HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

klaudius

74 karma · joined October 10, 2018

submissionscomments
klaudius··on Biden to Propose 20% Tax Aimed at Billionaires, Unrealized Gains
In countries where people die from famine there are not a lot of rich people. High concentration of rich people is found in societies where people are not starving.

So you are right in saying that in a world of starvation rich people should be an aberration. That is to be expected.

klaudius··on Ask HN: Why does the Ruble still hold 50% of its value?
EU used to produce its own energy, but environmentalists funded by Russia managed to reduce EU production and increase dependence on Russia. Hopefully those regulations can be reversed and EU can block Russia completely.
klaudius··on DuckDuckGo's daily search queries surpassed 100M, a 47% increase
Same here. DDG is also superior if you are searching for controversial information which Google bans.
klaudius··on English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)
What is the name of that board?
klaudius··on Steve Jobs emails Eric Schmidt (2007)
"human resources"
klaudius··on Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence
I suggest you read the book "Virus Mania" for a more skeptical look on epidemics, masks and vaccines.
klaudius··on John Rawls: Visions of Justice
It's also ignoring other species.
klaudius··on NATO is looking to connect with startups
There are cases where governments implemented protectionism and support for industry, but it failed. You have the case of computer industry in Brazil.

It's not as simple as saying that government support is the key since there are many cases where it didn't work.

klaudius··on Cristiano Ronaldo snub wipes billions off Coca-Cola’s market value
Buffett famously stated, "I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty."

source: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/08/buffett-best...

klaudius··on Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

    Big Tech should be locating large employment centers in strategic locations around the country. And by strategic I don’t mean where the talent, resources, or customers are located but rather where influential Congresspeople, Senators, and Governors are located.
I thought this was one of the problems of a Soviet style command economy. They would locate production not where it was more efficient and made economic sense, but where it was politically more beneficial.

If these companies start doing this they could lose to more efficient competition. Hope they aren't that stupid.

klaudius··on Amazon’s wage increase to $15 an hour also upped pay for non-Amazon workers
Now that they have market power and monopoly position in certain areas they lobby for regulation to make it difficult for startups to disrupt them. They used no sales tax and lower wages when they were starting up, but now want to prevent the same advantages for startups.
klaudius··on Moving my US tech job to Australia
They are paying Australia's GST. The tax you are referring to is income tax. They are exporting a product to another country and paying income tax in the country where they are producing the product.

Companies have to pay value added tax in the country they are selling their goods and services in, but their income tax is paid in the country where they are based.

klaudius··on Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?
- https://greyenlightenment.com

- https://www.joelonsoftware.com

- https://meltingasphalt.com

- https://lukesmith.xyz/blog

klaudius··on Cryptoqueen: A woman scammed the world, then vanished (2019)
I was at one of their scam seminars. There was some sociopath lying for an hour straight and trying to get people to purchase some package for mining Onecoin. It was ridiculous. I was invited by a (former) friend who tried to recruit me and make some money exploiting me.
klaudius··on Universal basic income to be tested in Wales
There are already studies on effects of UBI:

  https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effects-of-short-term-free-cash-guaranteed-minimum-income-experiments/
klaudius··on Man used Coinbase to pay hitman in Bitcoin for wife's murder, FBI says
Use Monero
klaudius··on Crazy New Ideas
Paul Graham addressed this in his previous essay "How People Get Rich Now":

    The best way to envision what happened is to imagine a pond with a crust of ice on top. Initially the only way from the bottom to the surface is around the edges. But as the ice crust weakens, you start to be able to punch right through the middle.

    The edges of the pond were pure tech: companies that actually described themselves as being in the electronics or software business. When you used the word "startup" in 1990, that was what you meant. But now startups are punching right through the middle of the ice crust and displacing incumbents like retailers and TV networks and car companies.
klaudius··on On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
Robin Hanson has also compares sex and income distribution:

https://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/06/comparing-income-sex-...

klaudius··on On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness
You are overestimating the role of social skills in attraction and not talking about looks.

People who are good looking experience halo effect where others put a positive spin on everything they are doing. If a guy is good looking, but shy, women will find it cute. If a guy is ugly and shy, he will be seen as a creep.

Some people have done real dating experiments with profiles of good looking men who describe themselves as child rapists. Guess what? These men have no problem getting women, at least from online dating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxC0OlgY6yI

klaudius··on Why are there so many unfinished buildings in Africa?
It's not culture. It's poverty + weak states.

If you don't live in an advanced organized country and you are poor you have to rely on your local group. How else are you going to survive?

If you educate those people, put them in an advanced country and make them well off, you will see individualism appear.

klaudius··on Researchers estimate the richest 1% dodge taxes on over a fifth of their income
They use 1% because number 1 is an integer and it can represent a whole person.

This is useful for scapegoating and hatred.

  "The 99% vs. the 1% is the modern articulation of this classic scapegoating mechanism. It is all minus one versus the one. And it has to just be the one. 99.99 people or percent is too granular. Scapegoating 0.1 doesn’t really work. You need a whole person to play the victim. Similarly, 98-2 doesn’t quite have the same ring to it either.  "
Source: https://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183....
klaudius··on How to bypass Cloudflare bot protection
They say there are multiple ways to do IP spoofing. Does anyone know some other ways to do it?
klaudius··on How Amazon Crushes Unions
How does someone get into that position? Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security?
klaudius··on GME stock halted trading after +103% daily
https://isthesqueezesquoze.com/
klaudius··on Researchers find stem cells for hair regeneration
There's a case [1] of an old guy who fell into coal fire and regrew his hair. He basically regenerated his skin and his hair. Microneedling [2] has been used successfully to regrow hair.

Methods like minoxidil and finasteride work well as preventative measures. However, it has been shown that with advanced balding there are skin changes (e.g. fibrosis), so you have to regenerate your skin first if you are visibly balding and then use preventative methods to not lose your hair.

There are some encouraging results [3] with people using skin regeneration methods like microneedling together with minoxidil & finasteride.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1351889/

[2] https://perfecthairhealth.com/microneedling-frequency-how-of...

[3] https://www.hairlosstalk.com/interact/threads/one-year-fight...

klaudius··on Stripe bans Trump campaign
Payment networks are where the network effects and scale are. Visa and Mastercard have been known to ban people for political reasons.

Payment providers are just a front end for their networks, so it's easy to switch providers like Stripe, but you can still be banned by underlying network like Mastercard and your business will suffer.

klaudius··on Stripe bans Trump campaign
You could look at countries as being part of a market. If one country decides to ban your speech, you just move to another one, right? But that's not how it works because switching countries is very difficult. We demand free speech from a government even if we theoretically have the option to move.

If you have a colluding oligopoly in something crucial to do business such as payments or communication, where it's difficult to switch due to network effects, being banned by them is like being banned by government.

klaudius··on A group of Google workers have announced plans to unionize
I don't understand unions. If they don't like certain behaviors that are legal like selling to government or paying high salaries, why are they working there in the first place? Just quit. Different people like different things, so go work somewhere that suits you.
klaudius··on Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
It has been shown that finasteride, which is a systemic drug actually helps [1] with heart health.

It's not that fixing hair would improve heart health, but that on a systemic level improving heart health could prevent balding.

  [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25632043/
klaudius··on Ask HN: What are you surprised isn’t being worked on more?
Yes. You can look up scientific papers linking balding with health issues. We know premenopausal women have much lower incidence of heart problems than men. Some ethnicities of men like east asians also have better heart health and incidentally have better hair than caucasian men.
Page 1 of 3Next →