wtvanhest

How do you tell if your air cleaner that you are using generates ozone?

I'm not sure who the best person to ask on this topic is, but do you have any sense for smoke prediction models? Over the weekend, I put together the resources I could find easily, but I'm wondering what, if any good prediction models exist.

Copernicus - https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/global-forecast-plots

NASA GEOS - https://fluid.nccs.nasa.gov/cf/classic_geos_cf/

From those, I concluded that we could see fresh air in san francisco as early as this afternoon. Right now, that doesn't seem possible, so I'm wondering if there are other models that exist?

59% possible

Yeah, they also should have MRId non-covid athletes to get a baseline. The entire thing is just click-bait without more details.

I read this essay in 2016, and was fortunate to have a child in late 2018.

This essay had a profound impact on me, and by extension a profound impact on our son's upbringing. There are very few weekends that go by that I don't think of it.

I am sure PG isn't wasting his time on HN anymore, but if he does happen to read this, I just want to say thanks.

I’m curious, where did you encounter them?

I expected downvotes with my comment because it is counter to what most people believe and the exact opposite message that the news gives. People heavily invested in politics will write off what I said immediately without really considering it.

Covid is the only destabilizing event, and it looks as though the US system of decentralization resulted in a variety of outcomes, but overall non-destabilization.

Wildfires make the news bc they are inconvenient, but largely impact rural areas.

Hurricanes are local events that cause damage, but US building codes largely prevent loss of life. Katrina is still a once in a lifetime event due to the flooding caused by failed levees.

Political tension is nothing more than the rise of news entertainment. The two political parties are extremely similar. In 4 months or 4 years, Trump will be out of office and the news entertainment business will manufacture other controversies.

The 3 big ‘problems’/destabilizing factors in the US are, student loans, massive prison pop, a great, but vastly overpriced health care system.

What dark patterns?

It could be interesting to artificially constrain the number of cars and auction the slots on a rolling 12 Month basis so that the tax payers get the full value of the licenses rather than speculators

If you picture a cap table having 3 components

1) Investor's Share 2) Founder's Share 3) Employee's Share

Founders try to optimize for their own share, but investors basically destroy the employee share to get founders to agree. I don't believe most founders are sophisticated enough to model employee interests until it is too late.

My belief is that a new structure could be sold to founders by being a thought leader. In a world with tons of money and no edge, I believe its worth it for someone to try.

But... I'm not a VC, and personally believe its the most difficult gig in investing (which investing is the most difficult gig in any job long-term). So, take anything I say with a massive grain of salt.

There are so many VCs now, and all of them are looking for an edge. There is an obvious edge in building a term-sheet that creates a full ratchet for the employee stock option plan at 10%, where each employee earns points toward the total based on days worked, and 10-year exercise windows.

Then that VC needs to lead rounds and talk constantly about how the employees and companies they fund have the best chance of an equitable exit for all. How if you are not at one of their companies, you will almost definitely be screwed through dilution and bad founder actions.

YC took VC from shareholder focus to founder focus. The next YC will balance employee and founder interests in a way that delivers outsized outcomes the way that YC delivered outsized outcomes for shareholders by understanding that the founders were more important than getting an extra 1% or some other BS term in the deal.

I left the comment partially to see if anyone countered it.

I wonder if the better solution would be to tip it on a 45 degree angle. If it melts, it will now be flat with gravity. No coin required

There is a good trick to use if you leave on vacation (or for monitoring breast milk for those new parents). You can freeze a cup of water, and throw a coin on top. If your freezer melts at any point, the coin will be at the bottom, not the top of the water glass when it refreezes.

I saw the title and remember how when the battery died it wiped the memory. Brutal

At a minimum, there should be a blind test jury in cases with over a 1 year penalty. Would give us useful data, and valid reason to appeal the case.

If you apply an age distribution it makes sense.

As people get too old to care for themselves, this is common, and they have a lot of assets.

Ah, I always wondered why that worked. I fought against it for a while, then started using that method out of laziness, but it works so well, I don’t use another method now.

There is a myth that administrators drive up the cost of colleges. The truth is that overall university headcount, including administrators, professors, etc. have all increased, and the costs along with that headcount has as well.

The rapidly increasing headcount growth, including professor headcount growth is driving the increased cost which is driving increased borrowing.

Universities need much bigger class sizes, many fewer professors, and many fewer administrators. Overall headcount at universities needs to shrink by ~70% to get the cost back inline.

No politician, or university president is going to say that because it would be so brutal to oversee. But... students are suffering with massive debt loads and someone is going to have to make the right choices to cut those costs.

That is a great comparison. I actually got bad advice like this when I started a company 6 or so years ago. I spent way too much time learning stuff that was not important to get results. Now I focus on the basic stuff first, and it works better in all parts of life. That is why I put real advice here, even though, originally it was heavily downvoted

I downplayed the value of the P&L, but your right. If the person ultimately wants to get to a CTO role, I imagine the P&L becomes more important overtime. Knowing when to back a project may come down to knowing whether it impacts the right metric.

The other thing probably worth studying earlier is HC costing. It’s really easy to understand, but often catches directors/vp in non-finance functions off guard.

Basically, timing matters a lot and people make mistakes when asking “can I afford this?”

People are too quick to recommend accounting and finance books. Or... recommend super complex material because they think the subject is complex. If his/her goal is to learn what it takes to be more effective at the finance piece, they should follow my advice. If they want to go deeper for fun later, they can, but it won’t have as much value as improving the 3 things I mentioned.

CTOs at most Fortune 500 companies do not need a strong working knowledge of double entry accounting beyond accruals and capex and how it depreciates.

You can be ahead of most technology peers by simply knowing the basics of accrual accounting. How to learn it? When working on a project, talk to the finance person you work with about the accrual process. They will be happy you asked. If they don’t help, google “when should I accrue an expense or revenue”

Once you get that down, you will want to spend a little time doing some NPV practice. When it comes time to getting your project approved, you want to show benefits in your NPV model. 99% of this is not the math around the NPV, that part is easy. The hard part is getting business partners onboard with supporting the benefits case.

Most finance people at large companies are mainly doing basic math, but doing it well and spelling out logic in a small program called a financial model. The best way to get good at this besides working in finance is to model everything you can. Small widget models are the key to building that skill

The most underrated type of privilege is location privilege. If you grow up far away from a major city, you have to invest heavily to break-in. One false move and everything you worked to establish gets wiped away.

People growing up in Omaha are at a severe disadvantage vs people who grow up in Mountainview.

I respectfully disagree. Founders blame the macro, but that blame is very often misplaced.

Even at massive scale, similar business diverge in profitability due to strategy decisions during all market conditions, including pandemics and other blackswan events

It’s a reasonable idea, but would make a lot more sense for employees. While outside forces impact companies, founders and executives are responsible for outcomes.

Employees have little individual power to impact strategy and are more likely the victims of poor management decisions.

I don’t think there is any evidence of that.

I haven't been there, (maybe someone who has can comment?), but I would expect you need the positive diagnosis for evaluating COVID19 treatment options for your kid. Or, at the minimum, I would expect the DR. to push you to have them tested.

In any case, I would expect kids to be tested after adults in most cases during the shelter in place

Another explanation, if I am sick, I will get tested first before making my kid go through that. If I test positive, only then will I test my child. If I test negative and we are both sick, I will presume we caught something else.

That is what underlies my point. Basically, I don’t think we can say that Europe or the northern US has this beat yet. It doesn’t. Once winter comes again, we get the real numbers.