Hacker News Reader

ojbrienon The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking

Here's the indicators that bloomberg uses for constructing the factor:

1. Gross tertiary enrollment ratio

2. Percentage of working-age population with advanced level of education

3. Annual new science and engineering graduates as a percentage total tertiary graduates

4. Annual new science and engineering graduates as a percentage of the labor force

ojbrienon The radical idea of a world without jobs

I find the use of this statistic really frustrating, if you're say an average westerner with $10,000 of debt and $2,000 savings - your net wealth is -$8,000. If on the other hand you sift through garbage somewhere in Africa and earn 50c per day your net wealth is ~$0. By this metric the garbage site worker is wealthier than the Westerner fresh from university.

ojbrienon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2017)

Why is a degree necessary for this position?

ojbrienon Rayton Solar: Legitimate Investment or Scam?

1. You seem to be implying that there's something wrong with share buybacks but aren't explicitly stating it. I'd be curious to know what your criticism of share buy backs is?

2. Anecdotally, I still think EPS is by far the more widely used metric. EPS numbers can be negative so there's not much use for loss per share numbers, and most public companies have positive earnings.

3. This I agree with, SNAP's lack of voting rights is really concerning and initially SNAP didn't seem to traded at a discount because of that. It's worth noting it's down over 40% from the price it traded on the day it went public, although potentially for other reasons.

I also generally agree that people would be far better off if they educated themselves a little better on what they have their money invested in.

ojbrienon Tesla to raise $1B

What overall market?

MSCI ACWI Autos and Components was at 3.44% YTD at the end of Feburary while MSCI ACWI was at 5.37%. The S&P 500 is at about 7% YTD return.

Tesla's YTD return more than matches the overall market

https://www.msci.com/documents/10199/f87aad4f-6f38-4878-a149...

ojbrienon Applied Game Theory or How to pay a dividend without paying a dividend

Yeah but as capital gains I believe, whereas a cash dividend is taxed as income (Income is taxed at a much higher rate than capital gains)

ojbrienon Ask HN: What do you think of Google (as a company)?

I'm sure you're right about not having quite as much elbow room at google compared to other companies - but saying that I'm not sure strictly enforcing a style guide is great example a developers freedom being quashed.

Anywhere you're working on a codebase that you want to be maintainable having a style guide that is strictly enforced seems like a no brainer. Keeping in my mind google could have any number of developers working on a codebase