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ignasl

212 karma · joined June 11, 2014

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ignasl··on It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere
No, you are wrong.

>the fact that not so long ago they were over 3 times higher

They never were. You can check futures price data here: https://www.investing.com/commodities/natural-gas On top of that you're probably talking about those spikes in 2005 and 2008, but they were short lived and spikes are natural for gas markets because of various circumstances (seasonality, pipeline situation, weather, how full are the reserves etc).

>not so long ago It was 13 years ago! And now it's the highest price since. The reason for such a ridiculously low prices for so long was shale gas extraction. Now US is losing this and more. Because natural gas prices are so sensitive (and react quickly!) to various things - you better hope for warm winter with decisions like these...

Also comparing prices in US and in other countries is intellectually dishonest or you simply don't know how natural gas market works.

ignasl··on Spiders are much smarter than you think
Yes, killing spiders is a bad omen in Lithuania. Usually they're simply thrown out. Not sure how many people does this nowadays but it stuck with me.
ignasl··on Covid Pass in Lithuania and Throughout Europe
I don't know if that guy was spreading some fake info on twitter but this article is very detailed and factually everything is correct.
ignasl··on Covid Pass in Lithuania and Throughout Europe
No one will come for you. They will simply cut you off - won't provide healthcare, won't allow you into the stores to buy food, force your employer to fire you so you have no income. But it's not force - you can choose. Same way like people actually have all the freedoms in North Korea - they can be critical of supreme leader if they want to they just need to choose to do it.
ignasl··on Covid Pass in Lithuania and Throughout Europe
Lithuanian constitution specifically states that no one can be forced to use experimental drugs, yet now you can't go to the shop and buy food if you are unvaccinated. Just yesterday hundreds of cops were checking people in stores for papers. If this is not a dystopian autocracy then I don't know what is. I am seriously consider moving away while I still can.
ignasl··on Show HN: Discord/Reddit alternative with follow functionality (mongo/meteor.js)
Hi, I have already showed my project here but now I introduced a pretty big new feature. Now you can follow any user/channel/thread and the latest 5 posts from your follow will appear on your personal wall on the homepage.

You might ask why only 5? Turns out personal wall is not as easy to solve without significant time investment if you want to keep it performant too. Simply naively aggregating posts would be costly on database and wouldn't scale for sure and potentially wouldn't even perform on small scale. Some smart architecture with smart caching for each user wall seemed complicated for that project that is already too big for one person. But then I thought of using things I already use - mongodb and meteor.js. My architecture is quite simple: there are tracker doc collection where document contain 5(or X) latest posts in an array and every-time something is posted this tracker is updated. Then there is userFollows collection with docs to connect users with trackers. From there I allow meteor.js to handle the rest. Once it subscribes to trackers that user follows all the posts of those trackers are shown on the front page with the added advantage that any new post if transferred right away because of meteor's reactivity so front page is "real time". I also use redis-oplog package for meteor which caches collections server side and made this pretty performant and very easy to implement. It's not ideal but hopefully it will be good enough.

ignasl··on YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
If they didn't have antibodies how did they beat covid?
ignasl··on NSA Spied on Denmark as It Chose Its Future Fighter Aircraft: Report
They won't invade Poland or Baltics because those countries are in NATO and EU and it's way too risky. Russia seems pretty involved in all the hotspots lately including starting a war in Ukraine. Very likely same fate would be for Poland and Baltics if they didn't protect themselves with stronger allies. And even if current Russia is not interested/capable to cause trouble to east EU - that doesn't mean it won't change in the future. Country leader shouldn't just look in the last 2 years - he needs to prepare country for the next 50 years.
ignasl··on Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Cognitive Function: 12-month RCT
If your car breaks you would spend 400 eur in an instant without even thinking. If you feel something is off or to do this comprehensive biochemical tests every 3 or 5 years is not that expensive.
ignasl··on UX Debate for Chat/Comments UI
Hard to say without using application itself and how important that form is, but I would say second option feels more natural. Anyway in both cases you need to do an action to access form (toggle or close overlay). Just choose whichever and test another option on real users.
ignasl··on Ask HN: Intel Core i5-10600K Versus Ryzen 5 3600X
3700X since it's almost the same price as 10600K
ignasl··on Extremely disillusioned with technology. Please help
I am not sure what's wrong with you and why you are happy but unhappy?! but if I would have to guess - it's most likely antidepressants/therapy. There is new "you" but you miss old "you". Brain chemistry is no joke and if you don't absolutely absolutely need medication don't do it. Ask good doctors for second, third and fourth opinions if needed.
ignasl··on Ask HN: I lost my job
It seems you still don't know exact reasons why you were laid off. Did your managers tell the exact reason during your lay off interview? Maybe it's just bad luck with current situation. Did your managers tell you about lack of leadership problem at any time during your reviews and one on ones?
ignasl··on Firefox 73
Still waiting for when Firefox starts supporting Matroska container for videos. Right now it cannot play h264 recorded by Chrome as Chrome puts it in Matroska for some reason. Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1422891
ignasl··on Investors Bet Against Tesla–and Lost $8.4B in Five Weeks
Stock market is much much much more efficient compared to housing and wages. One of many reasons is of course ability to short sell. In addition to price discovery short selling provides support when overpriced companies share price free falls and investors starts to panic. It also provides incentive to uncover outright frauds.

> Furthermore, the advantage appears to be extracted purely as profit by the short seller. So? Do you work for free? Short selling is extremely risky business as we could see here with TSLA. Even if you are right you can get obliterated by a short squeeze. It's basically impossible to go against solid company and damage it. And there is no reason to - there are plenty of badly managed companies with questionable financials that you could go after.

ignasl··on GDPR Enforcement Tracker: List of GDPR fines
If that’s true then the gdpr was not used according to it’s spirit at all. They punished annoying guy who was trying to get some attention. Of course google or fb is fine...
ignasl··on Ask HN: Is anyone still using Meteor framework?
I am interested what's the end game for this investment? It's kinda hard for me to imagine it would become billion dollar company doing some improvements on Rest API. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I don't really get GraphQL. Anyway best of luck for them it is really good news. If people much smarter than me believe in it then there is something to it.
ignasl··on Ask HN: Is anyone still using Meteor framework?
They are still alive, but all development seems stalled. The company does not seem interested in their community at all. Here is interesting issue: https://github.com/meteor/meteor/issues/10477
ignasl··on I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)
No need for gatekeeping. Maybe you won’t get 100% but you still get close to russian culture if you read War an Peace and that’s precisely why it’s so interesting and fun. It expands your world view, show you new points of view and you get interesting story too. Now it seems that you propose only reading your native country authors?
ignasl··on Ask HN: How to start learning Machine Learning in 2019?
You can start Coursera prof Ng course on machine learning to test waters if you don't know anything about machine learning.
ignasl··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2019)
Yes I did. Wish you the best.
ignasl··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2019)
Not looking for a job but this is a product I was thinking about for a few years. Even now I am just thinking to do it for myself. Let's say I read a book about negotiation. Then I want to have its summary, key points, set some goals for myself and check if I reached them, random reminders and maybe reminders integrated with calendar (if I have negotiation event) etc. I have those ideas of what I want but couldn't find anything like it. Hope you guys succeed and save me time so I don't need to do it :)
ignasl··on Ask HN: Should I work at a startup or obtain an MEng?
If you like programming more just go for it and be happy. It is very likely you will be much more successful at the thing you enjoy and software is definitely not a bad place to be in with a lot of opportunities and possible roads.
ignasl··on Efficient AVL Tree in C#
Here is java comparison of various self balancing trees (https://intelligentjava.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/self-balanc...). It seems that AVL tree is doing quite well.
ignasl··on Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
"Firstly, one can easily argue force to take wealth is already in place." That's exactly what I had in mind just maybe was not clear enough. Welfare economics/socialism has a lot of support on emotional level and it is understandable that people who might be struggling are asking questions like in this thread. But if we are discussing economic policies we want to implement then a simple analysis and understanding on the very basics on how things work quickly reveals that it's not as simple as "lets take it from the rich and give it to the poor and everyone will be happy". Taxes are necessary but I would argue that welfare is not what it should be used for at all.

About empirical evidence of socialism failures - countless examples where underdeveloped countries tried it - Russia & co (some not voluntary like my country Lithuania), Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua (and actually majority of south/central America so no need to list all of them), Somali, Libya (and actually mostly all worst African states where USSR were heavily involved no need to list it), good latest example from Africa is Zimbabwe, from Asia largest one is India, Bangladesh, Yemen, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Laos etc. Basically any poor country you can think of - it will have a history of some form of socialism. Nice example is China. You can compare it to Taiwan and Hong Kong. Also you can compare China 50 years ago and now (despite being communist on paper now it's one of the most capitalist countries in the world in reality and it's very good for them). North vs South Korea. Just too many examples. Redistribution simply does not create any wealth. Some very rich countries can get away with it but even current day Sweden on the very top on ease to do business lists. And Sweden is already very rich so they have something to redistribute (https://mises.org/library/sweden-myth)

I guess we look at 19th century extremely differently. For me it was as laissez-faire as probably possible. Current levels of redistribution and inefficiency of it would have been unimaginable back then. We should be very thankful for our ancestors who were working so so so hard. We are currently standing on the shoulders of those giants that started this exponential growth of technology that improved our lifes so much in the last couple hundred of years. Especially USA which to this day is world's economical, industrial, technological and innovation locomotive. Even logical arguments why redistribution though taxes are working for me seems like mental gymnastics and doesn't really much sense. Why would would someone should be efficient with someone else's money even if he has good intentions? Why would redistribution create larger pie to everyone? 19 century is a great example to me how human potential can be unleashed with freedom (from a lot of things at that time - religion, taxes, regulation etc).

I don't disagree with your conclusion. I would avoid left vs right labels though. There is some unavoidable reality on how the world works and labels clouds our judgment and we make emotional decision based on what is "morally" right or wrong and not adapting and working with what we actually have in reality. Every country is actually capitalistic (including USSR and North Korea). The only difference is who control that capital. It's ironic that in capitalist countries it's usually controlled by people (people of merit who often are creators and innovators) and in "communist" countries it is controlled by "government" - usually people with no merit and very often very evil ones. The ones who are good at getting at the top in the power pyramid. Where do you think computer would be invented and would reach all the regular folks?

ignasl··on Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
It's OK I don't mind. 1. This was a bit of rant but questions like this are very related to communist's/socialist's "it's always someone else's fault". This is not productive nor is helpful. It's better to educate yourself on how economics work in the real world. Then you will have a chance to make the world a better place yourself instead of "let's use force to take from productive people and give it to unproductive people" which is not that good of an idea in the first place from economics perspective (proven empirically in many countries many times).

2. Nit-picking on my my "all". I didn't mean that literally. Billionaires' wealth is tied up and even if they would sell everything (and give everything to charity) someone else (who takes over) would be even richer which most likely would result in less competition, less innovation, higher prices and lower quality to everyone. Lack of understanding in how economy works results in questions like this.

ignasl··on Ask HN: Why are billionaires not giving more money away?
Because all their wealth are already put into society. Where do you think all the factories comes from? Who do you think employs all the people? Who creates products and services that people want and which improves people's lives? Billionaires do not sleep on the bag of cash - their wealth is already tied up to the things they are already doing. And as for non profit activities probably all of them do it for the causes they believe in. Universities, libraries, research, art, charities etc. I never understood this demonstration of the rich people, like they are some kind of evil aliens who want to hurt "us good people". This communistic nonsense should just go.
ignasl··on Ask HN: Where should a UK-based company move to if encryption is outlawed?
Probably Berlin. Vilnius or Tallinn could be interesting choices because of friendly business climate, lower taxes, competent and cheap talent, not far away, good tech culture and basically 0% chance that someone would try to outlaw your business (Germany probably has a bit higher chance but I guess it's also not that high). I think US do have some restrictions about exporting encryption to some (all?) foreign countries so you better look closer into that before making a decision. P.S. Stockholm also could be a good place. It's just quite expensive.
ignasl··on Confessions of an Instagram Influencer
What an interesting idea.
ignasl··on Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.
Lithuania was occupied for ~120 years by Russia empire and ~50 years by communists. Other than that it's different religion, different language, different culture. Similarities of course exist and Russian people are fine people but I would like to emphasis that we don't want people in other countries think that we are the same so current aggressive government of Russia have "rights" to start trouble here again because we belong to their influence zone. F* that. Lithuania and Lithuanians are free and independent. I hope you understand why this kind of innocent "they are similar" is not perceived well here in Baltic. It plays right into Russian propaganda machine (they are very very good at it, divide and conquer experience for hundreds of years). Don't be naive - this trend that resulted in brexit and Trump was a direct result of Russian information war campaign. I think next target will be EU and there is a lot of material to work on for them - France, Italy, Greece on top of current trend and traction of marginal political groups. I think it was easy to initiate such a trend as those aggressive leftist ideologies which had support of political elites basically discredited itself as no sane person can look at some of those people and say - yeah right that is smart and totally make sense. And those people got an alternative to aggressive idiocy.
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