andjd

Hi Matt,

Asking for a take-home challenge is a big ask without any form of human interaction first. Are you open to me asking a few questions over email or a video chat so I can gauge if your company would be a good fit for me?

How long have you been in your current role? You can talk with your boss, and let them know you'd like to go down to part time. No guarantees that they'll say yes, but if you don't ask, the answer guaranteed to be "no".

"junction" is pulling the heavy weight here. The station is right before the tracks branch, so the purpose of the station is probably to let riders transfer from service on the one branch to service on the other.

One important thing to know is that the venues/artists often get a kickback of part of the Ticketmaster fees. In other words, the artists, venues, producers, and Ticketmaster are in cahoots to fleece fans for as much money as possible, and Ticketmaster is willing to play the 'bad guy' and take the blame for high prices, and they get to keep a bigger slice of the overall pie than they would in a highly competitive market for ticketing services because they provide that "service".

Take away this dynamic, and the face price of tickets is going to go up, and the total price is unlikely to change substantially.

Personally, I think this would still be a net plus for society. In order for market forces to work well, you need pricing transparency.

> Almost all innovation comes from this type of vertical integration.

Really? That's a bold claim. Having a large number of companies that are able to offer competing products and services tends to lead to innovation.

I would be curious how this compares to a more-or-less off-the-shelf text compression algorithm like gzip. My guess is that over the entire database, this would be more efficient than the OP's ad-hoc implementation or any alternative mentioned here.

Serious question:

The article points out that:

`C is far removed from modern computer architectures: there have been 50 years of innovation since it was created in the 1970’s.`

Is there a C-like language that uses abstractions based on current ARM or x86 processors? i.e. something above assembly that learning would help us understand how these modern processors actually work?

I have not personally used it, but Flexispot has a 4-leg adjustable base: https://www.flexispot.com/flexispot-4-leg-standing-desk-e7pl...

Even if this is not a foolproof way to avoid flying on a 737 max, using it will provide a very _visible_ signal to the airlines. If they're losing ticket sales because people don't want to fly on a 737, the airlines will find a way to adapt. Even a marginal change of a few percentage points can shift a route from profitable to unprofitable.

Airbus is already outselling Boeing 2-1. If you're looking at a 5-10 year lead time anyways, they can expand production to eat further into Boeing's share if that's what the airlines demand.

I wonder how this compares with just 3D printing in concrete, like Icon. It seems a little bit like putting a round peg into a square hole to have a robot fastidiously recreate a building technique designed around humans, whereas doing it in a way optimized for robots can be easier and more flexible. Kinda how roombas don't vacuum like a human.

https://www.iconbuild.com

So, there is a defensible reason for this carve-out.

For generations now, video game consoles have had very aggressive cryptographic pairing of parts, done in the name of securing the hardware against hacking by the console owner. This is done to prevent mods to enable cheating and piracy. Given that consoles are often sold at a loss with profits recouped on game sales, there's a justification for this.

Providing replacement parts for game consoles would also require tools to re-pair the replacement parts. If these tools need to be provided to independent repair shops, there's approximately a 100 % chance of them getting leaked and destroying the security of the console.

I'm not going to say that this is a good or a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that there's a real reason for lawmakers to treat game consoles different than phones or computers, and that it isn't necessarily a sign of corruption.

I agree that owning the DSLR niche is a good strategy for Pentax. Ricoh hasn't given them the budget to make digital autofocus systems that are competitive with the other big brands, and it's likely hard to justify doing so with their market share.

There's an interesting world where Ricoh sells Pentax to Samsung or Apple or Google. Taking cutting edge computational photography from smartphones and applying it to a full-size camera with the sensors and optics to match could be really compelling. Pentax has good brand value and the optical expertise to make this credible to photographers, and there'd be growth potential in just taking market share from other players.

>I understand that the failure rate is high just like startups and movies.

I'd suggest that startups and movies have a much higher probability of 'success' than minting a hit song that can generate 1 billion streams. While there are a few stories of hit songs that organically break through, the vast majority are promoted _hard_ by the labels using resources (both money and connections) that are hard to amass outside the major labels.

It is an axiom that today, artists make all of their money touring. But even live performance (particularly at the largest venues) is dominated by monopolistic players. Without having a large number of headliner artists, you won't have the negotiating power to get favorable rates, and they'll eat you for breakfast too.

> What year will I see the legacy automakers utilize their advantages to sell more electric vehicles than Tesla?

<troll>Ford is selling thousands of F150 EVs a month. How many Cybertrucks has Tesla sold?</troll>

Yes. Go has a culture that avoids using libraries (the axiom is "a little copying is better than a little dependency" (see, e.g. https://www.efekarakus.com/2021/09/23/a-little-copying-is-be...)

I'm reading between the lines here, but my guess is that you're interested in the coffee role because you're passionate about coffee. It also sounds like you've looked at the pay cut, and decided you can live with it. (Take the long view ... if you make a career of this job, will you be able to afford to live where you want to? Will you be able to comfortably retire?

I suspect that if after a year or two you decide that this more manual work isn't the life improver you expect, you should still be able to get another job in your current field. It might be a little harder than if you were to look for a new job without the gap, but will be much easier than breaking into it in the first place.

You can also talk to your manager -- they might be able to offer you an unpaid leave of absence for a while which would give you the space to try the new job while keeping your options open.

I'm familiar with the finance industry in NY which has a heavy work-hard-play-hard culture; or put another way, they have demanding expectations, but pay you enough for you to tolerate it. I assume London is similar. Switching to a similar sales role in a different industry might be an alternative that could work for you as well. It might be less of a pay cut, but give you more capacity to pursue things you're passionate outside of work.

I think you're missing the point. Sure, the bands did it because it sounded the way they wanted, and may not have had any deeper justification. But a music theorist is going analyze the music to try and understand _why_ it sounds the way it does. Trying to fit it into idiomatic in the traditions of jazz or European classical music is one tool for doing this. It may not be the best tool, but it does provide some insight.

A few years ago, working at a startup, I tried to convince our founder to pay for SO talent. IIRC, there was a minimum 6-12 month commitment, and while not crazy expensive, it was too much money to lay down on a lark. Since there was no way to 'try before you buy', there was no way to know in advance if the outlay would pay off.

It was a great experience for job hunters, but that value was not apparent to employers.

Compare this to LinkedIn, where you can post a job ad for free, and pay a relatively small amount to 'promote' your ad. Do this, and you immediately see the quantity and quality of applicants increase, so it's easy to make the case to pay, even if in the end you'd pay linked in more than SO talent's upfront costs.

That SO talent didn't have a self-service, pay-as-you-go option was a major miss, especially for an audience of tech companies, where this kind of business model is common, if not expected.

All of the examples cited use a repudiation of the backing of currency or bonds with gold or silver. I don't think I'd call that a default. I know that there is a political minority that still thinks that breaking away from the gold standard was a mistake, but that's not the same thing as straight up refusing to pay back holders of government debt.

It's fine for automotive companies to maximize their profit margin. If they have smaller margins than google, that's probably because google is nearly a monopoly, and there's fierce competition in the automotive space.

A key difference here is a car is a product that we buy and own. It doesn't cost Mercedes an ongoing cost every month to support these hardware features they change a monthly fee to unlock, and so the monthly fee doesn't provide additional value. To the extent it does, it's because the manufacturers are artifically limiting their product. Compare this to, say, and Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. With that, you're getting access to cloud services that costs Adobe to keep running, it also gets you access to new features and security updates. Whether or not you like Adobe's business model, this provides a justification for the subscription model that is simply absent in the automotive space.

Going back to the competition point, even if you just look at the monthly fee as cost shifting, it lets the manufacturers advertise a price that's lower than what the consumer is going to pay.

[citation needed] Denim is usually dyed with natural or synthetic indigo. The quip about the navy refers to Methylene Blue's pharmacological use as an antimalarial drug. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49831954_Lest_we_fo...

This is potentially an advantage for the Colorado bill, which (I think?) specifically targets right-to-repair for farmers/farm equipment. When you only target one industry, that industry can't say "give us an exception, the bill will still be fine."

It is really hard to recommend getting a Leaf in 2023, at least in the US, unless you _only_ plan to charge at home. The Leaf still uses the Chademo plug, (I believe it's the last car sold in the US that does so) where as CCS is becoming the standard here. The Chevy Bolt is otherwise a similar car for a similar price.

I have the opposite complaint. I don't need 300 miles of range, 100 would be more than enough. I can rent a traditional car if I need to take a road trip. But I do want a nice interior, and other "premium" features, such as a heads-up display, lane keeping assist, 360-degree camera, etc.

For the car you're describing, check out the Chevy Bolt EV/EUV. It's the closest car to what you're asking for, although it doesn't have a 300 mile range. It may be hard though, Chevy is moving all they can make.

> This seems like a project an entrepreneur ought to try and take on.

In a market where there is an affordability crisis, why would we want to add a tech entrepreneur as a middle man who will want to take 30% off the top for "owning" the relationship between customer and provider (like DoorDash, etc)? You see a little of this with corporate day care centers (e.g. Bright Horizons), and these operations charge a substantial premium over independent providers. They just have a higher cost structure, and greater demands to make returns for their investors. In NYC, the cost of sending just one child to one of these is close to hiring a nanny.

I agree that it's probably not reasonable to call wait-lists a market failure when having excess capacity in the market would require rates to increase to a level the market is unable or unwilling to bare.

Location: Columbus, OH, USA

Remote: Remote (or Hybrid in Columbus)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Ruby, Python, Swift, Kotlin, Elixr, JS, React, SQL, AWS, many more...

Résumé/CV:http://andrew.defran.co/assets/TechResume%202023%201-page.pd...

Email: andrew@defran.co

I have 7 years experience at successful startups leading teams and driving projects from ideation through to delivery & maintenance. I have full-stack experience building distributed, scalable, and robust back-ends and delightful mobile and web clients. I enjoy working cross-functionally with other teams and stakeholders to develop objectives, timelines, and plans. I’m looking for full-time staff/principal/lead/architect or hands-on engineering manager roles.

Note also that that the act requires that the ships be flagged in the US and staffed by 75% US workers. This means they're subject to US minimum wage laws, and there's a smaller labor pool to draw from, so there are additional costs that raise the price of each voyage, not just a higher upfront capital cost.

Additionally, since there are far fewer firms that can compete for these routes, I would expect that the margins on Jones act compliant shippers is much higher than the industry norm.

I think it's a fair criticism of the jones act that it hasn't delivered on its goals of keeping a vibrant commercial shipbuilding and shipping industry in the US for the purpose of supporting our military in case of war. Is seven active shipyards sufficient if we need to mobilize a war effort? Do ships matter as much to logistics in modern warfare? Is our domestic production capable of building trans-oceanic capable ships when international shipping is not protected?

Similarly, the costs of the act are not evenly distributed, with Puerto Rico and Hawaii particularly burdened by higher shipping costs.

  Location: New York City, NY
  Remote: Strong preference
  Willing to relocate: to Columbus, OH only
  Résumé/CV: https://andrew.defran.co/assets/resume2022.pdf
  Email: andrew\u0040defran.co

I am a product-minded full-stack mobile developer (iOS, Android, Backend) looking for a leadership role where I can directly impact technical direction, prioritization, and product decisions. This could take the form of a tech lead, engineering manager, or senior/principal developer.

In my most recent role, I brought Stationhead, a social radio platform, from stealth mode to Series A, outcompeting well-funded startups (Clubhouse) and big-tech plays (Amazon Amp, Spotify Greenroom). Highlights from my work at Stationhead include: * building our first revenue-generating feature, owning it from ideation and architecture design through to implementation and delivery; * leading the team bringing Android development in-house to improve the quality of the app, user experience, and increase the tempo of developing new features.

Skills, technologies, & keywords: Ruby, Python, Swift, Kotlin, Java, Elixr, Android, iOS, React, vanilla JavaScript, SQL (Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, Athena), Redis, Elasticsearch, AWS(Lambda, EC2, S3, Route53, ELB), Netlify, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Git, GitHub, CircleCI, HTTP, REST, WebSockets, Kafka, AMQP, Agile Development, TDD, Documentation, Sprint & Quarterly Planning, strategic planning, estimation, feasibility analysis, Cross-functional collaboration, Mentoring, PR reviews, Pair Coding

The USA has a world-class _Freight_ rail network, and almost all existing track in the country is owned by the freight operators, who manage the track to optimize it for freight operations. In many cases, they are openly hostile to passenger service on their tracks.

On top of this, most cities in the USA were built (or destroyed and rebuilt) for private cars being the primary mode of transportation. In Europe, one of the benefits of taking the train over an airplane is that the train stations will often be in a walkable city center with a good connection to public transit. In the USA, outside of a handful of older cities (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston . . .), the train station drops you off in the middle of nowhere, usually with far less connections and services than the airport has. When compared to air travel, intercity rail travel is often slower, less convenient, less frequent, and more expensive.

Even with the Acela/northwest corridor, flights are often cheaper than rail, so it is the convenience of the downtown stations and connections to public transit that drive people to take the train over airplanes. It's no coincidence that the major cities on the route (DC, Philiadelphia, NYC, Boston) are also cities with some of the best metro networks in the country.