Hacker News Reader

kingstonedon How to Earn a Billion Dollars

and you answer is...? There is an interesting article about inequality and intentions behind it: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/inequality-is-about-grabbin... ... what do you think about it?

kingstonedon Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions

How do they not have email when it's required to sign up for various sites, plus having android phones requires gmail, plus official documents, bank accounts, job applications etc. tend to ask for email; email is used for work as well...?

kingstonedon How to convert between wealth and income tax

If you want to understand why someone would even propose taking from the rich and complain about inequality, this post titled "Inequality Talk Is About Grabbing " is illuminating: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/inequality-is-about-grabbin...

kingstonedon Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

They have had good public education for the past decade or two and rank high in international student rankings. So, I would bet that high 'human capital' would be the cause here.

kingstonedon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

If someone is from one of 75 countries with ban on immigration but also has dual citizenship from a country that is not banned, do they need to go to that second country's US embassy when applying for an immigration visa?

kingstonedon U.S. stocks are set to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years

USD is actually stronger these days... I know since I receive USD as payment and convert them to EUR

kingstonedon Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

Could you please give some sources - books or articles or videos on that topic? It's really fascinating

kingstonedon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Can you have just one US client like a marketplace or network that gives you monthly payouts totalling $150k a year? The client is a famous US based company.

kingstonedon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

How easily can one get E1 treaty trader visa and what volume and quantity of trade are recommended? If I have a company registered in my home country (eligible country) and have payouts from a US provider like an advertising network, affiliate provider or some marketplace etc. and my clients are all US companies, can I apply for that visa? Would a low six figure yearly revenue with monthly payout be sufficient for that?

kingstonedon Britain's railway privatization was an abject failure

Why would public ownership deliver those benefits? Walmart is delivering cheap, quality and reliable service in retail. Soviet stores we not better than American ones.

kingstonedon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

If you want to get a visitor visa to attend an incubator like YC, is it better to:

1) wait to be admitted into YC and get B1 visa for 3 months. Do you get some kind of invitation letter from YC that increases your chances of approval?

2) get a normal tourist visa now and specify you will go to the US for a week or two like a normal tourist and later use that to go to incubator training.

kingstonedon How to live on $432 a month in America

  "Today, though, a young man working at a Walmart or a gas station will struggle to attract a stable partner or the respect of the world around him."

True if they are not good looking. If a guy is really handsome, he could attract a partner easily and people will like him due to halo effect.

kingstonedon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA

I have a company in my home country with revenues of $200k/year with 12 transactions per year from US clients. Can I apply for an E1 treaty trader visa and what are my chances of success?

kingstonedon uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store

Meanwhile scam cookie stuffing extensions like Honey are 'featured'

kingstonedon Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

It's generally a myth that government employees are somehow receiving low total compensation and they could do better in the real economy.

Here's one government employees providing stats and experiences about what it is like to work for the government: https://www.betonit.ai/p/the-joy-of-government-employment

kingstonedon Google "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI" (2023)

The result of that is suggesting to put delicious glue on a pizza. Yummy https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24176490/mm-delicious-glu...

kingstonedon David Lynch has died

    When people say "surreal" they mean "real", it's just most of your life is not very real, just repetition and routine. - Norm Macdonald

kingstonedon TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday

Netflix is not easier, but marketed heavily and competition is censored in search results. Some random pirating streaming site is unknown and probably not even easily discoverable on google (you have to use yandex for that).

I stick to pirating with adblockers because it is more convenient, there is a much bigger library of content and I don't have to share any personal info or pay for anything.

kingstonedon Kagi Teams

Subscriber count is not a measure of quality or importance of the service category. Hacker news is less popular than TMZ or the DailyMail, but it is not a lower quality news website.

kingstonedon Kagi Search API

Sued for what? For scraping a website? That is Google's main business.

kingstonedon Taxing unrealized gains has caused an entrepreneurial exodus in Norway

It's amazing to me that on a startup-oriented forum like this one you see these kinds of socialist comments when it comes to something that is harmful to startup founders and the entire ecosystem. Honestly curious to see what people who are hostile to entrepreneurship are even doing here.

kingstonedon ChatGPT Search

I use https://wiby.org for old websites

kingstonedon ChatGPT Search

It's not that different, Google's Gemini already provides this functionality where they have source/links in their responses...

kingstonedon John Rawls and the Death of Western Marxism

The problem with this discussion is thinking that the good life is about access to material resources and that we should examine unequal access to them and fix that.

It is simply missing that there are other more important inequalities and that people are being deprived of other things in life. Main one being mating opportunities and access to attractive sexual partners. You could fix inequality in access to material resources, but then people who are ugly would still be deprived of having attractive mates who love them.

Interesting read: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/comparing-income-sex-redist...

kingstonedon Dawn of a new era in Search: Balancing innovation, competition, and public good

I don't see how Kagi are advocating to destroy Google and especially competitors. They write about potential actions government might do to make the field more competitive.

Keep in mind that it's the Google that was government funded when it got started via NSF and university system. Also, a ton of subsidies, tax breaks for their subsidiaries, direct payments from government (e.g. google cloud gov contracts, military recruitment ads on youtube...).

kingstonedon Should the richest 1% – who gained $42T/decade – be taxed more?

Why is inequality in wealth a problem to be addressed? What about inequality in other areas of life like dating? Interesting blog post: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/05/30/the-inequality-that-matte...

kingstonedon U.S. podcast listening reach new high: 47% listened one last month, +12% YoY

AntennaPod hooked to a NewPipe folder = ad-free unlimited content.

kingstonedon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

For E2 visa:

1. Do they look at whether you paid taxes on the income you invested (how stringent are the requirements for source of investments)?

2. What is the minimum viable investment these days? Could they approve an investment of $50k-$100k for a software business?

3. Can the money your company earned count towards investment or does it all have to be personal income of the founder?

kingstonedon Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

There is a good review of the book you might like: https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-gossip-trap

kingstonedon Add PayPal to your Stripe integration

It's enabled for a certain period of time (usually a few hours) and I can do transactions during that time period.