Hacker News: JackFr

New comment by JackFr in "France pulls last gold held in US"

JackFr — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:56:56 +0000

One armored car can carry a ton of gold. If they left and drove to the closest US Navy port, where the French ship would dock. it wouldn't raise eyebrows.

New comment by JackFr in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

JackFr — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:03:42 +0000

Carriers aren’t going away because there’s nothing else that does what they do.

Many nations can blow stuff up but to actually project power, you need a mobile air base.

New comment by JackFr in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"

JackFr — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:48:43 +0000

I've been working in Wall St. banks for the past 30 years, and I've never used an Oracle database. The investment banks were all Sybase shops in the 90's, and a bunch of them still are. In my experience those that do move are most likely to go to SQL Server, since its Sybase roots make the transition a little easier.

When something has been there for 20+ years switching costs are big.

New comment by JackFr in "China is mass-producing hypersonic missiles for $99,000"

JackFr — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:48:51 +0000

Reagan, not Bush.

New comment by JackFr in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

JackFr — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:48:56 +0000

But they swear an oath to serve Richard Stallman unto death.

New comment by JackFr in "“Collaboration” is bullshit"

JackFr — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:29:39 +0000

It was also probably never true. The author handwaves away 'disagreement about his methods', but SLA Marshall was also simply a liar. He claimed interviews he never did and lied about his own combat experience and the circumstances of his own commission.

New comment by JackFr in "Vatican Rebukes Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures in Rome"

JackFr — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:04:20 +0000

What is the average pope? Fabian? Felix IV? Linus? Eusebius? Pius IV?

New comment by JackFr in "Hormuz Minesweeper – Are you tired of winning?"

JackFr — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 13:38:45 +0000

Triple tap seems to indicate definitely a mistake in targeting.

Despite the war aims being nebulous, illegal, and ever changing, none of them would be advanced by bombing a girls school.

New comment by JackFr in "Why Are Viral Capsids Icosahedral?"

JackFr — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:26:05 +0000

I was going to comment pedantically that soccer balls were dodecahedrons not icosahedrons, but in reading the article, I came to realize that truncated icosahedrons are the same as truncated dodecahedrons.

This was such a delightful realization I felt the need to comment anyway.

New comment by JackFr in "Billion-Parameter Theories"

JackFr — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:53:09 +0000

When all of humanity was hunting and gathering and living at subsistence levels, the was no poverty. It only shows up with wealth.

Pretty simple.

New comment by JackFr in "The stagnancy of publishing and the disappearance of the midlist"

JackFr — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:21:02 +0000

Barnes and Noble put local bookstores out of business by doing a better job at being a bookstore.

New comment by JackFr in "Launch HN: Palus Finance (YC W26): Better yields on idle cash for startups, SMBs"

JackFr — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 19:06:54 +0000

They said “short duration” not “short term”. The real risk is from spread duration rather than simple interest rate duration, and assuming they don’t lever up, that should be minimal.

The beauty of MBS floaters is that you’re relatively insensitive to prepayments because to a first approximation they’re always priced at par.

From an investor standpoint, as they say, you’re making maybe SOFR + 1.5%. That’s not a very sext return. But let’s say your banks repo desk is willing to finance the purchase at 5% down. Then you can lever up your investment 20x and now you’re a big shot making SOFR+30%, which is very sexy. But what’s that, when your lever like that, a tiny decline in price wipes out your entire stake (Welcome to 2008).

New comment by JackFr in "World-first gigabit laser link between aircraft and geostationary satellite"

JackFr — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:35:26 +0000

I like "huge buffer in the sky".

That's where I imagine all my deleted data goes.

New comment by JackFr in "Aromatic 5-silicon rings synthesized at last"

JackFr — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 15:52:39 +0000

Dilithium is a real thing. Who knew?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilithium

New comment by JackFr in "Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has died"

JackFr — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:00:42 +0000

Loved Ilium, and Olympos a little less so. Inspired me to read the Iliad.

New comment by JackFr in "The Hunt for Dark Breakfast"

JackFr — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:39:09 +0000

This article doesn't do it justice, but the Womelette at the short-lived Royal Canadian Pancake House in NYC lived in the dark abyss.

https://www.eater.com/2015/1/26/7860903/amanda-cohen-royal-c...

It wasn't just an omelette on top of a waffle (and both of them the size of a medium pizza). As you strayed from the edges toward the center it became difficult to see where the waffle ended and the omelette began.

Such a shame they went out of business.

New comment by JackFr in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

JackFr — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:30:12 +0000

Phoenix metro has 5mm people and does 37mm bus rides. NYC has 8.5mm people and does 400+mm bus rides. London has 9mm and does 1.8 billion bus rides.

But those 37mm in Phoenix are probably going faster than 8mph.

New comment by JackFr in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

JackFr — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:24:49 +0000

Both NYC and London have express buses that skip stops.

New comment by JackFr in "Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries"

JackFr — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 18:15:24 +0000

"Opaque MWE"? Does no one know the word "idiom"?

New comment by JackFr in "How did Joann Fabrics die while Best Buy survived? It wasn't Amazon"

JackFr — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:07:26 +0000

A firm can be capitalized by debt or equity. They can have a public offering to and sell share to retire debt. They can issue bonds and use the money to buy back shares. There shouldn't be a moral component to this.

That being said, it seems criminal to take an enormous management fee while sending a company into bankruptcy.