Hacker News Reader

chadashon Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

But people complain about this too. No one seriously talks about not treating people in the ER with gun wounds, but Obamacare explicitly introduced the mandate that you get insurance or pay a penalty to address this very issue. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, but the mandate says that you should have to pay for it.

chadashon Why hasn’t Sam Bankman-Fried been arrested yet?

Yeah, but they can't just go there and arrest him. Right now, the US and the bahamas seem to be in dispute over where to hold the bankruptcy. So there's some territorial beef. It's entirely in the hands of the Bahamas to arrest him and turn him over, if they decide to turn him over at all. In any case, it's common for extradition to take months or even years.

chadashon Why hasn’t Sam Bankman-Fried been arrested yet?

This ignores the parent comment. Whether or not members of the democratic party want to throw him in jail is irrelevant since they are not able to so long as he is in a different country. If he can convince the bahamas not to prosecute, nothing else really matters.

chadashon Twitter engineer: I thought I’d been hacked. It turned out I’d been fired

Top 10 articles from the front page of nytimes.com right now:

* E.U. Settles on Russian Oil Price Cap After Fraught Talks

* A phony climate foundation in Germany helped Russia complete Nord Stream 2 after U.S. sanctions threatened to derail it.

* U.S. Employers Add 263,000 Jobs, Showing Strong Demand for Workers

* Why are middle-aged men missing from the labor market?

* Alex Jones Files for Bankruptcy

* As Officials Ease Restrictions Amid Protests, China Faces New Pandemic Risks

* Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find

* Kanye West was suspended from Twitter after posting a swastika.

* Cameroon Tries to Become Third African Nation to Advance

* From The Athletic: Follow real-time updates from Serbia vs. Switzerland.

Sure, some of these (e.g. first twitter headline) seem to follow an agenda, but most of these are just plain old news. It is easy to think "all of this is available on Twitter or through other independent journalists", but twitter has the luxury of being able to look at what the papers are reporting on. If you didn't have the likes CNN, NYT and the BBC, you wouldn't have reporters at white house press conferences, people reporting from Ukraine, nor any sort of real curation of the news.

Are there blind spots? Of course. Twitter is way better in some niche areas. Do the news outlets show biases? Yes, of course. But without the big news outlets, twitter wouldn't have as much to go off of. I like to think of it the other way around... imagine that corporate media didn't exist. You'd have thousands of independent journalists looking into different things with no curation. Eventually, some of them would realize that to be effective, they need to form groups, since some areas are too big for one person to cover. Eventually, small groups that people followed would grow larger as they try to report on more and more things. Eventually, they'd collectivize and form larger "corporations". You'd be back to square one.

And I'm just talking about plain old news. All of this is leaving aside the big and costly investigative pieces that some of the larger outlets are able to put together. Go and read anything at https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/206 and tell me if anyone but "corporate media" would be able to do anything even close to these.

chadashon Fire Them All; God Will Know His Own

Because Harvard gets not-for-profit status and the associated tax breaks, despite having a $51B endowment that keeps growing. I think it's fair game to ask what our public policy should be for providing tax breaks to schools that horde huge amounts of money. On the other hand, if they didn't get tax breaks, then I'd agree with you that's it is none of the public's business.

chadashon FTX’s collapse was a crime, not an accident

The bar for defamation in the United States is very high. You have to prove not only that the statement was a lie, but also that the writer either knew that it was false or had reckless disregard for obtaining the truth.

Libel suits happen frequently. All the major papers are quite versed in dealing with them. They rarely lose these cases.

I did A quick google search and can’t even find a libel case the NYT has lost in the last 30+ years. There was one case in 2003 where media outlets reported incorrectly that the times lost a libel case. In fact, they won the case, even though the jury agreed that the facts reported were false, because the plaintiff failed to prove malice (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/05/24/n...).

chadashon Lastpass Security Incident

I have interviewed many “senior” candidates who can’t do simple coding exercises. I think that starting out with a simple exercise like that weeds out a ton of people without putting undue burden on the good developers.

chadashon Crypto’s Final Price Could Be Zero

I'm sure he meant this tongue in cheek, but dollars are ultimately backed and propped up by the US government. Sure, no currency is worth anything if it's literally controlled entirely by one person. There are plenty of cryptocurrencies that are pretty much identical to bitcoin but that didn't take off. The only thing that bitcoin has going for it is a shared belief that it's worth something.

On the other hand, the US Dollar is a worth something because of a shared belief that the US government is going to do whatever it takes to make sure it's worth something. Even if I thought that the US government is gonna get overthrown next year, I still need to pay this year's taxes in US dollars, so it derives at least some of its value from there.

To be fair to Buffett, he doesn't care about owning dollars either. Or even gold, which has a damn good track record of being valuable. His assets are pretty much entirely in some form of equity. He likes owning shares of companies that sell some product. Sure, he needs dollars to transact, but it's not like he's holding tons of dollars either.

chadashon San Francisco considers allowing law enforcement robots to use lethal force

This is a bit clickbaity. The article says:

"robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to the SFPD."

chadashon Google to lay off 10k “poor performers”

The NBA has extreme requirements. You can be an incredibly talented athlete and not be in the NBA. If you bring have what it takes you are out.

At Google, or any large company, there are plenty of people who for various reasons just aren’t good performers but don’t get cut. The requirements to stay on there are not “extreme”.

chadashon It’s Time to Reaffirm Our First Amendment Right to Boycott

I think that this cuts both ways to some extent. The references case is about not awarding government contracts based on a company’s not agreeing to not boycott Israel.

To be clear, no one is arguing that companies can’t boycott Israel. They are simply saying that doing so would invalidate your ability to get government contracts in the given state.

The problem is that it cuts both ways. If you say that this is an infringement of first amendment rights, then the logical extension of that is that the government can never refuse a contract based on a company’s free speech. So for example, say Acme Co openly proclaims their support for the Ku Klux Klan… should the state of Michigan be allowed to say that they won’t purchase toilet paper from them?

chadashon It’s Time to Reaffirm Our First Amendment Right to Boycott

Say that a company is called The White Power Group and is known to spew what most would consider hate speech. They bid to provide government offices with toilet paper. Should the government be allowed to turn them down?

chadashon Google to lay off 10k “poor performers”

When you are the size of Google I’m not sure how to tell managers across the company to assess poor performers and _not_ have it leak to the press. It’s not like this is a company press release.

chadashon Guide to Industrial Tourism in Japan

Oh wow, I guess they have relaxed in recent years. When I visited as a youth, it was a white tie affair, with a tail coat and steel reinforced top hat required for men.

chadashon Let crypto burn

I think a typical hedge fund won't accept less than $100k. For a lot of brand-name funds, the minimum is $1M or higher. Many of them won't accept new investors at all, or when they do, it's for very large amounts of money. For example, Citadel is $10m+. Millenium is $25m+.

chadashon Let crypto burn

There’s another reason. Hedge funds don’t want your $2,000-20,000.

chadashon Twitter to employees: all office buildings closed, badge access suspended

> Elon's MO is burning a ton of cash that his competitors aren't willing to do in order to be first in some space. That doesn't take talent.

He's had failures before. But this line seems unfair. He was neither the first person in electric cars (a few notable failures before him) nor in rockets (e.g. Boeing)... but he was able to lead a team that figured out some of the key tech and the business models to make these things viable. Even with a lot of money, this is no small feat.

chadashon Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse

He was talking about money, but I think meant wealth based on the context of his response to the OP. They are almost interchangeable, but not in this context.

> Unsold stock should not be quantified until the moment it is sold.

I don't know Elon Musk's finances, but I imagine that he's got a bunch of stock, (let's say) an amount of cash in the tens or even hundreds of millions and debts well above the amount of cash he has on hand. If you don't count unsold stock, then Elon Musk is poorer than most college students.

I agree the numbers are misleading (e.g. Bill Gates money is very diversified and he has already paid many of the capital gains on microsoft stock sales, so comparing his wealth to Elon Musk's with a single number is quite misleading). But you have to count unsold stock for something.

chadashon Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse

> There would be a buyer willing to absorb all of it at some level, but it's likely at a level far lower than the current market cap.

For crypto, no one would want to buy the entirety of bitcoin, because it basically has no value if it isn't traded, so it's effectively worth $0 if someone owns all of it.

For companies, this isn't necessarily true. When acquisitions happen, the current market cap is usually the floor, not the ceiling. I agree with your overall point though.

chadashon Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse

Yes, $10 has "magically" disappeared. Consider this case. I buy a used car from you for $10000. You now have $10,000 and I have a car worth $10,000 (let's assume that i got a fair price and would be able to resell it for that amount too).

A day later the Russian army hits my car with a mortar. You have $10,000. I have some scrap metal. Rather than $20,000 worth of stuff, there's now $10,000 (plus some scrap metal) total.

chadashon Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse

I would say that bitcoin has extrinsic value. The value it has is because people agree it has value. Imagine I started a blockchain using the exact same code as bitcoin and called it Bitcoin9890812894. It would have the same functionality as bitcoin but a value of $0 since virtually no one else would agree that it has any value.

On the opposite end, a can of Cambell's soup has intrinsic value, because it's worth something to someone regardless of what anyone else thinks. The can of soup that Andy Warhol as the basic for his famous paintings has a mixture of both types of value (surely someone will pay significantly more for that can over any other identical can).

chadashon Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse

Yeah, but the "money" is irrelevant. 99% of their buying power (which in a simple sense is what people usually mean when they say wealth) went away.

chadashon Crypto dominoes fall in the wake of FTX's collapse

No, the wealth actually is gone.

For example, bitcoin has a market cap of $320B. At its peak it was worth about four times that. Did $960B just disappear? Basically, yes.

The coin has no intrinsic value (in the way that a can of corn does, for example). It's worth money because people say it is. And market cap is just a multiple of what it trades for at the margins times the number of shares (coins).

To give an example, say that I bought a bitcoin 10 years ago and that it was my only possession. At its peak, I could have sold the bitcoin for ~$64k, so I had a net worth of 64k. If I didn't sell it at that point and still hold it, I'm now worth ~16k. No one made $48K of of me... there were no transactions in that time period. The "wealth" has simply vanished.

chadashon Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

Yes, he has committed to give most of his wealth. And he has also already given a bunch of his wealth.

chadashon Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

Yeah, but once it's in a donor advised fund, it can't come out. No, it doesn't have to be spent right away but at some point it needs to be given away. It's not like you can just put money in a DAF and take it back out when you want to buy a yacht.

chadashon Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

What does that mean his wealth hasn't reduced? Any money that he's given away (and he's given away a lot) has reduced his wealth. He'd be worth more if hadn't given it away.

chadashon Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledges to give away most of his wealth

He won't sell it all at once. Bill Gates used to own lots of Microsoft stock. Over time he sold it off and diversified, to the point that it's now only about 25% of his net worth.

The key thing is that over time, Microsoft transitioned to a point where Bill Gates wasn't running things day-to-day and investors became comfortable with him not having any control. At that point, him selling shares was no big deal.

At the other end of the extreme would be someone like Elon Musk, where Tesla's stock price is almost entirely dependent on him being at the helm. If he were to walk away now, the shares would tank in value.

Jeff Bezos is somewhere in between. Clearly, Amazon would run okay without him, but he still has some involvement. He certainly can't sell all of his shares, but if he sells over time and makes it clear (and credible) that he is selling in order to use his money elsewhere (rather than trying to time the market because he thinks the stock is overpriced), the share prices of Amazon should hold up just fine.

chadashon Wells Fargo mortgage staff brace for layoffs as U.S. loan volumes collapse

> The only wild card here is what will happen with cash buyers, who aren't affected by mortgage rates.

Depends what you mean by cash buyer. There's a few different categories here and people sometimes get confused.

1) Someone who is very wealthy and has enough cash (or cash convertible assets) lying around to buy house without financing. I'd put Bill Gates in this category. I think most people assume that this is what all cash buyers are (albeit not as wealthy as BG)

2) Someone who sold a home that previously appreciated in value and is now able to use the difference (plus some savings) to pay for the next home in cash. For example, you bought in Brooklyn in 1970 and now want to retire in Miami. You can probably sell that first place and have enough liquid cash to buy in Miami. This is sort of like category 1, but not necessarily someone who is wealthy in a way that most people imagine.

3) Someone who has access to some other means of temporary financing. For example, let's say you run a company and have a close relationship with your bank. You might already have a line of credit with the bank collateralized against your business or other assets that you can draw down to get a temporary loan so that you can make a "cash offer", which you then plan to turn around and get a mortgage on. You don't need to be able to afford $600,000 in cash to buy a $600k home. You just need to be able to have some means of financing it in between when you buy the home and when you take out a mortgage. Often times this might be a family member or friend helping out.

4) A real estate investment company that buys houses in cash. Again, you may not actually have the cash around, but you have a banking relationship and the ability to get large amounts of cash on short notice and without the amount of due diligence a mortgage reuqires.

In 2020-2021 when the housing market was at its peak, I suspect that a substantial chunk of "cash buyers" probably fell in category 3. Yes, people had more money and there were lots of bitcoin millionaires, but not enough to hear about multiple cash offers on $500k homes (if you are the sort of person with $500k in cash to spare, you probably want more than a $500k home).

In any case, all of these groups are affected by the current environment. The stock market is down and there are just fewer people in Group 1 right now. Sure, Bezos and Gates are just fine, but the person who had $10M in liquid assets in 2021 might have $7M in in late 2022 and is probably a lot more nervous about taking money out of that. For group 2, the house you are selling isn't gonna sell for as much, so you'll have less money to spend on your next house. For group 3, these people were planning to use financing as a bridge, but the underlying mortgage rates still very much affect you if you plan to take out a mortgage after the sale. And of course, Group 4 is probably the most effected... what kind of person in their right mind is investing in residential real estate right now :)

chadashon NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

> just for the privilege to be low-balled or even worse denied

I'm ok being denied. You set the bar and I don't meet it, fair enough... far worse is wasting my time when a simple discussion about salary at the start (at least after the first interview) could have saved us both time.

chadashon Activist glues his head to glass covering 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' painting

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you implying that the world has come to accept PETA's cause. Because while some issues are dramatically different than 20-30 years ago (e.g. marijuana legalization, gay marriage), I don't think the bar has shifted very much on animal welfare.