edc117

And further, how do credit card or other lending companies avoid this (if at all)? Is there additional information or red flags they collect that LendingClub does not?

Excellent question, does anyone know? I'd like to know the answer as well.

I agree completely, but the very first thing they'd do would be figure out how to turn it off or muffle it. Bad drivers are not the type to take feedback well or let things like the rules get in the way.

Fantastic speech, thank you very much for sharing.

Actually, the main problem is stopping greedy individuals from capturing the majority of benefit gained from the automation, or debt-slaving their fellow humans via rent extraction. Aside from those, I agree with you completely.

Likewise, I'm amazed at how bad it is. Screen sharing issues, copy paste issues, lock ups (while everything else continues working fine), problems with not saving old messages properly, can't send messages because they are too long (really!?) ....on and on. Microsoft has been screwing up messengers for 20? years now - yes, I know different teams - and still, every new release or client is literally 1 step forward, 1 step back.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see this was stopped, but how long until the DEA is simply drinking from the same firehose the NSA is? We've already heard all about parallel construction, and now there's talk about sharing the information the NSA sucks up. Why isn't any of this going through Congress or being given proper oversight?

Isn't anyone else furious about this? The entire system was built in secret and without the consent of the American people, at huge expense, with little-to-no oversight (secret courts), and now is being expanded to share our data among every 'security' agency in the nation (again without our consent)?

It still blows my mind we've spend such huge sums of money on what is effectively a very iffy interpretation of the law, designed to violate civil rights on a mass scale. The other top story in the news is how another security agency is essentially trying to get easy access to people's private data (phones) whenever needed.

Agree 100%. Golden rule: Never give off the cuff estimates (even if you're sure).

Are you saying this is not how it is? There is a lot of downvoting of anti-lobbying sentiment here, but I haven't seen a reasonable explanation as to why yet, and I'm curious. Everything I've read tends to indicate that it's a net negative for society when well funded, non-objective parties essentially write the laws.

This is kinda cool. At first I thought 'ugh, bottom feeder, must be cheap knockoff crap', but the more I read about the business the more respect I got for how he runs it. The fast feedback loop, the quick product iteration...he's going to eat more than one big name's margins. Thanks for sharing.

How is the lowering action? Does it go down smoothly? I have to admit this looks pretty promising, I might have to see if I can find one.

If I log into client infrastructure at my job (large corp), my activities are monitored. Audits are always kept of mission-critical data, and access to it closely watched. I wouldn't be surprised if my work machine contained software to monitor various aspects of my work. Frankly, I wouldn't want it any other way - as developers, we can do a lot of very expensive damage, and those logs are a way of proving you conducted yourself like a professional at all times.

Maybe this isn't common in SV, but if you work for a large organization who needs to be able to answer a client when they ask 'what happened at x on y', you better believe things are in place to make it happen.

I don't believe it's unreasonable to expect the same from police.

Seconding this question, this is baffling to me. I could see maybe getting through the door with some less-saavy clients and collecting a pay check for a few weeks, but I can't imagine that working for long. How long are you typically employed? What happens if you encounter projects you are unable to solve, is it a fake it until you make it sort of thing?

This is a very interesting mixture of two ideas I hadn't really considered before. Has this been discussed or brought up here previously? Is the only real obstacle to this adoption? It seems like an extreme transparency, but the lack of a central authority while maintaining reliability is very compelling.

Out of curiosity, how old were you when you started? I didn't really begin my career until 28 or so (35 now, undergrad and grad CS degree at a pretty good university) and I've been toying with the idea of moving to something else. Still trying to find an interesting niche that really speaks to me, though I keep my skills current.

I do fairly well for compensation but the way the market has been, I feel like I'm short-changing myself by not taking a shot at a career with the really big players, and I'd love to retire within the next 5-10 years as well. (obviously I've started saving already)

Good on you, this is a great gesture. Hope they take you up on it.

I'm guessing here (no numbers to back it up), but likely the reason you don't see more of this is safe drivers would sign up for it, and in insurance the safe/low risk drivers are the ones already subsidizing the crazies and making it work. I took part in something similar for my insurance company (Progressive) and received a whopping 6% discount for safe driving.

Show of hands: who here would want to be the admin for a network you know is going to be routinely infected with any number of malware or rootkits.

When you throw terms like 'the liberal left' into the discussion, it really derails any point you're trying to make. I'll be the first to admit I don't really watch much political discourse, but I've seen plenty of this behavior from pretty much everyone. IMO maybe, but stay objective.

That's a negative way to look at it, though I understand what you're saying. I think it comes back to a central point of the article:

'You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food.'

I doubt anyone starts out their day looking to be a failure.

You sound very ignorant. I don't mean this in a cruel or insulting way; you just sound like someone who has no idea what that kind of automation entails, the hard work and sweat and physical and mental labor that has gotten us to the point where that automation is viable for a (comparatively) small number of things.

The working class quite literally feed you, clothe you, and keep you safe at night. Get out into the world, learn more about how things are created and whose shoulders you're standing on when you're seeing this golden future of yours.

Disclaimer: I tried to get through the article, I really did, but there was just too much fluff.

My father had a stroke about two years ago that left him without much use of his left arm. Has anyone seen any success from this or other non-standard treatments? It's very discouraging being told by your doctor that the functionality is gone and you'll never get it back, no matter how hard you work.

What kind of disgusting person thought it was alright to go this far? To destroy what was clearly someone's life work because she didn't like his joke, or some random thing he said? If they really feel he was in the wrong, push for censure or a penalty of some kind; this is far out of proportion.

Wait until some of you start getting the 300gb data caps Comcast is trying to force down people's throats. They are gracefully allowing me to have my old un-metered service back for 30$ more a month.

300gb hasn't been a reasonable number for years now, and with more people leaving cable, this is clearly an attempt to monetize cord cutters further. Disgusting company.

I read it a bit differently: these companies are doing so well, they're capturing a huge amount of their respective markets, to the point where they can easily afford to raise the salary on even their lowest paid employees. Likewise on the other end of the spectrum, companies on razor-thin margins are stuck pushing people towards minimum wage salaries.

You could pull a couple of conclusions from this article:

1. The patent system is a mess, and is helping drive huge profits for a small number of very large companies, as well as hindering others from competing or entering that market. They note the biggest examples are in tech and healthcare, which is not surprising.

2. The 'best' or 'smartest' workers congregating in a few very large companies that can afford to pay them very well is no surprise. Add in #1 and employees have less reason to leave and create competing services or businesses.

3. The ability of technology to be so easily replicated, plus #1 and #2, means we see few, if any, challengers to certain established markets.

All this is great...if you work at one of these companies.

I know this is a UK related thing, but I've honestly felt this way about the US lately as well (and the situation isn't much different). Not sure where to look, everyone seems to have their problems dealing with the disruption and possibilities technology is bringing.

Definitely need to plan a trip to see one or two of these with a few friends.

I'd love to see something like this done with the Occulus or some similar VR platform, though I doubt it'd have the thrill of the actual experience.

Just curious, what do you mean by 'free money'? Most loans I've seen over the last few years vary from anywhere between 2.5%+ (houses) to 17% (credit cards). I don't think anyone would think of those as 'free'.

I would think the interest rates going up would actually encourage people to save more.

This is an underrated comment. The data is right there; even if you disagree with the author's conclusions, it's pretty hard to argue he's incorrect about the correlation between knowledge and age. Here's to hoping I'll be one of those older programmers in 15 years.