Hacker News Reader

jonwachob91on PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against violence

>>> I used to have exactly one representative I could go to

No, you have always had 3. Your districts congressman, and your 2 state senators.

jonwachob91on Expert predicts a major hurricane hitting Houston would be “America’s Chernobyl”

Another long time florida man here

Katrina was 15 years ago. Prior to that crazy sequence of hurricanes, the previous major hurricane was Andrew in 92. Very few cat5 hurricanes make landfall in the US as cat5s (unfortunately that isn't true for the Caribbean islands). These major storms have been par for the course for as long as records have been kept. One of the major reasons the British lost the Revolutionary War was a fleet with reinforcements was wiped out from a major hurricane while en route.

The other large-scale events you mention aren't related to each other at all... COVID, politics, and California wild fires have nothing to do with hurricane formation... So I'm unsure how the presence of COVID and other stuff would increase the likelihood of a major hurricane this year...

jonwachob91on Boeing 747s still get critical updates via floppy disks

Yesterday's discussion on this story >>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24109565

jonwachob91on Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university

Not everything in the world can be measured by pay.

Sure, an FBI Criminal Profiler earns a tiny fraction of what a google dev earns. But one can take serial killers off the street, and the other just makes ads more annoying.

A Social Worker earns almost nothing, but they get to help the most needy of people get the help they need. A FB engineer earns 10x the pay, but just makes ads more annoying.

A teacher earns almost nothing, but they get to teach the next generation of society. An Amazon engineer earns 10x the pay, but just finds ways to sell you more stuff you don't need.

No one goes into government work b/c the pay, they do it for reasons they find more important.

jonwachob91on Tim O’Reilly makes a case for why venture capital is starting to do more harm

The SBIR program is not a loan. It's product development contract program. You tell the program manager what you want to build with their money, they give you the money, you figure out how to build it. If you don't meet delivery expectations, you owe them nothing. If you deliver on the end product, they are likely to become your customer.

If you look through the list of companies with SBIR funding, and what they are working on, you'd be really impressed. A lot of the ventures funded are a lot more high risk than any sane VC would invest in, but that doesn't make them any less cool.

jonwachob91on Tim O’Reilly makes a case for why venture capital is starting to do more harm

>>government's backing >For those of us who aren't Musk, Thiel, or Vitalik, there's only loans and patronage and crowdfunding then :)

The US SBIR program provides up to $1.7MM per project over 2.5 years to small businesses or startups. It's a pain in the ass process that takes forever, but hundreds of start ups get funded this way every year, and it costs literally nothing to apply other than you time.

sbir.gov

jonwachob91on U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

A Japanese Warrant has been out since Jan. A US Warrant wasn't requested until May 6.

jonwachob91on YC S20 Remote Batch

YC S20 Remote Batch = YCombinator Summer 2020 Batch, remote. It's the same styling they've used for as long as I can recall. W21 will be the Winter 2021 batch, W20 was the W 2020 batch.

jonwachob91on Detailed audit of Voatz' voting app confirms security flaws

Page 1 of the report:

>>> "While the introduction of Internet voting in the U.S. is relatively new, the history surrounding electronic only voting is not. In the wake of counting errors, recount discrepancies, and uninterpretable ballots wreaking havoc during the 2000 U.S. Presidential race, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) [49], a bill targeted toward helping states move away from outdated and problematic punchard-based systems."

jonwachob91on Hipmunk Says Goodbye

The article says it all. Their parent company came up with a different way to do corporate travel solutions...

jonwachob91on Luxury hotel guests keep stealing mattresses

Thinking about any of the high-end hotels in Orlando (we have a few of those ;) ), they are all mini-cities with DOZENS of entry points. You can spend walk 15 minutes walking from one non-main entry point to the main entry / reception area.

Heck, I was just as a small 50 room hotel this past weekend that had 3 points of entry, only 1 was in view of the reception desk.

Any of those non-primary entry points would be extremely easy to walk a bed out of without anyone noticing (assuming no one had eyes on the camera at the moment you walked out).

jonwachob91on Doctors are turning to YouTube to fill in gaps in their training

10+ years ago if you weren't familiar with the procedure you were performing, you'd just read a medical journal article about that procedure ( one that had been vetted by a peer-review process ).

10 years from now, will we see high level research from CERN being published to YT before it goes to Nature (or some other journal)?

jonwachob91on Tesla Cybertruck

>>> Any producer would rather sell a tenth of the units at ten times the cost

* 10 times the PRICE. 10 times the cost means taking on 10 times the risk if units don't sell, while keeping the same reward (profit). :)

jonwachob91on Tunnel Boring Machines (2018)

>>> you can scale by buying more TBNs putting them in a line and having each meet up to the next

What I'm picturing from your statement is two TBM drilling towards each other like ---> <----.

Which would require the digging of a third hole where the TBM "drill heads" meet. After every TBM dig, the drill heads are left at the end of the tunnel b/c they are bigger than the new tunnel (as the head digs the tunnel, workers install support structure to prevent a collapse, so the just drilled tunnel is smaller than the being drilled tunnel). A 3rd dig would be required where the two TBM drill heads meet to retrieve them and connect the tunnels. That's a lot of $$$ :/

jonwachob91on Do You Know Who Owns Your Debt?

>>> This is really the biggest challenge facing borrowers. The means of payment should really be locked in.

Why? Some debt terms are incredibly long, such as a 20/30 year mortgage. Many soon to be paid off mortgages were signed before online banking / online payments was a thing. So you would be forcing people to continue using outdated and inefficient technology,,, b/c no reason at all.

Can you imagine the payment technology we will have 20 years from now? If I bought a house with a mortgage today, why should I be forced to continue using today's technology for another 20 or 30 years when a better technology is out there?

jonwachob91on Bill.com Files for $100M IPO

I have never had a good experience with their platform, or their customer support.

I've had an account bug with them for over a year, and every time I reach out to their customer support they just tell me I'm wrong and everything is okay with my account... Meanwhile, the dashboard is essentially "bricked" for me and I have to send invoices to my customer via email (how I prefer, but not how my customer that pays all their bills through bill.com prefers).

jonwachob91on Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

Wow. That is interesting. I haven't used ESPN's streaming platform in about a year (since they did that switch and stopped including streaming in cable packages). But I used to stream European Soccer games on my second monitor at work virtually every day. My work internet was maybe 75 mbps and it worked fine.

jonwachob91on All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

If Magic Leaps most expensive product is ~$3,300... Why didn't they win the contract over Microsoft's $4,800 product? B/c Magic Leaps contract for selling to the DOD was higher than that the products listed on their site.

That's why the military ends up buying hammers for $1000 when you could pick up a higher quality one for $10 from your local hardware store.

jonwachob91on Disney+ hit by technical glitches on launch day

>>> The logical conclusion, of course, is that Disney should've just bought Netflix

Why buy Netflix when you could get a similarly qualified team and infrastructure by buying Hulu? Oh wait... Disney already owns Hulu... Whoops.

What about ESPN. ESPN has a really good streaming product. Oh wait... Disney already owns that one too...

Disney didn't need to buy Netflix, they just needed to use the resources they already owned!

jonwachob91on All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral

You underestimate how the US Military makes purchasing decisions...

jonwachob91on Scientists create device that cuts desalination costs by 90%

Why would they use nano-bots instead of just ligands ?

jonwachob91on Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

You don't have to look that hard to find that this is not true.

Boris Johnson (the UK Prime Minister) was a US citizen until sometime in 2016. His UK political office roles until then included serving as a MP (2000-2008), Mayor of London (2008 - 2016), and UK Foreign Secretary (2016 - the time he relinquished his US citizenship). Reports indicate that he gave up his US citizenship to avoid the IRS taxing him.

jonwachob91on Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

I think you are right. I called 3 libraries in my immediate ~15m drive area (university library, County, and City), all 3 confirmed they will have it, but none were listed on the World Cat site.

jonwachob91on WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half

> Are you saying that having beer on tap is either unprofessional or not conducive to actual work? Color me shocked!

>> Didn't wework have to switch to kombucha after someone realized that a place where you pay money to hang out all day and drink is in fact a bar and you need a liquor license?

A "liquor" license and a "beer and wine" license are 2 different things. A beer and wine license is a few hundred bucks (depending on your location), and just requires some paperwork. A liquor license can be over $100k depending on your location.

jonwachob91on WeWork Parent Weighs Slashing Its Valuation in Half

The Federal Reserve only steps in when there is 1) system wide risk, and 2) when the company they are interfering with owns enough assets to guarantee the fed loans.

* Bear Sterns had healthy assets, Lehman Brothers did not. AIG had enough healthy insurance premiums to guarantee the loan to fix the unhealthy insurance products. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned the home mortgages assets.

---

1) WeWork doesn't have a substantial enough real estate position to bring down the entire real estate system.

2) WeWork doesn't have any assets to guarantee a fed loan.

jonwachob91on Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

>>> “This new statement better reflects the way corporations can and should operate today,” added Alex Gorsky, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson & Johnson and Chair of the Business Roundtable Corporate Governance Committee. “It affirms the essential role corporations can play in improving our society when CEOs are truly committed to meeting the needs of all stakeholders.”

Oh the irony... [0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/07/12/johnso...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/24/opioids-cris...

jonwachob91on New Marine Corps weapon that just destroyed an Iranian drone revealed

I was thinking it looks like a slightly modified John Deere Gator Utility Vehicle [0] that had an RF system placed on top of it...

[0] https://www.deere.com/en/gator-utility-vehicles/full-size-cr...

jonwachob91on Florida DMV sells personal info to private companies, marketing firms

>>> But it sounds like this case is different - the companies in question didn't submit FOIA requests, the DMV sold them for profit.

The way I interpreted it (and from prior experience with FOIA requests), a government agency can charge you a fee for processing a FOIA request. So the $77MM that the FL DMV made from "sales" of personal information, I interpret as FOIA fees collected for processing FOIA requests.

I could be wrong, that just how I interpreted the article.

jonwachob91on Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

Fair enough.

jonwachob91on Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated

>>> Almost all of the litter that escapes into nature, especially the sea, comes from poorer riverine countries with bad rubbish collection practices, such as China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Rich countries like the UK or US have rubbish collection rates approaching 100% and are responsible for almost no new waste reaching the oceans.

... Yea, b/c the developed nations of the world don't send their trash to "poorer riverine countries" to get dumped in the ocean. /s

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/28/treated-...