HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

travmatt

1,564 karma · joined October 30, 2015

submissionscomments
travmatt··on “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” asks Goldman Sachs (2018)
Any business who followed your logic would be then vulnerable to the first competitor who was willing to sell the cure instead. To prevent that from happening, it would take a global conspiracy of every company who could develop said drug, along with the complicity of every scientist who knew about said research and who would be tempted to develop or leak its it themselves.
travmatt··on “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” asks Goldman Sachs (2018)
In reality, a company will look at the cure and know that it will end the market in management. They will also understand that whoever brings the cure to market first will take the majority of the profits, and the other will just lose. A company will not refrain from selling a cure to protect the market share of its competitors.

Your idea only works if you believe there is a global conspiracy of businesses and scientists who all agree to embargo research into cures, and who are all willing to forgo any profits on the cure while also recognizing any scientist and company not in their conspiracy could wipe out their profits at any time.

travmatt··on “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” asks Goldman Sachs (2018)
If a company is aware that a new drug could cure a previously managed disease, it’s pretty obvious that you’d like to be the one pocketing any available profits before a competitor does. The conspiracy only works to the extent that nobody else in the world could create the same drug, and that every person aware of its existence is prepared to keep it secret and lose out on the money to be made selling it.
travmatt··on Young Koreans are echoing r/WallStreetBets in their war against short sellers
I don’t think the stock market has correlated with underlying economic realities in a long time, and I don’t think short selling is the cause of that.

Additionally, I’d think that the small constant corrections of short sellers helps avoid most large cost corrections later.

travmatt··on Young Koreans are echoing r/WallStreetBets in their war against short sellers
Economic research[0] disagrees with you.

“””

We show that stock prices are more accurate when short sellers are more active. First, in a large panel of NYSE-listed stocks, intraday informational efficiency of prices improves with greater shorting flow. Second, at monthly and annual horizons, more shorting flow accelerates the incorporation of public information into prices. Third, greater shorting flow reduces post-earnings-announcement drift for negative earnings surprises. Fourth, short sellers change their trading around extreme return events in a way that aids price discovery and reduces divergence from fundamental values. These results are robust to various econometric specifications, and their magnitude is economically meaningful.

“””

[0]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/01/sh...

travmatt··on Young Koreans are echoing r/WallStreetBets in their war against short sellers
Markets cannot find efficient prices without short selling.
travmatt··on Young Koreans are echoing r/WallStreetBets in their war against short sellers
One of the people in the world most vulnerable to short selling is against it.*

Short selling is still an essential part of markets and price discovery, it’s not really that hard to understand why Elon is against it.

travmatt··on The GPU Sadness Index: Tracking eBay Pricing
I saw a picture on Reddit of a wall stacked high with 3060’s. In the comments, the poster mentioned he placed a bulk order, the downside was it took a while.
travmatt··on WH Ignores Yellen $800k Speaking Fees from Firm Bailed Out GameStop Hedge Fund
Some might argue that you should provide evidence and arguments that support your allegation that’s she’s selling influence.
travmatt··on WH Ignores Yellen $800k Speaking Fees from Firm Bailed Out GameStop Hedge Fund
I have a hard time reconciling the fact you claim to be making a dispassionate analysis, and yet cannot find a single accomplishment of Janet Yellen that would merit her being an in-demand speaker, except her ability to ‘direct government largesse’. If you were trying to make a sincere argument, I suspect you’d find a few reasons people would value her ideas.
travmatt··on How Homogeneous Is Japan?
I’m telling you that black people in America have a culture that is descended from a lot of sources, and you cannot just simplify it as Anglo-Saxon, again because such a wide swath comes from the African diaspora that ignoring that means ignoring its most noticeable aspects. Gospel, jazz, blues, and rap are not descended from any Anglo-Saxon musical tradition, nor are our dances, or many of our foods.

American culture is largely descended from Anglo-Saxon culture, but that doesn’t transitively mean that all American culture is now Anglo-Saxon. The pockets of non Anglo-Saxon culture are not recent additions to black culture, they’ve been intact and distinct throughout their history. The Gullah people are American, not an expat community.

travmatt··on How Homogeneous Is Japan?
I know expat Jamaican and Dominican communities in New York that celebrate festivals yearly. I ate jerk chicken with red beans and rice last week, I don’t think that was an Anglo-Saxon invention, nor was chitlins, collard greens or other dishes. And we don’t listen to Anglo-Saxon music, as African American music isn’t descended from anglo-Saxon music at all. The fact that it’s been widely adopted in Anglo-Saxon culture doesn’t mean that they claim it’s origins at all. Gospel music and hymns do not come from Anglo-Saxon culture at all, nor does jazz, rap or blues. Gullah culture isn’t Anglo-Saxon, nor is the creole language and culture practiced around New Orleans and Louisiana. Trying to label African-American culture as Anglo-Saxon erases most of the actual history, which again comes from the African diaspora. Mexican-American culture doesn’t become ‘Anglo-saxon’ just because they now live in America and can speak English.
travmatt··on How Homogeneous Is Japan?
African-American culture is most certainly not Anglo-Saxon. It’s actual roots in the African diaspora and the Caribbean, and there are entire communities, like the Gullah of the Carolinian coasts, that have preserved their culture and language since the diaspora began. The most noticeable elements of African-American culture have been adopted into Anglo-Saxon culture, they don’t come from it. American culture predominantly descends from Anglo-Saxon culture, but it’s distinct.
travmatt··on FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
To protect against harassment: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/08/t-mobile-hands-over...
travmatt··on Early clinical trial shows anti-depressant prevents hospitalization from Covid
One possible candidate drug I’ve read quite a bit about but have not seen anything on HN about is high-dose melatonin, and even typical melatonin use is associated with a lower chance of testing positive. There’s a bunch of papers discussing how it _could_ be useful, there are several studies underway but none have been completed yet.
travmatt··on Early clinical trial shows anti-depressant prevents hospitalization from Covid
> The UK's health services are struggling at the moment.

Are you saying the NHS is struggling with their doctors publishing dangerous recommendations? I’m not sure what you’re implying.

travmatt··on Early clinical trial shows anti-depressant prevents hospitalization from Covid
I haven’t heard vitamin d administration is associated with better outcomes, but I’ve heard that vitamin d levels are inversely correlated with outcomes - i.e., people should take a blood test and determine if they are vitamin d deficient, and supplement as needed.
travmatt··on Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]
If you do his breathing exercises you can step into a cold shower and legitimately not notice the cold.
travmatt··on SARS-CoV-2 induced remission of Hodgkin lymphoma
It’d be pretty useless to only research and document phenomena that you already understand. But in case it seems that odd to you, here’s 16 other cases of cancer that went into remission after a viral infection:

https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijccr/international-jou...

travmatt··on My Favorite Books 2020
> I read 45 books in 2020

He’s claimed to have read a fairly large number of books in 2020. So not on the basis of his writing swift, rather his taste as a reader.

travmatt··on A first look at Ghidra’s Debugger – Game Boy Advance Edition
I don’t think the many eyes fallacy states that code audits are impossible or useless.
travmatt··on How Complex Systems Fail (1998)
A good example was the AWS S3 outage that occurred when a single engineer mistyped a command[0]. While the outage wouldn't have occurred had an engineer not mistyped a command, that conclusion still would have missed the issue that the system should have some level of resiliency against simple typos - in their case, checking that actions that wouldn't take subsystems below their minimum required capacity.

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/message/41926/

travmatt··on Video taken by pilots of what could be the elusive Los Angeles jet pack guy
Other comments here have remarked that previous sightings may have violated airspace laws. It’s unlikely that he’d break those laws.
travmatt··on Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?
If you go to YouTube and type in “FIBA gather step”, you’ll see a video released by the rules body showing legal 0 steps, the rule is being used exactly as intended, to the point where they want people to know it’s explicitly legal.

What you don’t notice is that the gather step is used for many more movements other than a euro step, but the euro step also has a change of direction and change of acceleration that combine to make the movement look illegal to someone who doesn’t understand the rules.

travmatt··on Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?
James Harden doesn’t travel, he simply knows the rule book better than non-experts. Specifically, he knows the gather step better than most anyone: https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2020/2/23/21149538/james-harden...
travmatt··on No, Cellebrite Cannot “Break Signal Encryption”
I’m just as concerned about: > According to one cyber-security expert, the claims sounded "believable".

One anonymous source at the topic of the article that bolsters the claim, then all the experts who were willing to attach their names to their words all temper the articles claim are towards the end of the article.

travmatt··on Elderly patients 23% more likely to die if surgery is on the surgeon’s birthday
Except if something changes suddenly and surgery is suddenly needed - that’s what makes it an emergency.
travmatt··on Why software ends up complex
For those interested in accidental vs inherent complexity, “Out of the Tar Pit” is a very easy to read paper that explores those definitions: https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love/blob/master...
travmatt··on I Hacked into Facebook's Legal Department Admin Panel
~10k and a minor hit of publicity. If you’re a security researcher I imagine that this is a solid boost to your reputation.
travmatt··on SCOTUS rules you may sue government agents for damages when they violate rights
In the decision the justices note that qualified immunity was not the matter brought before the court, and it may yet shield the agents in question from personal liability.
Page 1 of 24Next →