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pskiba

29 karma · joined July 11, 2019

Hi I'm Patrick Skiba.

Check out my blog at https://patrickskiba.com

I also maintain an org-mode web app called Weborg:

https://github.com/patrickskiba/weborg

submissionscomments
pskiba··on Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High Above $65K on Strength of ETF Debut
Yes and no, unless you have a magic ball its best to DCA. Maybe at best, you could do a modified DCA so that you're not buying Bitcoin when its at all time highs.
pskiba··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
Do you treat your 401k the same way?
pskiba··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
The original comment was about protecting yourself against inflation. Not sure how your comment is related.
pskiba··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
> The reason why we have inflation and debt is to keep the value of our currencies stable

A stable currency would have an inflation rate of 0%. Inflation does not cause currency stability, it decreases the value of the currency.

By definition, its value is changing.

pskiba··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
If your time horizon is long enough, volatility shouldn't matter. Historically speaking Bitcoin is getting less volatile with every market cycle. I would not be surprised if in the future its volatility is comparable to the S&P500.

Why would any sane person invest in real estate? You have maintenance costs, property taxes, it's not liquid and you can go years with little growth. Not to mention if your area see's hard economic times (i.e. Detroit), the chance of a rebound is slim.

pskiba··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
Maybe if he meant less than 5% of miners make money. I could potentially believe this, given the competitive nature of mining.

However, as an investment, as of right now, there is only a span of a few months where if you bought Bitcoin you would not be in the green right now.

pskiba··on China declares cryptocurrency deals ‘illegal’
This is not true, saturation points on staking pools exist to encourage people moving to other pools, this causes more decentralization not less. Additionally, from a hardware perspective setting up a pool takes significantly less capital compared to PoW mining.
pskiba··on Why Monero
I'm not sure I get your argument, staking takes significantly less powerful hardware so its very accessible.

Staking pools also have a "saturation point" to encourage decentralization. That way not all 80 Billion dollars worth of ADA goes to one staking pool.

Very hard to see how oligopolies can arise in this scenario when compared to mining operations that are unprofitable to most users (and of course bad for the environment).

pskiba··on Ask HN: What's your cross-platform PDF / ePub reading workflow?
I read all my pdf's using the Emac's library pdf-tools and epub's with the library Nov.el

Works pretty great

pskiba··on Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
Somehow I ended up getting a perfect score in every category, which in my company is not typical and I was given pretty much no feedback.

I'm confident my manager was scolded for the score he gave me by his boss or hr.

Ever since he's given me the most middle of the road scores . The only take away I've gotten from this experience is that performance reviews in my company are more political then actually reflective of your performance.

pskiba··on Ask HN: Which email software do you use on Linux?
Neomutt is good but it can be a pain to configure without a script. I recommend people who want to use Neomutt for the first time use this wizard https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard
pskiba··on How to Make Medieval Soap
I wonder how effective this soap is when used as a cleaning agent compared to commercial options.
pskiba··on Ask HN: Where do you go for career advice?
I very rarely look to friends and family for career advice. I typically seek developers who have something interesting to say about the topic and are passionate about sharing their insights.

When I was in college I read The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler, which was my first exposure to the concept of treating yourself as business even when working for an employer.

Later on a found Patrick Mckenzie's blog, via his blog post on salary negotiation. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ Which lead me to discovering a bunch of other great posts.

I could go on, but the moral is to seek out successful people that are willing to share their story.

pskiba··on Show HN: I made a jobs board for developers without degrees
Many self taught developers will focus on less theoretical skills related to programming and focus on what's practical.

They may read a textbook to teach themselves but it'll be different than the textbooks they make you read for a CS degree.

This typically is a benefit, many fresh CS grades I've seen are not as comfortable developing in their first job as a lot of self taught developers.