TDL

Effectively enslaving people to prove a point won't help and will probably make people resentful to the point that was trying to be made.

This is very neat, I hope I will have time to dig into this at some later date. Great job!

Aren't some BigCos a good place to do research? Have you tried that approach?

SEEKING WORK

  Location: Chicago
  Remote: Yes
  Email: t.lekkas[at]practalis[dot]com

Happy to help non-technical founders solve their problems.

Experienced Python/Django developer focused on web application development and data products. Experienced in client facing project/product management roles. Experienced in using & implementing technology in order to resolve client/stake-holder issues. Experienced in managing technical teams in order to deliver on stated objectives.

SEEKING WORK

  Location: Chicago
  Remote: Yes
  Email: t.lekkas[at]practalis[dot]com

Happy to help non-technical founders solve their problems.

Experienced Python/Django developer focused on web application development and data products. Experienced in client facing project/product management roles. Experienced in using & implementing technology in order to resolve client/stake-holder issues. Experienced in managing technical teams in order to deliver on stated objectives.

"If you're right 51% of the time when you invest you're going to get rich."

I completely disagree with this statement and I've seen it (or a variation of it) many times over the years. You can have a win rate of 99%, but still lose money if the 1% losing trades/investments wipe out all your wins. The win rate isn't what people should be looking, but the profit expectancy. Other than that, I agree with what your are saying, particularly #2. I don't think the majority of people should be actively trading/investing, they don't have the time to build the expertise and will probably not invest the time in learning about their bias.

Agreed

There are other accounts/instruments that can replace public pensions. The reality is that politicians over promise on pensions and create unsustainable obligations for future generations.

I agree with you. I think pensions are a mistake in general, however, many municipalities, counties, and states are locked in to existing pensions schemes. I am for doing away with pensions in the future, but the existing obligations need to be funded appropriately.

Being from Chicago I say it's a good thing to pay down the pension obligations. Pension obligations can cause a lot of problems in the future. Although I don't believe governments should be growing their budgets aggressively, squaring gov obligations is a good thing.

Just curious, how far did you get into the UW specialization? The first course is certainly rudimentary. Also important to note, after the intro course you don't have to use Graph Lab Create and you can use pandas, numpy, scikit. I have seen people in the forums use R as well. I thought that the regression course & classification course were very thorough, although it does feel as though some of the programming exercises are "hand holdy". Overall, I think it is a solid specialization to get into ML, it's not meant for those experienced with ML or AI.

I'm sure others in this thread will have some good advice on the math front. You will want to be comfortable with statistics (as it seems you already are aware), but you will also want to be comfortable with linear algebra as well. Andrew Ng's course has a quick tutorial on linear algebra, you might also want to check codingthematrix.com. Khand Academy is a decent place for stats, probability, linear algebra, & calculus. I know there has been some criticism of K.A. in the past, but I think it's a good resource to get an intro level understanding of those topics.

As an intro to ML, I am a fan of Courseras ML specialization that is done by the University of Washington (https://www.coursera.org/specializations/machine-learning). It's free, except for the capstone, and the instructors do a good job of giving both theoretical & practical grounding in various aspects of ML.

I am sure others will have good suggestions as well. Good luck.

"There are many, many positive software cults in our world today."

Care to name some? I don't believe cultivating religious fervor over anything and rejecting information that disconfirms or challenges your beliefs as a positive thing.

Not sure where he got his data, but you might want to try https://www.quandl.com/

They have a free, community, curated data set of ~3200 stocks.

Radley Balko has been writing about asset forfeiture for about a decade. He has done more to bring this issue to the medias attention than John Oliver has. It is completely unfair to claim that no one knew what was going until someone famous began to popularize it more.

Not that there is anything wrong with John Oliver hopping on the band wagon, that's good thing.

My belief why many people are calling this cycle a bubble is because they experienced two big bubbles almost back to back. I think much of the bubble calling over the past few years reeks of recency bias and people have been burned, not just once, but twice.

I have no idea if we are in a bubble or not, I'm sure some segments in tech are bubbles. I think focusing too much on whether or not we are in a bubble is a distraction of doing the work in front of us, whatever that work may be. Don't get distracted by the hype of bulls or the bears.

I said we have overvalued the certifications/diplomas, not that they don't have value. I also never implied that schools were meant to be perfect.

My point is that we have zeroed in on the certification/diploma too much and have begun (until recently) paying too much attention to whether the cert has been attained as opposed to what it is supposed to represent. The reason why I believe this happened is because it is much easier to quantify a diploma or any other certification, "Oh you graduated! That must mean X." It is harder to ascertain whether or not a person who gained a diploma or cert actually deserves it or learned anything in the process.

If I was in your position I would begin looking for a position in another company in a similar role (it's not clear what type of projects your are taking on.) It's great that you have been provided with mentorship & support, but, working 10 hours a day is not sustainable over the long term. This company sounds like many others in consulting; get bodies in chairs, sign on more business than can be handled, and crack the whip.

Start out attending technical meetups (the language your are writing in or a topic your are interested in, preferebly both) in your locale. Build your professional network and don't feel bad about asking if a company/startup is hiring. I would also start saving every last dime in case you get to the point where you are completely burnt out and just have to quit (not ideal, but might happen.) You are probably going to have to slog through a bit more before you find an opportunity.

Reading some of the comments here makes it clear that we (the global we) have way overvalued the piece of paper that we get upon graduation and have largely ignored the process, habits, & knowledge that said piece of paper once stood for. The problem with all these developing nations & cheating isn't one of moral failing, but the fact that a cred is valued more than what the cred is supposed to stand for. I would argue that this has to do more with the venality of Western universities (and our superior marketing) that it has to do with much else.

We (Westerners) tell the world, and ourselves, all you need is a piece of paper and all will be well. This piece of propaganda plays a larger role than any perceived moral inferiorities among the developing peoples of the world.

Good to know Keith Richards isn't dead yet, didn't realize he was a startup.

http://iskeithrichards.deadyet.lol/

This is absolutely false. The Tea Party coalesced after the bank bailouts.

The movement coalesced around the bank bailouts. There was growing dissatisfaction with the Bush neo-cons, more around economic policies then foreign invasions (I would characterize the Tea Party as confident in American power, but ambivalent to slightly negative on foreign invasions.) I imagine that those who identified with the Tea Party are now disgusted with the neo-cons, but I don't believe there was a clear (or at least well articulated) aversion to them at the beginning.

This may be helpful, depending on the geography of the rural area:

https://www.ubnt.com/

Tea Party conservatives are not necessarily neo-cons.

Any suggestions which subreddits I should be looking at?

"let alone how it was upvoted so highly.

The reason I upvoted this post was with the hope that comments like this would be made. I'm still solidifying my grasp of ML/math topics so when these posts come up I always hope there are commenters with more experience/education in these topics to further enlighten me.

I don't understand why it's necessary to make this political. What these guys did is wrong, I see no need to paint those have similar politics with same brush as this person.

"2 years of college..."

This bit right here might need some clarification. I believe the current U.S. average time in college is more than 4 years. I'm guessing you were motivated to get your degree as quickly as possible. I don't believe young adults in developed nations have the same motivation. 8 years in the real world will disabuse anyone of a desire to spend more time then necessary in school.

I'm right there with you. There is a lot of FUD on both sides of this issue, it would be nice to know what the reality of tech interviewing is. I can't seem to get passed perfunctory phone screens right now (if I even get those.)

"We should reinstate the draft."

No, we should not.