Hacker News Reader

kpwagneron The Village Voice (1955-2018)

Reading through some of these accounts, I tried to guess whether the writer was a man or a woman (before looking at their name, and not counting obvious tells like pronoun usage)? Do you ever do that? While I haven't performed a real experiment, I gotta say, I'm pretty accurate at guessing the genders of writers--not 100%, but way over 50%.

kpwagneron If you’re unsure whether to quit your job or break up, you probably should

Thanks. I didn't see that in the paper. Guess I get to hold on to my bitcoin.

I don't actually own any bitcoin ;)

kpwagneron If you’re unsure whether to quit your job or break up, you probably should

Yeah that's basically my point. I want to state, though, that I'm not just beating up on the under 30 crowd. I empathize with all struggles. But the same way that some people have never known a world without the internet, some people have never been hit by an economic recession. So, you have a lot of smart, ambitious people aged 24-32 who have built an impressive ~5 year career during a time of great economic expansion. For someone in this category, my advice is this: find someone 10 years older than you who works in your field, and ask them what their life was like from 2006-2010.

kpwagneron If you’re unsure whether to quit your job or break up, you probably should

In the midwest (U.S.), grain elevators are the big cement silo looking things you see in movies set in Iowa or Kansas. Really, elevators are synonymous with ag cooperative businesses. Grain storage is a primary function of these businesses. In the fall (harvest), they get really busy, and I worked as a seasonal employee. Long hours, dirty work, but the pay was not bad with all the overtime.

kpwagneron If you’re unsure whether to quit your job or break up, you probably should

I agree this should be your first choice if you want to stay employed. That's a legitimate "if" since some people may want to take time off from employment for personal reasons or to focus on a project. If that's you, you have my blessing. Think it through, and do what's right for you.

I was working as an M&A analyst at an investment bank, and this job has an implied shelf-life. A typical program is two years, and some people stay on for a third year as an "Associate I". Your options for jobs after an investment banking analyst program are much narrower than I estimated when I left college to seek my fortune. Analysts will usually go one of three places: private equity (or venture capital depending on your background), corporate finance (M&A at a big company), or hedge fund. The sad truth that haunts me to this day is, I thought my duty was to quit when my time was up. An Associate I position was not available at my bank after my two years, so I decided to leave. I interviewed for a few positions before leaving (one of them serious), but I didn't receive any offers. I was burned out and really just want to get out of there. One of my coworkers asked me what I planned to do when I left. I said, "Whatever the hell I want." One other serious misestimation on my part: turns out I was not enthusiastic about fighting for a job in an industry that already had too many people fighting for not enough scraps.

I required a lot of time and self-reflection to not get some combination of angry, sad, and ashamed when recounting my time in finance. One thing that still upsets me today is, I was a naive 25 year old who didn't even understand the terms of my employment. I was not a contract employee; our agreement was employment-at-will, and I was under no obligation to leave. Yet, the HR department at my bank hardly even acknowledged that I was leaving. Someone told me to leave my keycard and Blackberry on my desk before I left. No exit interview or discussion of any kind. They really let me down because I was clueless. Could I have asked a lot of questions? Yes! And if you are in a similar situation, learn from my mistake. Ask a lot of questions, and find the right people you need to be asking. The thing you should understand about investment banking is, it tends to be a conservative environment with a strong hierarchy. Analysts are at the bottom of the hierarchy. The best analysts are those who efficiently do what they are told to do. I was very good at not complaining even when things sucked, and I was pretty good at the actual work too. But unfortunately, when I thought I was being told to leave. I followed that order too well, and I didn't complain.

kpwagneron If you’re unsure whether to quit your job or break up, you probably should

Haha. I quit my job once. July 2009, working in finance. My next job was two years later, scooping grain at a grain elevator.

You know how to tell when the economy is in the last 25% of an economic expansion? When everywhere you turn is another white collar professional under the age of 30 in the middle of an existential crisis. Brace for impact, because we're all about to punched in the fucking mouth. And some of us are going to be like, "What? I thought things were just supposed to keep getting better every year. We've had one breakfast yes, but what about second breakfast? Elevenses? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper?"

Best as I can tell, the data for this article was collected via freanomicsexperiments.com over the course of a year. But I didn't see what year the experiment was conducted. And I'll bet you all my bitcoin the experiment data was not collected during any year from 2008-2012. Job markets, like credit markets, are very elastic. It's easy to find a replacement job right now, and it's also easy to qualify for a home loan.

kpwagneron Wells Fargo says hundreds of customers lost homes after computer glitch

While I don't disagree with your sentiment, I think WF would have done the refi if it met their criteria. The reason: they make a lot of money on new loans (refi or otherwise) due to the loan origination fee. In my case the fee was going to be about $1,500 for a ~$90,000 loan. Since mortgage originators usually process the payments, I assume they get some compensation for ongoing loans. However, my understanding is most mortgage originators don't "hold" the loans. They sell them off, so to speak, to be used as a part of an investment product (e.g. a CDO). Funny thing is, you might invest in a small part of your own home loan via a mutual fund (or pension fund). How screwed up is that! That's the real rotten thing about the industry. No skin in the game.

kpwagneron Wells Fargo says hundreds of customers lost homes after computer glitch

In my experience, mortgage originators rely on box-checking to get mortgages to pass. They make no decisions; it's an amoral, automatic process which happens to be much less efficient than it could be as the industry clings to the idea that homebuyers need to talk to someone on the phone and the people in seats are actually necessary.

Around 2013, WF Mortgage denied me a refinance on a property. It was my primary home (high-rise condo) when I bought it, then it became a rental. The reason for the denial was, my condo unit was in the same building as a hotel (downtown in a city), so it was labelled a "condotel". This was a shock to me. After researching condotels, I explained that the definition did not fit my property, but it didn't matter to WF. This was frustrating to me because WF originated the original mortgage when I purchase the property in 2007, and I never missed a payment. The refinance would lower my payment significantly due to lower interest and a large chunk of the principal that I paid down. They did not care at all. They all but told me to fuck off and stop calling them. It was like they wanted anti customer loyalty. I used Quicken Loans for the refinance--no problems.

kpwagneron What Does ‘Off the Record’ Really Mean?

Yeah, I get that. And I admit that Trump as a subject is relevant in this article.

Bottom line is Trump has a way of attracting attention, which only seems to help his cause. I was just venting a bit about how often we see Trump in the news, and how Trump as a subject has a way bringing good journalists down a level because they fall prey to biased reporting due to their personal views. Did this journalist really need to mention the whole eclipse-looking thing?

It's like celebrity news, I don't care (not much anyway), but somehow this information just finds it's way in front of me and into my brain.

kpwagneron What Does ‘Off the Record’ Really Mean?

I thought that term "off the record" was meant to protect sources, not journalists. Whatever the term was expected to mean by both parties, it kind of comes down to what leverage either side has to uphold the verbal agreement. The journalist has a lot to lose if they agree to be off the record, then report on that information. Does Trump care at all that NYT is throwing a toddler fit over his comments? We all know the answer to that one.

kpwagneron What Does ‘Off the Record’ Really Mean?

Haha. Yes, more importantly, the eclipse thing. Because no one else did that.

kpwagneron What Does ‘Off the Record’ Really Mean?

First two words of the article: "President Trump"

Is it possible for the news to cover anything without including an opinion about Trump--or his tweets? I am so turned off by this "style" of journalism where every piece includes an opinion (implied or explicit) about the president of the United States. Sad.

kpwagneron WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

The default really is not eating anything. Just fast, and fast, and fast, and die.

kpwagneron The Bulk of Software Engineering in 2018 Is Just Plumbing

These comments crack me up. Hacker News readers seem to have a lot of opinions about plumbing, the plumbing trade, the difficulty of plumbing tasks both intellectually and physically, pay scales of plumbers, personal experiences with plumbers, etc.

Did you get that "plumbing" was just, like, an analogy? The article wasn't really about plumbing.

kpwagneron Planets evenly spaced on log scale

Fascinating that this relationship scales from solar systems in which the planets are close to the star to solar systems that are more spread out. I wonder if the mass of the star has an effect on the average distance that the mass of the rest of the solar system is from the star. I also wonder if the mass of the star has a correlation with the tightness of the logarithmic distance relationship exhibited in this article.

kpwagneron Firefox is on a slippery slope

Does anyone know if the Developer Edition was affected?

kpwagneron Student Loan Debt Is Now as Big as the U.S. Junk Bond Market

Well over half of my student loan balance is in parent loans. I pay my parents monthly to pay for the loan payment. My younger two siblings are oblivious to what kind of debt they have. Now, my parents are a few years away from retirement--at least they hope--and they will be burdened with paying my siblings student loan debt on a fixed income.

kpwagneron Desktop compositing latency is real

It's amazing how much you can bend fiber. Fiber is really hard to break just by bending it, assuming it is well insulated. You can have performance loss with bends and kinks though.

kpwagneron $3 Trillion in Forgotten Debt

There is such a thing as a "capital lease", or at least there used to be. Capital leases work in this way--both asset and liability are recorded. It's only fair that the new rules for operating leases works this way too.

kpwagneron Myths About Choosing a College Major

Ah, okay. That kind of makes sense. If that is true, then the writer's comment about quartiles is wrong--or at least misleading. The outliers thing came to my mind too; it's such a big factor.

kpwagneron Myths About Choosing a College Major

"The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers."

This is an important statement. Success in a field is as important as the field itself. Those who lack the IQ or personality for an area of study and subsequent employment will find their life harder than it needs to be. My philosophy: there is value in being in the top ten percent--not that I've always lived by those words.

While the earnings chart is very compelling. I'm a little confused by the labelling. Why are the high and low end of the horizontal bars set to the 10th and 90th percentile? Does this mean the data point used as the high on the chart is the average (or median) of the sample of earners in the 90th percentile?

kpwagneron 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

https://thesellingfamily.com/the-known-brands-that-are-not-a...

Also, my Amazon seller app. But I'm a new seller. From what I understand, some of these restrictions may not apply to sellers who have been around awhile and sold certain brands or categories before they became restricted.

The deal about Walmart receipts not being valid I read in a forum post.

When it comes to "retail arbitrage", it seems dealing with Amazon FBA is kind of like dealing with the IRS. You can walk on as thin of ice as you want, but Amazon can ban your account at any time. Some argue that items purchased retail should not be listed as "new" because they will have shelf wear. Some sellers laugh at this notion.

kpwagneron 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

Huh. That's curious. Maybe you got grandfathered in. It's definitely restricted for new sellers. Anything Disney, which it turns out is a lot of stuff these days, is all restricted too.

kpwagneron 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

Many brands are "gating" their products on Amazon so only select resellers can sell them on Amazon. For example, the article mentions LEGO--restricted. You need to show Amazon proof that you purchased your products from a credible distributor in order to list your LEGO products. Receipts from Walmart are not enough.

kpwagneron Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

The iPad is dead... lol. Only 10.3 millions units sold last quarter.

kpwagneron Steve Wozniak announces tech education platform Woz U

He has a big heart. A few years ago Steve gave an interview with Patrick Bet-David, which was simply a marketing piece for Patrick's company, PHP Agency. PHP Agency is a financial firm founded on the power of "network marketing". The idea behind network marketing is to turn your social network into pyramid, positioning yourself at the top of the pyramid. I don't like network marketing companies, and I believe they are all sub-par. In this interview, which you can find on YouTube, Steve Wozniak described PHP Agency as a hit.

kpwagneron Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

This article misses the mark. Spot on.

kpwagneron Americans Are Paying $38 to Collect $1 of Student Debt

I don't know the difference. Only that my parents have loans from my undergrad, and I can choose to just not pay them, but I'm not a piece of shit (aka, my younger two siblings). But those loans can not get adjusted payments based on my income.

kpwagneron Americans Are Paying $38 to Collect $1 of Student Debt

Parent loans, not loaning money from parents, will not restructure payments based on income of the student. About half of my undergrad loans are parent loans.

kpwagneron Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear, Ran Fake Tests: Court Filings

This all sounds preliminary to me. Based on the headline and one paragraph I was able to read (not pay-walled), this doesn't necessarily indicate malicious intent or foul play. Big companies are complicated, and they do things in weird ways sometimes for reasons that aren't immediately obvious.

It's amazing how quickly the winds of the internet shift to absolutely condemn a person/company before all (or any) of the facts are in. The world is a better place when we all extend a benefit of doubt to our fellow humans and there creations.