Hacker News Reader

ckoon A Day Job Is So Much Easier Than Entrepreneurship

Not to mention shilling Fundrise and other real estate crowdfunding sites every chance he gets.

I guess there's no money in just telling people to buy VNQ in their ROTH.

ckoon What everyone gets wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison scandal

Something to do with impulse control, keeping your word, and honest and open communication in the context of a relationship. Maybe there's a better word for it than immaturity.

ckoon What everyone gets wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison scandal

I met my wife on Tinder. In some countries Tinder is less a hookup app and actually a dating app.

ckoon A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels

When I saw the photo in the article I thought, oh this is already available in my city in Romania.

ckoon Fast Crimes at Lambda School

You passed a Triplebyte interview? I heard they ask FAANG level leetcode or harder. That plus going through two boot amps plus SWE job experience looks like high market value to me.

ckoon The sun's magnetic field is about to flip

> One side effect of the magnetic field shift is slight but primarily beneficial: It can help shield Earth from galactic cosmic rays — high-energy subatomic particles that travel at near light speed and can damage spacecraft and harm orbiting astronauts who are outside Earth's protective atmosphere.

Buried three sentences from the end of the article, after a wall of ads and filler (I'm impatient).

ckoon Brain-Health Benefits of Weightlifting

Bulgarian split squats (or rear leg elevated squats) are pretty good, especially if you hold a kettlebell in front.

If you have a good 40m to run, then I would also do interval sprints.

ckoon Fired employee deleted servers, causing it to lose S$918,000

Just because someone wants plausible deniability doesn't mean they're considering doing something wrong.

They could just not want to be even considered a candidate for blame.

For example, if I was ever asked to babysit someone, I would want them to install a camera pointing at me at all times, for my sake and their peace of mind.

ckoon The big lie about sleep

No one is going to Vienna for a stag party, so tourists per capita may not tell the whole story.

ckoon I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business

It's not just half a million, he made more in business profits before the sale.

ckoon A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe

Alternatives like implantable contact lenses? I hesitated because something with cataracts and them needing replacement every ten years.

My eyes are -10.5 each and my biggest risk is retinal detachment.

ckoon Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

How do you "work on" philosophy?

Asking because my web developer wife, who happened to have majored in art and philosophy, is currently unemployed and kinda bummed about it.

ckoon The hikikomori in Asia: A life within four walls

Median family income in 1980 was $21k. Also San Francisco back then may not have been the San Francisco of today. So if you factor in inflation and increase in desirability and local wages, this would make for a more meaningful comparison.

ckoon TSMC EUV machines equipped with remote self-destruct in case of invasion

I hope you're right but think about it like this: with a high youth unemployment and supposedly more men than women, they can throw away a couple million people.

Also them being a manufacturing powerhouse, I think they may have enough, even if they're at low point in the economic cycle.

It wouldn't be smart and even the invasion were successful, not sure what they'd gain, besides more hate from all of Southeast Asia and maybe Western sanctions.

I have family in Taiwan and I'm told their military isn't very well funded or equipped.

ckoon New iPad Pro with M4 chip and Apple Pencil Pro

Not an artist but the Wacom-like graphic tablets are tethered to the laptop or workstation, with at least two cables (one for power, another for the HDMI) so some artists do prefer the more portable solution of iPad plus that nice Procreate app.

ckoon The Rise of the Forever Renter Class

The thing is... rents rise over time while a fixed rate mortgage balance doesn't.

So I think you'd need an additional 2-3% return on that interest-bearing account just to account for inflation.

In most cities the price to rent ratio makes no sense so I'm a renter for life. I do fantasize about a 2.5% fixed 50-year interest-only mortgage and never paying it down. If only those existed. I think Sweden comes close but the rates there are adjustable.

ckoon Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

The theory sounds good but there's a difference between having to sell parts of your portfolio (which is volatile) and never touching the capital because you have blog/YouTube revenue.

A big part of "retirement" is feeling financially secure. I'm sure Pete (MMM) practices what he preaches for the savings rate part of FIRE, but when I quit my job, the lumpiness of my investment returns made me very uneasy.

Having a steady stream of income outside of your investments makes the "safe withdrawal rate" part of the theory kinda moot. (By the way, here's some nuance to Bengen's 4% SWR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7rH7h7ljHg)

Nowadays my FIRE stance has softened to "it's nice to have this pile of capital in case things go wrong" and frugality has always been my nature anyway.

ckoon Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?

As someone who FIREd, his assumptions of 5% real returns and 4% SWR may not hold in the future.

He himself also retired with a free and clear home and a free and clear rental home, which meant he didn't have to tap into his capital, not to mention $400k annual blog revenue shortly after.

But generally I enjoyed his articles over the years and a high savings rate combined with investing is always a wise choice.

ckoon In Praise of Idleness (1932)

I've (GP commenter) read the essay several times in the past and enjoyed it each time.

My comment was a self-reflection of my failures in taking advantage of leisure time.

I've backpacked for 8 months and moved to a different country. It's all pretty boring, and I haven't found a hobby to stick to.

It seems like your comment implies not only did I not read the article but that I misunderstood the premise.

ckoon In Praise of Idleness (1932)

This is wonderful but I guess what I'm saying is: whether I'm jobbing 24 hours a week like I do now, or 55 hours like I used to, or zero hours, I spend all the remaining time in pure frivolity (what he calls passive pleasures).

Modern civilization's cult of efficiency combined with the ease of frivolous entertainment must have beaten the leisure out of me.

ckoon In Praise of Idleness (1932)

I like this essay but I've found it hard to be idle. I jumped aboard the FIRE train so I could coast the rest of my life, and quit my job once when I was 31 and then when I was 33 after working for a year.

Now I'm working the same dead end job again and I don't mind it. When I'm not working I'm consuming YouTube, HN and reddit. Not sure how to love idleness again.

I used to be able to sit still for an hour at a time (meditation).

ckoon How much time should you spend sitting versus standing?

2.2 hours of moderate to vigorous activity per day?

Lifting only takes like 5 minutes of actual movement per day. Guess I need to go play some basketball because walking one hour a day plus calisthenics just won't cut it.

ckoon The U.S. economy's big problem? People forgot what 'normal' looks like (2023)

https://collabfund.com/blog/the-fed-isnt-printing-as-much-mo...

Yep it was an accounting change.

Though the additional wave of stimmy checks plus continued buying of MBS during 2021 was definitely not good for inflation.

ckoon House approves sell-or-be-banned TikTok measure

Twitter was taken private at like $44B.

I've seen estimates that TikTok would be valued at $250B.

Bytedance (parent company) had $120B revenue in 2023.

ckoon US braces for cicadas by the trillion as two broods of periodic insects coincide

Or "rip" or "sound off" on them even. After all, they've been issued a FINAL WARNING.

ckoon Gum disease-related bacteria tied to colorectal cancer

I hope not, for my sake.

Also cavities and gum disease are not the same.

ckoon All billionaires under 30 have inherited their wealth, research finds

Selena Gomez is supposedly worth more due to ownership in her own makeup line, though she is older.

ckoon TSMC employee newborns in Taiwan make up 1.8% of country's 2023 total

I'm Taiwanese American so only slightly familiar. But from what I've heard from family and acquaintances still living there, it's the usual suspects: super high rent relative to salaries (and even crazier cost to own) especially amongst the youth, with no great job prospects.

It's a shame but I feel like this is the trend all over East Asia - work super hard and compete from the age of 5 and for what?

I'm lucky my father shipped me over to the US to live with my uncle because it was easy mode compared to Taiwan.

ckoon Vultr is now claiming full perpetual commercial rights over all hosted content

How did they get it so cheap? Even lower than OVH cloud.

ckoon Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds study

Yep I've tried mouth tape and it's pretty good, especially when combined with side sleeping.

Though I have this paranoia that mouth tape will increase my philtrum length, which I know is a vain worry. Another solution is one of those incline pillows - just a 20% gradient should allow me to back sleep, which I prefer.

Post-surgery I had my jaws wired shut and they had this chin strap that was like an ace bandage that around my head and chin. I could replicate that with one of those mouth guard combined with a chin strap, but I read somewhere that this would eventually pull the upper jaw down towards the airway as well (since maxillary plates are not fixed.)