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

> The worst part, by far, was the emptying / prepping.

Protip to those who have it coming up: Ask for the pill prep instead of the "sludge" prep. You end up spending the day on the toilet either way, but at least it doesn't taste as bad with the pills.


It depends, if you want the best possible colonoscopy quality, do the liquid/"sludge" prep, the general consensus is it cleans you out the best and gives the best possible view during the procedure. However that's only true if you actually do it properly and drink all the liquid.

A decent number of patients can't/don't get through all the liquid in which case the pills are far better.


I’m doing it this year. Does the pill work as effectively as the drink?


> Oral sodium sulfate in a single dose has been found to cause increased gastrointestinal (GI) events

> Sodium phosphate is no longer recommended as a bowel preparation regimen due to its serious side effects

Essentially, put in the effort and do the liquid bowel prep.

Consider adding flavour drops to your drink, icing it or turn it into a slushie to make it slightly more interesting to drink. The PEG will make the ice crystals slightly more smoother.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK535368/


Essentially, put in the effort and do the liquid bowel prep.

It's not just about effort. I must do the liquid prep due to my Crohn's disease. And while I am able to get the liquid down (as you note, it helps to make it as cold as possible; also, suck on an ice cube before drinking to numb the taste buds), I can't keep it down. Within an hour it has me evacuating from both ends.

For my last test, I barely slept at all the night before on account of the vomiting, and even once I got to the hospital I was lying on the wonderfully cold tile of the floor between rolling over to vomit in a trash can.

They know it affects me badly, but still assess that it's necessary due to my risk factors. And because I'm losing much of the drug due to the vomiting, the prep is poor, so I have to start fasting a day early to ensure that I get sufficiently cleaned out. It's torture all around.


It must be really challenging to feel like you are an outlier, and that medical advice does not fit you.

There are going to be niche clinical situations where the benefits outweigh the risks of what is otherwise generally not recommended. If you’re not able to tolerate the liquid prep, you’re obviously better to take an oral fleet than no prep at all.


What helps for me was using cool/chilled water, and a swimmer's nose clip to help reduce the smell of the ingredients. If you are adding flavor drops - go with lemon and not anything blue or red in color.

One other piece of advice - stay off the internet afterwards until you're sure the anesthesia has worn off. My doctor related that a previous patient had gone on the Carvana website and bought a car while still under the effects. Oops.


> Sodium phosphate is no longer recommended as a bowel preparation regimen due to its serious side effects

Well in my country, it's still wildly used for people without renal issues.


These are best practices guidelines that are ultimately implemented (or rejected) by surgeons who still go by feel, whether following the latest-and-greatest or by what they are used to.


I can’t compare the two, but fwiw, in my experience, while the drink is mildly unpleasant it’s only the texture of the drink itself that’s bad and the fact that you have to drink quite a bit of it. It doesn’t taste bad per se (and you can add flavored drink mix to help) and the “purging” part is painless, ie no cramps or anything.


Some doctors will say yes, some no. Best bet is to do what your doctor suggests, but at least ask if the pills are an option.


My doctor actually doesn't recommend colonoscopy until age 50. But starting at age 40 they have you do the "poop in a box" test instead, and then only have you come in if that shows anything.

The complication rate for colonoscopy is about 3 in 1000, and that is skewed towards people who have polyps, which in and of themselves could be dangerous if not removed.

So it's always a risk tradeoff. You can skip the procedure and risk the effects of the disease it's supposed to detect instead. But if you do the math, you're statistically better off doing the procedure.


Unions are great when they are fighting for worker's rights by demanding things like businesses sharing their profits with the workers who make it for them, more vacation time, required investments in safety, and protecting workers from getting fired for having the wrong skin color.

But when they get into the business of slowing down technology adoption to protect workers, that's when they get into the territory of giving unions a bad name. Getting together to lobby the government to make systemic changes to help displaced workers would be great, but it seems in this case they are trying to get government to just ban technology that replaces them.


Why shouldn't workers also lobby the government to help their material needs? Are only corporations entitled to welfare now?

There's also little benefit in discussing how "useful" this technology actually is if all the benefits are continually being captured by 1% of the population.


I wouldn't say all the benefits. I mean if I get a cheaper ride from the airport I'm benefiting at least a little bit from this, right?


> But when they get into the business of slowing down technology adoption to protect workers, that's when they get into the territory of giving unions a bad name.

I would consider the emputus more on companies to not roll out new technology in a way that harms workers.


> I would consider the emputus more on companies to not roll out new technology in a way that harms workers.

*Impetus, but also, why? Why is it a company's role to figure out how to soft land a technological advance that might cost you your job?


Why is it waymo's problem to help uber drivers?


This is of course a dangerous suggestion, but also, never in the history of the world has the destruction of a technology that was replacing workers ever turned out well for the workers. At best it briefly delayed adoption.


When has it worked out for workers? Genuine question. If its not offshoring manufacturing (China before, South East Asia today) and services (India primarily), its importing labor to depress wages and keep workers in economic peril (there are approximately 720,000 to 750,000 foreign-born truck drivers in the United States, representing about 18% to 20% of the total commercial driving workforce, as of this comment) to encourage compliance with the status quo [1] [2].

If you work with workers so that they will have a safe landing through a just transition, such that longshoreman experienced when the cargo container revolutionized shipping [3] [4], you might get worker buy in. If you say you will with no evidence you will follow through, you will not get buy in, and whatever is the downstream impact of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers becoming redundant rapidly without a safety net.

Despite hope not being a strategy, as an observer, I hope that policymakers make a choice that leads to a net favorable outcome. If they do not, that is a choice.

[1] Is long-haul trucking really facing a driver shortage? - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/11/20/is-long-haul-tr... - November 20th, 2024

[2] Impacts of Alternative Compensation Methods on Truck Driver Retention and Safety Performance - https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/TRB-CAAS-22-01 - 2024

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(Levinson_book)

[4] Arthur Donovan (1999) Longshoremen and mechanization, Journal for Maritime Research, 1:1, 66-75, DOI: 10.1080/21533369.1999.9668300 https://doi.org/10.1080/21533369.1999.9668300


This is already happening. Most companies are using AI screeners for hiring now. They reject qualified people all the time.


Have you ever successfully appealed a failed HR screen?

IME the reality of the modern world that there's little genuine appeal or reconsideration anymore. There is some sort of process but it's Byzantine and if we're talking the government, expensive.

I guess everyone has had different lives but between humans and algorithms I take the algorithm every time.


What I'm saying is that pre-AI, at least a human would skim it, and maybe see something that caught their eye that wasn't on the keywords list. Or if it were an internal referral that used to guarantee at least a call with a recruiter or HM.


I'd still trust ChatGPT over the median recruiter.

And ChatGPT has the benefit of being able to do 10-100x as many screens as with a human. Even if it's grossly wrong half the time I'm ahead on volume.


I don't think humans would skim stuff... Frankly I've always used a tool that preskimmed resumes. Even before AI. You can't expect a HR person getting 10k resumes a day to skim everyone or even look at 10% of them. Even 20+ years ago 80% of resumes went right into the trash bin before I even opening it.


Having been through an hiring cycle recently and prior to AI, the entire process has been pretty broken for a long time, but AI is definitely breaking it (and a whole lot of other things) in new and novel ways.

The only reliable and high quality signal is a positive referral, but those are gated by your personal network, which may not be well developed.


> The only reliable and high quality signal is a positive referral, but those are gated by your personal network

That has pretty much always been the case, but what I've seen lately is even the referrals get put into the AI and then rejected before they're even looked at.


Time for hidden prompt injections in cv?


It's not an issue if your office is so small that no one is hanging out in front of it. :)

My wife only comes in to get printouts and supplies if I'm working, and if she's working (we share the "battle station" by switching out whose laptop is connected to the dock) I basically only go in there to quickly chat and walk around to the other side.


I have three monitors. The left and right are turned vertically. They're all 30". So the main screen is in the center and I keep slack/email/web browser with docs/info on the left and usually Twitch DJs or Spotify on the right. So usually I'm looking forward but I look left briefly throughout the day.


It's a simple matter of math. The USA has less than 5% of the world's population. It's statistically impossible for that 5% to be the smartest 5% in the world. Therefore, if we want the smartest people in the world, we have to allow immigrants.


The smartest aren't uniformly distributed across the Earth.


They almost certainly are, at least before we account for education. Education is, of course, not uniform.

But... the US also has not the best education, so.


> account for education

and nutrition, pollution, infectious diseases, etc


That's true. It is possible that the smartest 5% are all here in the USA. But it is statistically unlikely that's true.


You put words in my mouth. I don't claim that the smartest are clustered in the USA.


So your original comment was somewhat of a tangent. the point jedberg made is that it is in the interest of a country with a strong economic and academic base to welcome the smartest people from across the world, since it is unlikely that all the smartest people in the world are in the US.


Yes, but Jedberg makes it sound as though -- given that only a small fraction of the world's population lives in the USA -- the country has little chance of succeeding if it is to go without immigrants. I disagree, and an extreme example I could offer as a counterpoint is Japan: tiny population (relatively), yet outsized performance.


Japan has struggled economically for decades. One of the fixes being put forth is to greatly increase immigration.


So we need leetcode for immigration now?


[flagged]


No? Not sure how you reached that conclusion. I'm just stating that the USA needs immigrants if we want to increase our median intelligence because we can't possibly have the smartest people in the world born here.


so in order to increase our median intelligence, we should make the process super easy?


Yes.

Why should immigration be kafkaesque? It is in the US interest to have a pipeline of smart, hard-working, innovative people come to this country. The US is/was in many ways a great country for them to come, but we are not the only international destination for such talent. Why would we want to put up such artificial barriers to entry, if we agree on the premises I laid out?

The purpose of this is to discourage legal immigration.


So what prevents the incompetent and lazy from immigrating?


Someone immigrating is almost certainly less incompetent and lazy than the median American. Immigration requires uprooting your entire life, and it requires entrepreneurial spirit and grit. That's why many immigrant groups dramatically out-earn American-born citizens.

TBH most immigrants I've met better embody the American spirit than most Americans.


What about the immigrant groups that don’t dramatically out-earn American-born citizens?




[flagged]


Are you implying that we should be trying to weaken Haiti?


[flagged]


Do you consider it humanitarian to further weaken a nation where the average gdp per capita is less than $3000 and who are in no way a threat to us? In what way do the immigrants arriving from there improve America? Can you give a coherent argument? I can easily argue the opposite from statistics:

From Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (ASEC CPS):

Of Haitian immigrants ages 25 to 64, 17.1 percent have not graduated from high school, 30.3 percent have only a high school degree, 30 percent have some college, and 22.6 percent have at least a college degree. This compares to 6.6 percent, 25.4 percent, 30.4 percent, and 37.6 percent for U.S.-born Americans. (2022 ACS)

Of households headed by Haitian immigrants, 52.7 percent use at least one major welfare program. For households headed by native-born Americans it is 28.4 percent.5 (2023 ASEC CPS)

So it’s clear that the previous immigration regime that allowed this was optimizing for something other than improving America or intentionally weakening rival countries.


[flagged]


Enough. Any more of this and we're banning the account. We don't care what your opinions are, but personal abuse is not allowed here, and just in the past three days your comments have included these phrases:

> Which nation state propaganda mill are you being paid from?

> You immigrant hating America First losers are going to weaken the country

> Not much more going on in that empty dome. Honestly the void your brain represents is kind of relaxing

> Fuck have you never even heard of the Jungle?

> You would be bitching and moaning just as much if Congress directly made these rules and regulations.

> You first, cultist

You've been here long enough and participated here enough that you know this is unacceptable. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep this up we have to assume that you want to be banned.


ill take a week off to cool down then


Asking basic questions about finances and job searches/security, perhaps? Do you have any original ideas or assertions to make, or do you only ask sealioning questions?


Obviously those smart people are going to go where they feel welcome, rather than climbing through obstacles designed purely for humiliation and malevolence.


Just stop being a jerk.


The current American immigration process is not figure-out-able. As any immigration lawyer will tell you, there's strategies with higher or lower chances of success, but there's nothing at all like a roadmap which will definitely lead to permanent residency if you follow it well.


The smartest 5% are able to figure out where they're not welcome.

https://yaledailynews.com/articles/international-grad-school...


come on, don't do this here.


Your argument is a bit flawed though. Most retires get income from a few places: Social Security, 401K, or rental property.

401k's will do great with AI replacing all labor. But social security will disappear and so will rental income, because no one will be able to afford housing anymore.


Most 401(k)s are backed by stocks and bonds. At least in the short term, yes, they'll do great as labor costs shrink in relation to the money earned by selling goods and services. However, if you have fewer and fewer people able to consume because they no longer have income, well, then you have the same problem as you do with housing and social security.

People say that universal basic income is a fix, but let's be honest: employers don't pay people more than they absolutely have to right now, and that's with most of the value earned for the employers being provided by people doing actual work for them. What makes anyone think they'll gladly cough up for those who don't work for them, especially at an amount that will allow most people's standard of living to either remain steady or improve?


OP wrote it poorly, but isn't wrong. Most retires get income from a few places: Social Security, 401K, or rental property.

Social security is a direct transfer of money from people currently working to people no longer working. The amount you get is vaguely based on how much you earned when you worked, but it's not like the money you paid in went into a savings account for you. It went to the people who were already retired. Remember, the first recipients of SS never paid in anything. It's been a long chain of working paying non-working ever since.

401k's are usually based on stocks. The value of stocks is based on the labor of the people who work at the company. The dividends and interest come from that labor too. Once again, at one point you were that labor, but your labor was going to retired people, and now it's "your turn".

And rental income comes from people giving you the money they get from their labor. You used your labor to buy the house, but the current money comes from their labor.

Now the rest of what they are saying is flawed because two of those three would go away if AI replaced all labor. But they are correct in saying that your cashflow in retirement comes from other people's labor, just as your labor went to other people when you were working.


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

Search: