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klochner

3,410 karma · joined April 7, 2010

Greetings. I'm Kevin Lochner, get in touch if you want to talk web development, SF tech, startups, ruby, econ, . . .

Currently working as an Engineering Director at SoFi.

follow/friend/network/read/etc:

   http://stackoverflow.com/users/110213/klochner
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   https://github.com/klochner
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   https://keybase.io/klochner
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/klochner; my proof: https://keybase.io/klochner/sigs/DbBmNhJDrimZQdQ0ADjQcTFfwlkWELzO9nPvNrpAWI0 ]
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klochner··on Purchasing power of one US dollar in every year from 1635 to 2020
this is a feature not a bug.
klochner··on 15-year-olds from wealthy families more likely to claim false expertise: study
The study was posted here a couple days ago.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf

klochner··on As German Bund Yields Head to Zero, They Still Beat U.S. Treasuries
Vs unhedged bund. Pretty lame.
klochner··on Self-driving cars will "cruise" to avoid paying to park
this will accelerate the rollout of congestion pricing in the US.
klochner··on Robinhood launches 3% checking account

    In an email to Barron’s the head of the SIPC cast doubt on 
    the idea that it would insure checking or savings accounts.

    “SIPC protects cash that is deposited with a brokerage firm
    for one limited purpose...the purpose of purchasing
    securities,” wrote Stephen P. Harbeck, the president and CEO 
    of SIPC. “Cash deposited for other reasons would not be 
    protected.”

https://www.barrons.com/articles/robinhood-app-is-offering-a...
klochner··on 96-Year-Old Secretary Quietly Amasses Fortune, Then Donates $8.2M
Lawyers aren't known for their stock picking, I wonder if she was piggybacking on insider trading by M&A lawyers.
klochner··on Theology majors marry each other a lot, but business majors don’t
Business Majors don't, but MBAs do.

Business majors want to focus on their career, MBAs are mostly there and ready to settle down.

klochner··on Electric scooter “mayhem” sounds like when cars were introduced
i love them.

They could easily take half the cars off the road and transform downtown.

They're more convenient and a fraction of the cost of an uber, and they're fun to ride.

People should not be riding them on the sidewalks, i'm expecting that to change quickly.

klochner··on Basecoin, aka the Basis Protocol
From the DAI site:

    > If the value of ether held as collateral is worth less than the amount 
    > of Dai it’s supposed to be backing, then Dai would not be worth one dollar 
    > and the system could collapse.

    > Maker combats this by liquidating CDPs and auctioning off the ether inside before the 
    > value of the ether is less than the amount of Dai it is backing.
Note combats not prevents, it will go to zero with probability 1 [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin

klochner··on California higher-density housing bill blocked in first committee hearing
Most infuriating about the SF housing debate is the the utter lack of economic knowledge that aligns groups like sierra club and low-income advocacy groups with rent-seeking or racist NIMBY homeowners.
klochner··on Dorm living for professionals comes to SF
Should, but sadly doesn’t at the moment.

We need more housing.

klochner··on Founders Fund Makes Bet on Bitcoin
No one seems to be talking about how venture investors have transformed into cryptocurrency hedge funds over the past year.

The conversations you see from VCs has similarly changed - instead of talking about teams building enterprise value, you hear something that sounds more like speculative bubble FOMO language.

Maybe i'm wrong, feels ominous.

klochner··on Ask HN: Any recommended books on developing mental models?
Tren Griffin is a big proponent of Charlie Munger’s use of mental modals.

This post has a good list of models:

https://25iq.com/2015/08/22/a-dozen-things-ive-learned-from-...

Tren’s weekly ‘dozen things I’ve learned from foo’ series is generally high quality.

klochner··on IMF Head Foresees the End of Banking and the Triumph of Cryptocurrency
Hashing does not materially impact the global price of electricity.

Also, hardware is a fixed cost, fixed costs don't affect the price at which miners would stop mining.

klochner··on Where will artificial general intelligence come from?

     [X] Open Source Tools
     [ ] Massive Data Sets
     [ ] $Millions in Computing Resources
I'd put it roughly on par with finding a general cure for cancer. While unlikely, quite amazing that the cure for one of the largest causes of death could be solved 3 doors down with lab supplies from amazon and a handful of mice.
klochner··on Crypto-currencies have lost 30% of their value in the last 3 weeks
You're agreeing with him.

Gold and tulips are commodity currencies, they have value outside of their uses as a currency.

The dollar and bitcoin are not commodity currencies, i.e., they have no value or use outside of their use as currencies.

Whether bitcoin can be called a 'fiat' currency is debatable because it's not a currency "by fiat", though "fiat" currency has come to mean a non-commodity currency.

klochner··on Functional programming in JavaScript is an antipattern
From the post:

    Basically, write Javascript without functional programming techniques. That doesn’t seem like a good solution.
So . . . what am I misrepresenting?
klochner··on Functional programming in JavaScript is an antipattern
The flagged comment was accurate - post claims FP in javascript is an antipattern, but then says FP is the most sane way to write javasript.

Ergo author is claiming javascript is an antipattern, tldr clojurescript. /shrug

klochner··on Errant Architectures (2003)
His take on microservices, 11 years later:

https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html

klochner··on Opendoor, a startup worth emulating
Any concerns about adverse selection?

I'd want to use OpenDoor if their pricing model came in above what I could reasonably get in the market, and would be more likely to wait it out if they came in low.

klochner··on My Biggest Regret as a Programmer
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/09/11/the-most-misre...
klochner··on How to create an AI startup – convince some humans to be your training set
hunch
klochner··on Heisenberg Developers (2014)
Many developers prefer to work like Navy Seals or Jazz Musicians. It's objectively more empowering, arguably more fun.

Some jobs require an army or a big band, i.e., a lot of coordinated precision - objectively less freedom and autonomy, arguably more tedious.

Beyond some threshold of granularity you will crush morale though.

Do what makes you happy.

klochner··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2016)
Expedite Financial, San Francisco Come help us build a mortgage bank from the ground up.

front-end: rails, angular, react (+redux), es6/es7, webpack, sass back-end: scala, rails, postgres dev-ops: chef, ec2

We are a well funded and quickly growing team of 34, including 8 engineers. Our tech team includes alumni from yc, fbfund, twitter, bridgewater, harvard/stanford/duke/berkeley/michigan, and we currently have 3 Ph.D.s on the team. We're looking for talented people from all backgrounds.

http://expeditefinancial.com/jobs (or email me - kevin@expeditelabs.com with subject "HN")

klochner··on Newegg sues patent troll that dropped its case
In addition to being aligned with business strategy, this is a great recruiting strategy as well.

I'd be giving Newegg a call if I were a patent attorney looking for my next gig.

klochner··on Common Stock Ownership Spreads Among Startup Investors
I was talking about income tax at time of exit. If you pre-exercise and file an 83b, you realize profit as long-term capital gains rather than ordinary income. It's hard to pre-exercise if doing so costs you $100k+ in exercise costs (you have to pay the option price). Options on common stock will be set at the price of common, which can be 10x if there are no preferred shares.

Read here regarding common/preferred valuations:

https://www.quora.com/What-were-typical-ratios-between-409a-...

klochner··on Common Stock Ownership Spreads Among Startup Investors
In the US, one benefit of two-tier structure is that employees can early exercise options at a very low stock price to get preferential tax treatment (taxed at long-term rate rather that ordinary income).

With all common it's likely too much money to exercise before a liquidity event, so early employees end up losing an extra 15% of their payout in taxes.

klochner··on Market Rate is for Lobsters
That scenario would only be "market rate" if the market put a higher price (market price) on luxury-car-driving engineers.

In that case it would likely not seem absurd because presumably there would be some extra inherent value in luxury car drivers (e.g., uber drivers).

klochner··on Dizzying Ride May Be Ending for Startups
Interesting point re: not staying at the seed stage long enough for a bubble. What we're seeing instead is multiple preferences layered on in subsequent rounds.

So seed/A investors think they're doing well when the company raises B,C,D,E rounds at higher valuations, when in fact many will be washed out when the company eventually IPOs or is acquired at a lower valuation than their last venture round.

klochner··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2015)
Expedite Financial, San Francisco

Come help us build a mortgage bank from the ground up. front-end: rails, angular, react, coffeescript, sass back-end: scala, rails, neo4j, postgres dev-ops: chef, ec2

We are a well funded and quickly growing team of 19, including 8 engineers. Our tech team includes alumni from yc, fbfund, twitter, bridgewater, harvard/stanford/duke/michigan, and we currently have 3 Ph.D.s on the team. We're looking for talented people from all backgrounds.

http://expeditefinancial.com/jobs (or email me - kevin@expeditelabs.com with subject "HN")

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