companies. Tech workers in the US are the modern day factory workers. Offshore skill set rise plus AI means the end of US tech jobs in the next decade just like it meant the end of US factory work in the 90's.

Everyone in tech thinks they are special but companies will always do what they can to reduce costs and tech salaries are some of the biggest costs companies have. They're going to do everything in their power to reduce them.


Layoffs are planned in India too.


Not according to the head of Microsoft India.


Really? Where do you see that?


I am in India with friends in their last year in college. Hiring is effectively ice cold. Companies like TCS, Infosys wouldn't come to his college but now do. I just want to say good luck, these projects and products are on autopilot with no hiring in India and layoffs everywhere.


That probably has more to do with the absolute tsunami of CS graduates India produces.


They need employees to serve their Indian market.


We've migrated a 1000+ product team to Mattermost 2 years ago.

Super happy with it. No bullshit upgrades that break your way of working. Utilitarian approach to everything, the basics just work. Still has some rough edges, but in a workhorse kind of way.

Endorse.


While my Target puts Legos behind plexiglas. While my Safeway puts deodorant behind plexiglas.

Statistics are amazing.

Even crime stats are "down". Don't report, don't convict - done.


This points more towards organized crime rings targeting stores, taking large amounts of the same popular items, then reselling them on eBay or Amazon. If you have a smallish number of people doing a largish number of crimes, this won't be reflected in incarceration statistics (particularly if the resellers rarely get caught).


Even the organized crime ring panic was made up. The data presented to congress was completely wrong and various organizations had to publicly eat crow about it.


"This points more towards" -- you have any source towards this? :)


Why selectively put this onus on the person you've responded to and not the person at the top of this thread?


Um. The same could be said to you? I don't see what your point is.


I know that in recent years Target has announced that they were investigating, in partnership with local and federal law enforcement, organized theft rings. It was publicly reported on here in Minneapolis.


Many, many of those claims were found to be significantly exaggerated. It bothers me immensely that people still talk about this nonsense.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret...


Or maybe they're low sales-volume items in a low profit margin store and it's cheaper to put some things behind glass than post up a security guard to deal with the fact that almost everyone, even nice old ladies at the grocery store, steal things sometimes?


What makes you think almost everyone steal things sometimes?


Well 40% admit to it but those are just the honest dishonest people

https://losspreventionmedia.com/new-survey-reveals-more-than...


Per Google: "In the United States, life expectancy varies significantly by race and ethnicity, with Asian Americans generally having the highest life expectancy and American Indian/Alaska Natives (AIAN) the lowest. In 2021, life expectancy was 83.5 years for Asian Americans, 77.7 years for Hispanics, 76.4 years for Whites, and 70.8 years for Black Americans, according to KFF. AIAN populations experienced the lowest life expectancy at 65.2 years. These disparities are largely attributed to factors like socioeconomic status, access to healthcare, and the disproportionate impact of certain diseases like COVID-19 on specific racial groups. "

Facts have a clear racist bias.


You too can ride in such a vehicle - just visit the Columbia Icefield in Banff, Canada.

https://www.banffjaspercollection.com/attractions/columbia-i...

They drive out tourists on to the ice (as long as it is still there, couple decades left).

I did it, very cool.


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

Search: