HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

formercoder

1,188 karma · joined April 14, 2019

Googler but my opinions are my own
submissionscomments
formercoder··on Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight
I just wrote a quick regex vba function when I was last in a job on Office.
formercoder··on Google to reduce workforce by 12k
That’s all algebra :)
formercoder··on Google to reduce workforce by 12k
Their cash balance doesn't really matter, it impacts their cost of capital in various ways, but you can still compare the ROIC of any given project to the overall company's cost of capital.
formercoder··on Google to reduce workforce by 12k
WACC = (E/D x Ke) + ((D/E x Kd) x (1 – T))

E = equity value

D = debt value

Ke = cost of equity

Kd = cost of debt

T = tax rate

Ke = Rf + B * ERP

Rf = risk free rate

B = beta of company

ERP = equity risk premium

Kd = Rf + credit spread

In theory, if a project's ROIC is less than WACC, it does not generate economic value.

formercoder··on Google to reduce workforce by 12k
They are related but different concepts. The value of a company is equal to the discounted value of its future cash flows. If rates go up, that means a higher return can be had for zero risk, which means all cash coming in the future at more than zero risk is now worth less. There is a second term other than risk free rate in the discounting equation which is related to capital structure. So, amount and cost of debt does impact valuation (though there is some debate and theory that makes my statement not quite true), but it is not the only factor.
formercoder··on 2022 Climate Tech VC funding totals $70.1B, up 89% on 2021
Could you link any research on this?
formercoder··on Binance's books are a black box, filings show, as it tries to rally confidence
In this restaurant example - why can't I trust the restaurants? Because if I can - I can do all of this without Blockchain.

If there is a network of financial institutions - why can't they trust each other?

formercoder··on Binance's books are a black box, filings show, as it tries to rally confidence
Why can't we just have a better, trusted, third party? Any use case for Blockchain that does not use the phrase "zero trust" is not a real use case.
formercoder··on As unions decline, inequality rises
I really don’t understand the push for white collar tech employees to be in unions. It’s my understanding that in most union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in role, not performance. I try and excel in my role and others are less interested in doing so. I should be promoted faster and compensated higher.
formercoder··on SPACs collapse as $11B of deals are called off within an hour
The vast majority of businesses are high capital and low margin by HN standards. Plenty of them IPO just fine.
formercoder··on SPACs collapse as $11B of deals are called off within an hour
Always $10, the share price is a complete fabrication so this just became a trend because it’s a nice number that’s easy to calculate %s from and the S-1 math was more standardized.
formercoder··on DoorDash lays off 1250 employees
Plenty go work in Big Tech for a bit to hang out, or try a startup, or fiddle around with trading strategies on their own time.
formercoder··on Ask HN: Will Google ever launch a successful new product again?
Redshift is a columnar database like BigQuery, so wouldn’t be based on an OLTP DB like Postgres. More I work for Google disclosures, but I think BQ kicks Redshifts butt.
formercoder··on Ask HN: Will Google ever launch a successful new product again?
I don’t think so, from what I’ve seen it’s a premium price to Cloud SQL.
formercoder··on Ask HN: Will Google ever launch a successful new product again?
I don’t know the details of Aurora, but AlloyDB separates compute and storage for Postgres. Masters can scale up and down with no downtime, and storage is provisioned in real time. Only pay for what you use. There is also a columnar engine cache, basically BigQuery, for OLAP queries.
formercoder··on Ask HN: Will Google ever launch a successful new product again?
I work at Google, but just want to say that AlloyDB is really cool.
formercoder··on Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
No thanks, I’ve been to the DMV
formercoder··on Ask HN: Books on designing disk-optimized data structures?
Doesn’t the chip on the drive deal with wear leveling?
formercoder··on The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool
Sony*, sorry
formercoder··on The downfall of smart TVs: From promises of seamless viewing to ad tool
I quite like my android tv on my lg display. It’s responsive with a nice solid feeling remote. I think there are ads on the screen but I’ve never given them more than a passing glance except once or twice I was recommended a good tv show. Most people outside of the HN crowd really don’t think about this stuff at all.
formercoder··on Ask HN: What is something you built but never marketed?
Not sure if this would be valuable to anyone but I have a custom apps script that parses all of my new calendar event and takes certain actions on certain events. For example, events from/to my wife get marked as personal color and private, title starts with a star -> personal and private. Event from workout class system -> mark as fitness and private.
formercoder··on The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just Approved by US Regulators
From what I have read waste storage is a non-problem from any practical view. It’s a really big planet. Just no one wants it in their little corner.
formercoder··on Shouldibuytwitter.com – A tiny takeover arbitrage model for TWTR
He’s not claiming that he actually didn’t know everything, he’s claiming that Twitter lied in public filings not related to the deal.
formercoder··on Postgres 15 improves UNIQUE and NULL
And when a supplier returns a shipment, and when new things happen that you haven’t thought of so a new column isn’t needed.
formercoder··on Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement
Yeah especially with his filing saying he’s waiving BDD. That’s a tough one to escape. He’s claiming that Twitter has made a material misstatement on their public filings. I’m sure that disclosure has been heavily diligenced.
formercoder··on Private equity may be heading for a fall
IRRs have been waning the last few years anyway, to the point folks will look at 12.5%. There is a lot of money chasing PE allocations. Of course top quartile funds will just pull further away from the pack.
formercoder··on Scaling our spreadsheet engine from thousands to billions of cells
Except the xlsx has to be human friendly
formercoder··on Scaling our spreadsheet engine from thousands to billions of cells
I’ve been in this type of role and the problem is your clients send you XLSX and expect it in return, as well as other 3rd parties exchanging data as part of the engagement/transaction. Changing one company is hard but changing an industry is entirely different.
formercoder··on How to set junior employees up for success in remote
The definition of “on laptop” is pretty ambiguous also
formercoder··on Hardening macOS
Santa isn’t that bad if your endpoints pretty much only run Chrome, which is a large swath of enterprises these days (not all of them of course).
← PreviousPage 2 of 16Next →