Hacker News: jsbg

New comment by jsbg in "US will ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes"

jsbg — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:15:55 +0000

> Why would you spend your time and effort building a house that earns you $50k when for the same time and effort you could build a house that earns you $150k?

Luxury housing is exempt from rent-control laws in places where those exist.

New comment by jsbg in "Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix"

jsbg — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:34:19 +0000

How many 9s does lyft guarantee?

New comment by jsbg in "Trump pardons convicted Binance founder"

jsbg — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 22:16:54 +0000

> Do you have a complete list because thats literally what trump is doing.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/07/biden-gra...

New comment by jsbg in "Trump pardons convicted Binance founder"

jsbg — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 21:15:58 +0000

> Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current administration abusing the Justice Department to go after them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.

Are pre-emptive pardons a common thing for American presidents to do?

New comment by jsbg in "Trump pardons convicted Binance founder"

jsbg — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 21:13:20 +0000

https://www.axios.com/2025/09/06/biden-pardon-autopen-concer...

New comment by jsbg in "The Rapper 50 Cent, Adjusted for Inflation"

jsbg — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 17:53:40 +0000

that's why no one every buys TVs

New comment by jsbg in "Video game union workers rally against $55B private acquisition of EA"

jsbg — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 16:10:28 +0000

> Yet, it creates zero value.

Then why do people give them money?

New comment by jsbg in "If you are reading this obituary, it looks like I'm dead"

jsbg — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 16:11:38 +0000

edit: the funeral home published this

previous comment: could have been programmed as `Time.now - 1.day` to be published if no action was taken on the day of

New comment by jsbg in "MAID in Canada"

jsbg — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 01:15:35 +0000

according to chatgpt, 25% of people die of cancer in canada; presumably dying of cancer is a lot worse than MAID so one might expect this number to grow beyond 5% unless there are just that many people that object to it for themselves on philosophical grounds

New comment by jsbg in "Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study (2017)"

jsbg — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:08:39 +0000

> which means almost all real numbers are transcendental

Definable numbers like 2, pi, or Chaitin's constant [0] are countable. The reals are only uncountable because of numbers we can't even talk about.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant

New comment by jsbg in "How we exploited CodeRabbit: From simple PR to RCE and write access on 1M repos"

jsbg — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 19:45:59 +0000

wild to comment this

New comment by jsbg in "Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room"

jsbg — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 16:33:51 +0000

> Gun game has been an official game mode is CS for a long time

This official version differs quite a bit from the original gun game though and it is not as fun.

New comment by jsbg in "We are all mercantilists now"

jsbg — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:10:53 +0000

> the theory of comparative advantage

It's not a theory. Firms trade internationally because it's cheaper, not because they "believe" in free markets.

> But government (society) can take a longer term view than a company that is influenced by pricing signals

Private markets routinely make multi-decade bets; entire industries (mining, energy, infrastructure, biotech) work on 20–100 year horizons. Risk and time are already priced in.

> Free market works in theory because you assume complete information

Free markets don’t "assume" anything; they function through decentralized price signals. And even with imperfect information, dispersed actors still aggregate and react to knowledge far better than any central planner can.

New comment by jsbg in "A Guide Dog for the Face-Blind"

jsbg — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 23:23:20 +0000

> I'm not really into celebrities

I don't understand how that factors in. It said my score was 34/40 but really it was 34/35. The rest I didn't know and I selected that I didn't know them.

New comment by jsbg in "We are all mercantilists now"

jsbg — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 23:12:20 +0000

Isn't this priced into the product? I don't see how this contradicts comparative advantage.

New comment by jsbg in "We are all mercantilists now"

jsbg — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 16:39:02 +0000

> There are huge advantages

What are they?

New comment by jsbg in "19% of California houses are owned by investors"

jsbg — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:18:35 +0000

Really. If obsessive zoning and building regulations didn't artificially restrict the supply then there would be no reason for anyone to "invest" in houses.

New comment by jsbg in "Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial"

jsbg — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 18:58:52 +0000

Doesn't biological age normally go down with weight loss? Is it just a corollary of the off-label effects of the drug?

New comment by jsbg in "Ozempic shows anti-aging effects in trial"

jsbg — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 18:54:34 +0000

> The long-term systemic effects of these drugs are still largely unknown.

The long term effects of obesity are very well known though and unlikely to be better than any still unknown negative effect semaglutide might have.

New comment by jsbg in "FDA has approved Yeztugo, a drug that provides protection against HIV infection"

jsbg — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 19:01:13 +0000

how does $500 (likely from your tax-free HSA) compare to the taxes you would pay in a monopsony system?