HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

shakethemonkey

356 karma · joined February 28, 2014

submissionscomments
shakethemonkey··on Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]
If you purchased crypto via Robinhood but not used a self-custody wallet, it is questionable as to whether you own a digital asset. You actually own some sort of financial instrument issued by Robinhood and no control over any underlying asset.
shakethemonkey··on What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
But a pallet of old academic books is unlikely to be composed of such books. It is probable that most of the books are worth less than the cost of shipping, and some of the books will have some value but not tremendous value. It is astonishing the number of wonderful, high quality books that can be bought on Abebooks for $1.
shakethemonkey··on US Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade [pdf]
This argument would be more convincing if the rest of the law treated the unborn as people, but largely it does not. You can't even deduct an unborn child as a dependent on your taxes.
shakethemonkey··on US Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade [pdf]
This is less giving authority to the States and much more taking away from the People.
shakethemonkey··on Based Cooking
I wouldn't call this a decent recipe, since it doesn't explain how to prepare or incorporate the tomatoes.
shakethemonkey··on Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
In this case Amazon would likely apply pressure to the utility company's regulator, if such discretion was allowed to the monopoly provider under their current arrangements.

That pressure would likely be successful.

But even if a datacenter is removed from one jurisdiction, Amazon is perfectly able to handle that loss immediately.

shakethemonkey··on U.S. Accuses Google of Illegally Protecting Monopoly
AG Barr has been pushing to get this out before the election, over objections of his own attorneys:

"He [Barr] pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence."[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/technology/google-antitru...

shakethemonkey··on Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?
My smart-ass comment[1] got us new Unicode characters[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959139

[2] http://www.righto.com/2016/10/inspired-by-hn-comment-four-ha...

shakethemonkey··on Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019
Ah, so a one-off anomaly. Over time it seems that median income is considerably underperforming. [1][2]

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-st...

shakethemonkey··on Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019
Why is it at such variance with the BEA data? That is my question.
shakethemonkey··on Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019
According to BEA, "State personal income increased 4.4 percent in 2019, after increasing 5.6 percent in 2018". This is not median data, so the median would likely have increased even less.

[1] https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/state-annual-personal-income-2...

shakethemonkey··on Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019
But does it make sense that there would be a huge jump in that for 2019 but not 2018? This data smells.
shakethemonkey··on The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents
The generation immediately after WWII gave a glimpse of what was possible, before crafty people figured out how to siphon off the majority of that wealth to those already at the top. And over time, that siphon has grown stronger.
shakethemonkey··on San Francisco most intensely gentrified city in new rankings
While this is not untrue on its face, the bulk of the blame should go to initiating banks, who became more willing to make untenable loans because they could package and securitize the loans and sell them off to investors, avoiding the consequences of their own actions.
shakethemonkey··on What Would a WeChat Replacement Need?
How is this different from a taxi company? A taxi company can and will blacklist your address. In fact, it may blacklist entire neighborhoods. This happens today.
shakethemonkey··on If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is working 24/7, guess again
Here, Congress is more to blame than the Obama Administration, who clearly wanted more money for this. Congress budgeted far too little money, and the administration rightly prioritized medication over masks.[1]

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/us-emergency-medical-stoc...

shakethemonkey··on Happy Public Domain Day: Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” Is Copyright Free
This isn't true. Replaying public domain music through mechanical means adds no creativity to the work, and thus has no copyrightable elements.
shakethemonkey··on Save .org
Is there a reason why price caps on .org can't be restored?
shakethemonkey··on Days of the Dolphin: Cetaceans in Cold War Science and Science Fiction (2018)
And the Greatwinter Trilogy by Sean Mcmullen. How can you go wrong with librarians, cetaceans, and massively parallel organic computing.
shakethemonkey··on Berkshire Hathaway 2018 Annual Shareholder Letter [pdf]
> hence the coveted AAA rating

The US Government seems to have begun a habit of launching investigations of credit agencies that downgrade its credit rating. It's happened to S&P and to Egan-Jones.

shakethemonkey··on $1.2T in risky corporate debt showing similar warning signs to subprime crisis
Houston had 500-year floods consecutively in 2015, 2016, and 2017. Oh and one in 2001. Must be a terrifically unlucky place.
shakethemonkey··on $1.2T in risky corporate debt showing similar warning signs to subprime crisis
It's a power law distribution (Mandelbrot's work). That's why these numbers are outlandish.
shakethemonkey··on $1.2T in risky corporate debt showing similar warning signs to subprime crisis
The 1987 market crash (October 19, 1987, single-day loss of 23% in the S&P 500 index) was a 25 standard-deviation event. Mind you, an 8 standard-deviation event is an event that should occur once every 3 trillion years. And 25 standard-deviation events are unfathomable given the age of the Universe.
shakethemonkey··on Researchers analysed 1700 novels to reveal six story types
And then there's TV Tropes[1] which uses a finer measure

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Plots

shakethemonkey··on It Came from the ’70s: The Story of Grandma’s Weird Couch
Those grandma couches were $399 in 1977 though (article has catalog with prices).
shakethemonkey··on What happens to country specific TLD's in a war involving that country?
The KW domain was removed after Iraq invaded Kuwait. [1]

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domain...

shakethemonkey··on White House scraps proposal requiring airlines to disclose bag fees
They often have the force of law (if permitted by statute), but they are definitely not law.
shakethemonkey··on White House scraps proposal requiring airlines to disclose bag fees
Laws. Those are called laws. Regulations are lawmaking delegated to the executive branch.
shakethemonkey··on Portugal Bans Use of DRM to Limit Access to Public Domain Works
I don't think this case comes up in the Venn diagram of realistic scenarios.

If the work is yours, you can use DRM.

If the work isn't yours and it's copyrighted and you know who the author is, you ask permission to use the work, and permission to apply DRM.

If the work is public domain, you don't apply DRM.

The scenario you describe is works for which you don't know the copyright status. Your choice is to either go ahead and use the work without DRM, or apply DRM and potentially face consequences.

In this last case, the case you seem so concerned about, what purpose would DRM serve? It isn't your work, you should not care if anyone copies it.

shakethemonkey··on Fraud Scandals Sap China’s Dream of Becoming a Science Superpower
The Soviet Union obtained the technology through espionage against the United States and the UK. China's program was greatly accelerated with help from the Soviet Union. China's current program is based on espionage against the United States, dating back at least to the 1970s.
Page 1 of 5Next →