Hacker News Reader

propmanon First US Census Bureau Report on Growing Childless Older Adult Population

“Among childless adults ages 55 and older, 85.2% were White alone; 79.0% were non-Hispanic White; 9.2% were Black alone; 3.4% were Asian alone; 2.2% were all other races or reported multiple races; and 6.5% were Hispanic”

This is a significant disparity based on race

propmanon Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

California needs to become a purple state again. Ever since 1 party supermajority has taken over, monumentally idiotic laws have come into play and there is 0 checks and balances. The media is completely biased as well so other systems of checks are failing.

propmanon Facebook to shift permanently toward more remote work after coronavirus

Competing with the entire world instead of just your city now.

propmanon Cases of Vaping-Related Lung Illness Surge, Health Officials Say

“All issues have come from illegal products.” You confidently state Yet claim terrible journalism...

propmanon Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

Would it be beneficial for you to make this a big deal from a political or media perspective? You seem to have an excellent case, and I would reach out to major news publications like Bloomberg or the NYTimes now while it’s at the top of HN. Maybe make a medium article or something for extra exposure as well?

Are there entities that protect American IP from other countries? Maybe the US chamber of commerce, or maybe reach out to the government itself.

propmanon Facebook ends platform policy banning apps that copy its features

So Facebook copies every major app and service and then destroys its lifeline immediately killing the work of creators who innovated. Immediately after that Facebook copies the exact same service resulting in little risk, ingenuity and an almost certainty of success.

Sad truth is many great developers will trust them again because there’s a huge opportunity here but they’ll be smarter this time around. Don’t put all the eggs in the same basket and plan ahead a solid pivot when (not if) Facebook renegs.

propmanon I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me happier

I deleted Instagram a few months ago and I’ve not missed it once. The people who post more take up most of my bandwidth and those people I sincerely do not care about but due to social etiquitte have to follow. As I grow older I find that I really don’t care about maintaining superficial relationships with acquaintances, many of whom I might not see ever.

Other negatives- I click on one picture of a scantily clad woman and my entire search feed turns into softcore porn for a month.

Culture is too vain. Selfies, blatantly showing off, spending hours on touch up apps were looked down upon in the entire history of the internet until that Ellen selfie photo that got huge. Apple, Facebook, Google, the media all advertised and made it socially accepted that the vanity is good. That had it’s pros and cons but I feel like we are crossed over on the cons side too much.

The culture is too global. Everyone’s opinions/posts/comments all converge to the same dumbed down pop culture accepted norms/memes. Everyone tries to be funny in the exact same socially accepted way and there is no originality.

propmanon Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

“The success of democracy is exactly the possibility to effect change without shouldering grave personal risks. Trying to reframe this accomplishment as ineffective, weak, or lazy runs the danger of provoking exactly the sort of dramatic, self-sacrificing gestures that have been in the news recently.“

Wow, that quote is breathtakingly beautiful...and it’s so relavent today. Many have this self righteous feverish belief that their side is good and the other evil. When we as a society begin taking for granted the benefits of democracy and start truly believing we can’t enact change, the number of nut jobs committing violence will absolutely increase. Tribalism today is insane, and our ability to enact change peaceful,h keeps the violence and the bad acting to an extreme minimum. It’s easy to get lost in the chaos.

Honestly, I’m completly blown away by that quote and I’m using it as a rebuttal when these topics come up.

propmanon Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

I meant cars, not all autos. Cars are 6.2 million. Musk said he’s trying to get to 6000 a week by the end of August and 10,000 a week in 2019. The demand is clearly there as are the profit margins even sans ev credit. I know he overestimates things a lot but that tells me they are seriously considering ramping up production. As the production and now delivery processes streamline, they can definitely hit 6000 by end of year and realistically hit 8000 by mid 2019.

propmanon Tesla Third Quarter 2018 Update [pdf]

Tesla could realistically hit 500,000 cars next year, almost 10% of total cars sold in America. The electric revolution is here and it’s finally profitable! Budget EVs with solid range are coming next year too with the 2019 leaf!

Convince congress to extend the federal tax rebate (no real increase in spending just keeping what’s already there) by like 2 years which is just maybe $1-2B more and electric will be the way to go for good!

propmanon Europe’s Attacks on Google Are Backfiring

I’m usually on Europe’s side against tech giants (Facebook fine, google antitrust fine, WhatsApp, mostly for unfair Ireland loophole with apple taxes) but this looks incredibly dumb to me. I’m fairly anti google but now that they have a 90% market share I want them to charge a ton for each phone and force someone to create a brand new OS that competes with android or iOS, fix all the security, convince developers to build for that, market it to millions, force a satisfied consumer base to learn a new OS and deal with a brand new UI.

This is a complete Google win. Now they can charge without looking bad.

propmanon China May Have $5.8T in Hidden Debt with ‘Titanic’ Risks

US also has a lot more assets though and is an already developed economy. China’s economy will inevitably slow and for an emerging market, their debt is significant. Also, this is only local Chinese debt and not even the full picture for that. According to nationaldebtclocks, China govt debt is $5.2 trillion on paper but they suggest multiplying by at least 3.25 to account for shadow banking not on the official ledgers and local govt debt the article was talking about.

propmanon Theranos Criminal Case Is Broader Than Publicly Disclosed, Prosecutors Say

They were arrested and out on a $500k bail. The same happens for those now in jail for smoking pot or dealing or whatever. The trial is now going on and the prosecution thinks it has a potentially far bigger case that can net more on charges.

Holmes settled the civil case with the SEC I believe so she’s cleared there. She absolutely could be jailed for a long time, but the wheels of justice turn slowly.

propmanon Facebook Says Hackers Stole Detailed Personal Data from 14M People

If I type my full name on google, I can find my home and cell phone number, age, all family members, home address, my last home address, and my google + (fb and LinkedIn I changed settings so not searchable).

And it’s a pain to ask them to delete the info. It’s obscure and time consuming and no guarantees. That in my mind is worse than anything here. I didn’t allow that info to be public, we need more privacy laws.

propmanon After Journalist’s Alleged Murder, Tech Execs Distance Themselves from Saudis

They have significant geopolitical power. The entire Sunni realm is essentially under their rule. They blockaded Qatar and every Sunni nation followed suit. They don’t have nukes but technically can call on Pakistan for their nukes anytime they want. The avg Saudi lives like an upper class westerner and by upper class I don’t mean upper middle class like the majority of us tech guys. The poor in KSA are all foreign workers, the Saudis barely work at all and are rich with servants and cushy govt jobs.

They have the most influence in OPEC and they are now diversifying. KSA is invested all over SV. Uber, Tesla, Snapchat, biotech firms, SoftBank. Probably only 2nd to Russian oligarchs in terms of SV money. A bunch of princes are multibillionaires exclusively from American and British assets.

propmanon As Chinese investment pours into the EU, the Europeans are beginning to worry

China used political capital to buy off the votes in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Greece so those 3 countries veto any measure that China doesn’t want the EU to develop.

China is smart, not naive. They can bring the EU to their knees with tens of billions of dollars making them completely ineffective due to their huge bureaucracy.

propmanon Research suggests wind energy may have serious consequences for the environment

Actually the places where wind is the strongest, (New Mexico, parts of West Texas, and everything directly above that in middle America) there is significant land space and not much else. Population density is all less than 10 people per sq mile and large chunks 0 people per sq mile. The people who own the ranches there absolutely love wind because it’s an additional revenue stream and the local towns are being reinvigorated due to additional revenue from the energy companies and more jobs. We need around 25% from Wind and 3% of America where there’s really not much else not even farms works out well.

For solar, the best place in North America is the Mojave Desert which also has wide open space and no population.

propmanon Research suggests wind energy may have serious consequences for the environment

I don’t know nearly enough about this but I never really gave it any thought. Does anyone who has expertise in this field know if the increase in continental and local temperatures would cause a meaningful increase in global warming as well?

Everything has to be done in moderation in my opinion. We don’t fully understand the costs of a lot of things when done in scale. I’ve been zealously following wind benchmarks and had a bit of a contrarian view that wind was better than solar but I’m now not so sure.

propmanon Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’

Was that a highly detailed front page investigative story? Because I’m specifically talking about those. For other cases, they are wrong quite frequently, some of the nonopinion articles on Bloomberg are often a few rungs above college journalism reporting. All elite papers are the same in that regard. The Nytimes just a few weeks ago they had a story that Nikki Haley spent tens of thousands of dollars on curtains and a possible corruption scandal which was easily disproven hours later. Those are usually junior journalists working on it alone, sometimes creating a story rather than reporting on one and fitting all the facts to match a singular narrative. These ones I’m talking about are different. They have a much higher level of checks and due dillegence.

Edit: I absolutely could be wrong and things could be disproven in this, but just in my experience highly detailed articles like this are usually right on the money or close but just like everything in the world, can’t say anything with certainty.

propmanon Bloomberg’s ‘The Big Hack’

For major major reports like this, reputed newspapers are rarely wrong. See WSJ John Crareyou of Theranos. Theranos vehemently denied it, MSM was with Theranos and at least they weren’t outright against them. Then they did more digging etc.

The Washpo digging on Roy Moore, the NYT digging on Clinton Foundation, etc. these are experienced reporters having 15-30 credible sources, evidence etc. every time this happens, everyone denies and slowly little by little the story finds more evidence and facts and it becomes true.

This is why a free press is soooo important

Why would Apple disclose that millions of their products could be hacked and you’ve lost all your privacy. Who would trust them? They’d lose billions, regulations would come etc. it’s in the best interest for every party to deny.

propmanon Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

Let’s say $11 was the previous avg wage for let’s say 300k employees (250k full and 100k part time avg). $4 increase is $8000 more a year. That’s $2.4B yearly transfer to workers which is honestly really really amazing, props to Bezos.

$8000 means 15.3% in payroll taxes so this wage increase will result in $367.2M in additional payroll taxes.

12% federal income tax as well for that $8000 is $288M per year.

So amazon is paying $655M more in taxes with a stroke of a pen and raising wages by $2.4B for those who make near minimum wage. In terms of taxes, this is equivalent to the US adding 48,000 high paying 50k a year jobs to the economy.

Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? It’s much better for the economy if companies higher more people than higher fewer and pay the equivalent in taxes.

Great job Bezos and Amazon!

propmanon Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

Amazon says no more RSUs in exchange for $15 min wage, can anyone say how much the RSUs were for those employees? I’m curious as to what the difference is?

propmanon Mexico’s drug cartels are moving into the gasoline industry

Then they’d push heroin, fenatyl, synthetic opiates, etc. they’d push weapons, other illegal stuff and no way should meth be legal in flyover country. Cocaine is mehh no strong feelings either way there

propmanon Mexico’s drug cartels are moving into the gasoline industry

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cocaine-meth-opioids-all-fuel-r...

First thing I searched up, not the article I originally read but I’ll find it. You tell me how is cocaine related to opiates? Cocaine overdose deaths doubled since 2013...that’s 5 years and it DOUBLED. Cartels are pushing all of these especially meth.

Actually ignore the first link, check out the .gov link here on overdose deaths: https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...

Both links have good visuals. Meth quadrupled in 5 years, FIVE times as many deaths from 1 drug, heroin increased even by a larger magnitude.

propmanon Mexico’s drug cartels are moving into the gasoline industry

Legalizing marijuana (btw I’m a huge proponent) was supposed to hurt the cartels and decrease violence but has made cartels much more violent and brutal. Instead of pushing weed across the border, they’ve been heavily pushing Meth, Heroine, and Cocaine instead. Their distribution from the north east to Chicago to LA is insane, they’ve got people hooked on these terrible drugs.

Look at the stats of drug deaths from different drugs over the last 10 years and see the huge spike. I believe double for cocaine, and triple for meth and heroine in just a few years. This is worse than 80s crack epedimic in terms of death. The cartels also didn’t get weaker they became more violent and richer.

I can’t beliebe I was so naive to think about legalizing drugs when I was in college. I am 100% for marijuana, medical marijuana without a doubt should be legal in every state anyone disagreeing has basically no merit. But the rest of them, I’m okay with a mild version of the Reagan crackdowns. We’re a lot less racist and a lot more forgiving from 30 years ago, I think we need to be a lot more forgiving for personal drug use or force the courts the option to send repeat offenders to rehab or prison and 100% they’d choose rehab, prison makes absolutely no sense for heavy hard drug users. We need to be even harsher for heavy drug dealing, gang violence, drug violence, and need far more agents stopping the drug inflows from the southern border and need to beef up our coast guard.

Also need to help the economy of flyover states because a lot of the drug deaths are from there.

propmanon SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

Wow interesting Wikipedia read on him too, you’re right that’s probabaly a billion in today’s dollars tooo.

propmanon Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users

...is that seriously possible with this scope and such little time?

propmanon SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

Thanks, just read his Wikipedia page. Can’t believe I didn’t know he was

propmanon SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

Well he turned Tesla into a multi billion dollar behemoth in a short time and revolutionized the electric car industry. He didn’t create Tesla but he did “create” Tesla the billion dollar company.

PayPal is more complicated agreed. Elon’s portion of it might be a billion due to inflation? But regardless he set the basis for it.

propmanon SEC Sues Musk and Seeks Ban for His Tweets on Go-Private Deal

I can only think of Elon as the only person to create THREE multi billion dollar companies in wildly different industries.

Elon is a fantastic CEO AND visionary. I personally know people who could be making double specifically work at spacex because they believe in his vision. Elon is able to get Supreme talent and productivity for pennies on the dollar. He’s able to market Tesla and spaceX to billions with such a positive favoriability unlike anything we’ve ever seen. SpaceX and Tesla don’t have a marketing budget because of Elon. Car companies spend billions marketing, Elon tweets saving billions for Tesla which he reinvests in r&d.

The entire world will lose if Elon is forced out. He’s the biggest fighter for climate change and space travel in modern history, greater than Al Gore in marketing and execution, greater than Buzz Aldrin, Tyson, and cosmos. I’d much rather have an honest relatable Elon Musk than a suit. I’d rather have creativity than suffocating structure.

Elon is a great CEO. I would pick him over almost anyone alive.