Hacker News Reader

CheezeIton Amish community in Lancaster County reaches herd immunity from Covid-19

I’d expect it to be much lower than other populations. The Amish population is relatively young, and controlling for age, very healthy. A 4% obesity rate (trusting the first google result).

CheezeIton Australian mathematician discovers applied geometry on 3,700-year-old tablet

Maybe they just used a square (tool) or levels.

Geometrically the simpler and more precise way to make a perpendicular line is to mark two points an equal distance on the left and right, and then from them intersect circles of a larger radius above the line. Drop a perpendicular down to your starting point. That’s much more precise because you don’t need to have a radius 5/4 the size of another one.

But you can lay out rectangles on the ground with proper right angles with fewer workers if you use the Pythagorean theorem instead of trying to get a parallelogram out of ropes with the diagonals equal.

CheezeIton Biking while Black: Racial bias in Oakland policing (2019)

I have no doubt there’s racial bias, because the police are trying to catch gang members or other serial troublemakers with a weapon, drugs, or some other pretext to put them away. So they don’t just police a space more, they police it with the intent of creating stops. I am pretty sure that bias targets men. What would be interesting is to see how big the racial disparity is looking only at women.

CheezeIton Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

You might say playing Minesweeper prepares you for law. Or vice versa. Or coding prepares you for law. It’s omnidirectional.

CheezeIton Don't call it 'outsourcing': Hiring employees globally is getting easier

The context was software developers, so yes, that’s what’s relevant. The problems 1 through 5 are basic word problems and if you can’t reliably figure those out at 15, you aren’t going to be any good at software development. (I think, for problem 6, given a dysfunctional education system, you could excuse ignorance of what “average speed” means.) And businesses are looking for intelligence in other roles, too. That’s what gives you an advantage. Especially basic stuff like, being able to answer what is the smallest number in a chart.

CheezeIton CIA’s fake Hepatitis B vaccine program in Pakistan helped fuel vaccine distrust

I actually like Jackson Pollock’s art. That’s all I can think of.

CheezeIton Don't call it 'outsourcing': Hiring employees globally is getting easier

You’re vastly overestimating the quantity of high talent internationally. Take a look at the proportion of Colombia’s students that can answer these math problems:

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/test-2012/form/

For example, 25% of Americans could solve problem 4, and 39% of Canadians, but only 2% of Colombians. (But 8% of Chileans, 15% of Serbians, 21% of Croatians.) Problem 5 is USA 9% to Colombia ~0% (Chile 2%). Problem 6, Taiwan is at 18%, USA 2%.

Colombia’s IMO team, drawn from its 50 million people, also gets trounced by Mongolia, population 6 million. And Mongolia isn’t just poor and polluted, half of that 6 million are horses. Only 3.3 million Mongolians are human.

Taking the 25% vs. 2% comparison, we could say Colombia’s quality-weighted population is effectively 50 million divided by 12.5, so it’s effectively a 4 million person country, measured in Americans.

CheezeIton U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

That’s the goal. You want them to end up as trash. It’s not cost effective to recycle it, and if it were, that would lower costs and create more pollution.

CheezeIton U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

Plastic bags don’t go in the recycling, they go in the trash bin.

CheezeIton U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

We don’t ship our “trash”, distinguished from our recycling, to other countries.

CheezeIton U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

Landfills aren’t everywhere.

CheezeIton Cash Flood Drives Use of Fed Reverse Repo to Record $1T

Yet we now have rock bottom interest rates and a 0% reserve requirement.

CheezeIton Robinhood Has the Worst Debut Ever for IPO of Its Size

No, you are completely wrong. This is the ideal IPO. You want to get a high price, because that means more money goes into the company.

CheezeIton Activision Blizzard employees walk out over harassment and ‘frat boy’ culture

Productivity per hour, or productivity per week?

CheezeIton Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?

I totally agree with this, though I have to wonder how many retail options traders with advanced features are really making money.

CheezeIton Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?

I am pretty sure it does not mean that you get a price that’s “far” worse. You would need to quantify such a claim — a number I see from the SEC comes down to $1 per user (as a _lower_ bound on total extra cost, weakening my argument).

I’m not a day trader — almost all my money is in long term held stocks and crypto — so margin interest rate is all that matters. (For options, I don’t think I suffered any execution issues, because it almost always has involved a limit order in a low volume option.)

CheezeIton Ask HN: What is your favourite stocks/options trading platform?

I haven’t really investigated it too hard. I use Robinhood because it has 0 fees for stocks, options, and crypto (but I’ve mostly moved on to an exchange that lets me withdraw crypto). I also use Robinhood because it has 2.5% interest for margin (with 6% interest on the first $1000, counting the $5/month Robinhood Gold fee). And also, instant deposits.

I’ve found the UI to be pretty poor in some respects.

CheezeIton Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers [pdf]

I’m not really a source memorizer, sorry. I think at 117 IQ it was 50% and 67% respectively (in some past year). It’s probably tough to google too. But you could look at overall post-secondary attendance rates and compare against 12th grade literacy proficiency rates to see the same picture.

CheezeIton Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers [pdf]

White Americans attend college at a lower rate than African-Americans when they have the same IQ. I suspect that’s good for whites and bad for blacks, for the average college student.

CheezeIton Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers [pdf]

It’s a good point of comparison, because it’s a much bigger deal. A 9% lower callback rate, concentrated in the most marginal candidates, won’t have as big an effect on your life as college acceptance.

CheezeIton Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers [pdf]

It’s 25.1% vs. 23.0% response rates. Table 1.

CheezeIton Uber, Lyft drivers strike in Los Angeles

Uber and Lyft hare both non-profitable organizations. Even if rides were matched by some zero cost magic oracle, drivers would be making almost the same amount of profit, because that number’s defined by the next best alternative.

Really, what you find objectionable is not the presence of Uber or Lyft, but the fact that people are running independent businesses, competing with each other.

CheezeIton A reporter’s fight to expose Epstein’s crimes, and earn a living

https://s9503.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Epstein-cas...

“On January 19, 2017, Cernovich, an independent blogger and self‐described “popular political journalist,” moved to intervene, seeking to unseal the summary judgment record, and Dershowitz joined his motion.”

CheezeIton A reporter’s fight to expose Epstein’s crimes, and earn a living

> Berman revealed little about what went on inside his office, but said that his team was helped by “some excellent investigative journalism.” He was clearly referring to Julie K. Brown’s 2018 Miami Herald series “Perversion of Justice.”

Well, this is a facile lie, unsurprising from the New York Times, because before Brown, there was Alan Dershowitz and Mike Cernovich (another journalist) suing to unseal documents, and then Brown joined the party.

But that would undermine their morality play about newspapers and their funding.

CheezeIton Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

(The guy can’t talk to the press.)

CheezeIton Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

Why don’t you ask Joe Biden the next time he takes unscripted questions.

CheezeIton Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

Why are you acting like it stops here?

CheezeIton Google Drive bans distribution of “misleading content”

> It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

In other words, it bans correct claims that Hillary Clinton had health problems, and that Joe Biden has dementia.

CheezeIton U.S. Pacific Northwest heat wave bakes wheat, fruit crops

The reason is, you’re wrong, it’s not the most important issue. Because there are other more important issues. There are more important long term issues. There are even some more important environmental issues, in terms of harm and our ability to engage productively with them. And your opinion about what to do about climate change is surely a thoughtless, harmful, uncreative regurgitation.