Hacker News: wskinner

New comment by wskinner in "Waymo in Portland"

wskinner — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 03:22:02 +0000

Road wear and tear increases as the fourth power of axle load. Are you counting the spending on bus stops, bus parking, dedicated bus lanes, and more on the other side of the ledger?

New comment by wskinner in "Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performance' with iOS 27 next year"

wskinner — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 21:46:02 +0000

Yes. The impossible to disable system services (photoanalysisd and friends) are an abomination of software design.

New comment by wskinner in "California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters"

wskinner — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 02:11:14 +0000

California has the most progressive taxation scheme of any state. Dividends and capital gains are taxed as income. I’m curious what you would consider “sufficient” taxation - the top marginal combined rate for a Californian is over 50%.

New comment by wskinner in "Amazon's Emissions Climbed 6% in 2024 on Data Center Buildout"

wskinner — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 23:50:11 +0000

> Taking muni or bart involved walking, waiting, more waiting, and then more walking

Exactly.

Uber makes a lot of money these days. The price is not suppressed. And yet... it is more popular than ever. Prices were artificially low for awhile in order to bootstrap the market, and that worked, and now that the market has been established, prices are at a level that is sustainable. Your whole premise is wrong.

New comment by wskinner in "Amazon's Emissions Climbed 6% in 2024 on Data Center Buildout"

wskinner — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 20:34:04 +0000

Higher energy consumption translates to higher standards of living and better outcomes for everyone.

New comment by wskinner in "Amazon's Emissions Climbed 6% in 2024 on Data Center Buildout"

wskinner — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 20:31:34 +0000

Amazon’s capex is not funded by venture capital. It is funded by people buying things from Amazon or services from AWS.

Uber hasn’t raised from VCs in years, and their business is far bigger than it was back when they were losing money.

The idea that SF residents choose to use Uber rather than BART because Uber is cheaper is simply wrong - Uber is much more expensive than BART, and with some notable exceptions for shared rides, that was true during the VC funded growth period as well.

New comment by wskinner in "Meta says it won't sign Europe AI agreement"

wskinner — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 02:05:29 +0000

People are generally responsive to incentives. In this case, the GDPR required:

1. Consent to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous and as easy to withdraw as to give 2. High penalties for failure to comply (€20 million or 4 % of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher)

Compliance is tricky and mistakes are costly. A pop-up banner is the easiest off-the-shelf solution, and most site operators care about focusing on their actual business rather than compliance, so it's not surprising that they took this easy path.

If your model of the world or "image of humanity" can't predict an outcome like this, then maybe it's wrong.

New comment by wskinner in "Meta says it won't sign Europe AI agreement"

wskinner — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 01:48:36 +0000

> The mistake the EU made was to not foresee the madness used to make these decisions.

It's not madness, it's a totally predictable response, and all web users pay the price for the EC's lack of foresight every day. That they didn't foresee it should cause us to question their ability to foresee the downstream effects of all their other planned regulations.

New comment by wskinner in "OpenICE: Open-Source US Immigration Detention Dashboard"

wskinner — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 20:39:30 +0000

Why do the data only go back to October 2024? It would be great to be able to see the longer term trends.

New comment by wskinner in "America’s incarceration rate is in decline"

wskinner — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 05:03:52 +0000

The scholarly debate is over how large and how lasting the effect is, not whether any evidence exists.

New comment by wskinner in "Tesla seeks to guard crash data from public disclosure"

wskinner — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 02:06:33 +0000

There are over 40,000 _fatal_ car crashes per year in the US, and a few orders of magnitude more non-fatal crashes. Most of them do not make the news.

New comment by wskinner in "How the U.S. became a science superpower"

wskinner — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 20:41:15 +0000

There is a natural garbage collection mechanism for corporations that become too inefficient. Inefficient government agencies can last much longer.

New comment by wskinner in "Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike"

wskinner — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:54:34 +0000

If that is true, then what stops port operators from raising prices from their present level and pocketing the free money? In reality, demand curves slope down and the surplus from efficiency improvements is split between buyers and sellers. And with the lower costs that result from efficiency improvements, ports will be able to move more goods per unit of time. Even with the unrealistic assumption that the surplus is entirely captured by the port operators, buyers and sellers of goods will benefit from the increased volume.

New comment by wskinner in "Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike"

wskinner — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:19:26 +0000

It is, and it does. US ports are far less efficient than the more automated ports in Asia and Europe.

New comment by wskinner in "Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike"

wskinner — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 07:18:04 +0000

Everyone buys stuff.

New comment by wskinner in "Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike"

wskinner — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 06:36:48 +0000

> the benefits of the automation goes solely to investors and owners

Totally false. The benefits go to anyone who buys or sells goods that pass through the ports.

New comment by wskinner in "Grok-2 Beta Release"

wskinner — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:45:54 +0000

X is not Meta.

FIRECalc

wskinner — Wed, 08 May 2024 06:25:22 +0000

Article URL: https://firecalc.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40294939

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by wskinner in "Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can't You?"

wskinner — Wed, 08 May 2024 06:24:58 +0000

The 4% rule of thumb is intended to include sequence-of-returns risk. See e.g. https://firecalc.com/, a tool commonly used to aid these decisions.

New comment by wskinner in "Neighbors Are Retiring in Their 30s. Why Can't You?"

wskinner — Wed, 08 May 2024 05:16:19 +0000

"Enough" is a function of how much you have and how much you need. 25x annual spend is a common heuristic for the required net worth before you can safely retire. And the older you are, the less margin of safety you need. 4% of $1.3 million is $52k, which is enough to live quite comfortably in many places.