Hacker News: shakethemonkey

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Crypto is the first question on IRS Form 1040 in 2022 [pdf]"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 29 Dec 2022 03:47:10 +0000

If you purchased crypto via Robinhood but not used a self-custody wallet, it is questionable as to whether you own a digital asset. You actually own some sort of financial instrument issued by Robinhood and no control over any underlying asset.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 01:03:41 +0000

But a pallet of old academic books is unlikely to be composed of such books. It is probable that most of the books are worth less than the cost of shipping, and some of the books will have some value but not tremendous value. It is astonishing the number of wonderful, high quality books that can be bought on Abebooks for $1.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "US Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade [pdf]"

shakethemonkey — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:51:08 +0000

This argument would be more convincing if the rest of the law treated the unborn as people, but largely it does not. You can't even deduct an unborn child as a dependent on your taxes.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "US Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade [pdf]"

shakethemonkey — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:44:28 +0000

This is less giving authority to the States and much more taking away from the People.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Based Cooking"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 18:39:13 +0000

I wouldn't call this a decent recipe, since it doesn't explain how to prepare or incorporate the tomatoes.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support"

shakethemonkey — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 18:32:30 +0000

In this case Amazon would likely apply pressure to the utility company's regulator, if such discretion was allowed to the monopoly provider under their current arrangements.

That pressure would likely be successful.

But even if a datacenter is removed from one jurisdiction, Amazon is perfectly able to handle that loss immediately.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "U.S. Accuses Google of Illegally Protecting Monopoly"

shakethemonkey — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 14:25:33 +0000

AG Barr has been pushing to get this out before the election, over objections of his own attorneys:

"He [Barr] pushed career Justice Department attorneys to bring the case by the end of September, prompting pushback from lawyers who wanted more time and complained of political influence."[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/technology/google-antitru...

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?"

shakethemonkey — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 16:07:57 +0000

My smart-ass comment[1] got us new Unicode characters[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959139

[2] http://www.righto.com/2016/10/inspired-by-hn-comment-four-ha...

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 21:27:36 +0000

Ah, so a one-off anomaly. Over time it seems that median income is considerably underperforming. [1][2]

[1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html [2] https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-st...

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 02:36:49 +0000

Why is it at such variance with the BEA data? That is my question.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 02:18:38 +0000

According to BEA, "State personal income increased 4.4 percent in 2019, after increasing 5.6 percent in 2018". This is not median data, so the median would likely have increased even less.

[1] https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/state-annual-personal-income-2...

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019"

shakethemonkey — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 01:39:28 +0000

But does it make sense that there would be a huge jump in that for 2019 but not 2018? This data smells.

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

shakethemonkey — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:10:12 +0000

The generation immediately after WWII gave a glimpse of what was possible, before crafty people figured out how to siphon off the majority of that wealth to those already at the top. And over time, that siphon has grown stronger.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "San Francisco most intensely gentrified city in new rankings"

shakethemonkey — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 20:49:46 +0000

While this is not untrue on its face, the bulk of the blame should go to initiating banks, who became more willing to make untenable loans because they could package and securitize the loans and sell them off to investors, avoiding the consequences of their own actions.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "What Would a WeChat Replacement Need?"

shakethemonkey — Sat, 18 Apr 2020 00:04:42 +0000

How is this different from a taxi company? A taxi company can and will blacklist your address. In fact, it may blacklist entire neighborhoods. This happens today.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is working 24/7, guess again"

shakethemonkey — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 01:54:26 +0000

Here, Congress is more to blame than the Obama Administration, who clearly wanted more money for this. Congress budgeted far too little money, and the administration rightly prioritized medication over masks.[1]

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/us-emergency-medical-stoc...

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Happy Public Domain Day: Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” Is Copyright Free"

shakethemonkey — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 23:24:56 +0000

This isn't true. Replaying public domain music through mechanical means adds no creativity to the work, and thus has no copyrightable elements.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Save .org"

shakethemonkey — Sat, 23 Nov 2019 06:47:51 +0000

Is there a reason why price caps on .org can't be restored?

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Days of the Dolphin: Cetaceans in Cold War Science and Science Fiction (2018)"

shakethemonkey — Sun, 24 Mar 2019 05:08:59 +0000

And the Greatwinter Trilogy by Sean Mcmullen. How can you go wrong with librarians, cetaceans, and massively parallel organic computing.

New comment by shakethemonkey in "Berkshire Hathaway 2018 Annual Shareholder Letter [pdf]"

shakethemonkey — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 03:57:11 +0000

> hence the coveted AAA rating

The US Government seems to have begun a habit of launching investigations of credit agencies that downgrade its credit rating. It's happened to S&P and to Egan-Jones.