harterrt

I've worked from home for ~2 years now. Mostly in Pittsburgh, but for the last 5 months I've been working from rural Vermont. I'm not afraid that my social skills are decaying. Actually, I think they may be improving.

The biggest change I've noticed is that I have more social energy to spend with people I choose. Before, I'd exhaust all of my social energy at the office. For me this is great - I feel richer for having more interaction with people who aren't techies. Small talk isn't about the newest javascript framework or crypto currency. I have to work harder to clearly explain what I'm working on and why it's important and why it's interesting. Good social exercise.

I still spend plenty of time communicating with my co-workers. I feel like I'm less likely to fall into the office group-think now that I have a chance to tune out and think though problems independently. I'm more likely to say what I mean and ask for what I want. I think I speak more clearly now that I need to pump my thoughts through a narrower conduit (email or video chat).

I use bookmark keywords [1] to register new search engines.

[1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

Will this actually cause producers to remove ads? Isn't there just an alternative monetization now? In other words, is there no way for a content producer to 'double dip' and earn from both Brave's payments and ads that work around Brave's ad blockers?

Right, but maybe markdown isn't the right markup language for presentations.

This may be the correct way to add color in markdown, but it feels unnatural for the tool. I'm glad xkr brought this up it; it feels like hidden complexity.

Where in Vermont do you recommend? I just went remote in the past year and I plan on roadtripping to VT soon for a week.

> "The demand in the job market is not always captured by the highest salary,"

I don't see how we can have the combination of low salary, high demand, and a deficit of supply. It sounds like the proper economic adjustment here is to increase salary. I imagine the only reason the adjustment hasn't happened is because wages are sticky.

Hmm, that's really interesting - "toilet cleaners" in particular stuck out in my mind. There will still be folks doing this job, but I imagine they'll be paid more.

Money becomes less valuable the more you have. For example, your first $1000 dollars buys food and shelter, while your next $1000 buys nice food and a bigger house. With BI, everyone should have the basics covered so any earned income will buy luxuries.

Depends on what you're trying to forecast and what you want to use the forecast for. If you're just curious, go for it. If you're planning on trading NG futures, well... go for it, but expect to be disappointed.

I'd bet the biggest hurdle you'll face is getting quality data.

I generate static pages using Pelican and host them on Github.

It's a great way to avoid lock-in. Your content is kept in Markdown. Pelican is a joy to use. It's all python, so it's possible to understand, hack, and extend if you'd like.

I don't think the issue is that it's hard to tax savings. Printing money is a pretty effective tax.

I think the real issue is the money multiplier effect. If I spend a dollar, it's spent and re-spent. This means that it gets to be taxed many times.

For clarity, I wrote up my thoughts here [0]. The issue I pointed out applies to Federal as well as State taxes. By my calculations, it looks like it's clearly not worth it to move to the Bay Area.

[0] http://blog.harterrt.com/is-moving-to-the-bay-area-worth-it....

Thanks!

While I agree with the others calling this a type of sampling bias, I've seen this type of error frequently enough that I think it deserves a more specific name.

This could also be an artifact of the metric. I call this the "Geico" fallacy.

Geico advertises that "People who switch to Geico save 15% or more". Notice that people who would lose money by switching to Geico should rarely switch. Accordingly, this metric will usually be positive.

Consider that people moving to a new city for a job may need more incentive to move.

Thanks for adding the note on the tax difference! That doesn't address my point though.

If the salary difference of $33k is the difference between gross salary, that $33k is going to be taxed at the marginal tax rate. My guess at a marginal tax rate would be ~40%. Accordingly, that $33k becomes closer to $20k after tax.

Edit: to clarify, consider a Seattle salary of $100k and a Bay Area salary of $133k. The take-home salary for each location would be:

  Seattle : $100k*(1-0.4) = $60k 
  Bay Area: $130k*(1-0.4) = $78k

Leaving $19.8k in additional income to cover the median rent increase of $18k annually.

A renter can get get roommates or landlords can subdivide properties further. Renters may also consider increasing their commute time.

It looks like the salary differential of $33k listed in the article is gross earnings. After taxes this would just barely cover the rent differential of $1.5k/mo ($18k/year). Note that this is the best case scenario according to their estimates.

What troubles me is the use of median rent to compare housing costs. As rent increases, renters are likely to downsize offsetting some of the rent increase. I'd be willing to bet Seattle renters are able to get more space for the area's median rental. Accordingly, the salary increase probably doesn't cover the rent increase for a similar sized home.

Really? Voice input is faster for entering text. However, I can't imagine editing text by voice would ever be faster than using a keyboard.

Agreed.

The time saving isn't as important as avoiding frustration in your tools. Stubbing your toe on silly problems like trailing commas breaks flow and makes exploring less fun.

In my experience, these commas don't add any real meaning to the human readers. Will it really obfuscate the code for a future reader? I can imagine it can look unfamiliar and consequentially grate someone's nerves. Reminds me of the arguments around R's "<-" vs "=".

I agree with the sentiment for most code, but I doubt I spend as much time reading my SQL queries as I spend writing and refactoring.

Leading with commas makes it easier to refactor if you're prototyping a query. You're less likely to cause an error when removing a column from:

  SELECT 
      first
    , second
    , third
  ...

than from

  SELECT 
    first,
    second,
    third
  ...

Which becomes:

  SELECT 
    first,
    second,
  ...

Is this definitely a good thing?

It seems like Rome has provided a cash stipend to immigrants, but the local government has intervened and restricted the immigrant's purchasing choices. For example, this could be bad for the recipients if local shopkeepers had significantly higher prices than online retailers or if they charged a premium for extending this credit.

I see the benefits as well, which seem to be well represented in the other comments so far. I'd be interested to see whether this actually helps everyone in practice.

It looks like the markets are already moving in that direction.

The PJM capacity market had a big increase in demand response supply circa 2012, though not much of it was from storage. Still, new players are paying attention to these arbitrage opportunities. CAISO is already seeking out corporate partners to participate in demand reduction.

Local kinetic storage like pumped hydro have an efficiency advantage over batteries (at least with current tech)

For context, the average transmission loss between generator and consumption in the US is ~11%. This is generally over relatively short distances when compared to actual transmission.

In the short term, transmission lines are congested during peak hours so we often can't pipe enough power to high demand markets.

Not sure what you mean by "cost reduction curve". Can you expand?

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

Transporting electricity is not trivial.

But stored solar energy no longer undercuts coal for most of these storage technologies.

Pumped hydro is probably the best bet, but is very geography dependent. Adding transmission is a non-trivial investment.

Do you have a link to that talk? Sounds relevant to a side project I'm working on. Thanks!

I'm surprised by the prevalence of the green dots, particularly in San Jose.

I'll have to take a look at the data to verify government and education jobs are really that common.