Hacker News: galahad_

New comment by galahad_ in "Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B"

galahad_ — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 23:31:55 +0000

I can't understand one thing: why are pension funds so fond of risky capital investments? What's the problem with allocating that money into shares of a bunch of old, stable companies and getting a small but steady income? I can understand if a few people with lots of disposable money are looking for some suspense and thrills, using venture capital like others use a casino. But what's the point for pension funds, which face significant problems if they lose the managed money in a risky venture?

New comment by galahad_ in "The darker side of being a doctor (2017)"

galahad_ — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 00:11:13 +0000

It's a bit scary how mostly smart people writing here seriously believe doctors are a "cartel" blocking preparing of new doctors. It's scary how you just ignore obvious facts like that the problem is present in any developed country. You really believe there is an international mighty cartel of doctors, what could influence like governments and private universities as well? Even would it be so, who would benefit from the lack of doctors? It's bad for simple doctors, because the workload is greater, it's bad for doctors in leading positions, because finding new staff for their teams is more difficult, and it's bad for patients, because the doctors are chronically tired and worn out and in some areas they even got a problem just to get an appointment soon enough, because local doctors are overloaded and got a full shedule for many months in the future.

The explanation of the situation is not a mythical cartel, but the simple facts: - Any additional place for a medical student at a university costs a lot of money, and nobody wants to spend money to fund its creation. - The people in developed countries get on average older and need more medical service and consequently more working hours of doctors. - The quote of women among students is constantly growing. In my country Germany we had ca. 70% men and 30% women among students like 30-40 years ago. Now the quote is like 70% women and 30% men. Nothing bad at that, but a lot of female students get soon a family, a bunch of children and since that never ever work full time anymore.

Stastitically we got so much doctors as never before in the history, but the sum of working hours in the country is lower, while the needs are getting higher because of olding population.

New comment by galahad_ in "The darker side of being a doctor (2017)"

galahad_ — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 03:25:38 +0000

Because you can't just set a higher number of students per year, for more students you have to create more facilities first. It's not like IT, where you can learn everything pretty well basically just with a study program, books and online lectures. As a medical student you have to do a lot of practical stuff with things that you don't get at home.

New comment by galahad_ in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

galahad_ — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 19:31:33 +0000

I'm afraid you don't really understand what you're writing about. Terms such as marginal cost and average cost are used only for goods, which are sold on a free market for a price. Your examples are services or freeware, you can't calculate marginal cost and average cost for a service or freeware.

New comment by galahad_ in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

galahad_ — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 07:52:39 +0000

The average cost ist always higher than the marginal cost for digital products, for obvious reasons. So you are literally saying free markets don't work for digital products.

New comment by galahad_ in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

galahad_ — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 07:44:55 +0000

Owning theaters was forbidden for movie studios, but afaik making movies was always allowed for theaters.

New comment by galahad_ in "Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly"

galahad_ — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 02:47:22 +0000

The problem ist that a production of f.e. a movie costs money. If the people that make movies don't earn money, they will not make any movies. So they have to earn that money somehow. If the price of their good is 0 why should they bother with filming?

New comment by galahad_ in "The pro-Israel information war"

galahad_ — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 23:38:34 +0000

The USA is a bad example because it does not have a basic ethnic group. A good parallel would be: "France should not be a French state" or "Ireland should not be an Irish state" or again "Japan should not be a Japanese state."