murgindrag

I expect inflation to remain high for a while, and I think concerns about it (if not for self-fulfilling psychological, which are very real and significant) are overblown. I think this stimulus, and the resulting inflation, DID help the economy, relative to the alternatives. The critical thing was to avoid structural damage:

- Businesses going under

- People losing jobs

- Mortgages going under

... and so on. All of this DOES directly impact the productive output of the economy.

Inflation does distort the economy a little bit. It makes some of us poorer (those with cash), some of us richer (those with debt), and leaves some neutral (this with hard assets). But I think this distortion pales relative to the alternative.

Imagine you're a business with 5 million dollars in revolving debt, at a 2% interest rate. You have $100k in debt service costs.

If interest rates go up to 5%, you have $250k in service costs. Most businesses operate close to break-even (in efficient markets), and many will immediately go under. If businesses go under, that triggers a recession cycle: Those businesses lay off employees, who stop buying, driving down revenue for everyone else. People anticipating layoffs/furloughs/etc. stop buying. Hiring goes down too, since businesses start planning for rough times.

People buying on credit (anyone with a credit card debt) also find purchasing much more expensive, together with higher bills on existing debt.

A whole bunch of business opportunities also disappear in a poof of smoke. If a business has even a 1% expected real return, and interest rates are zero, it makes sense to borrow money to start that business (especially if inflation is also high, giving effective negative interest rates). If a business has an expected 1% return and interest rates are 12%, then I'm bleeding money. For these kinds of opportunities, think less SV startup, and more just normal businesses (e.g. I buy something and sell it a month or two later).

All of this piles on to form a recession.

I was surprised by the quality of the Coway Airmega 200M. Good reviews, but looked sketchy:

- Super-quiet

- Sensor does actually speed it up with even trivial amounts of pollution. You sneeze in the same room, or spray some hairspray, and woosh.

- Washable prefilter, carbon filter, HEPA filter

I have a super-high-end air filter from 2-3 decades ago, and I'm surprised by the progress. The cheap 2020 unit is better.

As far as I can tell, COVID has two predominant modes of spread:

- Extended time indoors, with high viral loads. It spreads ridiculously well with no protection (even among the vaccinated).

- Isolated superspreader events, where one person infects many, even with distant contact.

Filters would seem to target the latter more than the former.

There are two theories:

- We're borrowing money, and we'll need to pay it back. That's scary.

- Money is bits in a computer, and from the perspective of the US government, it's like video game currency. Debts and deficits are fiscal instruments.

Which of these is correct, or something else, is TBD. I think a big part of the question is who holds the debt. I'm a lot more worried about foreign debt, and I'm a lot less worried about debt as a financial instrument to pay interest on de facto savings accounts.

> If you aren’t interested in maintaining your app annually, don’t publish apps on Apple’s store.

That's exactly what I do. I avoid the app stores like the plaque.

> (I am not sympathetic to your situation, because as a user of apps, I am exhausted of crappy apps and bottom-of-the-barrel behaviors from developers. I understand that others may feel otherwise, and that’s fine too, just as long as those feelings do not get in the way of being a responsive app developer.)

I think the word here is 'entitled.' There are a few different groups here:

- Bottom-of-the-barrel scammers, whom I have no sympathy to

- Little kids and amateurs, who might want to put something out and move on

- Graduate students and research projects

- Little not-for-profits

- Internal-use small businesses and enterprise apps, where a they might be developed once and forgotten about for decades (yes, plural)

In my case, I don't need to have an app on the app store, and I don't care for Apple's behavior, so I don't have an app there. That hurts Apple (and you, if you're an iPhone user) more than it does me.

You're also confusing strictness with timelines. I'm all for super-strict policies. Just with:

- Backwards compatibility (e.g. grandfathering) of older apps

- Plenty of notice

As much as I like the change, the 3-month window seems unreasonable. I don't currently have AppStore apps, and these kinds of whiplash changes are part of the reason.

Microsoft, for all its faults, is much better than Apple or Google here.

Businesses take planning and strategy, and these things lead to drop-everything fires.

Economies rely on stability.

Well, modules can be designed to protect my security, or to harm my security (e.g. to enforce DRM). I'm unclear on how "real TPM" functionality helps me. If it helps secure Microsoft, and hurts my security, that's a good reason to not use Windows.

I have not found good docs on what TPM exactly does in Windows 11, but people I trust tell me to distrust it, so I do.

Serious question: How does YC work with companies like this?

It seems like a YC standard-form offer doesn't make any sense to a company like Ginko at the stage it entered YC.

Stereotype much?

Allergies.

You end up with a large segment of the population who sneezes a little bit, which is sort of annoying but sort of okay.

You end up with a small segment of the population with asthma attacks, anaphylaxis, and other life-threatening conditions.

Universal use of dogs would mean that there would be people who simple cannot travel, ever, anywhere beyond driving distance.

There's a small war between extremist dog-owners (the ones who believe dogs are people too, and sneak them into all sorts of places dogs aren't allowed as "activism") and people with severe allergies.

My impression is that there are rapidly rising and then diminishing returns on investment.

Going from cloth to any mask with a high filtration layer is a huge improvement. Cloth is <30% of small particles. High filtration layer is >90%. Beyond that, the benefits are questionable.

Some surgical masks include a non-woven layer, and those already do pretty well (but how would you find those? pre-COVID it was easy). From there, genuine (non-counterfeit) KN95 and nanofiber masks are a big step up, and incredibly effective. At least pre-delta, if everyone used those, combined with modest social distancing, there was very little spread.

N95 masks are a modest improvement from there in terms of filtration, but by that point, mask quality (at least pre-delta) no longer appeared to be the dominant risk factor. COVID19 can spread through other mucous membranes (e.g. eyes). While combined with a face shield, used correctly, etc. I'm sure N95 make a difference over KN95, in practical public health use, I doubt there's any difference.

This is a good summary of data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M0mdNLpTWEGcluK6hh5L...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i06OAItoOwIUaMjElr8m...

I don't really distinguish between things with >90% filtration. Unless you've got an excellent seal and are otherwise protected, it doesn't matter much. Note that the measurements are performed at 300nm. There isn't much spread at 300nm (a single virus particle is unlikely to make you sick). A 90% mask at 300nm will have >>>90% at e.g. a micron. A micron particle is unlikely to have more than one or two COVID particles (a micron is 5 COVIDs wide).

I do distinguish based on pressure drop. Lower means more air goes through the mask, rather than around.

I also do distinguish based on technology. The nanofiber ones don't degrade the same way as N95. The N95 nonblown layer will theoretically beat nanofiber for the first couple of hours of use, but once it's moist from your breath, nanofiber beats it. Personally, I use a disposable nanofiber mask, and I consider it a better (e.g. safer) option. I'm not in a controlled cleanroom/hospital setting, and life happens. Masks do get reused, abused, rained on, and generally exposed to life. Nanofiber have much better durability.

I also supply chain. Amazon and eBay are rife with counterfeits. I like masks where I can order direct. Especially 3M tends to be mostly fakes, unless ordered through authorized distributors.

I distinguish on fit. In addition, a well-fitting 90% masks beats a poor-fitting 99% mask, since with a good fit, all the air goes through the mask. Order yourself a variety pack and see what's comfortable and fits.

The biggest thing you can do is limit yourself to settings where everyone uses reasonable precautions. All parties wearing KN95 masks, having reasonable social distancing, favoring outdoors, vaccinated if >12, etc. is pretty safe. If you have a mixture of extreme precautions and no precautions, everyone is at risk.

This is incredibly true.

Homes don't even need to be that small. Buying a chunk of land with enough trees to build a home is <$5k, if you're willing to live in the middle of nowhere.

You need the equivalent of a Ph.D in zoning, permitting, and municipal regulations to do that, though.

And if each high school class, as a year-long class project, build a home, I think my kid would get a better education and we'd have more homes.

Plus, most people need to bring in specialists to do all the maintenance because we have no idea how our homes work. I'd like to run ethernet in my house, and I have no idea what's inside my walls, how to get in there, or how not to break things. That's embarrassing.

I don't think this represents most studies, but the far lower end. If we're going to cherry-pick, here's one which shows more than half of kids show at least one symptom 120 days out:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.23.21250375v...

My best guess is that it's around 10%-20% -- that's sort of in the middle where studies land.

I suspect a big part of the problem is which child and which COVID. I would speculate alpha, delta, mu, etc. all have different rates.

I think the second question is the distribution of symptoms. None of the studies are sensitive enough to pick up a 5% loss in IQ, lung capacity, or similar. Do some kids get it and others don't? Or is there a bell curve of symptoms, and we're picking up kids with the more extreme versions?

If it's a bell curve, it's pretty scary. All kids could be harmed to the level of e.g. lead exposure, and we wouldn't notice.

If a side effect of COVID19 were getting rid of flu and colds, I'd be very very happy.

It doesn't look like it will be, but it'd be nice.

I actually think all the contact tracing stuff would do it. If we had zero tolerance for colds and flues -- we quarantine everyone who gets them and their contacts -- we'd end up at close to zero cases, and close to zero actual quarantines.

I actually think steady-state, we'd need fewer quarantines than the number of people flu kills. Flues kill 60k per season. I think 60k quarantines would be more than adequate for containing it.

If you define "risk" as "hospitalization," that's largely true. If you define "risk" as months or years of bizarre symptoms, reduced lung capacity, brain fog, etc., then children are at risk too.

But perhaps you don't care about that sort of thing.

Investment in the housing market drives up supply of buildings, and drives up the cost of the land underneath them. In high-cost markets, most of the cost is the land, not development on that land.

You can waive the higher taxes for very high density developments. Skyscrapers to require investors, and that is beneficial.

I'm not sold on the Economist article. I do believe in home ownership. The idea that a person spends a lifetime in the same home and community is a good one. We're tribal creatures, and you want a tribe -- you want people to know their neighbors, have community BBQs, and live in real communities. You want enough of a vested interest in municipal politics that democratic structures work. You want kids growing up with the same friends in school.

The flips side can be pretty dark too. For example, there are are plenty of stories of poorer communities, especially African American tenant ones, being broken up and priced out by gentrification of rental markets.

Ownership is less economically efficient, but much more resilient. Once a mortgage is paid off, you've always got a roof overhead. You just need to earn enough for food, clothing, and medicine.

I think the trick would be to implement significant differences in land tax based on:

* a home you live in; versus

* an individual investment property (e.g. if you own 2-3 homes); versus

* an institutional investment property (e.g. investment fund owns hundreds of homes)

I'm saying that there are internals problems and there are external problems. Whenever I've had mental health issues, there were clear external causes, and therapy ain't gonna do a thing about that. Therapists will tell you the same thing. Removing the root causes will do something.

Unfortunately, there isn't a magical get-help fairy which helps with external problems. Sometimes, your life just gets f-ed up, and there's nothing you can do about it.

No, I'm saying if you're:

* in an abusive job

* are going to be deported if you quit

* have kids you want to keep in school

... anxiety is a natural biological response, and there isn't a magical therapy trick that will help you get rid of it. Perhaps that time and money is better spent on managing immigration or job issues than on therapy.

And if you're in a new country with no savings and no contacts, continuing with the same example, there might not be friends or family whom you can turn to for help.

If the root causes is:

- Financial constraints

- A harasser

- A medical problem

- Etc.

a therapist/counselor can't help you very much. Whenever I've had issues I needed help with, there were real issues behind it. A therapist/counselor won't be able to do much, if anything.

If you're making a $350k salary in a hell-job while having $100k in financial obligations, the solution is simple enough.

If you're making a $350k salary in a hell-job to pay for your kid's medical problem and meet mortgage, talking to a therapist or "just quitting" won't do much.

Quotes like this bug me:

> If you find yourself in this type of situation, please do what’s best for you and get help if you are feeling stuck or overwhelmed.

Get help the !@#$% where? There isn't a magic American "help" fairy who bails people out of trouble.

These issues are complex, and therapists/counselors/psychologists suck up time and don't really address root causes.

You do risk jinxing it. Once people believe high level of inflation are coming, they move wealth out of fiat for other assets. That leads to inflation. And it cycles in on itself.

The classical example is the Weimar Republic. The government printed money to get out of financial problems, but that initially led to inflation, not hyperinflation. What led to hyperinflation was when people started dumping papiermarks for other assets.

Imagine: You believe the US will see 50% inflation, and Canada will see 5%. What do you do? Swap all your USD for CAD before that happens. What does that do? Devalue the dollar. Now, everyone expects 60% inflation. People start investing in stocks, property, or just about any other store of value. That devalues the currency. And so on.

All inflation requires is a sudden loss of faith.

Avoiding hyperinflation is about maintaining faith in fiat currency. Announcing inflation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think everyone paying any attention expected inflation, but downplaying it was exactly what the ruling class had to do to avoid hyperinflation.

No, you're not diluting wealth unless you're sitting on a Scrooge McDuck pile of cash.

If you have investments or property, they go up with inflation. If you're leveraged, inflation is a huge win.

Inflation is a massive redistribution of wealth, but it's more complex than that. The debt-ridden lower classes benefits. The non-debt-ridden renter class is harmed. The mortgage-holding class benefits. And so on.

Inflation is good for folks with student debt too.

It's not so much the convenience as the problems other carriers bring. T-Mobile has no security, and lousy coverage, and is technically incompetent, but they're fairly honest and customer-friendly.

I could tell a horror story from Verizon about a multi-thousand-dollar roaming bill from someone I knew, from Google about being completely locked out of a phone number forever from another person, and lots of others.

Pick your liability.

On the whole, I found the risk of data theft from T-Mobile to be the lesser of the evils.

Seen locally, all improvements are useful. PHP is better each year.

Seen globally, it's 10% improvement and 90% churn. One "improvement" is a half-fix, another is another half-fix, and so on, where after 5 improvements you're 97% of the way there.

In the meantime, you've broken backwards-compatibility five times, perhaps not always in the literal sense (old code still runs), but in the practical sense (old code has to be rewritten to follow modern conventions and be compatible with new code).

You've also had five learning curves.

And you have a ton of legacy stuff to support, from each of those five changes, leading to an almost unbounded explosion of complexity.

With JS, the answer is because Netscape adopted it, and it had market share. If you wanted to code which ran in web browsers, you needed to use it. Netscape, the company, no longer exists, so I wouldn't call it all too successful an outcome. From there, momentum.

Early history is in '95, Netscape hired Brendan Eich to embed Lisp in Netscape, while simultaneously pursuing a partnership with Sun to embed Java. Sometime that year, Lisp changed into a new language, which was created and shipped in beta, by September 1995. We're talking a few months.

If we had designed a sane framework upfront -- even 6 more months design time -- the web would likely be a decade or two ahead right now.

Most of the early "improvements" to JavaScript were stop-gaps created under similar cultures, which would need to be replaced again and again. It's not that we didn't know how to make a decent programming language in 1995; it's that we didn't.

Today, I do about half of my coding in JavaScript since it runs in the browser, and therefore on all platforms. It has nothing to do with the painfully bad language design.

PHP exactly makes my point.

PHP was a no-good, terrible, poorly-made, horrific original design for something like powering Facebook. As a result, it needed a lot of good and important improvements.

Or to be more specific, it was a great design for what it was intended to be: a pet hobby project to make it easier to make Personal Home Pages, and was never intended to be a programming language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP#Early_history

The concept of putting out something this bad, and then refactoring for over a quarter-century to make it almost-usable, is exactly the definition of the webdev way.

The result is a ton of churn.

No, the web people have it wrong. It's called:

- Failure to do upfront design (yay, misinterpreted agile/MVP/etc)

- Reinventing wheels over, and over, and over

Newer versions and frameworks tend to be 10% improvement, and 90% unnecessary churn.