Live data from Hacker News

ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

news.cornell.edu

31–40 of 164 posts

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#31
post #14
post #11

$10M seems way too much - if it's per year. Call me paranoid, but that kind of money invites the ESG crowd.

Eh, inflation has happened, and taxes, medical bills, and real estate are insane these days. So much so that you can't live a "normal" life of the standards of 20 years ago with less than $500K+ in salary. (At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...) Sounds outrageous but most…

> At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...)

99% of the country doesn't pay $50K per year in rent. Nor $50K per year in food. Nor $50K per year in transportation. Nor an additional $25K per year in food.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#32
post #31
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, inflation has happened, and taxes, medical bills, and real estate are insane these days. So much so that you can't live a "normal" life of the standards of 20 years ago with less than $500K+ in salary. (At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...) Sounds outrageous but most…

> At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...) 99% of the country doesn't pay $50K per year in rent. Nor $50K per year in food. Nor $50K per year in transportation. Nor an additional $25K per year in food.

Most people pay more than they think they pay.

For example they think they pay 2K/mo in rent but that easily blows up to 4K after hidden costs that aren't on the sticker price of the lease.

Utilities, utilities of others that landlord charges to you because the lease said they could (and so does every other lease in a 100 mile radius), maintainence and safety issues that landlord doesn't cover, moving costs averaged over time, extra months of rent you have to pay because of stupid 12 month lease systems, tax or whatever other stupid fees charged by the rent payment systems, pest control, mold control, cleaning costs, furniture costs, ... only after all that does the place become even livable for a middle class standard.

Yeah, if you're okay with some pests and bedbug-ridden furniture you can save $200/month. If you're okay with shitty internet access that you can't even have a quality video call, you can save $50/month. etc. If you breathe mold all day, you can save $50/month. If you move all your stuff with muscles and no moving companies, you can save $200/month. But then you're not having a middle class life.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#33
post #15

Oh that’s great to hear! I really like arXiv and am glad it’s getting more funding! I hope this will enable arXiv to fix some of the long-time issues it has, including the way identity and attribution are handled. For example: the current system assumes people’s names do not change [1], which in particular negatively affects trans authors. This seems like it could be fixed if they had the bandwidth to, and I hope the…

It much more negatively affects women who choose to or are compelled by societal expectations to take their husband's surname.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#34
post #24

I am really glad arXiv is getting more funding. It is an essential resource. For me personally, it’ll be really interesting to see if the frontend changes. No doubt there are some important improvements that can be made (a website can always be made more accessible, moderation tools, support for name changes as mentioned, etc.) However, to first approximation, arXiV’s website already seems almost like a platonic idea…

Loads fast, except for the PDFs which load quite slowly

Have to download the file, then load it on the client. Not sure you can make it much faster.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#35
post #27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I agree that that's middle class levels of expense. If you're living a "normal" life, and for the sake of the example you start with $500k per year, my estimates are $300k after taxes, $290k after medical/insurance, $240k after rent/mortgage, $220k after food, $200k after transportation. IMO $50k for rent/mortgage is the only vaguely plausible number you have.

Considering: - health insurance rarely pays for what they do, balance bill you several thousands of dollars every time you have a regular check up for an incurable health issue, and it often requires legal notices and lots of lost work hours on the phone with debt collectors, insurance, hospitals - rent figures don't include my $200 electric bill, $200 water bill, $70 internet bill that comcast decided to charge me $…

> health insurance rarely pays for what they do, balance bill you several thousands of dollars every time you have a regular check up for an incurable health issue, and it often requires legal notices and lots of lost work hours on the phone with debt collectors, insurance, hospitals

Despite what the news will tell you, most SW engineers don't deal with this. In over a decade of working, with lots of interactions with the medical system, not one of these has manifested for me nor for my friends.

> transportation isn't cheap. a rock hit the bottom of my car last month on the highway and it cost $700 to repair. tires wore out and that costs $1000. DMV charge me $600 a year just for the hell of it. insurance costs $200/month. other costs are upwards of $200/month just to use the damn thing. and then there's parking, energy costs, fastrak costs, ...

There's a whole country out there where you don't pay most of these fees. I pay a sixth of what you do to the DMV, and half what you pay for insurance (and I have more than the bare minimum). Repairs? Yeah, sometimes I have to pay a lot. But something on the order of $700 for a single repair is one of those "once every 3-4 years" things for me, for 2 cars.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#36
post #6

> arXiv was founded in 1991 by then-Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Paul Ginsparg, Ph.D. ’81, prior to his return to Cornell in 2001. I had no idea arXiv was that old. I honestly only heard of it and started using it less than 10 years ago.

It was an email listserv before it was a web site.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#37
post #15

Oh that’s great to hear! I really like arXiv and am glad it’s getting more funding! I hope this will enable arXiv to fix some of the long-time issues it has, including the way identity and attribution are handled. For example: the current system assumes people’s names do not change [1], which in particular negatively affects trans authors. This seems like it could be fixed if they had the bandwidth to, and I hope the…

It seems arXiv does support name changes, just not in citations and references[1] This seems… fine? To modify citations would be a strange alteration of history and an intrusion on authorship. If someone quotes this comment and cites it as “bigyikes” and later Dang changes my name, should he also edit the comments that quote me? I don’t think so, but maybe I’m in a minority here. [1]: https://blog.arxiv.org/2021/03/1…

[deleted]

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#38
post #35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering: - health insurance rarely pays for what they do, balance bill you several thousands of dollars every time you have a regular check up for an incurable health issue, and it often requires legal notices and lots of lost work hours on the phone with debt collectors, insurance, hospitals - rent figures don't include my $200 electric bill, $200 water bill, $70 internet bill that comcast decided to charge me $…

> health insurance rarely pays for what they do, balance bill you several thousands of dollars every time you have a regular check up for an incurable health issue, and it often requires legal notices and lots of lost work hours on the phone with debt collectors, insurance, hospitals Despite what the news will tell you, most SW engineers don't deal with this. In over a decade of working, with lots of interactions wit…

> Despite what the news will tell you, most SW engineers don't deal with this. In over a decade of working, with lots of interactions with the medical system, not one of these has manifested for me nor for my friends.

I'm a software engineer, and I dealt with this multiple times a year until I joined a big corp. In all my years of startup life it was the norm to constantly battle the system and have several thousand dollar medical bills thrown at me all the time even though I had insurance. I don't actually talk about it a lot, because there's nobody to talk to who will actually fix the system, short of moving to another country. As I understand it, this is the state of "21st century life in the US".

At a big corp, things are different, insurances are shit scared of big corp HR ditching their policy so they pay for everything.

Re: ArXiv receives $10M for upgrades

#39
post #32
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At normal "middle class" modest levels of life hat's $250K after taxes, $200K after medical expenses, $150K after rent, $100K after food, $50K after transportation, $25K after food ...) 99% of the country doesn't pay $50K per year in rent. Nor $50K per year in food. Nor $50K per year in transportation. Nor an additional $25K per year in food.

Most people pay more than they think they pay. For example they think they pay 2K/mo in rent but that easily blows up to 4K after hidden costs that aren't on the sticker price of the lease. Utilities, utilities of others that landlord charges to you because the lease said they could (and so does every other lease in a 100 mile radius), maintainence and safety issues that landlord doesn't cover, moving costs averaged…

> Most people pay more than they think they pay.

Sorry buddy. I track my finances - since 2007. I rarely look at them, but I have all the data for me. And I'm not frugal.

Do you have yours?

> For example they think they pay 2K/mo in rent but that easily blows up to 4K after hidden costs that aren't on the sticker price of the lease.

This may drive you nuts, but in every place I've rented, I've never paid water, trash, sewage or parking. And I did not seek out these places. I know places do charge for these, but they are locale dependent. In a number of apartments I didn't pay for heat either.

Moving costs? Only paid them once. Otherwise just moved with friends, or had the company pay. OK, I did have to pay U-Haul. You got me there.

No hidden fees. Sorry.

As I said, there's a whole country you haven't seen.

Post reply on HN