Hacker News Reader

gotmediumon Scores for Adults Are Dropping on Tests of Basic Skills

There wasn't a single chapter devoted to actionable items. As much as I like to read 199 pages pf reports, their value goes down rapidly once there is no sense of finding solutions.

This is a good 'pointing-fingers' i-told-you-so kind of bureaucracy. They should know better

gotmediumon Reddit S1

it feels i’m re-reading part of wework first S-1:

“Similar to how cities are made from cement and steel, but are really built by their citizens, Reddit is made from code and algorithms, but is really built by our users”

“We see a spirit of entrepreneurship among Redditors, who are constantly pushing the boundaries of what Reddit can be used for. To support their creativity, we are developing new ways to earn money on Reddit. We have enabled artistic users to earn millions creating avatars”

gotmediumon Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

When will we see data centers in space?

gotmediumon Virtual tour of Museum of Failure

No 404?? That is a failure

gotmediumon Amazon R&D spending is more than that of all companies and government of France

Please remember that any publicly-traded company must follow guidelines, US-based or otherwise. There are rules for what constitute R&D for those who want to understand why 'company asked me to fill a report'

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/corporations/irc-41-asc-730-r...

gotmediumon We raised a bunch of money

If that is the case, then you shouldn't be using Apple, Google, Intel, Nvidia, Stripe, Shopify, Meta, Git, etc etc.

Companies raise money now to generate cash flows in the future from a wildly risky innovation. Assuming the thesis is correct, the company will then to pay it back to investors (VCs and their investors including Endowment Funds), but also employee and taxes.

As companies grow, they pay more taxes, and this will let government spend in things like education, infrastructure, social security.

It's either this or socialism.

"Capitalism: The worst economic system, except for all the others"

gotmediumon Discovering that a Bluetooth car battery monitor is siphoning location data

On iOS you can disable cellular data and it won't allow the app to connect to the Internet, and you can work on Wifi Assist to remove cellular data even on wifi

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/view-or-change-cellul....

gotmediumon Things I learnt doing stand-up comedy

If you like standup comedy you should watch the french standup comedy series from Netflix! Amazing cast and great throughout

https://www.netflix.com/fr/Title/81233911

gotmediumon Battery cost declines raise prospects of all-electric container shipping

Solar may be highly unlikely due to waves and salt salinization.

See windmill ships for more on the second question > https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill_ship

gotmediumon Lidar reveals pre-Hispanic low-density urbanism in the Bolivian Amazon

I believe you have never been to the Amazon. It is not like taking a water cab in Amsterdam or a ferry in nyc.

The sheer complexity of canals[1], [2] tides, [3] seasonality influences a great deal on who will have the guts, time and money to visit the region.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/eco.1863

[2] https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Macapa-Amazon-River-...

gotmediumon Snowflake acquires Streamlit for $800M to help customers build data-based apps

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30533250

gotmediumon The definitive guide that you never wanted: Backpack fabrics (2017)

This is a great guide!

Would love if there were additional info on pricing (per pound, per metric), any sustainability issues (see Dark Waters for teflon [1]), and lastly ownership (are these patent protected, largest manufacthrers)

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9071322/

gotmediumon DNA Mutations Do Not Occur Randomly – Discovery Transforms Our View of Evolution

Original article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04269-6

gotmediumon Peloton insiders sold nearly $500M in stock before its big drop

As CEO you may want need to become familiar with the rules that govern insider information. Typically if you are a director you cannot trade the stocks you own based on material non-public information.

Also, you may want to read Matt Levine's newsletter. It has plenty of very weird examples that sound just like this.

https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/invest...

gotmediumon Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

I believe there is a lot of internal politics and dynamics playing here.

If you are Demis Hassabis and want to lead this new initiative:

- Why would you want to report to the CEO of another subsidiary instead of spinning-off another entity within the Alphabet conglomerate?

- You can let the DeepMind team focus in their original areas of expertise.

- You will have a new (and $$$$) budget to hire computational biology PhDs

- With the new entity, you can fail a lot and not make Verily and Calico look bad (inside and out XYZ)

If you are Verily and/or Calico:

- You don't want a newcomer bring the exciting new projects and ruin your projects, budgets, initiatives

- [very speculative] You don't like Hassabis' progress (or is envy of)

- You think this new project will fail and don't this under your umbrella

gotmediumon Leaving Google

>most business in the world survive

While this may be the case for capital-intensive businesses (oil, consumer goods, energy), this is usually not the case for intangible-asset businesses (media, tech). In the former, the assets will generate cashflow, whereas in the latter it's a people-centric model

What was the last time you chose yahoo over google or altavista over google?

Google was always greedy, but when it was small it was cool to be the disruptor. Now it's perceived as only greedy. This is typically the case for any successful company (from HP, IBM, to the new 'big tech').

Good (related) book recommendation btw: capitalism without capital

gotmediumon Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings

* >and was quite a bit cheaper*

There are reasons why your ID.4 is cheaper than the others (and it always boils down to quality of the parts).

Take a look at this Tesla, Ford, & VW's Electrical Architectures for instance. There are other tear-downs that can confirm

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkm6-bBk4U

gotmediumon Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings

“The percentage of stock borrowed by traders, a standard measure of short interest, has slumped to 1.1% of Tesla’s shares available for trading, according to IHS Markit Ltd. as of last Thursday. That’s the lowest since 2010, when the carmaker went public.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-04/tesla-sho...

gotmediumon What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

I think there is an under-appreciated average search engine user in the comment:

People will typically write their intent on the search engine even when they could simply directly to the website.

Case in point: The top 10 bing searches are for websites, including FB, Google, Youtube [1]. This traffic is highly competitive and should (as in all competitive markets) be bid among competitors.

https://ahrefs.com/blog/top-bing-searches/

gotmediumon X-rays reveal censored portions of Marie Antoinette’s letters to Swedish count

> Hyperspectral imaging in the visible and near-infrared ranges initially seemed promising. Unfortunately, the black redaction ink absorbed almost all light in the visible range, and in the NIR range, the two inks were rendered largely transparent. They were too similar to draw any conclusive results. Pottier and his collaborators got the best results with X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy in a microscanning mode

Does anyone know what are the other use cases for these techniques? The article is very interesting! Thanks for sharing

gotmediumon Did Twitter Spaces Help Kill Clubhouse? Some Say the Hyped App Is Already Over

Was big-tech responsible for the clubhouse 'demise'?

Another theory is that is was a gigantic product/market 'misfit'. It didn't get the traction (nor the user engagement) to make it successful. Not Clubhouse and not a single copycat.

When big tech copies and kills a startup usually someone wins the battle