Hacker News: ghufran_syed

New comment by ghufran_syed in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"

ghufran_syed — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:24:27 +0000

I look forward to seeing your company actually producing and selling food for “next to nothing”, given how easy it apparently is

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 05:07:25 +0000

The net margin of around 1.5% seems more relevant: the gross margin is just the revenue minus the cost of good sold plus cost of transportation. The net margin is the money you have left after paying things like Rent, employee wages, electricity, taxes, interest on debt.

New comment by ghufran_syed in "US SEC preparing to scrap quarterly reporting requirement"

ghufran_syed — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 03:46:03 +0000

as the time period gets longer, the the more likely it is that the numbers represent the true performance of the business rather than randomness. That has to be balanced against the fact that investors get less frequent updates i.e. the information is now potentially 6 months out of date rather than 3 months at worst. But then its just a judgment call of the relative benefit of each - you could argue that with modern accounting systems, modern companies could deliver weekly or even daily earnings , which would give investors much more timely information, and the high frequency would probably mean it wouldn’t be worth making the effort for management to fudge the numbers to bring forward or delay revenue one day or one week. There would be a lot more variance in the numbers if they were daily, but thats a good thing - it would just reflect the underlying randomness, and then the investors could decide when the accumulated trend over a period of time is meaningful or not, instead of management wasting time massaging numbers into a fairy tale of steady growth.

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

ghufran_syed — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:34:04 +0000

I think the issue is that you can only be registered to vote in one jurisdiction. So being a citizen isn't enough (though as I understand it, many jurisdictions let you cast a provisional ballot in these situations)

New comment by ghufran_syed in "If you tax them, will they leave?"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:45:47 +0000

and you’re claiming the process still isn’t complete more than 40 years later? shouldn't the wealth gap between the poor in the US vs the poor in Afghanistan be starting to get smaller if your argument is correct?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "New YC homepage"

ghufran_syed — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 12:01:43 +0000

what alternative metric are you proposing?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Why don't people return their shopping carts?"

ghufran_syed — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 05:28:45 +0000

why is returning the cart intrinsically some sign of “goodness” but returning your plates to the kitchen and washing them at a restaurant is not? The customer is at the store to fulfill their needs, not the store’s. Taking the groceries from the checkout to the car in a cart helps fulfill the customer’s aims. Returning the cart does not, same as picking up trash in the store car park does not. And the revenue from customers pays for return of the carts from the parking lot, so most customers feel that is a better deal than a place that forces them to return the carts.

The original article and many of the comments have a hugely moralistic tone - where are people expected to learn these implicit rules? If the store doesn’t care enough to communicate these expectations (assuming they even have them, and that they don’t only exist in the minds of the self-appointed “cart police”), why should customers follow them?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Show HN: Learn German with Games"

ghufran_syed — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:53:31 +0000

fyi, the account confirmation email redirects and ends up on a tab with address localhost:3000. looks like it did work, i was able to login after that, but many users may assume it failed and give up

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Is 4chan the perfect Pirate Bay poster child to justify wider UK site-blocking?"

ghufran_syed — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 09:48:18 +0000

and yet they keep voting for blue labour or red labour…

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 19:50:40 +0000

Perhaps you would apply the same logic to a family car, or the clothing you bought? Should they tax the value of your medical degree when you leave the country?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 06:58:55 +0000

could you maybe respond to the point made in the comment you are replying to? If it’s a good idea for all those other countries, why does the idea become a “turd” when america does it? is this some kind of “manifest destiny” (to be dumber than other countries)???

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 06:55:45 +0000

if it would give domestic manufacturers such great pricing power, then wouldn’t it also encourage foreign manufacturers to manufacture in the US to take advantage of that pricing power? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for the US? and as more manufacturers move to the US, wouldn’t that competition then tend to lower prices?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Goodbye to All That – My Resignation from the FBI"

ghufran_syed — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 16:37:11 +0000

So…they wanted him to take a polygraph interview regarding the nature of his relationship with Peter Strzok, and he resigned instead, did I understand that correctly?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Abrego Garcia Was Beaten and Tortured in El Salvador Prison, Lawyers Say"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 07:55:51 +0000

why would this be the case? Taking the 2nd amendment argument to its logical conclusion, wouldn't the speaker also have a firearm?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "After months of coding with LLMs, I'm going back to using my brain"

ghufran_syed — Fri, 16 May 2025 13:00:18 +0000

I wouldn’t classify this as binary thinking - isnt the comment you are replying just defining boundary conditions? Then those two points don’t define the entire space, but the output there does at least let us infer (but not prove) something about the nature of the “function” between those two points? Where the function f is something like f: experience -> productivity increase?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Elon Musk Just Doesn't Understand the Sci-Fi Visions of Iain M. Banks"

ghufran_syed — Thu, 01 May 2025 02:02:42 +0000

Do you have some kind of reference for this phenomenon? If so it would be very interesting to read. If not, what is this statement based on?

New comment by ghufran_syed in "The US has highest rate of pregnancy-related death among high-income countries"

ghufran_syed — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:13:55 +0000

“Although cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of the overall pregnancy-related deaths, cancer, mental and behavior disorders, and drug-induced and alcohol-induced death were important contributing causes of late maternal death”

New comment by ghufran_syed in "The average college student today"

ghufran_syed — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 03:08:16 +0000

i’m assuming this is a system that changes the numbers in the question each time? often there is a separate “practice” button where you can practice and (maybe) get feedback, figure out the process, and then do the questions?

even if not, try putting the textbook and the question into an AI (I use the paid version of gemini, the $20/ month is the best money you’ll ever spend at college), then as it to explain how to answer the question. Then ask it to generate a similar question, and then give you feedback to you as you try to answer it. Then try and answer it step by step, repeat as many times as you like until you understand and keep getting the right answer, then answer the actual homework question.Feel free to dm me if you want to discuss!

New comment by ghufran_syed in "Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks"

ghufran_syed — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 15:01:39 +0000

usually it shouldn’t affect position or function of the shoulder once healed, and while the clavicle does tend to heal with a “bump” in it at the site of the break, its long been thought that the risk of surgery at that site outweighs the benefit. But it does depend on the specifics of the fracture: https://www.orthobullets.com/trauma/1011/clavicle-fractures-...

New comment by ghufran_syed in "The European VAT Is Not a Discriminatory Tax Against US Exports"

ghufran_syed — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 22:05:43 +0000

but don’t they already pay tax on their profits? What’s the rationale for taxing the “value added” and then also the profits?