Hacker News: scottiebarnes

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Stop Using Face ID"

scottiebarnes — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 19:40:59 +0000

The same passcode prompt appears after software updates, multiple previous failed Face ID login attempts, and maybe more.

Not a lawyer, but everyone has a password locked phone and its standard practice for device security. I'm not optimistic for a prosecutor winning on an interference charge.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "US trade deficit widens by the most in nearly 34 years in November"

scottiebarnes — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:51:03 +0000

Generally I'd rather be in a trade surplus; I would want my country to sell more things than it buys. Energy, technology, machinery, services, whatever it is, if I'm selling, it means I have productive capability/advantage over others and thus more independence.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Digg.com relaunch public beta is live"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 21:31:24 +0000

is that a daily ai generated podcast?

and ai generated icons...

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Crypto investors face tax crackdown as 70% non-compliant"

scottiebarnes — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 15:19:28 +0000

The swapping of any asset for another asset would be a taxable event

New comment by scottiebarnes in "73% of AI startups are just prompt engineering"

scottiebarnes — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 17:08:41 +0000

Every city should have its own municipal chip fabrication plant!

New comment by scottiebarnes in "I have recordings proving Coinbase knew about breach months before disclosure"

scottiebarnes — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 20:45:00 +0000

Are you going to be suing?

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Jensen Huang's Stark Warning: China's 1M AI Workers vs. America's 20k"

scottiebarnes — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 23:48:44 +0000

The root cause of this is: 1) population size, 2) social investment into math and science.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Gold Prices Top $4k for First Time"

scottiebarnes — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:06:03 +0000

Ah, so gold is a shiny rock that doesn't have a decentralized transmission network (the internet).

Mining and smelting gold requires quite a bit of electricity. But Bitcoin the network undoubtedly uses more.

As for small denominations, Bitcoin goes down to a single unit of Satoshi (1/100 millionth of a btc) and since its digital, subdivision is trivial.

So despite this, there are far more retail and commercial opportunities to exchange your btc for goods and services, where as I don't know of any place I can trade gold coins for things.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Gold Prices Top $4k for First Time"

scottiebarnes — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:51:51 +0000

That's great. I also enjoy taking custody of my data and property.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Gold Prices Top $4k for First Time"

scottiebarnes — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:50:32 +0000

And how does it compare to gold?

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Gold Prices Top $4k for First Time"

scottiebarnes — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:32:27 +0000

Your observations are also a bullish signal for Bitcoin, as it sort of functions as a "digital gold". Cheaper to transmit, cheaper to custody, basically instantly auditable/verifiable, as a financial instrument. No need to inspect, ship and melt down to store in warehouses.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press"

scottiebarnes — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:31:50 +0000

Not sure if this applies to livestreams but look into the --download-sections arg?

yt-dlp --download-sections "*05:00-05:10"

New comment by scottiebarnes in "US national debt reaches a record $37T, the Treasury Department reports"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 19:11:43 +0000

On my reading list: Principles For Navigating Big Debt Crises by Ray Dalio

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people"

scottiebarnes — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 14:15:29 +0000

A lot of manual labor and optimization on the marginal things.

Ex: Raspberries start to get funky. Bad ones get picked out, good ones get regrouped into a new tray package. Ripe avocados with limited shelf life? Go into deep cold refrigerator overnight, back out the next day. Discount deal on volume, on everything ("2 for $X"). Cash only. etc.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "On doing hard things"

scottiebarnes — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 17:14:31 +0000

Heart rate training is key for a smoother onboarding. Most beginners (myself included) simply try to do a pace that they simply can't sustain, think running is too hard, and then quit. Building that aerobic base is something I wish I understood far sooner.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:04:48 +0000

I bought shares, a sum that I could afford to lose but also a non-trivial amount.

As it went up, I occasionally sold some and took profit, but not much, till now.

I saw how important and productive machine learning was, and it seemed like NVDA had an excellent CUDA moat, so that was my thesis for that bet. In the last couple years I sold some and bought a house.

This is obviously a story with survivorship bias. But anyway my superpower isn't technical knowledge, its the lack of emotion and bias towards non-action when markets tumble. As you probably know, time in the market is better than timing the market.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:30:59 +0000

Fair enough.

As someone who bought NVDA in 2016/2017 and held till now, I'm very happy with the way I applied my software knowledge to profit where I won't have to work again.

Risk taking is best done in domains where you have an edge!

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:43:03 +0000

Yes, that is a limit of the model (PE ratio) that we're using. It requires the holding of all variables to be constant, which is not practical.

We use it as a snapshot in time to check our sanity and to allow us to compare apples to oranges.

That said, you could have made the same statement about AAPL or MSFT 20-30 years ago, and you would have been dead wrong.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Nvidia Becomes First Company to Reach $4T Market Cap"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 16:53:56 +0000

NVDA's current forward P/E ratio (price to earnings) is about 37.

That means if we hold constant the profit earnings, if you bought the whole company at its current valuation ($4tr), it would take you 37 years to break even.

Is this reasonable? Depends on sector and growth potential. To me, this is a "fair" valuation and not overly inflated based solely on existing earnings.

New comment by scottiebarnes in "Why can't stinking rich Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?"

scottiebarnes — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 14:59:13 +0000

I'm not sure this is a "free market choices" problem. Some institutions like education should be funded by government, in part or in whole.

The government threatening to take away that funding based on "taste" is more of a problem of authoritarianism.