LurkingPenguin

No, I didn't. Maybe if HN had an effective system for mods to message users...

It's strange to me that voicing an opinion about predatory businesses and lamenting the fact that these are supported by an investor class smart enough to see their predatory nature would be labeled as doing "ideological battle". Can you tell me what my ideology is? I'd love to know what ideology has an exclusive on calling out predatory business models and the people who fund them without any apparent moral qualms.

In your other comment, you stated "It also looks like you're mostly using HN to argue about ideological and politically inflammatory topics." It's quite confusing. If there are "ideological and politically inflammatory topics" being posted on HN, any comment on them could be also conveniently deemed "ideological and politically inflammatory", no?

You don't have to ban my account. I'll do you the favor of logging out permanently as apparently, Hacker News is a place where "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it" determines what's considered acceptable.

Before I log off, one final note: I've traveled extensively in SE Asia (and in "poor" countries in other parts of the world) and have friends in places like the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. If you get a chance, I hope you can travel to some of these places. Try to spend some time with people who don't have much and maybe you'd understand how utterly harmful and shameful these predatory businesses are. Perhaps, having made real-life connections with the people targeted, you too might even see a post about these predatory practices and feel the urge to speak up about it.

The vast majority of people aren't that dense, and in fact, a lot of people actually have a reasonable sense of humor.

> Credit is useful for the single use case of buying a house.

I haven't paid a cent in interest on a credit card since I was in my early 20s. Thanks to credit card points/miles, I've flown all over the world (often in business class), enjoyed stays at hotels, had access to airport lounge access, received various upgrades on hotel accommodations, car rentals, etc. -- all for next to nothing.

Credit cards are an excellent tool if you are willing and able to use them properly.

So what's your intent in calling out machine learning?

"[Something else] has a bad environmental footprint too" is the most tiresome refrain from crypto boosters. It's nothing more than pure whataboutism.

> Collectively, hospitals have overflowed...

This bears repeating every time this gets mentioned:

In the US, even before the pandemic, it was "standard" for ICUs at most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities to operate at 80-90% capacity[1] and for ERs to be overwhelmed by patients in bad flu years[2].

SARS-CoV-2 is basically already an endemic virus, just like influenza, and in the near-term it is absolutely unrealistic to expect that somehow miraculously unlike influenza, it won't have a material impact on hospital utilization rates.

[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...

[2] https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

I had the exact same reaction. It's like the NY Times is stuck in the past and totally out of touch with the present, and hung up on stereotypes and ideological generalizations that aren't very accurate.

> ...cafes and restaurants seem like natural partners for charging parks.

$30 Avocado toast and $15 lattes.

> So I'm very sure that my most effective means of improving the situation is to put cameras on their affairs from my house and get all the other adjacent neighbors to do likewise. The dealers have felt the heat, and now their clients are normally more respectful and quiet, presumably at the prompting of the dealers.

Do you really believe this is going to be effective? In your scenario where the police are unresponsive to reports, what makes you think that they're suddenly going to care if you send them a bunch of surveillance video of illicit activity?

The drug dealers know when they're operating in safe territory. In places like San Francisco, people openly deal and use drugs on the street because they know that they are likely to get away with it.

I bet if you posed as a journalist, some of these people would even let you photograph their activities, all while flashing big smiles.

You should look up the term "multiple expansion."

I can assure you there are people in San Francisco who would be very excited if you told them that you had finely-ground Antarctican coffee.

> Some in the investment community say that much like Tesla's rally to become the most valuable car company on Earth, Rivian's value is also a sign that valuations have gotten out of hand.

> "Despite the popularity of the electric vehicle market and huge gains in Tesla's stock, we think investors should avoid the temptation to buy Rivian shares," investment research firm New Constructs said of the company ahead of the IPO.

> The firm notes that when Tesla went public in 2010, it was valued at $1.7 billion US, was at least already delivering vehicles to paying customers, and was on track to sell 1,500 vehicles that first year. That's more than Rivian says it will do, despite now being worth about 50 times what Tesla was worth then.

> "To buy the stock at such a high price before the company has shown it can consistently produce more than a handful of cars seems ridiculous to us," New Constructs said. "Investors shouldn't buy a stock just because it's in a hot sector."

Rivian might very well prove to be a horrible investment at current prices. It would certainly impossible to justify its valuation in a sane, "normal" market. But the market hasn't been normal for over a decade and just keeps getting less and less sane.

Is there really any point in trying to warn people about valuations anymore? As far as the market is concerned, we're basically living in a post-logic, post-sanity world and sadly, investors who stick to logic and sanity are going to miss out on most of the gains.

Of course, if and when the bubble pops, a lot of people will lose money but that doesn't mean that the logic and sanity folks will profit because, well, you'd have to be insane to be heavy short almost anything in this market.

Full resume is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OevE4HFiAgUPlOym3RAPjtvp...

Not mentioned in the Protocol article is that Angelina also has adult entertainment industry experience and expertise in Mia Khalifa. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from UC Berkeley (emphasis on Cum is in the CV).

Is it possible that some of the responses Angelina received were from pervy hiring managers, not hiring managers who only looked at the companies she claimed to have worked for?

> It's human nature

I think this is only true to an extent. In my own career, I've worked for and hired people who were honest about their roles, taking a reasonable amount of credit where appropriate while also owning the things that didn't go so well.

In tech, there's really no downside to this because the industry is pretty damn forgiving. Failure is expected, and a lot of super successful people had multiple failures under their belt before they succeeded.

It's really, really cringey to have a LinkedIn bio where you basically position yourself as the owner of a product and then elsewhere make it sound like you not only had nothing to do with said product's failure but in fact knew how to make it successful but couldn't because everyone else was flawed in some way.

I felt the same way and find it somewhat ironic that this guy now works at...wait for it...Facebook. You know, the world's most non-toxic, consumer-centric charity.

It's also amusing that he has this in his LinkedIn bio:

> Previously, he led design for Zillow’s newest venture, Zillow Offers—building the team and product vision of an end-to-end experience for buying, selling, financing and managing a home, all within the Zillow ecosystem.

So he takes credit for leading the design for Zillow Offers and building the team and product vision, but then posts a retrospective criticizing it all and disavowing any responsibility in the product's failure? Strange, but perhaps explains why he's a good fit for Facebook.

It doesn't look like it.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

> SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected.

> Everyone will need boosters at least once per year in perpetuity if they want to maintain any reasonable amount of protection

At 6 months, there's a stark difference between VE against infection versus VE against hospitalization. What endpoint should we really care about? Constantly boosting a non-sterilizing vaccine that is apparently still highly effective at reducing the risk of severe outcomes is mind boggling.

There are people getting breakthrough infections just 2-4 months after their second dose. Look at how much drama has been generated trying to get people to take an initial vaccination series. The idea that vaccination campaigns for perpetual boosters every 3-6 months could ever be widely successful is absurd. It just isn't going to happen.

It's pretty obvious that virtually everyone is going to get this thing at some point even if they've been vaccinated, and eventually public health officials will have no choice but to accept that natural immunity is a real thing.

> I still don't understand how people don't get it.

I've come to believe that it's all political and ideological at this point. There is indeed a contingent of crazy people who don't think COVID is real, believe in wild conspiracy theories about COVID, oppose any preventative measure (be it masking, social distancing or vaccination), etc.

And then there is another, larger contingent of people who believe that if they acknowledge any limitations of the vaccines, the minimal utility of rushing to vaccinate children, etc., they are letting the crazies win.

So now we're stuck in a Twilight Zone where the vaccinated have to be protected from the unvaccinated, vaccinating the group least likely to be affected by COVID is promoted as the latest key to ending the pandemic, "natural immunity" has gone from being accepted as basic science to treated like pseudoscience, and everybody who is vaccinated will probably be pressured to boost every 6 months no matter how much protection they continue to be told they have against hospitalization and death.

SARS-CoV-2 is basically already endemic.

In the US, since the start of the pandemic, the total number of deaths "involving COVID-19" in children aged 17 or younger is 595. During the same period, total deaths in this age group amount to 61,523.[1]

The vaccine does not provide sterilizing immunity. Fully vaccinated individuals can become infected and transmit the virus to others.

Based on these facts, can you explain how vaccinating children will "end" the pandemic and make children significantly more safe?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se...

The recommendations are simply based on estimates of the observed incidence rate by age.

We don't even yet know for sure the mechanism by which the vaccine can cause myocarditis. There are various theories, a number of them related to the spike protein itself.

Figuring this out should be of the highest priority given that public health officials around the world are basically moving towards a boost every 6 for the foreseeable future position.

I live in Taiwan and while there's much to be lauded about the way the government here has handled the pandemic, the current situation is not sustainable.

Taiwan's case numbers are low because the borders are effectively sealed shut. With few exceptions, only citizens and residents can enter the country. Upon return, everyone is required to do 14 days of quarantine in a centralized quarantine facility or in a quarantine hotel at their own expense. When I did it, I paid close to $2,000 USD for the 14 days.

Chinese New Year is coming up and there isn't enough quarantine hotel capacity, so the government is preparing to announce some loosening of the restrictions, like 7 days of quarantine in a centralized facility plus 7 at home for the fully vaccinated.

Economically, many local businesses have been hurt by almost 2 years of closed borders. Some have gone out of business. Save for the quarantine hotels, which are making a killing, tourism has been devastated at a time when it would be really helpful for Taiwan to be not isolated from the rest of the world.

The big problem is that, looking at highly-vaccinated countries like Singapore and Israel, it's clear that once the borders open, the virus will get in. Fully vaccinated people will get and spread the virus and some percentage of individuals in high-risk groups are likely to get very sick and die even if they've been vaccinated. Taiwan had a very high CFR when it had its mini outbreak in May, which reflects the fact that there are a lot of old, not so healthy people here for the virus to run through.

I wouldn't suggest that Taiwan should have just thrown caution to the wind and opened the borders before vaccination rates were higher, but at some point, continuing with a 0 COVID strategy is just delaying the inevitable at a higher and higher cost.

No, you wouldn't. If influenza viruses didn't mutate the way they do, you'd inevitably get infected (whether vaccinated or not) and you would have natural immunity such that the benefit of getting vaccinated every year would be miniscule unless you were in a high-risk category. So in this scenario, an annual "flu shot" wouldn't be a thing for the general population.

What do you say to people who eagerly took the initial 2-dose vaccine series but aren't interested in perpetual boosters every 6 months? Are they antivaxxers? Do they need to be marginalized?

The neutralizing antibodies generated after vaccination wane very quickly and the vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission. There are even breakthrough cases happening in people who are just 2-3 months out from their second dose.

I flew halfway around the world to get vaccinated and when I was in the US earlier this year, observed that the people who were most confident and even cavalier about forgoing preventative measures like mask wearing and social distancing were people who were fully vaccinated.

If vaccinated people who harbor objectively wrong beliefs about what the vaccines actually do engage in behavior that causes "real harm to other's bodies", do they need fire and brimstone too?

In the US, even before the pandemic, ICUs were typically run at very close to capacity. From Becker's Hospital Review[1]:

> For most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities, operating intensive care units at 80 percent to 90 percent capacity is standard — even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

In bad flu years, ERs are commonly overwhelmed[2] even though we obviously have vaccines that provide so-so protection:

https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

I suspect that the situation in Europe is much the same.

Even if the vaccines continue to provide good protection against hospitalization, that doesn't mean that breakthrough infections won't have any impact on the healthcare system. As an anecdote, I just learned that a friend, who is a super fit collegiate athlete, just had a breakthrough infection and almost went to the ER because her symptoms were quite bad. She decided against it and the symptoms subsided within a couple of days, but if you hear about and read enough reports about breakthrough infections, it's pretty clear that it's not rare for "mild" cases to be pretty rough -- rough enough to have some people thinking about a visit to the hospital.

SARS-CoV-2 is well on its way to being endemic (it basically already is) so if we're being honest about getting back to normal, it's time for public health decision makers to be more realistic about the impact the virus will have on the healthcare system. Practically speaking, that means being prepared for high utilization and expanding capacity.

[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...

[2] https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

> I think what Western observers are missing is that this was an intentional "let fail" in order to prevent this structural weakness from becoming too big of a problem.

I think what you're missing is that China isn't even out of the first inning on this one.

Evergrande hasn't even failed yet. It's a slow-moving trainwreck and the contagion is only just starting to spread.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-state-council-hel...

Better erections, better pumps in the gym, better chemotherapy. Now that's my holy trifecta!

> It'll sting some emerging market investors, but I don't think you'll see a massive knock-on here.

China has basically been the single biggest driver of global growth over the past decade. Its highly overleveraged real estate market is a huge threat to its overall economy, and that has plenty of potential to create a massive knock-on.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-economy-global-kemp-colum...

Even better news: in the Metaverse, race, sexual orientation and politics themselves will be banned. All will merge into the singularity that is The Zuck.

> Many vaccines require boosters.

There is no other vaccine routinely administered to large numbers of people that requires a booster every 6-12 months in the general population.

Of the vaccines that require ongoing boosters in the general population, Tdap is probably the most common, and the booster is every 10 years.

The "flu shot" is not an annual booster. It is a different reformulated vaccine every year that, in the case of the trivalent vaccines, targets the 3 strains of influenza that are predicted to be most prevalent in the coming flu season.

The bed was probably listed as a separate budget "room" on AirBnB.