Hacker News Reader

temp129038on I’m not saving ninety percent of my income for myself

I just went to a talk by a software engineer in SF who was talking about effective altruism and how he personally donates 33% of this income to charity every year...

The one thing about personal finance blogs that consistently bother me is that they always feel incredibly selfish. How much do they donate to charity every year? Given the attitude of scrimping every penny I’m guessing very little to none.

temp129038on Write HTML Like It's 1999

I didn’t find this particularly insightful, and disagree with many of the points made.

First of all the post is arguing for more semantic HTML and says nothing about using semantic HTML5 tags over <div>? AFAIK semantic tags didn’t even exist before HTML5 which is definitely not the 90s.

I also find using the <table> element generally be bad practice. There are much better/easier ways to build responsive tables using grid or flexbox than dealing with <tr>/<thead>/<td> everywhere.

temp129038on Plaid Deletes GitHub Issue Exposing Imitation of Bank Login UIs

No offense, but I think we’d all be better off with open bank API standards in the US.

temp129038on Plaid Deletes GitHub Issue Exposing Imitation of Bank Login UIs

I’m not sure, but does it matter?

I take issue with a product that markets to consumers as an easy way to authenticate for the purpose of pulling or pushing funds, but is actually authorizing developers to scrape years of transaction history in 20 minutes, my real time balance, my phone/email/address etc. without another level of permission. It’s disgusting.

I just wanted an alternative to microdeposits to prove to an app that I own a bank account, not give the app free range to steal all my bank data in the process of doing so.

temp129038on Plaid Deletes GitHub Issue Exposing Imitation of Bank Login UIs

Plaid needs to be exposed as one of the most unethical companies in SV. If people are worried about online privacy then they should really be worried about a company that is so deceiving and makes it basically impossible to revoke permissions on something as sensitive as access to your bank account and transaction history once granted.

temp129038on Four in 10 Americans don't see retirement ever happening

Personally I think the younger generation will rethink the entire notion of what retirement is. The stereotype of counting the days til 65 and then all of a sudden you’re playing golf every day for the rest of your life is just comical.

temp129038on How to get rich without getting lucky (2018)

I listened to the Rogan podcast and was definitely confused by some of the arguments he makes e.g. he claimed the celebrities are the "most miserable people in the world" because they get a disproportionate amount of hate directed toward them due to their status as public figures (or something). I don't believe that for a minute.

I was also a bit surprised by the discussion around questioning the truth behind climate change. Yes, we should be scientific about validating hypothesis about anything, but to nod along as Rogan said "there's no evidence" was a bit shocking.

temp129038on Why Linked Lists Are an Interview Staple

Curious...assuming you’re employed in a technical role did your interview not include a technical interview that with data structure or algorithm qs?

temp129038on Why Linked Lists Are an Interview Staple

I don’t really see a problem with LL questions. There’s only so many linked list question variations and they are a simpler subset of trees/graphs, which are useful and have more real world applications.

If I was interviewing I would be much happier if I was asked a LL question over a tree or graph problem.

temp129038on CSS Grid Level 2 – subgrid is coming to Firefox

I feel like flexbox works better for how I think about building apps in that I'm usually working on one feature at a time, not "laying out" an entire 2d page at once.

temp129038on Peloton Confidentially Files Statement for Proposed IPO

Not to shill for Peloton (I don't have one), but the success of SoulCycle and Barry's Bootcamp show that there's appetite for $32-$35/class "boutique" fitness classes. If you would otherwise go to either/or 1x-2x/week then the math does work in Peloton's favor when you factor in the class + transportation to/from + removing temptation of buying a $10 smoothie too + any "add-ons" you'd otherwise buy (e.g. water).

temp129038on Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Triumph is a strong word. I personally enjoy being a generalist (have been an analyst, PM, and dev), but in my experience companies frown upon it and they will try to put you in jr roles despite having experience in various areas. On the other hand, I think my propensity to want to do a lot of things is probably my brain telling me that I shouldn't be joining a company or take a role where specialization is valued more highly than not.

temp129038on Google Fi Is Broken Right Now

A huge drawback to Google Fi I rarely hear about is that Google is just terrible at customer support. At least with T-Mobile I can call someone, chat with someone, go to a store, get Twitter support, and it's usually pretty quick.

The biggest plus is protection against SIM hijacking, which I agree is a big plus, but no one should be using SMS for 2FA anyway.

temp129038on [dead]

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FB

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG

temp129038on Stripe Chargeback Protection

Interesting - I've been following bolt.com, which seems to guarantee zero chargebacks as well. Given Stripe's scale I now wonder why the value add for Bolt over Stripe is supposed to be now.

temp129038on Uber’s IPO means higher fares for rides

I mean higher fares happened a long time ago on both Uber and Lyft. I used to take regular UberX all around SF for <$10. Now I never see a regular Uber for less than $15 and regularly more than $20.

temp129038on Global recession fears grow as factory activity shrinks

Curious: does anyone actively sell stocks in this situation - even if it's in a retirement portfolio you'd presumably not touch for a long time? I've sold some in the last few weeks though I know the general advice is not really to do anything.

temp129038on What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy

I wonder what the default emotion is of most other creatures, specifically other mammals? To me, happiness is just a signal, just like sadness, anger, etc. It's your body telling you something is "good" or "bad" but isn't necessarily a natural feeling to be had 24/7.

temp129038on A new credit bubble gets ready to burst

If SF, I'm seeing ads all over for 1) Brex (corporate credit cards for startups) and 2) Zerodown (pitching no down payment for homes).

It would be quite something if tech and not banks caused the next great recession.

temp129038on How Plaid Reconciles Pending and Posted Transactions

You're giving Plaid and your average user way too much credit.

If the inherit trust is so obvious, then why would Plaid not include a very common step in authentication flows like FB and Google to explicitly tell users what they are agreeing to share with XYZ developer before submitting their credentials (which may be just a bank account number, but might also be transaction history, personal information, account balance, etc.)? They've purposefully omitted this step because conversion would almost certainly tank.

temp129038on How Plaid Reconciles Pending and Posted Transactions

It's not a weird complaint at all when it's being presented purely as a tool to facilitate money transfer in/out of your bank account.

temp129038on How Plaid Reconciles Pending and Posted Transactions

On the other hand, it's crazy to me that we're all talking about how evil Facebook is for selling the fact that I liked "Family Guy" 15 years ago but for some reason we're all OK cheerleading a company that literally enables real-time financial surveillance on unsuspecting users with a purposefully deceitful onboarding flow that hides any mention of what permissions you're actually providing and no simple way to revoke those permission.

temp129038on How Plaid Reconciles Pending and Posted Transactions

Isn't it more scary to think how many people are so cavalier with sharing their online banking credentials with a third-party app like Plaid?

I don't think enough people realize that when you authenticate with Plaid, even for apps that don't provide "Mint-like" functionality and have no need for your transaction history, you're giving that developer permission to pull your transaction history, personal information, account balance, etc without any additional permission at anytime.