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Akababa

311 karma · joined July 15, 2019

Hello HN!
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Akababa··on Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%
There are diminishing returns to more engineers. Also hiring more is like investing with leverage. You might increase EV but also increase the chance of going bust if things go poorly.
Akababa··on Alpine Linux does not make the news
Found the person who didn't read the article lol
Akababa··on Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend
ozontel.com doesn't exist. Is that a typo or did a competitor really buy ads to a nonexistent domain?
Akababa··on GM scales back partnership with electric truck startup Nikola
So Trevor fabricated evidence to fool the police? That's a far more serious offense than the sexual misconduct, and frankly it's hard to believe he could pull that off, unless he managed to bribe the police. Johnny's probably not completely innocent - they can both be scumbags.
Akababa··on Prediction Markets Beat Polls
If you look at it in terms of risk-adjusted returns (Sharpe ratio), a fixed transaction fee costs more Sharpe on a low-variance bet than it does on a high-variance bet. The variance of balanced contracts is higher than the variance of unbalanced ones (p(1-p) is concave with maximum at p=0.5), so after adjusting for risk the transaction fee is more significant for the unbalanced contract.
Akababa··on DoorDash S-1
A large proportion, if not the majority of my doordash orders include some sort of promotion. They're everywhere and at this point I almost have an expectation that doordash will always have a promotion that lets me order at a discount.

I think that these effective consumer subsidies are included in their "sales and marketing" budget.

Akababa··on Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
Yeah, but left/right is a big part of what differentiates political parties. It's like the first factor in a PCA decomposition.
Akababa··on Andy Kelley (of Zig) intimidated into vacating apartment for Hulu filming
I don't get it. If the landlord wants the filming to happen so badly, why doesn't he kick in a few grand to compensate his tenant... That's a lot easier than kicking and screaming all night.
Akababa··on 8086 Microcode Disassembled
If ROM space is so valuable, why is ASCII text (which I imagine is relatively large) stored on it?
Akababa··on Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps
If true, that's uncannily reminiscent of North Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inebLA3HqPo
Akababa··on Why did a hedge fund manager worth $700M take a $630k job managing an oil fund?
That's the fundamental problem of hiring: you have to make educated guesses about who is going to make a better employee. And you should be willing to pay more to hire someone who you believe is better. For some companies, salaries are such a small part of their revenue that it makes sense to offer some candidates a lot more... and if your first choice happens to accept a lower salary, it doesn't really matter - you've saved a drop in the bucket.
Akababa··on Degoogle: Cutting Google out of your life
They can't lock me out of my account if I do it myself first!
Akababa··on Why a Slack Backlash Is Inevitable
Have you talked to the person who made the not? They might not realize how distracting it is. Maybe they'll move it to another channel as a compromise.
Akababa··on Why did a hedge fund manager worth $700M take a $630k job managing an oil fund?
It's about supply and demand. If he really is the best person for the job, then there's nothing to be gained from paying him a higher fixed salary. But if there's someone else who's even marginally better that you can get for $10M, it's probably easily worth it - for the size of the fund, one person's pay is a negligible amount.
Akababa··on The universe has made almost all the stars it will ever make
That's a uniform distribution
Akababa··on Michigan college is tracking its students with a flawed app
You can even use an android emulator for this - some of them come with location spoofing too.
Akababa··on Uber and Lyft shutdown in California averted as judge grants emergency stay
My impression is that Uber fulfills a niche for drivers who want a certain tradeoff between flexibility and job security. There are people who fit into that niche and people who don't, but forcing the company to change its value proposition is going to make some people start or stop driving for Uber depending on how well the new contract suits them. This could be a net economic win or loss, but we don't know the numbers. In the long run, if there are enough drivers who value the flexible arrangement that Uber provides, then either another company will fill that niche or these people will find similar work elsewhere.
Akababa··on Modeling a Wealth Tax
You're the one who brought up the forest metaphor, where plants compete for light.
Akababa··on Ask HN: How do you switch off from work, particularly when working from home?
I share a monitor and peripherals for both personal and work stuff, and find that an effective way to "turn off work mode" is to simply switch the hub from my work laptop to my personal computer so I'm not as tempted to go back to work.
Akababa··on Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees
This is part of a super generic tradeoff between liberty and public good that differs from case to case depending on your culture and values. For example, should we ban smoking? What about meth? And so on.
Akababa··on Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees
As other commenters have mentioned, all the company has to do is disclose risks in their public filings and it's up to investors to do their due diligence. It's safe to say that unless they lied to investors, the majority of capital coming in is from people who know what they're doing and are comfortable with the risks.
Akababa··on Uber and Lyft ordered by California judge to classify drivers as employees
I'm not sure that this makes an economic difference - ultimately Uber's algorithm will set the price where supply intersects demand. Or equivalently, drivers can raise their own prices/restrict supply by only working during surge hours.
Akababa··on XXH3, world's fastest hash algorithm, has reached stable status
Noob question: how do they even measure performance faster than RAM sequential read?
Akababa··on What Went Wrong at OpenAI? [audio]
I can see your point, but that does beg the question: what niche does a nonacademic nonprofit fill? It seems to me that's it's not filling a particular niche at all, but rather sitting somewhere between a corporate lab and a traditional academic lab. It's for those who are okay with trading off some of the freedom of academia for some of the resources afforded by industry.
Akababa··on What Went Wrong at OpenAI? [audio]
It labels almost every paragraph as a different speaker, which makes you wonder why they bother to try! Does their software really think the podcast has 20 different participants?
Akababa··on What Went Wrong at OpenAI? [audio]
Is volume control necessary? I don't think the YouTube app even has it because it just uses your device volume.
Akababa··on Is Catalina a Good Upgrade Yet?
Works fine for me developing on PyCharm on a new MBA. But on the other hand, I haven't used pre-10.15 macOS so I might be blind to some of the pain points of upgrading.
Akababa··on In Battle to Recruit New Quants, Hedge Funds Outpay Banks
This particular article is about MFE students from one school, but hedge funds love PhDs too.
Akababa··on In Battle to Recruit New Quants, Hedge Funds Outpay Banks
One way to get interviews at least is by doing well in math contests.
Akababa··on Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns [pdf]
Right, so the issue with the income premium without economic growth argument is that the government would have collected those incomes anyway, just from different people (unless the student loans are structured as a % of future earnings, in which case I apologize for my ignorance).

Of course, degrees aren't zero value, but the subsidies for education (student loans) could still be distorting supply in a way that results in a net loss for the government. For example, a self-taught engineer or entrepreneur spends years in school instead of inventing or starting businesses. This is a poor allocation of investment and human capital which results in a net economic loss (including a loss for the government).

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