Hacker News: JMTQp8lwXL

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Summer 2021 has changed our understanding of extreme weather"

JMTQp8lwXL — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 15:19:27 +0000

It's possible folks used that merely as a conversation opener. Sure there was some concern but primarily they wanted to reach out and talk. Concerns for hysteria are valid, but there are more plausible explanations.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "My rant about React"

JMTQp8lwXL — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 14:47:24 +0000

1. Browser APIs have subtle differences, or don't always exist in every browser you need to support (e.g, https://caniuse.com/)

2. You'll need at least a transpiler (if writing anything above ES5) and polyfills to solve #1, and if you're diving that far into the JavaScript tooling chain (bundler + babel), might as well choose to use a framework.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era"

JMTQp8lwXL — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 22:31:25 +0000

I wouldn't leave my job for a "slight" increase in pay, though that's subjective and we haven't defined concrete amounts, other than 300k and 700k in my previous comment, and such a jump (more than double) could not be characterized as slight-- it's substantial.

I need to be paid a risk premium for the new gig having potentially worse colleagues, poorer WLB, or whatever things I find after the interview process. With my current job, I know all of these things. So jumping from 300k, to say, 325k would be unwise and immaterial (8.3%). I might jump for 350, definitely for 400.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era"

JMTQp8lwXL — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 22:02:20 +0000

You could change the process by being the person who rubber-stamps everyone, regardless of how silly the "process" is. If the person didn't get the PhD algorithm perfect, yet still did a good job, let them in. Anyone who is good enough to be considered for an interview at FB or G is good enough to do the job. That's the truth of the matter. Be the change you want to see-- this somewhat reads as a 'stick-in-mud' approach which may not get your desired outcome.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era"

JMTQp8lwXL — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 21:59:23 +0000

I told myself I'd be fine at 300k. Now I'm there, and I've picked up more hobbies. Doesn't stop me from looking for new gigs, from time to time. Going super deep into optimizing for one thing might be a good short-term, but bad long-term proposition. A lot of getting to 700k, I imagine, is luck. So long as you're competent, it's right place, right time. You can't force that situation to happen, so it's wasted energy to invest further.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era"

JMTQp8lwXL — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 21:49:23 +0000

If they already have their budget in mind before the interview process began, it won't buy you any leverage waiting until the very end. They won't care that they burnt the money/time/energy considering your candidacy, even if that costs them more in the long run.

I've ended up wasting a lot of my own time with this strategy. I'll get to the point where they want to extend an offer, I name my number, and then we have an awkward 15 minutes on the phone (e.g., "the VP couldn't ever approve that amount") and then I say I'm not interested 24 hours later.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "As multimillion-dollar IRAs grow, lawmakers vow to curb abuse of these accounts"

JMTQp8lwXL — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:07:04 +0000

A simple rule would be only permitting publicly traded companies from being included in an IRA. No private companies. Then, no more 100,000% growth inside of the IRA.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Amazon EC2-Classic Is Retiring"

JMTQp8lwXL — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 23:42:25 +0000

Combining "enterprise" with "vague promise of longevity" is quite the oxymoron. Google should start celling cell service if they want to continue upleveling their doublespeak abilities.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "WeChat suspends new user registration for security compliance"

JMTQp8lwXL — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 17:48:42 +0000

Re-frame the question: if they could have western style liberal democracy without any bloodshed, would they? The answers you're seeing might be tainted with knowing the path to democracy would be painful, and all else equal, that pain is worse than the current power structure.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich [pdf]"

JMTQp8lwXL — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 18:31:33 +0000

The nominal return (9%) is:

40000 * (1.09 ^ 70) = $16,669,203.

The first calculation uses 7%. It is the real return. You'll actually have $16m, but the purchasing power would be $4.5m in 2021 dollars.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich [pdf]"

JMTQp8lwXL — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 18:23:57 +0000

It's less than the median household income. If you save 15% of the median income for a few years, you could come up with $40k. It's also small relative to $4.5m (0.88%).

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich [pdf]"

JMTQp8lwXL — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 17:56:39 +0000

The S&P 500, over its history, has returned north of 9% per year.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich [pdf]"

JMTQp8lwXL — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 17:53:21 +0000

If you can take a relatively small amount of money (e.g, $40,000-- the price of a new car, which is something the middle class does buy), and invest it for say, 70 years, earning a 7% annual return, you could leave your heirs $4.5 million:

40000 * (1.07 ^ 70) = $4,559,575

If you can buy a car, you can make your beneficiaries multi-millionaires, if you want to.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Americans' life ratings reach record high"

JMTQp8lwXL — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 23:51:30 +0000

There's a pervasive sense of stagnant wages, unaffordable homes, etc in first world and developing countries. In China, it's tangping. In America, it's my step sibling having 0 desire to move out of our parents home (e.g., "Millennials kill X" headlines).

Your options are to try very hard, and maybe secure a barely conventional middle class life, or not try. And for people who aren't a fit for the knowledge economy, the second is the optimal choice.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Empty storefronts are killing neighbourhoods"

JMTQp8lwXL — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 22:48:57 +0000

If rents are bi-modal, as one of the parent posters suggests, then how can all properties be valued based on the higher end (e.g, tenants with deep pockets) when not all tenants actually have deep pockets? Shouldn't the entire demand curve be considered when deriving the multiplier and therefore the price of the commercial property?

Not everyone can get the deep pocket tenant. The staggering number of empty store fronts reflects that.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will turn into a ‘metaverse’"

JMTQp8lwXL — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 18:46:24 +0000

I wouldn't characterize people as being dishonest when they talk about the societal-scale issues posed by platforms like Facebook. It's tough to separate those emotions from a purely analytical discussion of their technology.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "Ask HN: Could the telemetry collected by VSCode be used maliciously?"

JMTQp8lwXL — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 18:32:52 +0000

I care somewhat about telemetry, but the path to avoiding it must be simple. In VSCodium's case, it's not quite there.

If VSCodium wanted greater market share, the first thing they'd do is clean up the extensions story. Today, there's a laundry list of things you must do to use extensions:

https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#ext...

An IDE with no extensions is quite valueless to me, and resolution isn't frictionless.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "AWS's Egregious Egress"

JMTQp8lwXL — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 18:13:50 +0000

There's the opportunity cost to throwing away your organization's knowledge of AWS, though. Everyone will have to learn to do things the bespoke way on your bare metal. So developer productivity could decline.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft (2002)"

JMTQp8lwXL — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 15:59:41 +0000

I'm fairly certain a square manhole cover with a sufficient perimeter would still have no chance of falling into a hole, depending on the diameter of said hole.

New comment by JMTQp8lwXL in "California sues Activision Blizzard over unequal pay, sexual harassment"

JMTQp8lwXL — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 01:20:23 +0000

It's almost like they're regular people, just like the rest of us.