Hacker News: hardtke

New comment by hardtke in "The real cost of owning a home"

hardtke — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:57:46 +0000

In some states (California being one) the original mortgage on a house purchase is non-recourse. This means that the bank cannot come after your personal assets in the event of default. Yes your credit gets dinged but the leverage of a home loan is fundamentally different than a margin loan in the stock market.

New comment by hardtke in "Spotify will start reserving concert tickets for fans"

hardtke — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:44:09 +0000

Former Pandora employee. The music recommendation team was amazing when I worked there, and the use of global song frequency capping across seeds helps prevent too much repetition at a user level but I agree on the genre bleed. They may have changed it but the music recommender was an ensemble model that polled 30 or so distinct models that would provide their own next song recommendation. One of the last resort recommenders used only the music genome data for the song (no collaborative filtering).

New comment by hardtke in "Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive"

hardtke — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 20:42:42 +0000

Phish gives people a code that lets them access the show they attend on livephish.com without a subscription. You can subscribe and get access to all of the shows. I think livephish.com is run by and/or shares the same platform as nugs.net but it's a different subscription.

New comment by hardtke in "The American Healthcare Conundrum"

hardtke — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:32:18 +0000

We rarely discuss the primary source of health care cost differences in the United States -- US doctors get paid a lot more than elsewhere. I haven't seen a credible proposal to address that. Most of the salary difference can be blamed on deliberately created shortages of doctors in many specialities. Not enough medical school slots (horror stories among my kid's friends of not getting accepted) and then also shortages of residencies that allow foreign trained doctors to work in the US. The only change in recent memory is replacing some primary care physician services with nurse practitioners.

New comment by hardtke in "How private equity is changing housing"

hardtke — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 18:15:28 +0000

One of the issues the article doesn't mention is that these houses are effectively cheaper to purchase for corporate owners. Generally they can borrow money at a lower rate, but the ability of corporate owners to use depreciation on a new purchase to offset profits from previous purchases is more significant. Effectively they are redirecting money that would be paid in taxes into the payments on the new purchase.

New comment by hardtke in "Why is there no Uber for plumbing/HVAC? (and why there ought to be)"

hardtke — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 19:15:14 +0000

If you want to understand the state of these industries I highly recommend reading "How contracting because a race to the bottom"[0]. The crux of the problem is that unlicensed/uninsured firms will always undercut "quality" firms for small jobs. If you are getting a quote from a firm that actually pays workers compensation insurance it's going to be at a substantially higher price.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/magazine/contractors-cons...

New comment by hardtke in "Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend"

hardtke — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:52:12 +0000

It does. I have a Ford CMax from 2014. For years, when the SiriusXM radio software update would happen it would get stuck downloading. The geniuses at Ford decided the update should continue trying to complete even if the car was turned off. So once the download got stuck, it would completely drain my battery every single time. I'd rather have a car that moves that the latest SiriusXM update in my radio. The only fix was to pull the fuse if you noticed that it was happening.

New comment by hardtke in "A computer upgrade shut down BART"

hardtke — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 20:58:51 +0000

There is a half cent sales tax in BART counties, 75% of which goes to BART.

New comment by hardtke in "A computer upgrade shut down BART"

hardtke — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 20:29:03 +0000

The numbers are here [1]. BART generates about $300M in revenue and gets $500M in "financial assistance," of which $320M is sales tax revenue.

[1] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/FY26%20Adop...

New comment by hardtke in "Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts"

hardtke — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 22:15:17 +0000

If I am reading this correctly, Google is now required to syndicate their search text ads to "Qualified Competitors." This is important as it will allow companies to monetize AI answers and other search replacements without needing to completely build a corresponding search ad marketplace. The search ad marketplace is a somewhat natural monopoly where the revenue per auction actually grows with the number of auctions so a second search ad marketplace could never develop on its own.

New comment by hardtke in "Let's get real about the one-person billion dollar company"

hardtke — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:47:43 +0000

It's already almost happened with Plenty of Fish. Mostly a one person company, acquired for over $500M.

New comment by hardtke in "Who died and left the US $7B?"

hardtke — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 17:07:53 +0000

Estate tax valuations of assets should be made public, particularly the taxed value of professional sports franchises. We know that NFL teams are worth $6+ billion dollars, and seeing the billionaire owner families pay tax on 1/10th of that might infuriate voters enough to demand reform.

New comment by hardtke in "The shrinking number of primary care physicians is reaching a tipping point"

hardtke — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 23:35:20 +0000

The supply of doctors in the US is primarily limited by the number of residency slots. Unlike many countries, foreign medical graduates can't practice here without doing a residency. I think the number of residency slots is kept low by the federal government (which funds them) and also by physician organization lobbying.

New comment by hardtke in "Talks That Attendees See in Person More Likely to Be Cited"

hardtke — Mon, 22 May 2023 22:30:22 +0000

This is why it is dangerous to think that the best scientific theories always prevail and that science is a meritocracy. The people invited to give talks are usually well known or have connections with the program committees. There is also an element of bias since the people on the organizing and program committees will invite speakers whose research is consistent with their own work.

New comment by hardtke in "U.S. proposes 56% vehicle emissions cut by 2032, requiring big EV jump"

hardtke — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 17:05:02 +0000

Not directly related to cars, but PG&E is unable to handle the incoming requests for electrical system upgrades[1]. Many older houses don't have the electrical panel capacity and they need engineering signoff from the utility.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/home-pge-electri...

New comment by hardtke in "U.S. proposes 56% vehicle emissions cut by 2032, requiring big EV jump"

hardtke — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 16:47:25 +0000

My brother is a contractor in the Bay Area and he told me that PG&E will not allow the installation of 220 volt EV charging infrastructure in new construction or a home remodel unless the homeowner can prove they already own an EV. Add to that the issue of people who live in apartment buildings and condos and I don't see how we can scale up consumer demand quickly enough.

New comment by hardtke in "Mass layoffs and absentee bosses create a morale crisis at Meta"

hardtke — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 15:54:33 +0000

A totally legitimate use case for crypto is moving money into countries that have bogus official exchange rates (e.g. Argentina). I've got multiple friends that hire developers in Argentina and pay them using crypto in order to avoid the 90% haircut.

New comment by hardtke in "Safety performance of the Waymo rider-only automated driving system [pdf]"

hardtke — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 21:57:43 +0000

I've probably driven half a million miles and I don't remember having 10 incidents (I probably have, just don't remember). So I'd conclude I'm at least as safe a driver as Waymo. Even if not true, most people are going to feel that way when they see the data. Human nature.

New comment by hardtke in "Bay Area homeowner is the face of California’s latest housing drama"

hardtke — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 21:47:55 +0000

The same "Builder's Remedy" kicked in last year in many Southern California cities when they missed similar deadlines, and as far as I know it has led to approximately (if not exactly) zero new construction.

New comment by hardtke in "Airbnb nightly rates shot up 36% in 3 years"

hardtke — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 18:53:12 +0000

To be clear, my place is not on any listing service. Purely family and friends, I never rent it. I tell everyone "the cleaners are supposed to come but leave it so that if they don't the next person is not grossed out."