Hacker News: fitchjo

New comment by fitchjo in "Troubled electric truck maker Nikola files for bankruptcy"

fitchjo — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:57:40 +0000

By law, any public company in the US (and most other countries) are required to have a financial statement audit. I am sure there are instances where it is not required, but substantially all private companies that have debt are required per their credit agreement to have a financial statement audit completed. I would be interested where you are getting your information that auditing a company is not a normal process.

New comment by fitchjo in "Hackers found a way to open any of 3M hotel keycard locks"

fitchjo — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 16:28:50 +0000

I assume/hope the newer versions in hotels that are a little l bracket that flips are little harder to get open?

New comment by fitchjo in "TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash"

fitchjo — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 16:18:09 +0000

Or, most cynically, returned to owners in the form of dividends/distributions or stock buybacks

New comment by fitchjo in "20 year study of global wealth demolishes the myth of ‘trickle-down’"

fitchjo — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 13:56:48 +0000

I think he is arguing the exact opposite.

New comment by fitchjo in "Nobel scientist's deletion from Wikipedia points to wider bias"

fitchjo — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 17:38:04 +0000

Why do you feel so attacked about the subject of this article such that you have concluded this is part of a gender "war"?

If I understand your claim correctly, it is just that simply there weren't any reliable sources to verify the information because there are not any articles about these women; however, the article further examines (or at least considers) that exact fact as being part of the issue - that these women are not being written about at the same rate as men.

New comment by fitchjo in "New York Senate passes Right to Repair bill"

fitchjo — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 15:50:03 +0000

Am I being a bit naive to think that this has more to do with public safety? In theory, there is some increased level of regulation/review of the car and medical device manufacturers that limits the risk these repairs aren’t done to an appropriate standard? You can make a trade-off between standard of repair and price for your iPhone that only impacts the device, but cars and medical devices not properly repaired could impact a life.

New comment by fitchjo in "Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of Less Than 1 Percent"

fitchjo — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 12:48:50 +0000

NOL (net operating loss) carryforwards, which is what is being described above, would not make a difference in the situation you have laid out here - it sounds like your issue is the fact that we have a progressive tax for personal income (versus a flat tax for corporations)

New comment by fitchjo in "U.S. Strategic Command response to FOIA request regarding gibberish tweet"

fitchjo — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 12:01:15 +0000

I think I saw a documentary about that once... ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP5kcUhMK1I

New comment by fitchjo in "Texas electric firm files for bankruptcy citing $1.8B in claims"

fitchjo — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 13:56:08 +0000

As a couple other replies have mentioned, determining insolvency and when to file bankruptcy is a bit more complicated than this simple comparison. A quick counterpoint - you start a company on Day 1 and put $1 into the company; on Day 2, you borrow $10, but with the costs associated with borrowing, you only net $8 cash; at that point, you have outstanding debt (liabilities) of $10, but cash (assets) of $9; your new company is not insolvent, however - you can take that $9 and generate additional cash flows that allow you to repay the $10 debt in the future. While certainly not common, there are plenty of companies operating that have negative equity - it certainly is an indicator of a company having some challenges, but not an absolute that the company should be dissolved.

New comment by fitchjo in "Ditching processed foods won’t be easy – The barriers to cooking from scratch"

fitchjo — Fri, 24 May 2019 18:03:02 +0000

You can definitely find certain items/dishes where it is cheaper to buy already made instead of making yourself - rotisserie chickens in the US are a perfect example of that. On the whole, though, cooking at home is less expensive than eating out.

New comment by fitchjo in "Ditching processed foods won’t be easy – The barriers to cooking from scratch"

fitchjo — Fri, 24 May 2019 14:06:21 +0000

> So wait, hold on, is cooking more expensive or not? What are they eating that's supposedly healthier but significantly more expensive?

Cooking unprocessed meals is more expensive than cooking ultra-processed meals. Cooking at home, however, is less expensive than eating out, which appears to be the reference they are making in the second quote.

> What major grocery chain doesn't carry everything needed to make dinner?

For those shopping on a budget, going to multiple stores may be necessary based on pricing differences between stores (including consideration of sales or coupons for different products).

New comment by fitchjo in "Bogle Sounds a Warning on Index Funds"

fitchjo — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 14:44:10 +0000

He is mentioned here pretty regularly, so many may already be aware, but Matt Levine discusses this and its variants a lot in his newsletter, most of the time under the heading "Should index funds be illegal?"

New comment by fitchjo in "The rise (and rise) of the healthcare administrator"

fitchjo — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 21:12:41 +0000

Historically, the US used CPT, which was different than the rest of the world, but since they adopted ICD-10, they use the same billing/procedure codes as the rest of the world. The entire time, though, any provider in the US was using the same set of billing codes.

New comment by fitchjo in "U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani"

fitchjo — Sat, 16 Jun 2018 14:03:03 +0000

Are you implying that the bankers should go to jail for the misrepresentations made by the applicant because they didn’t exercise an “appropriate” level of diligence?

New comment by fitchjo in "Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say"

fitchjo — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:06:30 +0000

What evidence have you seen that tether is backed by real money? I haven't seen "definitive" proof/evidence either way, but it would seem there are certainly strong suspicions that tether is not backed by real money (e.g., never having completed an audit and being fired by their auditing firm).

New comment by fitchjo in "Mapping cherry blossom"

fitchjo — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 15:22:22 +0000

They bloom later there because of the weather, but they still bloom.

New comment by fitchjo in "Amazon will launch its own delivery service to compete with FedEx, UPS"

fitchjo — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 16:06:06 +0000

Wouldn't that be an indication that the wages are at market?

New comment by fitchjo in "Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk"

fitchjo — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 22:11:03 +0000

Finding a use for the underlying technology supporting bitcoin is very different than saying bitcoin as a fiat currency is worth the value at which it is currently trading.

New comment by fitchjo in "The End to Apple’s Cash Dilemma"

fitchjo — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 21:53:12 +0000

Not sure I follow your logic: 1. What are you calling the market in your first sentence? 2. Why/how is an index fund somehow less risky? What is the fund indexing and how does that compare to the market in your first sentence?

In your scenario, if the index fund is properly designed to capture the risk of the "market" as you have defined it, a monkey has equal chance of performing better or worse than the index fund and the average monkey (or an average of a large enough set of monkeys) will perform with the index fund. Certainly, though, if your index fund is not designed to be reflective of the market, but of some subset, then it will carry different risk, but not necessarily less risk. However, a monkey randomly picking stocks from a pool will not, on average, outperform the average return of that pool of stocks.

New comment by fitchjo in "$3 Trillion in Forgotten Debt"

fitchjo — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 19:19:31 +0000

I would like to caveat by explanation by saying I am admittedly less versed in IFRS than US GAAP, so there may be some technical differences between the two, but the spirit should be the same - there is actually corresponding gross up of your assets, equal to the net present value of your minimum lease payments, when you put the lease obligation on your balance sheet.

So at the the time you sign a new lease, you will put an asset and liability of equivalent value on the books. Assuming the useful life of the asset extends past the lease term, general expectation is that the asset value would be amortized over the term of the lease, and at the same time, interest expense will be recorded on the lease obligation. Ultimately the same amount of expense will be recorded (equal to the minimum lease payments), but the timing of the expense is different as it front loads the expense (because of the interest accretion). So you have that and the balance sheet gross up that will be different. The change, in theory, provides greater transparency related to what can be a significant obligation for a company.