Hacker News Reader

drocer88on How to Live in Airbnbs for the Price of an Apartment Lease

"The annualised total return on the S&P since 2000 has been 3.31%". This is way off. I'm not sure what their mistake is.

The alfphaantagelive calculator is reporting much lower numbers than the real value.

Yahoo has a symbol for S&P 500 total return: ^SP500TR Check out: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5ESP500TR/chart?p=%5ESP500T...

Punch in December 2000 for start and today's date for end. You'll get 398% total return. 398/21 = 19% annual return.

Total return includes dividend re-investment.

The alphavatangelive calculator says 3.31%, but even without dividend reinvestment the S&P 500 reports 11% average annual gains.

This does not price in inflation which historically reported as 3% over long periods and was much lower until recently.

Damodran has as good historical financial returns summary page: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/... . According to the spreadsheet linked to on that page, S&P 500 returns with dividend reinvested is 11.64% since 1928. Assuming 4% inflation, that's 7.64% annual returns.

So going all in on the stock market over a long time you can withdraw 7%. Even through world wars, depressions and stagflation periods. Some decades will be better than others.

drocer88on Study rewrites understanding of modern Japan's genetic ancestry

Paper here ( "Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations") : https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abh2419

drocer88on Seq – A programming language for computational genomics and bioinformatics

Look at the link: https://github.com/seq-lang/seq It says 96% of the code is C++ in the "Languages" box on the right. C ( and C++ and Rust) outperforms Python in benchmarks and certain optimized C code can do 160x over very naive Python. So this is very possible, though the routines tested are probably cherry picked for bragging rights.

drocer88on AI Recognises Race in Medical Images

From the preprint ( https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2107/2107.10356.pdf ) : " In this work, we define racial identity as a social, political, and legal construct that relates to the interaction between external perceptions (i.e. “how do others see me?”) and self-identification, and specifically make use of the self-reported race of patients in all of our experiments. "

drocer88on FBI declassifies document on Saudis and 9/11

Actual source document ( pdf ) linked to here : https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related...

"Release of FBI Electronic Communication dated April 4, 2016 Pursuant to Executive Order 14040 § 2(a) (Sept. 3, 2021)"

drocer88on The Forever Trial at Guantanamo

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10604

drocer88on The Forever Trial at Guantanamo

How many have returned to terrorism? Is there a reliable source documenting this?

drocer88on The Forever Trial at Guantanamo

An alternate view : https://nypost.com/2021/08/21/hundreds-of-released-gitmo-det...

"Shortly after taking office, Biden reversed President Trump’s executive order to keep Gitmo open and is lining up inmates to transfer out of the prison with the goal of emptying it and shuttering it — even though the remaining prisoners have long been classified by military intelligence as the worst of the worst and too dangerous to release."

drocer88on Coronavirus-sniffing dogs deployed at Miami Airport to detect virus in employees

Nature News, in November 2020 ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03149-9 ) says : "Canines seem to detect coronavirus infections with remarkable accuracy, but researchers say large-scale studies are needed before the approach is scaled up."

drocer88on Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

John F. Kennedy used this trick: https://www.politico.com/gallery/2012/06/16-worst-political-...

Note the two "Joseph Russo" entries on the ballot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_John_F._K...

drocer88on Docker Desktop no longer free for large companies

Singularity ( https://singularity.hpcng.org/user-docs/master/introduction.... ) is a platform that lets you create and run containers. Source is on github : https://github.com/hpcng/singularity

drocer88on Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)

It says it wasn't a "formal alliance". The Nazi-Soviet pact was alliance for practical purposes as seen with joint "victory parades" with the Wehrmacht and Red Army and expanded trading.

I'm not sure what specific "rebutted by historians" you're talking about. There were disclosures about Nazi-Soviet secret protocols in 1946 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... though Soviet attempts to deny this were not credible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

drocer88on Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor...

U.S. + British + France GDP was 7 times bigger than Russia at end of the war. Western allied air supremacy ( including a nuclear monopoly ) would have obliterated Soviet logistics.

The West had the upper hand and Stalin knew it.

drocer88on Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)

"while the communist movement actively tried to fight".

They also allied with them : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

Remember this stuff also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_French_Communis...

drocer88on Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)

"Russian tanks had a significant advantage over US tanks". This is much debated by WWII historians. When the U.S. tanks finally did square off against the Soviet tanks, U.S. tanks won : https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-Sherman-tank-compare-to-th... . U.S. reliability and logistics made up for any discrepancies in the specifications.

drocer88on Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)

Reds did invade northern Japanese islands and still occupy them today.

Yalta agreement carved out areas south of this for the U.S.

drocer88on Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)

"the American and British armies would have been no match for the Soviet Red Army".

U.S. , Britain, Canada and France had millions of battle hardened troops, too ... and air and sea supremacy.

drocer88on For First Time, Half of Americans Favor Defending Taiwan If China Invades

Japan is strengthening ties to Taiwan : Taiwan says security talks with Japan focused on TSMC investment ( https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Taiwan-says-security-talks-... ).

... "The comments were made at the first ever regional security dialogue between the ruling parties of Taiwan and Japan -- a meeting, already condemned by Beijing, that comes amid growing Chinese aggression in the region."

drocer88on CCP publication calls Tibet policy a template for other ethnic minority regions

"the imperial family were also devout Buddhists."

Do you have a link for this?

drocer88on CCP publication calls Tibet policy a template for other ethnic minority regions

FYI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23291

Note the PCA plot: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/6f245ebd-af27-4633...

drocer88on CCP publication calls Tibet policy a template for other ethnic minority regions

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53220713 : "China forcing birth control on Uighurs to suppress population, report says".

https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we... : China cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abortion, sterilization

drocer88on Yahoo shuts down news sites in India

Yahoo News India here: https://in.news.yahoo.com . "As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content."

https://in.help.yahoo.com/kb/account/SLN35842.html?impressio...

Effective August 26, 2021, we have ceased publication of content in India and have shut down Yahoo's content operations in the country. The content offerings closed include Yahoo News, Yahoo Cricket, Finance, Entertainment and MAKERS India.

We did not come to this decision lightly. However, Yahoo India has been impacted by changes to regulatory laws in India that now limit the foreign ownership of media companies that operate and publish digital content in India.

Yahoo has had a long association with India and we're really proud of the premium, local content we have provided our users here for the last 20 years. Once again, thank you for your support and trust in our brand.

drocer88on 323k Federal Student Loan Borrowers to Receive $5.8B in Automatic Discharges

Who's paying for this? Banks? Schools? U.S. Treasury?

drocer88on Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men

They used to be high quality. Many news organizations have dropped a few notches. It is unfortunate that Hong Kong has lost its independence and suffering more and more from Chinese Communist policies.

drocer88on Black barbers have become mental health advocates for African American men

SCMP was acquired by Alibaba and has become more supportive of Chinese Communist Party: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/south-china-morning-post/ . I can't vouch for this analysis. I think they are not what they used to be.

drocer88on Fighting Like Taliban

The East Turkistan nation disputes China's ownership of this area.

drocer88on 48 pct of Americans say government should restrict “false” information online

Who decides what's false?

drocer88on Will the rich world’s worker deficit last?

Just raise wages. We seem to always get this "worker shortage" marketing campaign every few years from our fat cat leaders. There is no shortage. If I want a wagyu steak but only want to spend $5.00, does that mean there's a food shortage? Labor, goods and services are all subject to supply and demand. Let it work itself out. No special government subsides for people whining about shortages.

I want a trip on one of these orbital space ships. Is there a space ship shortage?

drocer88on Big Oil methane emissions: ‘significant gap’ between reality and reporting

Communism also : https://search.brave.com/search?q=pollution%20in%20soviet%20...

drocer88on Dallas police lose 8TB of data, impacting criminal cases

"muchless a Texas based one"

What's with the Texaphobia?