Hacker News: freech

New comment by freech in "IRS reminds taxpayers to report virtual currency transactions"

freech — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 20:39:34 +0000

"Income from virtual currency transactions", not "virtual currency transactions".

New comment by freech in "Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?"

freech — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 16:03:15 +0000

There are lots of CRUD apps that help people in need.

New comment by freech in "Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies"

freech — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 13:07:25 +0000

You could require people to advance some money, that they only get back if they pass the test.

New comment by freech in "Craigslist takes personals sections offline in response to FOSTA"

freech — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 11:38:04 +0000

If you want to stop having casual sex but feel you can't control yourself, maybe you can have yourself committed to some sort of clinic, instead of trying to take away the possibility from everyone else too? (Which probably wouldn't even help, since if you're not hideously ugly you will probably find more then enough men willing to have sex with you without craigslist.)

New comment by freech in "Rent out GPUs to AI researchers and make ~2x more than mining cryptocurrencies"

freech — Sat, 24 Mar 2018 10:03:49 +0000

The person who runs the platform could do some calculations themselves and then throw people out if there's a disagreement.

New comment by freech in "Peer review: the end of an error?"

freech — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 03:01:11 +0000

Reddit but only academics can participate? Probably better then peer review, but it won't have the aura.

New comment by freech in "Poland's economic experiment based on Thomas Piketty"

freech — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 02:44:22 +0000

This is protectionism for capitalists. At the end, capital competes for labor and less foreign capital means domestic capitalists have to pay less.

New comment by freech in "Britain’s White-Collar Cops Are Getting Too Good at Their Job"

freech — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 01:58:51 +0000

> Even Green’s 93-year-old father sometimes asks if he really wants to spend his time making life difficult for companies that employ thousands of Brits.

This is such a teriffic argument. The mafia also employs people. If a company that employs people that earns money with fraud, not by doing anything productive goes bankrupt, that just means that those people will now have to work for a company that does do something productive, which is a good thing.

New comment by freech in "Britain’s White-Collar Cops Are Getting Too Good at Their Job"

freech — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 01:54:59 +0000

You've got to be kidding. What about the cast system? Do you think that would be better or worse now if the british had never colonialised india? Would india be a democracy now?

New comment by freech in "Britain’s White-Collar Cops Are Getting Too Good at Their Job"

freech — Sun, 11 Mar 2018 01:34:31 +0000

> In October 2008, Barclays was saved from collapse thanks to a $12 billion investment led by Qatar’s government. As part of the transaction, Barclays paid Qatar a secret $452 million fee for “advisory services” and loaned the country an additional $3 billion. To the SFO, the fee looked like a bribe and the loan an attempt by Barclays to illegally fund a purchase of its own shares. (The executives and the bank deny wrongdoing.)

Preventing stuff like this is essential to a working stock market. How can anyone invest in any company, if he has to fear that the companies assets he supposedly owns a share of, are given away in exchange for buying stock, so that the managers can get a bonus for the rising stock price, instead of the company getting raided and the managers replaced with better ones?

There's no detail about the other cases, but at least in this case it's clear that there's no dichotomy at all between the UK's economic interest, jobs, the free market and ethics, but rather between those things and the upper management of a single company.

> Bankers who manipulate markets ought to be charged, he said, but “simply ratcheting up ever-larger fines that just penalize shareholders, erode capital reserves, and diminish the lending potential of the economy is not, in the end, a long-term answer.”

"penalize shareholders" Shareholders are supposed to invest in sound businesses. There's nothing wrong with them being "penalized" by fines, anymore then there's anything wrong with them being "penalized" if a companies new product fails.

New comment by freech in "Research suggests some potential benefits to being a loner"

freech — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 20:22:03 +0000

It follows from the law of marginal utility.

New comment by freech in "Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits"

freech — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 01:56:19 +0000

So china invades Taiwan, Taiwan nukes them, and then? China decides to nuke them of the map instead?

New comment by freech in "Coinbase Index Fund"

freech — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:24:45 +0000

The entire point of cryptocurrency is to control it yourself, by owning the private keys. Instead of investing in ethereum with coinbase, why not invest in a centralized smart contract platform (much easier and even safer as long as you trust the person who runs it)?

New comment by freech in "Coinbase Index Fund"

freech — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:22:24 +0000

> There was a guy a while ago who bought a hardware wallet on ebay and lost all his coins.

Was this because he sent his coins to a paper wallet that the seller generated for him? I would be impressed if someone had actually managed to produce a fake trezor, but even then, it's pretty straightforward not to buy them on ebay.

New comment by freech in "Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits"

freech — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 19:20:22 +0000

> We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have.

What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

New comment by freech in "'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie"

freech — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 01:17:04 +0000

The employees of corporations are absolutely subject to things like the 3 strikes law and the death penalty for things they do for the corporation. So it makes sense that they have the same rights when they do things for the corporation.

It would be inconsistent to say: If you do something in the employment of a corporation you have same duties as anyone who acts on his own, but none of the rights.

New comment by freech in "Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany"

freech — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 03:08:45 +0000

> If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it?

Yes.

> If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?

No.

New comment by freech in "Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices"

freech — Sun, 04 Mar 2018 01:56:49 +0000

I wonder whether Amazon accounts for this properly. If someone asked them to remove a competitors products, how much money would they demand? They'd have to calculate the damage this does their brand. Do they calculate in this case?

New comment by freech in "Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany"

freech — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 21:22:46 +0000

> mainly because the www.gutenberg.org site has some content in the German language.

That's an extraordinary theory of international law. By that logic Austria and Namibia also have jurisdiction.

New comment by freech in "Berkshire Hathaway 2017 Annual Letter [pdf]"

freech — Sat, 24 Feb 2018 21:46:23 +0000

In contrast to Warren Buffett, who presumably uses his Coca-Cola shares to buy coffee somewhere.