Hacker News Reader

wikiburneron Ask HN: Can time travel be possible .... ever?

Haven't Einstein, Hawking, and others made statements that the only indications that time travel is impossible are the issues of time paradoxes and because we haven't seen any evidence of time travelers? I thought besides those issues, they felt it should be theoretically possible?

wikiburneron Ask HN: Can time travel be possible .... ever?

NASA doesn't seem to think so:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534359

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238297

but the OP is talking about traveling forward through time by going near light speed, which isn't really relevant to a warp drive.

wikiburneron Failed HN Launch vs. Reddit Paid Advertising: Which Converts Better

Just curious if anyone else saw a disparity between the amount of traffic Reddit claimed you were getting from paid ads, and what your analytics showed?

My numbers were very different.

wikiburneron Why we ditched Amazon AWS

That's funny, I was just reading this blog post from Adrian Holovaty on some of the issues he ran into with deploying Python/Django on Heroku and how great AWS has worked out for him with Soundslice:

http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/

He just about had me sold.

Anyway, I'm definitely in the wanting to avoid sysadmin stuff if at all possible camp. Does anyone have any thoughts on AWS vs Heroku for Django? Does Adrian's solution seem reasonable?

wikiburneron How Hacker News ranking really works: scoring, controversy, and penalties

I don't think it's an American phenomenon. Every culture has their taboo and sacrosanct subjects - you're just used to the European ones.

From an American perspective, you could argue that it's tough to have a candid conversation about the monarchy in England, World War II in Germany, abortion in Ireland, or entrepreneurship and wealth creation in France.

wikiburneron Why China is leading the global rise of Bitcoin

I wonder if this is an answer to PG's Ask HN: Why would a government have created bitcoin?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5547423

wikiburneron Alexis Ohanian on Colbert Report [video]

You make some great points, Elon.

wikiburneron How General Motors Was Really Saved

Yep, misspoke, just debt holders. Shareholders usually receive nothing.

Regarding societal benefit of the bailout, even with imminent domain, the government has to give the owners fair compensation. It can't simply step in and disregard rule of law and pick and choose its preferred winners.

Keeping GM afloat in no way excuses the preferential treatment. The unions hardly took a haircut at all compared to the bondholders:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230376810...

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124105303238271343

wikiburneron How General Motors Was Really Saved

> Was there anything about how bondholders were robbed to pay off the union?

I'm genuinely confused as to how this went unchallenged. Even if the bankruptcy of G.M. resulted in pennies on the dollar, those pennies still belonged to the share and debt holders, rather than their being arbitrarily wiped out by the government in order to benefit the union.

Were there/Are there any lawsuits to address this?

wikiburneron Reddit’s Politics Section Bans Salon, Mother Jones, HuffPost for Bad Journalism

My impression is pg has banned some sources manually:

Huffingtonpost.com - for linkbait blogspam.

theonion.com and buzzfeed.com - off topic entertainment.

gawker.com and its other domains - general sleaziness.

pg might want to consider unbanning Buzzfeed, though. In the past year or two they've added tons of reporters who do pretty decent long form articles you would expect to see on Slate, The Atlantic, or Forbes, and the risk that HNers will upvote "The 50 Greatest Cat Photos of All Time" is probably pretty low.

wikiburneron Microbe computers

Also:

Memristors

Graphene

3D Chips

Optical Computing

Spintronics

Quantum Computing

and I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting a couple of other promising paths to extending Moore's Law.

Microbe computers strike me more as a path to nanorobotics.

wikiburneron Microsoft Office is killing Google Apps and anemic iWorks

It seems to me that this is a situation similar to the one Dropbox found itself in when starting out - the key obstacle for getting a file hosting service to take off was universal device compatibility, and they spent a ton of time on it and nailed it.

For any startup or other competitors to Office, the one key feature they must get right is document compatibility. I know Microsoft doesn't play fair in that regard, but I'm sure a motivated enough team could crack it.

Office is actually decent for being MS software, but a simplified and streamlined web experience, reduced feature bloat, with online collaborative tools, and made available free or cheap could steal a lot of market share.

wikiburneron Seven-Planet System Detected

Not dubious - speculative:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4534359

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238297

Although, I certainly wouldn't bet against it long term.

wikiburneron How Big Is The NYC Tech Sector?

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you worried De Blasio will negatively impact the startup sector?

wikiburneron Nasdaq says human error to blame for index data outage

Sorry, fixed.

wikiburneron Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

PG, what did you think of that "Can Google Solve Death?" Time magazine cover story from a month ago?:

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2152422...

or Google's project Calico in general?:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/03/tech/innovation/google-calico-...

wikiburneron Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well

I think you're either misunderstanding me or how social security works. I'm only talking about replacing social security, not "these systems".

Everyone who gets a paycheck pays their 6% in social security, regardless of income level.

wikiburneron Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well

No, I'm saying individuals would invest in lieu of social security. Those low earners are already losing part of their income to social security.

There would obviously have to be a transitionary period where the government makes up the shortfall, in order to honor the commitments made to retirees. It would be painful, but only a small addition to the 87 Trillion in current liabilities of the U.S. government.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732335320...

wikiburneron Cash to the poor: Giving money directly works surprisingly well

I've had similar thoughts on social security. It would make a lot of sense to simply require citizens to save or invest a certain portion of their annual income.

You could have enforced diversification (certain percentages allowed for high vs. low risk), and accreditation boards to vet and approve mutual and index funds.

Also, the investment would have a very stimulative effect on the economy, and you could probably also set it up in such a way that it works on autopilot (like a 401(k)) for those that can't be bothered..

It would be quite a bit less draconian than the government simply confiscating the money. In the private sector, the current setup would rightly be called a ponzi scheme.

wikiburneron Comcast launching broadband bundle with HBO

To activate the credit cards? I'm pretty sure you don't - you just need to plug in any old address and phone number online which aren't verified (at least with the gift card ones), kind of like a burner cell phone.

You might need to get European cards, though, and I'm not sure how they work over there or how easy they are to get.

wikiburneron Comcast launching broadband bundle with HBO

That's interesting. If that's their only verification, you could probably pretty easily get one of those rechargeable or "gift card" credit cards, and plug in any address you want.

wikiburneron Don't let the cheap Comcast HBO deal fool you, cord-cutters

Hey everyone, I posted this in the related thread, but I'm really curious about it:

Has anyone in the U.S. had any success signing up for and using the HBO Go standalone service "HBO Nordic AB" through a VPN? It's only $12 a month in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

Is the content automatically subbed or dubbed, or is English the default?

wikiburneron Comcast launching broadband bundle with HBO

Has anyone in the U.S. had any success signing up for and using the HBO Go standalone service "HBO Nordic AB" through a VPN? It's only $12 a month in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

Is the content automatically subbed or dubbed, or is English the default?

wikiburneron Introduced to VC/VC is asking for money to pitch him?

No. Walk away.

wikiburneron Dry Ice Bombs at LAX

Yeah, I don't think you've ever set one of these off before. It's not nitroglycerin, but they can be very dangerous, especially in a "secure" environment:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/EOF4IRj3CTo

wikiburneron Poll: Where are you currently living?

Other:

Antarctica?

I.S.S.?

Sealand?

Edit: Uh oh, New Zealand isn't covered.

wikiburneron HealthCare.gov’s glitches prompt Obama to call in expert troubleshooters

Nope, both sides are spinning like crazy here. 55 Million is a very old number.

NBC News has released a report on what the actual numbers are. It's $196 Million as of 5/15/2013, and the price appears to be well on its way to $292 Million: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53309356/

That was five months before the failed launch and the emergency overhaul that's now underway, so it looks like the final number could be even higher.

wikiburneron Troubled Obamacare website wasn't tested until a week before launch

There was a $600+ Million price for the website that was previously mentioned in HN comments on this topic, and others were claiming that this number was debunked, and the actual price was $30 Million or so.

NBC News has now released a report on what the actual numbers are. It's $196 Million as of 5/15/2013, and the price appears to be on its way to $292 Million: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53309356/

Anyway, I apologize if it looks like I'm spamming the thread with it (I posted at the bottom of the thread as a reply). That's not my intent, but I think it's important information.