Hacker News Reader

bildungon 40% of US dollars in existence were printed in the last 12 months

It's always important to compare the whole economy, not just a single number. For context, the median income in 1940 was $18680 in 2021 dollars ($956 in 1940, https://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/149575704/the-1940-census-72-...)

So in terms of the income of the average US man[1] in 1940 the WW2 cost was double the nominal number alone.

[1] The source above explicitly says man, not person, so presumably the median household income was even less than half of today's numbers.

bildungon DeFi bug accidentally gives $90M to users

This all depends on juristication. You are correct if you implied the US AFAIK, TedDoesntTalk is right in e.g. Germany.

bildungon Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

> The point is, it's better to have the option to buy something at a high price

On a macro level this doesn't change anything (besides distribution in a limited way), as this doesn't increase production, or am I missing something?

bildungon YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

Funnily enough, I have exactly this problem with ads on a youtube channel right now. On the Channel, one video mentions Covid in the context of healthcare politics. This results in instant rejection of ads for other videos about other topics. Requesting review of the denial results in confirmation of the denial in about 95% of the cases so far.

The video in question is citing official recommondations, i.e. is pro-vaccination, of course.

bildungon Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

Yes the bias is obviously also pro US, anti China, but that has been true since forever. It was the same at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions of the US, for example.

Nevertheless the facts themselves also tend to get reported, e.g.:

https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/welt/206683...

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Deutsche-Fregatte-wird-auf-...

bildungon Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

This probably explains the well-known confrontational postion of the US vis-à-vis Saudia Arabia and Bahrain and so on.

bildungon Secret military aircraft possibly exposed on TikTok

> Those claims pose a grave threat directly to global shipping and to regional fishing and mining rights, and indirectly to the largely peaceful maritime waters status quo globally.

European here, so this may be caused by selective reporting in different regions of the world, but here news is equally often about US military presence in the South China Sea. Looking at a globe and seeing the distance between US homeland and the South China Sea, I wonder who gave the US a mandate for military manoeuvers near the coast of another country? And how this makes China the aggressor?

bildungon Fallout begins for far-right trolls who trusted Epik to keep identities secret

Trump literally said so on TV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates...

bildungon Europe’s energy crisis is about to go global as gas prices soar

> Nord Stream 2 and the cementing of European dependence on Russian gas it represents seems like a terrible idea geopolitically.

Why? Central Europe isn't that dependent on that gas, because Russia isn't the only source. OTOH Russia now has an incentive to keep the gas and thus the Euros flowing.

bildungon Pausing “Instagram Kids” and building parental supervision tools

Parental supervision is just a means of externalizing the societal costs of the platform onto the parents. How about building a product that isn't a net negative to society in the first place?

bildungon Fallout begins for far-right trolls who trusted Epik to keep identities secret

"After a scandal narrative [about Hunter Biden] failed to gain traction in the mainstream press, conservative media and personalities pivoted to a "meta narrative" that the press, social media platforms and the "deep state" were suppressing news of the scandal."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspira...

bildungon What Does Evergrande Meltdown Mean for China?

That isn't what shadow debt / shadow banking means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banking_system

bildungon The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

> The people in Sweden are concentrated in one fairly dense area, Stockholm.

So exactly like Norway, were almost all people live around Oslo/Bergen

bildungon The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

Cubas age structure is practicaly identical to the US, both have about 16% aged 65+.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/388539/age-structure-in-...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/270000/age-distribution-...

bildungon The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

Response type absolutely matters. Sweden has 10x the death rate of Norway, for example.

Norway, Finland, Denmark, even Cuba, a poor country with 3x the population density of the US is significantly below 700.

Australia stands at 45, not 700, BTW.

bildungon The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

Measles, Chickenpox, Rubella, Mumps, Polio, Pertussis, Smallpox, HIV as you mentioned, SARS, Diphteria and the common cold all have basic reproduction numbers >= original Covid, per wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

bildungon Berlin buys thousands of apartments from corporate landlords

The important context here: The conservatives who were at the helm pre 2004 created a big banking crisis that brought Berlin on the brink of insolvency, which forced the state to sell a bunch of public property: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Bankenskandal (German only, sorry)

bildungon Berlin buys thousands of apartments from corporate landlords

You get the best of both worlds with housing cooperatives, where the tenants are also collective owners of the units. Those are pretty common in Berlin and the rest of Germany (at least Eastern Germany).

You have a large enterprise giving tenants the advantages you described, while also removing the incentive to rise rents on every possible occasion.

bildungon Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

I've been reading Krugman regularly for the last decade and can't remember him saying anything like this. Feel free to provide a source.

bildungon Lumber crash leads to 'blowout' sales as prices crater

> None of the mills started expanding or engaging in capital programs to try and take advantage of the increased prices.

I'm a bit doubtful about this because I know that even German mills started to produce lumber with US dimensions, causing shortages for metric lumber locally.

bildungon Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

Yes, because in the case of Japan, the US heavily lobbied for them to develop nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Early_y...

bildungon Lawmakers Ask Zuck to Drop 'Instagram for Kids' Since App Made Kids Suicidal

> Um, there actually is a fair amount of evidence that violent video games influence people's thinking.

Then feel free to post the research. This was the core topic of my studies, and to my knowledge there simply is zero evidence of a causal relationship.

The US indeed has a big violence problem, but there are actual, established causes, e.g. the high wealth inequality, which is a big predictor for violent crimes in most countries.

bildungon GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

Those have nothing to do with each other: Germany indeed has a company level corruption problem (especially in combination with the conservative party), but pretty low corruption at the citizen level, i.e. where vehicle inspections happen.

bildungon Backpage founders get mistrial because US overplayed child sex trafficking claim

> If she had been using end to end crypto, it’s likely these communications would have auto deleted.

> That’s the thing about end to end: it isn’t just about a stopping surveillance in real time. It auto destructs the message.

Those two things have nothing to do with each other. Encryption neither enables nor prevents auto deletion of content.

bildungon Losing Covid-19 antibody immunity after six months after Pfizer vaccine

Because there is a difference between getting actual Covid and getting vaccinated the weakened live stuff. You are just guessing the effect of the latter.

bildungon Losing Covid-19 antibody immunity after six months after Pfizer vaccine

The important part of your quote: "Meanwhile, BNT162b2-induced protection against hospitalization and death appears to persist with hardly any waning for at least six months following the second dose."

The vaccine reducing Covid symptoms to that of the common cold is a perfectly fine outcome IMO.

bildungon Social media influencer/model created from AI lands 100 sponsorships

I doubt this is an East-West thing at all. In Europe many famous buildings were destroyed in e.g. WW2 and have subsequently been rebuilt, same situation. The "West" here seems to equal the US, which mostly don't have such historical buildings in the first place.

bildungon Energy Prices in Europe Hit Records After Wind Stops Blowing

Decisions like these seldomly are about engineering alone.

France didn't embrace nuclear out of the goodness of their hearts - they wanted to become a nuclear power, and needed the infrastructure and specialists and so on to become one (establish study paths, and give those students the prospect of jobs so that they actually choose the new paths etc.).

Now that this isn't of strategic importance anymore, France lost interest in nuclear plants (just look at what gets built in recent decades in France). Because nuclear power by itself isn't that interesting, mostly because it is so hugely expensive and inflexible.

Germany was never allowed to get nuclear infrastructure because they started two world wars, and at the time no one was interested in Germany having nukes for the third attempt. Even research alone wasn't allowed for decades after the end of WW2. That's also the reason why Germany has no capacity for processing used fuel rods and does this in France to this day - its dual use tech.

bildungon Record number of environmental activists murdered

You seem to have mixed up your conspiracies, DuPont itself was the one calling ozone depletion "a science fiction tale … a load of rubbish … utter nonsense", according to wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

bildungon The Buffett Indicator

You may like Keynes :) Some of his main points were about countercyclical fiscal policy.