Hacker News Reader

skurryon Buy (and rent) vs buy: a hacker's view on housing

What’s happen if the market went down and I sold it after 5-10 years for a 25% loss? In that case I’d be more or less breaking even, since the money I spent was spent on an investment (an unfortunate one), but not entirely lost as if I had just rented a place.

Eh? In that scenario a buyer is MUCH worse off than a renter. Depending on the variables (interest rate etc) you'd lose your down-payment, all the payments you made so far and still be five figures in the hole. And in Spain, the bank will go after your other assets to make up for their lost money, unlike in some US states where you can just walk away.

skurryon Show HN: Craigslist+ My New Simple Craigslist App for iOS

Eh, do you have an agreement with Craigslist? It looks like your app is in direct violation of 12b of their Terms of Service, plus the name of your app is a pretty obvious trademark infringement.

The screenshots looks nice though.

Good luck.

skurryon Louis C.K. experiment results: over $500,000 in 4 days

So this is why Big Media is freaking out. Anyone with a MacBook and a Shure SM58 mic can record a studio quality album, and anyone with a Canon 5D on a shoulder rig can produce professional quality video. The Internet replaces the studios' giant duplication and distribution networks. And now Louis proves that this applies to full features as well, and that the artist can make really good money with this model. Reminds me of Kina Grannis of YouTube fame, who won a major record label deal, but decided to keep self-publishing, probably for her own best (even financially). Too bad Big Media is barking up the wrong tree (piracy). They can't stop technology.

skurryon Ask HN: Does this kind of arrogance get job applications?

Sounds like it was written by someone in a hurry. Or maybe by someone who had made the observation that the time invested in crafting a thorough job posting does not correlate significantly with the quality of applicants to said ad? In any case, I didn't strike me as that arrogant.

skurryon New York vs San Francisco in fight for tech start-ups

I just saw today that Oakland is in the top 5 of the most dangerous cities in the US. I know those Top Anything lists have to be taken with a grain of salt, but Oakland seems to be in the (local) news constantly, and it's mostly not good news. After having lived in the Bay Area for 4+ years, I've been to Oakland only once, and that was to help someone move out of Oakland. I think I'd rather move to San Jose if I wanted some city life, real estate prices there have come down a bit. Avoid the east side though.

skurryon The story of Computer Space, the first mass-produced video game.

Very inspiring story. Best part is when they discovered that all their four demo units had been damaged during transport to the debug trade show:

"They got three of them working, but the forth one proved damaged beyond repair. Thinking quickly, they made the best of the situation by turning the damaged machine around, opening up the back, and showing off the internal workings as if they had always intended it to be that way."

skurryon I Accidentally Deleted All Our Data

I wonder if it's possible that it was a MongoDB glitch and not a user error. From what I've read, it's notorious for randomly losing records. Maybe the loop save triggered it?

skurryon If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker

Maybe this says more about me than about the author of that blog post, but if I got an email like this from my "friend and boss", I'd be thinking hard about my future with this "company".

skurryon Groupon is an unregulated check cashing company

Given Groupon's published payment terms, this article is a little odd: http://www.groupon.com/pages/merchant-terms-of-service-1 (see 4.3). It seems they're paying merchants only after coupons have been redeemed. So in reality, merchants get their cash later than for regular purchases. Of course these default payment terms can be overridden in a custom agreement, but I wonder how often this really happens?

skurryon Why MySQL’s DATETIME can and should be avoided

Right, stop using those "complicated" built-in date processing functions and instead roll your own. What could possibly go wrong? Storing a number that's only meaningful when defining it somewhere outside of the database is much more fun! Finally you get to meet all your co-workers in person, at least all the junior developers who will stop by your desk to ask why there are these weird numbers in the date columns.

skurryon Google’s Chief Works to Trim a Bloated Ship

"Trimming a bloated ship" made me immediately think of layoffs. Then I read the article, and the tone was quite different, it looks like he's just re-focusing efforts and killing unpopular projects.

IMO, "Me Too" products only make sense if you have the valid hope to be able to offer something better than the existing products. Gmail for example was vastly better than any existing popular browser based email client. Facebook is sufficiently "good" and hard to improve further, so I'm afraid Google will have a hard time coming up with something that will convince people to make the switch.

skurryon What are the odds that you exist?

The odds that I exist, per my definition ("cogito ergo sum"), are 100%. It's a cute idea, but it doesn't really make sense. It's like asking, what are the odds that this pile of sand is structured exactly the way it is now?

skurryon The Tyranny of Meritocracy

By market forces I mean supply and demand. And you have correctly noted that these have a secondary role in CEO pay negotiations. Instead, it's a question of power and indifference. Where does this power come from? It stems from the fact that the board with which the future CEO is negotiating consists of inside and outside officers. This means that he is negotiating with future subordinates (inside officers) and executives who might want to become the CEO of a company where this future CEO has a seat on the board. Who would openly try to lower the salary of their future boss, the same person they will have to talk to about their own pay raises? So, the board does not really have an incentive to push for the true market rate of the CEO, unless they are major shareholders, but usually lots of incentives not to do so.

> We'd have no need of minimum wage laws because anyone anywhere could turn down a job offer.

And right now janitors can't turn down job offers? I don't understand. How does a self-employed janitor have more power? I think you greatly overestimate the advantages of being self-employed, and underestimate the downsides.

skurryon The Tyranny of Meritocracy

Regarding human talent, we both can't prove either standpoint, so we'll just leave it at that.

Welfare is not the only solution to this problem. If minimum wage is not enough to allow a single mother to pay for child care, then we should just offer free child care, financed by taxes. Mom still has an incentive to work for a living, but is much better off. Scandinavian countries demonstrate that this works very well.

>Why should anyone in the US be guaranteed comfort when there are children begging in the street in Mexico or India?

Because as I said, the US as a society is incredibly wealthy. It's possible with a few political tweaks to fix this, and not a single person will be noticeably worse off. There's no real reason not to fix it, except for the extraordinary greed of a few.

skurryon The Tyranny of Meritocracy

The board of directors decides if a CEO gets hired, and for how much money. Often this board consists of presidents and CEOs of other companies. Is it very far-fetched to suspect that there may be non-market forces at work when this compensation is determined? Quid pro quo? I don't have a chart handy, but I think the pay of a CEO in relation to the average employee of a company has been rising dramatically over the past decades. Are CEOs orders of magnitude more important today than they were 30 years ago? I don't think so.

skurryon The Tyranny of Meritocracy

Believe it or not, there are still working blacksmiths and horse carriage drivers. But that's beside my point. My point was that the author of the article assumes that with enough work and educational opportunity, anyone can join the meritocracy. But I believe that getting a college degree requires a certain set of talents, which I believe a sizable chunk of the population simply does not possess (I admit that I may be wrong here, and that some people might see this as offensive elitism). It's unfair that those who don't win the talent lottery should be doomed to a life in poverty. Therefore, there should be a bottom in labor compensation, and that this bottom should guarantee a certain standard of living, and that this standard of living should depend on the wealth of a society as a whole. The US has a minimum wage, but that is way to low to guarantee any sort of comfort in many parts of the country.

skurryon The Tyranny of Meritocracy

Not everyone is cut out for a high-paying white collar job. Some people are passionate about doing construction work, driving a truck across the country, or even waiting tables. Or maybe one of these profession is most in line with their physical and intellectual abilities. These people believe (and rightly so I think) that if you put in your 40-50 hours of hard work per week in a blue-collar job, you should earn enough to afford a decent place to live, food, health care, child care, to send your kids to college and to retire once you're 65. The problem is today that this is less and less the case. This is what people are complaining about. They're not envious of the "Top 1%" making a lot more money than they do, instead, they are noticing that the "ruling class" is actively pushing blue collar wages down, either directly or indirectly by outsourcing, dismantling entitlement programs, slashing union rights and so on, with the help of politicians they bought. Of course, the money saved goes back into the pockets of the upper class, for example in the form of tax cuts, bonuses, or dividends, and at the same time they claim that these are hard times and everyone has to tighten their belts. It's not a tyranny of the meritocracy, it's a tyranny of the power elite.

skurryon How can I teach a bright person with no programming experience how to program?

Learning how to write code is actually fairly easy. Kids can do it. The hard part is to write code that doesn't make your co-workers hate your guts because they have to maintain it. I'd recommend getting a copy of McConnell's "Code Complete".

skurryon Ask HN: Startup promised me a job, then backed out after the internship

Why do you think so? I have omitted one case: The two year requirement might also apply if the visitor is from a developing country and his skill is needed in that country, but there are very few European countries on that list.

Source: http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_1267.html#15

skurryon Ask HN: Startup promised me a job, then backed out after the internship

The absence rule only applies if you're in the medical field, or if the J-1 included got a government sponsorship.

skurryon Ask HN: Startup promised me a job, then backed out after the internship

Not sure if that's good advice. Committing immigration fraud and lying to border officials can get you in serious trouble (18 U.S.C. § 1001). Not only you, but also the company that's paying for your services. It's only a matter of time until a CBP officer starts asking questions about those month-long sales meetings and training sessions.