Hacker News: blago

New comment by blago in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

blago — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 20:20:33 +0000

There is no need for exact numbers. I'm mostly interested in your tax bracket and effective federal and state rates. It sounds like you had a good year with a one-time payment that couldn't be classified as long-term gains, virtually no expenses, and you are probably filing as a single. That's the only way those numbers can make sense. Do you think this one-time fluke puts you at odds and you are being "squeezed by the working class"? Do you think your fluke-year taxes are representative? Do we really have a country or a CA-wide problem with 60% tax? Is there anything that you, or your company, could have done to better plan for this event?

New comment by blago in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

blago — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 18:16:36 +0000

> ...52% tax which is still damn egregious given that I had better roads and most public services in Florida (0% income tax)

Hmm, I live in Southern Florida. Full time. It has the shittiest roads of any place in the US I have been and some of the highest fatality rates to go with.

Highways look like someone ran a snow plow at full speed, turning what were once scattered potholes into a continuous network of trenches making their own interstate.

This is in a state without cold weather, ice, or snow...

There are many non-0 income tax states that have vastly superior roads than FL. Does this prove anything about taxes?

New comment by blago in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

blago — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 03:27:32 +0000

Oh boy. Tax brackets are incremental. Most people in the 40% bracket will not pay anywhere near 40%. There is a theoretical possibility that someone, who's income exceeds the highest bracket MANY times will have an effective tax rate approaching 40%. But in reality people with that kind of income derive their earnings from sources that are taxed in a very different way such as long-term gains.

New comment by blago in "AI Demos"

blago — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 03:21:08 +0000

> Well positioned to take over VR if it becomes a thing.

This is an incredibly generous way to admit that Meta failed their pivot to VR and they will probably never recoup the tens of billions of dollars that was spent on it.

New comment by blago in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

blago — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 01:44:46 +0000

Sixty percent is high. So high, that it almost seems impossible. Can you provide some details? What's the breakdown?

New comment by blago in "DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes"

blago — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 01:34:32 +0000

> Taxes on corporations, like tariffs, are just passed onto consumers

Never heard this argument before - it sounds very implausible. Do you have any studies or source for that claim?

Animation Made with Subtitles [video]

blago — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 18:52:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oos6D4_Bjo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42910762

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by blago in "TikTok goes dark in the US"

blago — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 17:47:06 +0000

I'm all for the TikTok ban but listening to your last argument a reasonable opponent might notice that:

1. You assume others play dirty by default, even though we never caught them red-handed. Not necessarily unreasonable, but see 2.

2. You assume we play fair even when we are caught red-handed. You rationalize it with "it only goes to show this was the exception and look what happened after". Spoiler alert, nothing happened after, neither the courts nor public opinion shit it down.

You have to admit these two are a little inconsistent to say the least.

New comment by blago in "Cognitive load is what matters"

blago — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:02:08 +0000

> Proponents of small functions argue that you don't have to read more than the signature and name of a function to understand what it does;

Although this is often the case, the style of the program can change things significantly. Here are a few, not so uncommon, examples where it starts to break down:

1. When you’re crafting algorithms, you might try to keep code blocks brief, but coming up with precise, descriptive names for each 50-line snippet can be hard. Especially if the average developer might not even fully understand the textbook chapter behind it.

2. At some point you have to build higher than "removeLastElementFromArray"-type of functions. You are not going to get very far skimming domain-specific function names if don’t have any background in that area.

More examples exist, but these two illustrate the point.

New comment by blago in "Most iPhone owners see little to no value in Apple Intelligence so far"

blago — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 16:22:15 +0000

> Companies are afraid of being left behind in the new arms race...

Sometimes it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

The curious case of the blocked window [video]

blago — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 19:13:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8fOJdmSbdU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42248893

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by blago in "Piet: Programming language in which programs look like abstract paintings (2002)"

blago — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 12:51:53 +0000

Do you mind me asking, what does the last calculation do: pi=(pi * 100 | 0 ) / 100;

EDIT: Ah, nvm. It's truncating the result to 2 decimal places.

New comment by blago in "Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death in $27B fraud case"

blago — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 15:45:48 +0000

The prevailing opinion is that the death penalty was handed down to provide leverage and incentivize restitution.

New comment by blago in "SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say"

blago — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 18:10:37 +0000

Are you saying that there will be a large number of Starships on duty for immediate launch to deploy kill vehicles over an arbitrary area in space over and around the US? I'm no expert but this sounds pretty different form what Starship is designed to do. And not cheap at all.

New comment by blago in "Why are most sofas so bad?"

blago — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 02:37:08 +0000

When we moved to the US with two babies last year it was very important for us to buy non-toxic furniture. We ended up buying a sofa and chairs from Medley. Their products are made in LA out of wood and are free of formaldehyde, flame retardants, and PFAS. It's been only a year but it looks like the furniture is going to last.

New comment by blago in "Anki – Powerful, intelligent flash cards"

blago — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 18:34:57 +0000

I think it's even more precious that the boy has learned how to learn and has developed a taste for achievement based on a dopamine loop that doesn't employ sugar or special effects in 4K.

New comment by blago in "Apple built iCloud to store billions of databases"

blago — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 23:46:17 +0000

One can probably say that there exists a level of abstraction where there’s not really a difference between a database and a file system. That's not a lot :-)

A new class of antibiotics is a cause for cautious celebration

blago — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 03:34:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04086-z

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38862670

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by blago in "Waymo outperforms comparable human benchmarks over 7M+ miles"

blago — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:39:07 +0000

Snow?

New comment by blago in "Belgrade's kafana pub culture"

blago — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 13:06:12 +0000

For much of history (i.e. millennia) the north and the south of Vietnam have experienced different degrees of voluntary and involuntary separation. For hundreds and hundreds of years they existed as different countries and even tried to conquer each other. The vast majority of south Vietnamese people today have more sympathy for the US than for Hanoi.

Source: half my family is Vietnamese and I lived there for 3 years.