Hacker News: RhysU

New comment by RhysU in "Where did my taxes go?"

RhysU — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:59:09 +0000

Many people do get more back than they put in. High earners do not:

> Most American workers receive significantly more from Social Security over their lifetimes than they contribute through payroll taxes.

https://legalclarity.org/is-social-security-worth-it-contrib...

New comment by RhysU in "Where did my taxes go?"

RhysU — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:53:09 +0000

> Social Security is almost completely disbursement charges but those disbursements aren't means tested so even quite wealthy individuals receive them.

Only to those who paid into the system and far less than they personally could have earned on investing the same dollars.

New comment by RhysU in "40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal"

RhysU — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:12:36 +0000

A little over a third of production evidently goes to ethanol: https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10339

No idea if subsidies disproportionately subsidize fuel ethanol over non-fuel usage.

New comment by RhysU in "40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal"

RhysU — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:07:04 +0000

Beef prices are high right now.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000703112

If the intent of the government is to pour subsidies into domestic beef production to stabilize prices they're doing a crap job.

Compare corn: https://www.macrotrends.net/2532/corn-prices-historical-char...

New comment by RhysU in "40% of lost calories globally are from beef, needing 33 cal of feed per 1 cal"

RhysU — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:15:28 +0000

In the US agricultural subsidies for 2024 were overwhelmingly for corn ($3.2B), soybeans ($1.9B), cotton ($998M), and wheat ($960M). Pasture comes in 5th ($741M).

https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-da...

Tofu and ethanol may be more price-distorted by the US government than is beef, but I dunno how to quickly support that idea with hard data beyond what I cited above.

New comment by RhysU in "Non-Determinism Isn't a Bug. It's Tuesday"

RhysU — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 01:58:27 +0000

> Most roles let you settle into one way of thinking. Engineers think in systems and constraints. Designers think in experiences and affordances. Salespeople think in objections and value props...

I don't think often, but when I do, it's in stereotypes. Stay dismissive my friends.

New comment by RhysU in "Show HN: We're building an AI hedge fund"

RhysU — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 21:55:22 +0000

The default page load hides plots for all models with negative returns? That's sketch.

New comment by RhysU in "I Quit. The Clankers Won"

RhysU — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:34:03 +0000

COBOL also came to mind.

The COBOL thing seems to be working out just fine last I heard. Today a small number of people get paid well to know COBOL's depths and legacy platforms/software. The world moved on, where possible, to lower cost labor and tools.

Arguably, that outcome was the right creative destruction. Market economics doesn't long-term incentivize any other outcomes. We'll see the arc of COBOL play out again with LLM coding.

New comment by RhysU in "Car Seats as Contraception"

RhysU — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:20:06 +0000

> We estimate that these laws prevented fatalities of 57 children in car crashes in 2017 but reduced total births by 8,000 that year and have decreased the total by 145,000 since 1980.

145K is roughly the population of Syracuse, NY or Midland, TX. That is far more than the absolute number of US military deaths in World War I (116,516 per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...).

New comment by RhysU in "Car Seats as Contraception"

RhysU — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:14:46 +0000

A friend once remarked that it'd take particular dedication to so using a Miata.

New comment by RhysU in "Spertilo Live Music Time Machine"

RhysU — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:26:01 +0000

> Operable while tripping

> We are often faced with 45-button remote controls, and multi-level menus of options to navigate. This can be ok in everyday life, but when you transport to the spiritual dimension of the Grateful Dead show, or when you are tripping, menus and buttons are the last thing you can deal with.

> The Time Machine needs to be controlled with knobs, a few buttons, and intuition. And if it doesn’t do exactly what you want, maybe it will do something that you need anyway.

Spertilo Live Music Time Machine

RhysU — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:24:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.spertilo.net

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47449143

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by RhysU in "Bumblebee queens breathe underwater to survive drowning"

RhysU — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:33:09 +0000

As a child, I caught a bumblebee in my hand because I didn't think it could sting. Those stings hurt.

New comment by RhysU in "A Survival Guide to a PhD (2016)"

RhysU — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:09:12 +0000

Citeulike [1] was great but is sadly no more.

Add any paper you pick up to your tracking system before you read it. Make that part of your reading ritual.

Save the PDF right away, too. You may later lose access to the journal. Or, CiteULike (where I^Hyou uploaded all those articles) may go away.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citeulike

New comment by RhysU in "US intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse"

RhysU — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 10:38:36 +0000

Any significant transfer to the ordinary people will flow, in large part, to the government.

Putting cash into a somewhat closed system is particularly inflationary.

So, this well-meaning humanitarian idea of cash transfer (a) funds an authoritarian regime while (b) adding inflation woes to the people it's trying to help.

New comment by RhysU in "US intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse"

RhysU — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:28:01 +0000

We ran this experiment already. Obama handed them $1.7B in cash [1]. Not a good outcome.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/united-states-government-fd411341...

New comment by RhysU in "WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate"

RhysU — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:29:18 +0000

How many employees at each of those schools? How much management? Is the manager / employee ratio lower or higher than where you work?

New comment by RhysU in "Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar"

RhysU — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:45:10 +0000

Proper grammar on formulaic language is a proof-of-work system. Difficult to achieve but easy to check. It suggests that the author cared enough to put in the time. When the cost of graduate labor is low, careful editing suggests that you can burn a student's time to demonstrate the message is worth reading.

New comment by RhysU in "WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate"

RhysU — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:23:52 +0000

Redundant may be a strong word. NJ ranks at the top of the states for public schools, e.g. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

NJ has effectively a publicly operated system of private schools where the tuition is the tax burden.

New comment by RhysU in "MacBook Neo"

RhysU — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:23:53 +0000

No. Going back to what I initially responded to:

> I’m going to need HN geeks to get over analog headphones from the 60s

I am saying that not all adoration of the analog headphone jack is baseless. And we shouldn't universally move on.