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Totally agree, I went to fiber years ago, and the decrease in latency makes it _feel_ so much faster than 10G copper, it is not funny. Besides, if you put in the "good stuff" them moving to 40G and beyond is not a problem later on. Like others said, just add a copper line for POE devices, but for systems... its fiber all the way.

I wasn't aware there was a substantial latency difference between fiber and copper. Some googling suggests copper might be .4-.8c and fiber might be a more reliable .6c? But even if there was a huge difference in speed of light through the medium, inside a home aren't the distances so short that it wouldn't matter?

There's no way you could feel even a millisecond in latency difference and that would be a lot.

That can't be right. The old network must've had a problem somewhere. I'm running 10G copper throughout the house and my latency is ~1ms from the office upstairs to the server in the basement (across three switches). Using moonlight to game for example and it is flawless.

The real problem is his example, "you start off with 2 million dollars and 95% growth rate".

Fine, show me the average person who can come up with 2 million dollars. I sure as hell can not. I even went to banks and founders with my ideas, cash flow sheets and customer list looking for a loan.

No, I am convinced, the rich already have 2 million dollars, and make themselves a billionaire. The system is rigged against "normal" people.


He was talking about an equity stake in a start-up. Although on paper it is worth $2M, it is (probably) not liquid (i.e, the shares can't be traded easily, maybe at all.) The vast majority of founders don't literally spend $2M from their checking account to purchase their position in a start-up - they get some ownership as part of taking the start-up risk.

Is there some standard he/people use to come up with the initial company paper-stock worth? A 2m company I would imagine needs to have some tangible traction already.

Of course - at founding, if $20M goes into the company at $1 per share, and the CEO gets a 10% equity stake (usually subject to restrictions), then the CEO has $2M on paper (or will have after possible vesting.) Real money in this case came from the original investors that flowed into the company in exchange for ownership, but the CEO can't really do anything with his shares yet. At this point the original investors are taking a huge risk with their money - chances are, they just lost $20M dollars, and probably even more, as it can often take a long time of putting good money after bad.

Once a company starts operating, but before revenue (and hopefully eventual profitability), the valuation is trickier. The share price _should_ be the number of shares divided by the sum of all future profit (minus current debt.) Which is hilarious of course, because no one actually knows the denominator.

That original $2M equity stake can grow to billions if the company ends up making something that a lot of people want or need, so the sum of all future profit is large. Or, much more likely, it will be worth nothing, or a modest amount.

Graham's essay kind of avoids the point of whether ownership of a vastly appreciating asset is "fair", if a bunch of other people help that asset to appreciate.


But these are still numbers plucked from the air (or as you put it, from the 'future'). I want *tangible, material bases* to start from if any.

Another far more sensible model I've found is slicing pie. Each founder's input % of the pie pre-'bake' is their % of the rewards. And what makes up for one's slice of the pie? The dollar-value you would've earned if you worked somewhere else, times the period of baking. These can be tweaked accordingly to the type of investment put in. IMO, it seems far more grounded compared to say a flat 10%.


To quote good old Chester Karass (https://www.amazon.com/Business-Life-Dont-Deserve-Negotiate/...): you get what you negotiate. In an ideal world, people are compensated according to their contributions (and when hired, expected contributions.) This isn't a once-and-done thing, though - compensation (in the form of company ownership) gets adjusted all the time. The flat 10% is just a starting point (a typical CEO level of ownership in a start up, although this number varies quite a lot, due to aforementioned negotiation.) If a CEO screws up badly enough, they might get fired even before their stock vests.

Sure I'd acknowledge the risks taken. Arguably though, there should be some degree of a known benchmark just so people don't get overly taken advantage of.

Of course people who have more access to money and parents who understand money would be better at earning it.

Why are you presupposing the world is just when EVERY skill and opportunity is distributed non-linearly?


I, too, would win the marathon if you put me at the last mile marker while everyone else starts at the beginning.

Is that skill?


If your life analogy is a closed system competition you’re going to be disappointed.

Most people with millions do not become billionaires. So yes, there is an exclusive pool of players who can play the game. But within that pool there is incredibly different outcomes.

A better analogy is being born as a child of D1 basketball athletes and then making 100 million in the NBA. Being born into a family with no interest in athletics makes it almost impossible to be a professional athlete. Life isn’t fair. It’s still impressive to become one.


"Life isn't fair" as if we are physically prohibited from making it less unfair...

Yeah I’m not sure “people gather knowledge and guidance from their families and culture” is on the table, or desirable.

> Yeah I’m not sure “people gather knowledge and guidance from their families and culture” is on the table, or desirable.

Are you missing something like "getting rid of", as in getting rid of that is a way to make things more equal? Because you are aware there are more than one way to make things more equal, right? For knowledge, a well-funded public education system (i.e., not the US apparently) goes a long way, and most people consider that a public good.

Most people concerned about inequality, I would wager, would be more focused on things like nepotism and access, for example I don't have a mum that could get me a meeting with the CEO of IBM to pitch ideas to.

A robust social safety net would probably be helpful if enabling non-already-rich people to take entrepreneurial risk is considered desirable, among other benefits.


> well-funded public education system

The knowledge we are talking about is particular. You can’t learn how to navigate a professional basketball career AND how to do tech startups. There isn’t enough time even if that information was publicly accessible and teachable.

> I don't have a mum that could get me a meeting with the CEO of IBM to pitch ideas to.

Once again. How can you possibly correct for this? This is basically saying some parents work in tech and some don’t.

> enabling non-already-rich people to take entrepreneurial risk

I think what it does is let people play video games and watch porn. I don’t think the majority of the population is untapped entrepreneurial potential.

Inequality and difference is a natural part of life. The distribution of ability in almost every activity is massive. So why would or should outcomes be the same?


> I think what it does is let people play video games and watch porn. I don’t think the majority of the population is untapped entrepreneurial potential.

I don't think rich people are inherently more entrepreneurial so I don't see why they are the only people who should be allowed to have the opportunity to play video games, watch porn, and maybe occasionally start a company with any degree of security.

> You can’t learn how to navigate a professional basketball career AND how to do tech startups. There isn’t enough time even if that information was publicly accessible and teachable.

I never suggested that a public education system means no specialisation. In fact, most public tertiary education systems do separate people into specialised streams based on interest and skill.

> Inequality and difference is a natural part of life.

Again with the naturalistic fallacy.

> So why would or should outcomes be the same?

Why should the opportunities available be different?

> Once again. How can you possibly correct for this? This is basically saying some parents work in tech and some don’t.

Right, there is no possible way of ensuring things like hiring and contract negotiations are conducted at arm's length and in a fair and transparent manner, so we may as well not even try. I give up.


Well the average person, when you exclude real estate, is neither worth nor has a million dollars, that is true.

But this kind of person isn't rare either, even in Italy or Poland where I live I know many multi millionaires.

Some are farmers, some have restaurants/hotels, some work remotely for US tech companies, some were early engineers in startups.


One in 500 of them makes themselves a billionaire, the rest have thrown two million dollars down the toilet. It's just a fair bet, there's nothing "rigged" about it.

Just because only 1 in 500 makes it to a billion, does not mean the other 499 are failures. Plenty of startup founders turn a few million into much more.

If someone has an idea that 'only' makes them 20 million, I would call that a great success; even if it takes dozens of years to get there.


yes but again, who has $2M to bet, even at 1/500 odds? You have to be a billionaire to make 500 bets hoping one hits, then you’re back to just being a billionaire again.

Dropped in to say this. The Marzoccos are good, but dang the Kees van der Westen are downright amazing... I know a lot of cafe owners who threw the Marzocco out and purchased a Kees and the espresso shot quality went through the roof.


Do you know what's the difference between the two? Building an espresso machine isn't exactly a science.


On the flip side, a really good bag, and these have lasted so long I can not recall when I purchased them, are really expensive [https://www.tombihn.com/].

What is really irritating is that sometimes we see the same thing within a single brand (we have a garbage entry-level item and a top tier item which is good).


guess who has a new owner and is starting to make some of their bags overseas

https://www.tombihn.com/blogs/main/fall-2025-factory-update-...


Tom Bihn sold recently, and doesn't do everything in the US any more. Also I don't know that they were ever "expensive" so much as priced to reflect the economic reality of being made in America and (from what I've read), treating their employees well.


Completely agree with this comment. Had to cut / paste it into vim and q! when done, was getting a headache.


Even as a Vim user I find this completely overkill when you can just press the reader mode button on the browser.


document.querySelectorAll('p').forEach(p => p.style.color = 'black');

Use this command in the developer tools console to change the color.


Not sure if they were the first, or whatever, but this really seems like a breakthrough technology / methodology. How many cardboard boxes do we use a day? The mind boggles.

Totally cool stuff.


This seems more like a replacement for Styrofoam rather than cardboard boxes, though it could certainly be used in places we already use cardboard inserts. But probably still need a cardboard box on the outside. Thankfully we can grow those too!!


> This seems more like a replacement for Styrofoam rather than cardboard boxes

It seems rigid though, more akin to cardboard than soft styrofoam. I don't see anything about how dampening it is, but from the pictures I also assumed it was more like cardboard than styrofoam. Maybe the color is deceiving me though.


https://magicalmushroom.com/mushroom-packaging

Under "Features" it explicitly calls out polystyrene as what it is meant to replace, and under "Performance" they claim to provide for clients "that demand the same technical performance as the polystyrene we replace"


I don't think this is better for the environment than cardboard (if anything it is probably worse as a direct replacement for cardboard because cardboard already has a robust recycling supplychain). Rather, it is a replacement for plastic foam.


Dell have been using mycelium packaging for a while now - 2014 maybe? created in the US. Very interested to see this space go.


Dell (and IKEA, and others) source from Ecovative who have been working on this for a while: https://ecovative.com/


Nice, thanks for the link. Somehow, this weekend I’ve gone into the rabbit hole of mycelium packaging, a completely new and interesting topic for me. Need to check this out before my fascination wears off.


https://magicalmushroom.com/mushroom-packaging

Under Features, it lists polystyrene products as what it replaces, not cardboard.


Cardboard is mostly renewable, it's the applications where we combine it with plastic where alternatives are needed.


This isn't different from cardboard. This is made from mushrooms, cardboard is made from trees. The real problem is plastics.


I thought your blog sofware was interesting, and you have a blog on it from last year. The Git link on this page: https://elliotbonneville.com/building-a-blog-in-90-minutes/ however, is broken.

Broken Git link: https://github.com/elliotbonneville/elliotbonneville.com


Heh, I made myself laugh.

Literally clicked on that link thinking I had read _asteroids_, as in a remake of the 1979 game.

Total disappointment ensued.


I will admit, I type exclusively on 40% keyboards. I used to have a Happy Hacking Keyboard, (in fact, the original Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) with separate PS/2, Sun and ADB cables, still have the board and cables), then the HHKB USB, then the HHKB 2. One day I saw a 40%, in fact an original "minivan" by "The Van Keyboards" and thought I would give it a shot. For someone who uses the computer all day, this was an advancement over the HHKB in the same way the HHKB was an advancement over the 104:

* Your hands move a lot less during typing.

* Your hand is much (_much_) closer to the mouse to grab it.

Even though there is a slight learning curve using layers, after a short while it becomes just like the muscle reflex for "hit shift to use the alphanumerics", etc. When I have to run into the data center or go somewhere and use a "real" keyboard for a moment, I am reminded of just what a huge time difference it is to grab the mouse, or reach for keys like PGUP/PGDWN, etc. It may not be for everyone, but I advocate for giving small keyboards (even split ones) a try.


I feel most people could get like 80% benefits with simple key moves rather than macroing:

* add column of common movement keys (pgup/down/home/end) on the left side * move entire numpad block after that (so its leftmost) * remove the spacing between the top level FX/esc keys

if you don't need arrows, that immediately puts your mouse good 6.5 cm closer

I especially don't get losing the numeric top of the keyboard but that's mostly because I actively use the Fx keys for window navigation (one window per key,capslock+ 1-9 get the left monitor, F1-9 get the right).


I worked at 5 universities, two of them in the top 50, and I do not know of one tenured professor that "does nothing" and "publishes next to nothing". Some of them teach very little, and that may have been for the best, but all tenured professors I was aware of needed to do research, bring in money (or you were, yes that's right, fired), and teach.

Granted, I worked in STEM fields. Maybe this author does not realize what it is like in the physical sciences or engineering?


This isn't true right? You really can bring in zero dollars in grants and phone it in in the classroom. (Now, literally on Zoom!) I don't think it helps to pretend that everyone keeps pushing hard post tenure.

But, I think most people do. The system is deliberately designed to push an assistant professor so hard, that when they get a permanent contract, they're conditioned to keep pushing. It typically succeeds.


Yes; you can phone it in post-tenure. But just because it is possible doesn't mean (in my experience) it is common; and I don't think it's helpful (as TFA claims) to equate this possibility with "a total scam." To get tenure anywhere doesn't just require a huge amount of work as an Assistant Professor; it also requires a huge amount of work as a PhD student and potentially multiple rounds of post-doc'ing or other non-tenure-line work. In my experience, tenured professors have spent nearly two decades distorting their work-life balance beyond all recognition to the point that grinding insanely hard in pursuit of publications just feels normal.


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