akashshah87

>> I might be unusual in the sense that in my teens I absolutely adored Asimov as a writer of non-fiction rather than as a sci-fi author.

That's because he was only the second-best sci-fi writer but the best science writer in the world at the time [Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue|https://sfandfantasy.co.uk/php/the-big-3.php]

Summary from ChatGPT:

- DHS proposes replacing the random H-1B lottery with a weighted system based on wage levels (higher wage = higher chance).

- Weighting scheme: Wage Level I = 1 entry, II = 2, III = 3, IV = 4.

- Goal: favor higher-skilled/higher-paid workers while still leaving a chance for lower wage levels.

- Differs from the 2020 rule (rank-order by wage); this uses probability weighting, not exclusion.

“The U.S. began defunding UNESCO under Obama after it admitted Palestine as a full member—and then withdrew entirely during Trump’s first term.” — [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/world/europe/us-withdraw-...)

This isn’t just a blip, but part of a long-term downward trajectory in U.S. and UNESCO relations.

The population of Manhattan peaked in the 1910s. Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_New_Yor...

Yes, donating stock means you avoid capital gains. But even more relevant in this case is that she likely inherited the Berkshire stock from her husband which also resets the cost basis which means she wouldn't have had to pay capital gains even if she had sold the portfolio instead of donating.

>> as all cardholders get their bills on the same date, giving customer service reps a huge peak in workload.

A real world manifestation of the thundering herd problem

Unfortunately, looks like https://www.tarsnap.com/infrastructure.html will have to be updated.

>> So far such an outage has never occurred; but over time Tarsnap will become more tolerant of failures in order to minimize the probability that such an outage occurs in the future.

This is not true. If the bonds are held to maturity, there are no losses.

This is not true. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/29/tech-c...

Also used to filter wine - see https://www.winespectator.com/articles/are-egg-whites-really...

The current stock price of the company is theoretically the present value of future cashflows. For example, if you had project this revenue growth a year ago, you should have bought Facebook stock and not Amazon and you would have bet correctly. Facebook stock is up 21% from 2/1/2021 to 2/1/2022 whereas Amazon stock is down 9.54% during that same time period.

If you had put money in VTSAX on 1/26/2017 and reinvested dividends, you would be up 101.91% with an annualized return of 15%

Interesting to go back and read the HN discussion from Jan 30, 2018 when the venture got announced - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16264662

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21259697 made it to the front page of hackernews. Title of the post was "You may never see Studio Ghibli’s movies on streaming services". Today we have this news.