Hacker News: nubbins

New comment by nubbins in "Rents for the rich are going down, rents for the poor are going up. Why?"

nubbins — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 05:10:00 +0000

That may be a perk of having had an aristocratic ruling class, the first industrial revolution, and global empire (not being sarcastic- I'm a big Hidden Houses of Wales fan, would love to renovate an old castle). The UK was historically wealthy and has amazing old houses. In the US every decade has had significantly better housing stock with increasing standards of living, so its much less appealing to get an older house in 95% of the country. Especially anything 40s - 70s you get smallish rooms, low ceilings and questionable "vintage" building practices like I'm dealing with now (aluminum wiring, poor insulation, etc).

New comment by nubbins in "A Brief History of the Hedge Fund"

nubbins — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 04:59:25 +0000

For all the focus this article seems to put on "hedge" I can't imagine there are many hedge funds left that are really market direction neutral are there? With the performance of the SP500 being what it is in the past few years you'd have to think you have some wickedly smart strategy to match that without going net long. Plus almost all assets, even things that were supposed to be countercyclical have been trading together so when the market really dumps even gold and silver get sold, if only to provide liquidity to cover other positions.

New comment by nubbins in "Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay"

nubbins — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 05:21:29 +0000

Sorry for the late reply, I don't entirely agree but thank you for laying out your argument point by point, it has certainly given me a different way to look at things.

I do agree that the quality of art is roughly proportional to the size of the economy that "spins it off" so to speak. Obviously hunter gatherers are not going to produce great art without surplus goods or division of labor.

At base I think we can't just write off human pleasure because some of it varies based on the individual. Economists estimate things like this all the time. I enjoy my favorite music albums very much, much more than say a $10 album cost, but if it cost instead $300 and my choice was between an album or a bicycle you can bet I would buy fewer albums no matter how much I liked them, so we can at least bound my enjoyment at $10 - $300 and realistically much narrower.

I do admit most of my favorite poetry and literature was produced by great imperial powers, even if by relatively impoverished or humble members of that society. There is something to this- whether Rome, Song China or Colonial Britain lots of good art and luxury is created by conquest.

New comment by nubbins in "Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay"

nubbins — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 06:10:21 +0000

This is a strangely mechanistic view of the economy not allowing for human joy (which economists would lump in as utility.) I get a great amount of satisfaction from great food or art far beyond the costs required to produce them. I don't see how that isn't creating value beyond the simple energy equation.

New comment by nubbins in "Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay"

nubbins — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 06:05:11 +0000

The entire idea that you must be anti-racist is borrowed from Marxism- a totalizing ethos that sees everything through the lense of race (instead of class). Its not enough to say I am a neutral person who treats individuals the same regardless of the color of their skin- if you are white that is seen as a subtle way of preserving your race (class) interest. Only by actively joining in the struggle can you convince the successor class that you are sufficiently anti racist (formerly anti bourgeois).

New comment by nubbins in "Most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people (2018)"

nubbins — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 08:36:29 +0000

Across all my HN comments I've found there is an optimum level of detail where it sounds like you know what you're talking about, beyond which is too complicated to get many upvotes. The exception is occasionally on HN you get an undisputed expert on something to come in and set the record straight.

New comment by nubbins in "Silicon Valley exodus: Bay Area tech companies leaving for Texas"

nubbins — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 17:09:25 +0000

Is the Bay Area really friendly to all immigrants in a way that metropolitan Texas is not? I think the definition of friendly should include being able to afford decent space to live. I could imagine that for a young well off Chinese or Indian engineer many cultural aspects such as food and being around many members of your community would be preferable in the Bay Area certainly. But Houston is of the most foreign born cities in the US and for less skilled immigrants their pay check will go much further in Texas.

New comment by nubbins in "FedEx and UPS hit companies with unexpected holiday shipping limits"

nubbins — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 20:16:45 +0000

Look at the directionality of prices for one way rentals. Because of the outflow from big cities NY area pickup -> Southern US dropoff prices are still 3x+ vs going the other direction, where I believe they used to be similar prices both ways.

New comment by nubbins in "Less than half of Americans know that alcohol is a carcinogen"

nubbins — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 21:12:15 +0000

I think people know that a piece of meat on a grill that is totally burnt black is not healthy. And likewise I'd throw away or at least scrape off burnt toast.

Browning on foods is a huge source of flavor though (Maillard reaction I think), is this also a concern? It seems like an occasional steak with thin grill marks could be worth it, but I have no idea where to draw the line on this, compared to something like alcohol, because there is no study for how many grams of burnt food you can eat per week etc.

New comment by nubbins in "Learn difficult concepts with the ADEPT method (2014)"

nubbins — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 04:32:18 +0000

I think the key here is the analogy is just a warm up for the actual full detailed explanation. Where I find analogies always fail is in journalistic tech books that just use analogies to explain concepts but never get down to low level details and leave the reader with a vague feeling of understanding something, but if you asked them about any of the implications of the model explained they can't state anything.

New comment by nubbins in "Learn difficult concepts with the ADEPT method (2014)"

nubbins — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 04:21:14 +0000

Out of all resources I have found Wikipedia to be almost uniquely useless for teaching yourself a new concept, its like "explanation by committee". On the other hand if I can understand a Wikipedia article I know I am at least intermediate in a area.

New comment by nubbins in "A new jailbreak for a new era"

nubbins — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 04:02:05 +0000

I understand Apple's likely concerns about encouraging distracted driving. As a cyclist and motorcyclist I take distracted driving seriously and don't actually watch youtube videos while driving (just listen).

My issue with this argument though is that the cat is already out of the bag- by blocking youtube on a larger screen, and similarly not allowing Siri to play youtube via voice commands Apple may claim they are doing it for safety, but in reality all is does is make people manually fiddle with their phone or watch a video on a smaller screen. I just don't believe there is any real world safety benefit to the paternalistic blocking.

New comment by nubbins in "A new jailbreak for a new era"

nubbins — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 23:33:55 +0000

The best feature for me was being able to use carplay with youtube to watch videos, instead of the limited handful of apps that iOS paternalistically limits you too.

Ultimately it wasn't worth the hassle to keep up (and now as a bonus I'm stuck and can't update or un jailbreak).

New comment by nubbins in "Alan Turing – In Our Time"

nubbins — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 01:57:31 +0000

Possibly I am judging too harshly on a few weaker podcasts (though isn't that always the risk when a show has so many episodes) but "pop history fun facts" is how I would characterize a lot of the non Western ancient/medieval history episodes. 45 minutes on "the Samurai" feels a little thin when we have no background on Japan prior to that episode. And "Maths in the early Islamic World" was really frustrating how sometimes the guests are in the middle of making an interesting technical point and he interrupts with a totally different question.

New comment by nubbins in "Alan Turing – In Our Time"

nubbins — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 20:29:48 +0000

I love this podcast for anything in British history or literature. The aristocracy episode was particularly interesting. But the further afield it gets from that I feel like I don't come away having learned much about the history. He'll make random talking points like "Ghengis Kahn is remembered as a great conqueror" and then 3 phDs try to use that as a jumping off point to say something intelligent but end up arguing in different directions.

New comment by nubbins in "We learn faster when we aren’t told what choices to make"

nubbins — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 16:33:55 +0000

I used to use google maps as just a GPS rather than navigation instructions. I've since found it is most helpful to use navigation in major cities because the directions are so much more complicated and the consequences for a single wrong turn can be huge time in traffic.

New comment by nubbins in "The majority of 18- to 29-year-olds in the US are now living with their parents"

nubbins — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 17:31:07 +0000

Maybe people in middle America already have enough space to not feel pinched so that extra space is viewed as an amenity not a huge factor that they demand? In my experience in denser high COL areas space is priced basically linearly on the margin. In NYC going from 1 br to 2 br can significantly affect your quality of life so people are willing to pay an extra $1000.

New comment by nubbins in "We Don’t Need to Work So Much (2015)"

nubbins — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 16:26:40 +0000

Quarantining outside a big city has opened my eyes to how much urban life is purely consumptive activity. Living in a low density area, just having space and a vehicle to transport supplies I was able to grow vegetables, restore an old motorcycle, build a computer from components, cook and cure meat etc. In my small city apartment all of this activity would've either been impossible or required spending lots of money- turning what was either a fun hobby or a value generating activity into just consumption.

New comment by nubbins in "How I lost control of our bank accounts to a phone scammer"

nubbins — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 02:56:35 +0000

That's so frustrating, as a bank they are making it harder to avoid fraud by training people to trust them. I was in the same position where someone tried to hack me but I will never give out information to a incoming caller, so I asked for their fraud number and googled it. I figure if it comes up on somewhere on their website its legit, if not I won't trust it.

New comment by nubbins in "Ultimate Electronics"

nubbins — Thu, 13 Feb 2020 20:16:19 +0000

You can tell they're not messing around because there are 7 MIT math and physics courses listed as corequisites. Looks like a fantastic resource. On the other hand I have no idea when I'd get the time to do this until I retire. Maybe I'll spend my retirement years like fixing up vintage amplifiers and designing circuits.