jeremyt

Cofounder of thumbtack here. I think you misunderstand our business model. We don't hire anybody; we're just a marketplace. A request comes in, we connect it with qualified professionals, and then they bid directly on the job.

At no time have we gone out and hired "MBA students or aspiring actors" to fill our provider directory. From day one all of our providers were actually working in their industry prior to signing up with us.

Further, I would say that we don't have the same quality problem that Homejoy does. If you submit a request on our site, you'll get a choice between several providers at different price points and quality points. You choose the provider. Poor providers will get low ratings and will either have to lower their prices or exit the system.

The government leaves the cheap money door open to banks like Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs lends rich people a pile of money at 1%. Rich people invest that borrowed money with the intention to arbitrage the difference.

Works great, until the party ends when interest rates start increasing or the assets plunge and one has to cover their leverage, whichever happens first.

Well, in this case the IRS isn't passing a retroactive law, they are clarifying the interpretation of an existing law.

I can't really believe this is a serious idea. Or maybe it is a serious idea from people who have no idea how startups work.

As one of the other commenters said, the primary reason I wouldn't start a company in France is the "Byzantine and insane laws" that you have to deal with. For starters, how about all of the employment laws that make it difficult to fire poor performing employees.

But beyond that, look at the tax rates. As someone who has been through starting a company before, it's just not worth it without the chance of a good return in the future. A quick internet search reveals that as a non-French citizen, I would be liable for around 56% in taxes if my company ever exited. Compare that with the qualified small business rate of about 15% here in the states...

It's almost offensive to me that the French government thinks that the only thing standing between a successful tech scene and where they are now is the ability to get a visa and some seed capital. Hubris much?

Worst advice ever. A credit score is not just for getting a mortgage or a car loan. When I lived in New York, I had to have an acceptable credit score to get an apartment in most places.

Not to mention, when I signed up for a Verizon account under an LLC that I have with my dad, we were forced to put down an $800 per phone deposit because the company had no credit history. Same with utilities.

When I was starting a company, the bank wanted to check my credit score to decide whether I was going to get a checking account or not. This has happened twice, once with my previous company and a merchant account for credit cards.

I haven't ever personally, but I've also talked to people who check credit scores as part of employment evaluation.

Also, having a higher credit score gets you a better interest rate if you do need a loan, which can be worth a whole lot of money.

You have every right to make the choice to live without credit, but I would have a hard time arguing that it's the smart play.

Your numbers aren't quite right.

The first $6000 of income is the standard deduction and is taxed at 0%. Then, the next $10,000 is taxed at 10%, and the remainder up to the next $30,000 is taxed at 15%. You have substantially overstated the amount of taxes this hypothetical person is paying. And that's not taking into account that they probably qualify for the earned income tax credit.

This is in large part thanks to Rand Paul.

It's the only thing on his homepage.

http://randpaul.com/

Oh come on. I can't figure out whether you're feigning ignorance or whether you really didn't pay attention in Econ 101.

Basic economics certainly does not claim that every product will be sold at the equilibrium price. In fact, if that were so, then it wouldn't work.

In a free market, some products are sold above the equilibrium price, and some are sold below. It's free, because people can offer the product at any price they wish. What basic economics does say is that a price above equilibrium cannot be sustained without some corresponding market advantage.

I couldn't disagree more. Most people I know work so much because either 1) they have a very high paying but high demanding job or 2) they overconsume and have to make the money to pay off the debt that they've created with their overconsumption.

For the former (my friends at Google, well-funded startups, and in finance, etc.) I'm afraid I'm not going to shed any tears for them.

For the latter, most people I know are neck deep in auto loans, mortgages, credit card debt, etc. Up until this year, I would be hard-pressed to name a friend who had a car that was older than mine. My group of friends roundly poked fun at me when I furnished my new apartment with nice craigslist furniture.

To address your point directly, for most people, finding a cheaper apartment is an alternative to "moving back in with parents".

I'm currently living in a 450 ft.² studio apartment in a small town in Tennessee for $400/month. I'm quite sure this is affordable to anyone who isn't making minimum wage, and probably them too. Making minimum wage? Get a roommate. I've had roommates my whole life.

No, people choose to work a lot because they're living a lifestyle that is more than they can afford.

With obamacare there really isn't any excuse for not having health insurance.

Well, I quit using firefox after the Eich ridiculousness. Chrome is quite good...wasn't difficult. Doesn't seem all that hard to believe that others might have, too.

It appears Clinton's staff has provided 50,000 pages of correspondence from the account in question since it was discovered.

Well, the specific law referenced here is a federal law which only applies to high ranking federal officials (e.g. Cabinet secretaries). It would apply to Clinton, but not to most of the people on your list.

"The head of each Federal agency shall make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities. (44 U.S. Code § 3101)"

The only relevant question is, "are emails 'records'?", and according to the State Department, the answer is yes:

"All employees must be aware that some of the variety of the messages being exchanged on E-mail are important to the Department and must be preserved; such messages are considered Federal records under the law. (5 FAM [Foreign Affairs Manual] "

And I might add that the accusation here is not that she had a personal account in addition to her official one, it's that she didn't have an official one at all.

What difference, at this point, does it make?

Well, then you didn't read the whole article. The whole last paragraph is about methane's contribution to greenhouse gases and its effect on fossil fuel policy.

Seriously, if it wasn't for the greenhouse impact and its connection to climate policy, what would be the point of the article...or the paper?

Instead of ad-hominem, why don't you point out the flaws in his paper?

According to two very smart PhD engineers who work for Google and were assigned to look into this problem, there is no way to get there with wind and solar.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-rea...

Author here. To be fair, the bug only prevents you from activating 2fa. If you manage to activate it, it seems to work fine.

Yes, but I'll bet that they'll give you the username if you know the Social Security number and birthday of the user. Sometimes they ask me for the address on the account.

Not like any of those things are hard to find.

You're correct, but that doesn't fix the first activation, which is what I wrote the post about. The real problem is that I thought I had two factor activated for months when I didn't.

I might buy it if two factor activation wasn't a one time operation.

As it stands, there's no need to confuse existing users. You just need a separate pathway to activate the token.

THEN you just ask for the token as a step two in the login process. That's actually how Schwab handles things right now.

Efficacy

A CleanKeys keyboard does the same thing but cheaper.

I know we're feuding in the other thread, but I just happen to flat-out disagree with you on this.

Believe it or not, I'm open to being convinced. Care to share what you're basing this statement on?

Well, that's fine, but do you also want to argue that women and pacific islanders, on average, have received fewer advantages than poor white people from Appalachia?

Here's my question: Do you honestly believe that a poor white person from Appalachia, who has received very few advantages in life, deserves to lose out on this opportunity because his skin happens to be the wrong color?

Does he get fewer diversity points, even though his life experiences are so far removed from that of the white person growing up in, say, southern California, that they might as well have grown up in different countries?

Well, to be fair to you, I was trotting out the discouraged rich people trope.

It's rich people who have the most elastic working hours and income.

Well, I suspect one of the reasons why they can do that is because they're charging you $90 per month for a 2 Mb connection. I pay $27 per month here in the state for a 25/5 connection that routinely gets about 8/3.

You should read paragraph number 5 again. It concedes that at least 25% of the reduction in reported income is due to working less.