yyy888sss's comments

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Can Google fix the news industry it helped break?

I think the news industry is better than ever. Just like 50 years ago, you can watch the evening news on TV, or listen on the radio, or read the major papers (NYT, The Economist). My local paper is online now and charges a small subscription but it's still around. In addition, Google is constantly recommending me articles from hundreds of different news sites and blogs, some which are major operations and some which are just a single person. The tech giants have diverted ad dollars from the News industry but they hardly broke it...

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: China and Japan race to dominate the future of high-speed rail – The Japan Times

High speed rail has a small niche for routes a few hundred km between two large cities. Any shorter and the car becomes more convenient, any longer and the plane becomes cheaper and faster.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Facebook to hide number of likes in trial aimed at improving users' wellbeing

We have this for Instagram in Australia already and I like it. I noticed I would always look at the like count and judge a post based on that before the change. Of course the real way to 'improve your wellbeing' is to use social media sparingly or not at all, the real motivation behind the change is probably to more seamlessly integrate ads into the feed.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: UK supermarkets report a surge in vegan food sales while expanding ranges

You don't need to subsidize cow milk, we don't in Australia and it's still $1/litre.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Bill Ackman: give every American cash at birth so they can retire a millionaire

You can do what we do in Australia, every employer has to pay 9.5% of your income into a retirement account. It's like a social security tax but it goes into an account you own instead of the the general pension system. If you have a normal career you will have over a million in it by the time you retire. Obviously you will be a lot better off if you also own your home outright by that point.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do people make money in the cryptocurrency industry?

Either selling shovels (https://micky.com.au/bitmain-earned-300-million-in-profit-fo...) or making a market for people to trade in (https://www.coindesk.com/binance-to-earn-profits-between-800...)

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. Presumably future engines will be bigger still, will they just tack them onto this old design as well? At the end of the day this is just a software fix.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Tasmania declares itself 100 per cent powered by renewable electricity

My council and university also declared themselves '100% renewable powered'. What they do is fund a solar/wind project which will generate the amount of electricity they use over the whole year. Of course in reality their power comes from the grid which was only 26% renewable last year. https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=1y&interval=1w

Its not a scalable solution! A lot of Australians already have solar panels on their roof which generate more electricity than they use in a 24hour period. But we cannot say we are 100% renewable because we also use power at night, where the electricity is still mostly from coal, especially when theres no wind.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Tasmania declares itself 100 per cent powered by renewable electricity

Much like companies declaring they are 100% renewable powered, this does no actually mean only renewable electricity is used 100% of the time. In the last week, 20% of electricity used in Tasmania was from Victoria coal power https://opennem.org.au/energy/tas1/?range=7d&interval=30m/

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: The problem of prosocial lying in the economics profession

Theres also just the fact that social scientists don't agree on lots of topics. You can find one economist who says raising taxes is the right thing for the given situation, other who says they should be lowered. Opposing political parties could both use their economists as proof their policies are the 'right' one.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

But they are not the same. Every company and organisation will advocate for itself by advertising, lobbying, legal battles etc. Brands will also adopt a LGBT pride/BLM/etc campaign as soon as they think it provides good publicity. The aim of all this is to help the company/org. It's not the same as employees bringing up their social or political views while at work.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Amazon restricts how rival device makers buy ads on its site

Seems like 'Company gives preference to its own products on its own store' which is hardly surprising.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Applebot

No, Apple is a 'full-stack' tech company. People buy their products both for their hardware and software. If they were just a hardware company, why would they bother making macOS, iOS, iMessage, Safari etc?

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Bill Gates' nuclear venture plans reactor to complement solar, wind power boom

Seems to be more like 40% [1] and it's worth noting that in a lot of geographies you still need full backup for wind farms as the wind speed can drop low across the whole country/continent.

[1] - https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Q2 2020 Update

It's just a punitive tax on the producers of heavy emitters, with the proceed going to Tesla instead of the government. Tesla is treated very generously as their cars count as emitting 0g Co2, which is not the case unless they are recharged with renewable energy.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Fighting poverty accidentally stopped deforestation

Turns out it's more about economic development and education - most women who are financially secure don't want to have 10 children.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Most-streamed track of the day by country

Plenty of Top 40 is still generic easy listening for anyone. Ed Sheeran - Perfect is the 8th most streamed song on Spotify and could have been released in basically any era. Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk is the 6th most viewed video on Youtube and sounds straight out to the 70s to me.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Most-streamed track of the day by country

If music were the way to describe society - I'd say it shows that we are connected globally but also have a diverse range of tastes. A top hit song can quickly go viral globally now, yet the global number one song on Spotify usually only has around 5 million streams/day. Considering Spotify has ~300 million users, clearly people are listening to a wide range of stuff beyond the charts. Pop songs have had a simple beat, simple chord progression and simple lyrics since the dawn of recorded music. Anyone with the "most basic knowledge" of music could have made an early Beatles number one has well.

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Zoom Now Worth More Than the World’s 7 Biggest Airlines

Overvalued IMO. I don't find Zoom to be at all differentiated from the many other video call apps from Meet, Teams, Skype, etc. All the enterprise software companies include video meetings in their bundles, why would you pay extra for Zoom?

yyy888sss | 5 years ago | on: Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights (2018)

Not really, the CEO just says crazy things to drum up some publicity. He also claimed he would charge fat people more, and that Ryanair was so frugal that they didn't let employees charge their phone at work to save electricity.