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sbeller

45 karma · joined November 13, 2020

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sbeller··on Basecamp Removes Warrant Canary
Per PR description:

> Removed warrant canary (we still have never received a NSL or FISA order, but we are removing this language now to avoid a future situation where we receive one but are not permitted to remove the statement from our policy)

yeah, is that more believable? Maybe, I cannot tell.

sbeller··on What can be the next big thing after the internet?
crypto
sbeller··on Google rolls out ‘pay calculator’ explaining work-from-home salary cuts
Have you seen the rents in new Zealand? They did not crater as much as in SF. ;-)
sbeller··on $600M taken in largest DeFi hack to date
> - allowing true ownership of assets

What is ownership and how is it true? This is philosophically on the deep end, as the evil powers can seize your wallet just as easily and you may have no (legal) recourse, https://xkcd.com/538/

Seriously if I own a traditional asset within the current legal system (e.g. stocks, bonds, real estate), "the system" can help me protect and enforce my ownership rights, if you're in good social standing. In crypto "the system" cannot help you as much.

However if you are in bad social standing, the system can seize the wallet or the stocks easily.

sbeller··on The Broken Promise of Retirement
> I don't know anything about 401(k)s but do they really operate on some foundational condition of less-profitable investments and higher fees?

The (HR person of the) employer chooses what to allow in a 401k. Normally you have a dozen funds or so available. And the choice by the employer doesn't necessarily align with the employees interests, as the high fee funds would love to send you that amazon gift card, whereas the low fee funds wouldn't even reach out to you. ;-)

sbeller··on It’s possible to pay $150 in taxes on an income of $150K
> October 16, 2013

In 2013 150k seemed a lot IIRC as the economy was in shambles and all those paid with these sweet RSUs and ISOs weren't having it.

sbeller··on Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production
cash it the most important thing that should not be done JIT. ;-)
sbeller··on Tech giants join call for funding U.S. chip production
> but hardware startups seem to be few and far

back then I used to watch all the videos of https://millcomputing.com/docs/belt/ as that seemed promising, but they seem to be stuck in the hardware production and writing a compiler for that architecture.

sbeller··on Don’t wait for billionaires to sell their stock. Tax their riches now
They try such a thing in Germany by having different rates of VAT (~sales tax) for different products. Basics (such as food) being on the lower rate, and luxury items on the higher end.

Not sure if it actually works well or is overly complex nowadays.

sbeller··on Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
Look at it the other way round: they could reduce losses from 6% to 4%, which lead further savings in needing less cooling tech.
sbeller··on I Beat the Berlin Rental Market with a Python Script
> "profile"

Things like whether you have dogs, kids, are a smoker.

Or other things that you're not supposed to discriminate by according to law (looks "foreign", doesn't speak German or with a strong accent).

And then the non-obvious things like your financials (what is the likelihood of paying rent or lack thereof) or connections.

But I think the article doesn't specify actually what they mean by profile.

sbeller··on Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables
Traditional plants to manufacture aluminium do not work on-demand though. If they are not shut down orderly, you can rebuild the whole plant essentially.

So there will be some innovation needed to shutdown (and boot up) these plants quickly, I would think?

sbeller··on Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division’s Suit to Block
handing out your login credentials is like giving a blanko check with your signature on it already.

> What bank in the U.S. wont reverse fraudulent ACH debits?

If you admit to handing out signed blank checks, I would hope that most if not all banks would at least have a discussion with you about how you may be not the customer they are looking for.

sbeller··on Four-day week means 'I don't waste holidays on chores'
20% pay cut (pre-tax, after tax it is less due to progressive taxation) for 50% more weekend is superb IMHO.
sbeller··on More challenging projects every programmer should try
> (in fact, it extracts that value from non-HFT traders, so even those are shafted here).

in return HFT provides liquidity (and by that smaller spreads) to the market, I would think.

If you ever bought or sold a stock with a market order, you profited from the work the HFT is doing.

sbeller··on Some U.S. Colleges Cut Tuition
> USA's highest tax state?

That is another myth that is floating around the US. CA actually has progressive tax brackets (i.e. the rate changes quite a bit from bracket to bracket) and only few get into the top state brackets, whereas most of the other states that have income tax, >90% of people are in the top bracket as the top bracket is around $10k (looking at https://tax.idaho.gov/i-1110.cfm).

sbeller··on Oracle Moving HQ to Austin
> I've personally seen several people be priced out of an area due to this.

Ask a Californian about prop 13 ;-)

sbeller··on San Mateo County Health Officer Statement on Bay Area Stay-at-Home Orders
Great read. (resident in San Mateo County here)

I personally think the whole country should focus more on the greater good for everyone by culling the virus instead of doing this open-nd-close back and forth juggling, as to optimize for the best outcome available (similar to New Zealand). But then again I am not well versed on the Nash equilibrium when it comes to highly infectious diseases.

sbeller··on FCC to require email addresses on applications for amateur radio licenses
exactly. How would that work in an electronic setting?
sbeller··on FCC to require email addresses on applications for amateur radio licenses
They tried something like that in Germany, but they got it wrong in the details:

Once you elect to communicate via this government blessed email, you are basically forced to check that email everyday notwithstanding your ability (e.g. when your computer/internet breaks) as the communication is considered delivered once it hits your (e-)mail box.

For example if you are summoned to court (and it is a felony to not show up), I'd think I'd prefer snail mail for those communications, as I'd trust my "tech stack" of a physical mail box on the receiving side a bit more than some government blessed email provider.

sbeller··on Pollution from car tires is killing off salmon on US west coast
Most electric vehicles I know recuperate the power instead of braking. There are reports of rusty brake pads, even.

Besides, this is about tires, which may be worn down more by electric vehicles (as they have more wroooom, or rather they don't, but can still accelerate better)

sbeller··on Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
> In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically; that is another area that petroleum could have a long useful life in.

Over the last couple years / decades, ships went slower and slower on average as to save fuel (fuel became more expensive as well as environmental regulation on how much a ship may emit, which correlates to fuel intake).

So some people in the naval industry propose going back to using wind power, either via traditional sailing or more elaborate schemes (via electricity generation as an intermediary).

sbeller··on Melting ice patch in Norway reveals large collection of ancient arrows
Just an exponential function showing its true colors, not sure what is alarming here. /s
sbeller··on The SEC “Modernizes” the Accredited Investor Definition
> In a hypothetically free market world, they would be dumping their disposable income in stocks sold over the counter in convenience stores,

I would not be so sure about that. The poor (who buy lottery tickets) have a lot less ability to delay gratification. And if you compare the chance to double your $10 in the next year (e.g. invest in $QQQ) to having the chance of being a millionaire next week, the bet to gain $10 is not an appealing option. Firstly it takes a year and secondly it's not enough to escape their current life.

sbeller··on The SEC “Modernizes” the Accredited Investor Definition
Having worked at Google until 2019, I do not recall their stock being available in the 401k, nor any direct stocks there. All things available were the boring broad Vanguard funds.
sbeller··on SpaceX Starlink has some hiccups as expected, but users are impressed
How did you come to the estimate of 25%?

Because that difference in distance is the actual reason. The geostationary satellites used for your internet in 2009 are at ~2.5 of the earth diameter above ground (35k km, ca 1.5 earth circumference), whereas the starlink satellites are near the atmosphere (less than driving distance SF to LA). And speed of light is rather slow in these dimensions already.

sbeller··on An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms
> Perhaps they'd say those are the simplest, purest instantiation of a frequency.

Actually I thought it is the other way round: A frequency is defined as a sine basically, it has an * amplitude * frequency * phase shift

The phase shift is why we need cosines and sines in the Fourier transform as cosine is just a shifted sine.

The frequency is the constant in the argument of the sine. And here is where the tail might chase the dog: it's the definition, not an observation I'd think.

> When performing a Fourier transform, we represent the signal in a new basis, where each component

... each component is a sine, that is described by the 3 constants above.

> In simpler words, it comes down to the barber pole illusion. If you rotate a spring-shaped 3d curve, it looks as if it was traveling upwards. And the 2d projection of the spring are Sines and cosine.

Exactly, a complex exponential function is just that spring. And if the absolute value of the argument is not exactly one, the spring spirals outwards or inwards.

sbeller··on Transparency Report
> places don't re-think their strategy for decades

because it is hard to measure the effectiveness. How many terrorist attacks and domestic incidents are there (assuming in good faith those are the only things to be prevented) ?

I would assume in the absence of any of these national security agencies that there were only very few per year if not decade. That makes it hard to adjust the strategy even if you assume that they are totally focused on security only, and not e.g. on the continued presence of their paycheck of suppression of opposition parties.

To give you an example: the (American) security measures at the airport that were introduced in 2001 can be considered a total success, as there has been no incidence since then (success = good, people can get promoted for that[0]), although these measures have been called security theater at times[1].

And with these measures called successful by those promoted people, why change them? Of course some other people opine that they may not be as successful as they claim they are [2], but it is still hard to quantify.

> instead of catching everything you see, you can also collect information until you find a pattern

yeah that seems likely. Though this scares me personally as I may demonstrate a pattern now that will make me a suspect in the future, despite doing nothing wrong.

[0] I worked at big tech once upon a time [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-bus... [2] https://www.thelocal.de/20091231/24279