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frankc

813 karma · joined July 23, 2010

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frankc··on How to Accept Over-Engineering for What It Really Is
I believe this behavior has been dubbed "Resume Driven Development". I am sure I was guilty of it when I was a junior developer. It extends from over-engineering to also selecting the hot new technologies rather than the tried and true ones. It's actually a pretty rational behavior from a self-interest standpoint. As a manager you have to balance the needs of the projects with the needs of your staff to develop their skill sets. If you don't, they will languish and the good ones will leave. For instance, I will try to work with only 1 new technology at a time in a project, try to limit the super abstractions and over-generalization to libraries, where you might get real benefit from them someday, rather than the applications that come and go.
frankc··on Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test
That's really interesting that he said he was a psychologist. I am probably giving them too much credit, but maybe they rare screening for personality with this test and not for technical knowledge. If you handle a frustrating and difficult situation gracefully, perhaps how many answers you got "correct" is irrelevant?
frankc··on Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers
If it went from 20% men to 80% men in a short period of time...no.
frankc··on Ggplot2 2.2.0 coming soon
I have found this to be an excellent tutorial: http://tutorials.iq.harvard.edu/R/Rgraphics/Rgraphics.html

It explains the use but also the philosophy and design pretty well.

frankc··on NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments
I propose the following system for commenting on news sites:

-comment period open for 3 days after publication -comments are not published until the end of the comment period, then all published at once -you can submit 1 comment per article only

After the comments are published, then a voting/ranking system is enabled for automatic sorting, but nothing is deleted except for spam

This eliminates any back and forth arguments. It would function like an online letters to the editor.

frankc··on Thiel shows why tech billionaires are the new robber barons
Gawker was allowed to say whatever they wanted about the sex tape. No one has ever questioned that. They were not allowed to publish it. That is what they were sued over. I'm pretty absolutionist about free speech myself, which is why it's pretty disappointing that a lot of people are missing this key point.
frankc··on Silicon Valley Asks Mostly for Developers with Degrees
No can take away the value of the education. It's only the credential that lacks value. There is no requirement that you list it on your resume.
frankc··on How gentrification really changes a neighborhood
Many(most?) localities have a cap on property taxes for this very reason. For instance, look at the propery taxes for 3 or 4 million dollar brownstones in Brooklyn; it's usually 5 or 6 thousand per year.
frankc··on When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages
That is true, but this can be just as much an issue in 1 dimension. Consider that the average person has roughly 1 testicle. I think it's about understanding distributions, and joint distributions are a big part of that.
frankc··on Large analysis finds that low-fat diets have low impact
I have a big problem with this line of thinking. It's like saying the key to not having a fever is to keep your temperature down. Maybe you have a high temperature because you just don't have the willpower stop from shaking when you get the chills? Obviously we know that is not the case, but why do we assume that obesity is strictly a willpower issue?
frankc··on Researchers Say Data From an Island in Quebec Proves Humans Are Still Evolving
Another thing to consider beyond which subgroup is reproducing more is to what extent the subgroups are inter-mating. Who is to say we don't diverge into different species completely in the distant future?
frankc··on Cutting Back Sugar Improves Obese Children's Health in Just 10 Days
This is not really the point of the thread and I know what you are trying to say but your example is bad. You don't need to eat any carbohydrates at all. Your body can manufacture enough glucose for your brain on its own.
frankc··on “On Accident” or “By Accident”?
I almost never hear anyone say'on accident' but If I had to guess, it comes from taking sort of a parallel antonym to 'on purpose'. Did you do it 'on purpose'? No, I did it 'on accident'. It sounds weird to my ears but there is some kind of sense to it.
frankc··on Show HN: Visa Explorer – Salaries, lawyers, companies of all H-1B in the USA
it's better than that because social security tax will be capped four months in.
frankc··on When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause
It's probably not, unless you copy very specific things, which is possibly why they seek to discourage it contractually.
frankc··on When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause
They have then doubtlessly been told that they are unenforceable again Joe Employee who wants to work at Subway, but you seem to think that they still do it to trick people from leaving to work at subway. Why don't you think it's useful to discourage people potential competitors from infiltrating their company? I'd bet you it's way more likely to be enforceable in the latter case, against someone looking to copy your operations, if it's enforceable at all.
frankc··on When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause
There are different issues being mixed up here: the fairness of the policy, the enforcibility of the policy and the motivation of the policy. I am only speaking to the motivation of the policy. Obviously we are just trying to read minds here since neither of us has any evidence of what went into their decision-making process. I am simply telling you from my first-hand knowledge in this industry, that 1) infiltration by potential competitors is common 2) it is a real concern 3) a non-compete provides some mitigation in terms discouraging the practice and providing a possible avenue of enforcement (though it might not actually be enforceable)

The blanket way OP has been dismissed really has to do with the rustled jimmies about the fairness of the policy and does not reflect well on the quality of the replies.

frankc··on When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause
Why do you think that Jimmy Johns is concerned with the life of an average minimum wage worker? Perhaps they are concerned with the outliers and are happy to saddle the average workers with a non-compete just the same. The lack of insight in this thread is shocking. No one said the policy is fair or justified. The point is to think through why they might have the policy in the first place and people seem to be too outraged to do that. It's disappointing, really.
frankc··on When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause
The real threat is not that fast-food worked gets job at Jimmy Johns, decides sandwich business is great, decides to open competitor.

The threat is potential competitor decides he want to open sandwich shop. Already has the capital in place, doesn't have the experience. Decided to get a job at Jimmy Johns to learn how they operate. I have no idea why people dismiss this like it's crazy. If you were already set on opening a hamburger shop/chain, you wouldn't stand a couple of months at minimum wage at McDonalds to see how a successful McDonalds franchise operates?

frankc··on When the Guy Making Your Sandwich Has a Noncompete Clause
Of course the vast majority of them are no threat, but you should not assume every fast food employee is in it for the pay. If you are committed to opening a hamburger shop, you go and get a job at a hamburger shop for a few months to get some experience, see how they operate, maybe even pick up some ideas in terms of recipes, though usually its more learning the operations rather than stealing recipes. I know for a fact that this is a real thing because I know people who have done it in the taco truck business. If you are opening a hamburger shop without significant hamburger shop experience and you don't do this, you are a moron.

Doesn't mean blanket non-compete is fair, but to completely dismiss the OPs point it at best naive.

frankc··on After Big Bet, Hedge Fund Pulls the Levers of Power
The innuendo that interests group and congressman switch their allegiance based on who has paid the most is pretty yucky, but also not Ackman's fault. But no, the general running of a campaign to bring down a terrible company is not a bad thing at all. I was alluding to some other comments here that used the word 'disgusting'.
frankc··on After Big Bet, Hedge Fund Pulls the Levers of Power
Ackman has said he will donate any money he personally makes from this.
frankc··on After Big Bet, Hedge Fund Pulls the Levers of Power
This might be the most comically wrong piece of journalism I've read in my entire life. Ackman should be given a medal for what he's doing to this snake-oil selling pyramid scheme. He has even disavowed any personal profit from his investment. He hasn't made any secret of what he's doing. Short selling is a hugely important market mechanism that allows these fraudulant companies to be sussed out. If all the lobbying is disgusting to you, be disgusted with the system that requires it, not Ackman for playing the game. You don't think Herbalife is doing the same lobbying? I almost can't believe this article was published in the New York Times and not on a late night infomercial selling false hope to the downtrodden.
frankc··on Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties
Yahoo has a good fantasy sports platform. They might be the leader there though espn may have passed them by now.
frankc··on Quant Strategies Implemented by the Quantopian Community
Total returns versus the benchmark is not the only important measure. For instance, the minimum variance strategy visibly underperforms its benchmark but it has way lower volatility and fewer drawdowns. These are more important in the real world where you are likely to be heavily levered.
frankc··on Why do dynamic languages make it more difficult to maintain large codebases?
They have thousands of apps. Maybe 10s of thousands by now. It's been many years since I worked there. It's a pretty unique setup.
frankc··on Monty Hall problem explained visually
The way I explain is to expand it but also change the frame of reference to so its clear that the host is an adversary. Imagine we play a game called "who has the Ace of Diamonds"? I deal you one card face down and I deal me 51 cards. I look at my cards and then choose 50 of them to show you, none of which are the Ace of Diamonds. Do you want to keep your card or take the one I have not turned over?
frankc··on How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes
Actually, I would characterize this as the removal of dead code that brought down the system, which is basically the opposite.
frankc··on How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes
It's most likely a giant C++ server or set of servers. It's not really that surprising that old code is in there. One way releases are handled in these kinds of places is to roll out new features on some kind of external flag system, perhaps shared memory flags or some other mechanism. This way if something goes wrong with that one feature, you can disable it by flipping the switch, rather than having to back out the software, which would likely cause downtime during market hours, a major problem.

What sometimes happens when you want to decommission features is you just turn the flags off rather than remove the code. There's an obvious allure to this as you have already tested the on/off functionality of the switch when you did the original roll-out so you can avoid having to test whether you have removed the code correctly. It sounds like in this case they removed the code and repurposed the switch that disabled said code (it may really be a shared memory system and they are running out of flags), but they fucked it up. The old code was still there on some servers and the switch was turned back in intent to enable the new feature it was re-purposed for, re-enabling this old code.

frankc··on How to lose $172,222 a second for 45 minutes
It is peg, not keg. Peg refers to an order where the limit price is automatically adjusted to some benchmark. For instance, you always want to be 1 penny away from the best bid. I don't know specifically what "power peg" is, though.
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