Hacker News: ProjectArcturis

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination"

ProjectArcturis — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:19:59 +0000

Dan Ariely remaining at Duke, after it has become clear that much if not most of his work is fraudulent, is at least as big a black mark for Duke as Jason Arday was for Cambridge.

Not to mention the Epstein ties.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "I Became the Scapegoat in the Jason Arday Affair"

ProjectArcturis — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 21:59:12 +0000

Being fired from a postdoc in Sociology at the University of Ghent is hardly a punishment.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Scientists link oral bacteria to heart disease and cognitive decline"

ProjectArcturis — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 21:32:18 +0000

This has been an ongoing area of research for at least a decade in Alzheimer's. People with worse teeth/gums get Alzheimer's more often and decline quicker.

But no one has been able to disentangle the causality -- is it the oral bacteria, or is it that people in the early stages of dementia take worse care of their teeth?

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Female US rower completes historic solo journey from California to Hawaii"

ProjectArcturis — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:07:07 +0000

I wonder what was going on in her life that made her say, "I want to spend the next 43 days rowing alone across the ocean."

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "How to earn a billion dollars"

ProjectArcturis — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:13:47 +0000

The timing doesn't matter because monopoly -> enshittification was always the plan. Hence FAANG were valued with the expectation that they could turn the profit knob at the right time.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "How to earn a billion dollars"

ProjectArcturis — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 23:03:48 +0000

I would have liked the essay more if PG had actually engaged with AOC's claims. He just does some math and shows that exponential growth is fast.

What did the founder have to do to keep growing at 93%? Good solid business fundamentals and identifying a new solution can get you some growth. But eventually you've done all that and the only way to continue growing is extraction -- buy out your competition and raise margins, outsource your workers, enshittify your user experience. THAT is why no one "earns" a billion. The last $900M pretty much always requires using your resources in clever but unethical ways to extract money from customers and financial markets.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "SpaceX, Other Mega IPOs Denied Fast Index Entry by S&P"

ProjectArcturis — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:07:59 +0000

You seem to be confusing "listing" - the stock exchange where a company chooses its stock to trade (i.e. NYSE, AmEx, Nasdaq) with "indexes" - a list of stocks that is often the basis for index funds.

The Nasdaq 100 is not the same as Nasdaq. A company can be in many indexes but only one listing. There may have been competition for the listing but there is not competition between indexes for inclusion.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "The desperation of NYTimes"

ProjectArcturis — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:05:05 +0000

FYI you can get Money Stuff delivered by email without a Bloomberg subscription.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "The Pirate Bay Remains Resilient, 20 Years After the Raid"

ProjectArcturis — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:39:02 +0000

I'm astounded that they've been able to keep that domain name.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Allbirds announces pivot from shoes to AI, stock explodes 175%"

ProjectArcturis — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:15:45 +0000

Sure didn't seem like it.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Allbirds announces pivot from shoes to AI, stock explodes 175%"

ProjectArcturis — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:44:17 +0000

It's not just Schwab, there aren't any options traded on BIRD. And shorting is not a guarantee. First you have to find a borrow, which if it's available probably costs >1000% annualized today. Then you have to be able to maintain that borrow, even if BIRD doubles from here.

Based on the price action today, this seems like a short squeeze.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Roulette Computers: Hidden Devices That Predict Spins"

ProjectArcturis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 23:02:23 +0000

Yes this would defeat it, but standard practice is that you can keep betting a couple rotations into the spin. The reason for that is that some people believe the croupier can target his shot to some extent. (I don't think it's farfetched that someone who spins a ball 8 hours a day could get above chance at targeting.)

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case"

ProjectArcturis — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 01:12:55 +0000

You neglected to mention: - It was company policy to keep coffee excessively hot (180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home). This was to make customers drink it more slowly and request fewer refills

- Other customers had suffered similar burns, and McDonald's knew about it and did not change the policy

McDonald's, then, was willfully and inevitably causing injury to random customers in order to save themselves a few cents in coffee.

In light of those facts, I think a $2M verdict was too low, and the executives who decided to continue keeping the coffee that hot should have been criminally charged with reckless endangerment.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

ProjectArcturis — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:44:00 +0000

> Not very smart itself. How sad to reduce the whole thing to ignorant stereotypes

It's hard to call it an ignorant stereotype when it is the explicit policy of some police departments not to hire smart people. And to go to court to defend that policy.

https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer's proteins from brain cells (2016)"

ProjectArcturis — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 01:09:07 +0000

There are easily hundreds of compounds that can reduce beta-amyloid in vitro. This is a decade-old nothingburger.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "How important was the Battle of Hastings?"

ProjectArcturis — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 20:26:54 +0000

I don't think that's obvious at all. I think there are obviously a mix of wars where the outcome was inevitable, and where it was decided through a series of one or more battles.

In WWI, for example, if Germany had won the battle of the Marne, they would have captured Paris in 1914 and likely (eventually) have won the war.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk"

ProjectArcturis — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 01:11:04 +0000

Sovereign like Putin.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Layoffs at Block"

ProjectArcturis — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:25:29 +0000

No, there'll always be a new trick.

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Large study finds link between cannabis use in teens and psychosis later"

ProjectArcturis — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:41:59 +0000

Do you think their lives would be substantially better if they had been arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms?

Alcohol can have a well-documented destructive effect on people's lives. Should it also be made illegal?

New comment by ProjectArcturis in "Large study finds link between cannabis use in teens and psychosis later"

ProjectArcturis — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:39:25 +0000

It's weird that people argue it's better for you to consume extra burned plant material to get to the same level of high-ness. If it's stronger, people just use less.