nissimk

I heard a guy talking on Bloomberg radio this morning about this in regards to emerging markets bond investing. The interviewer was commenting that the legal system didn't provide good recourse in the event of default. The guy said like you that the credit analyst would need to focus more on the likelihood of default than the recoverability of the collateral.

It reminded me of my time working on credit models for subprime mortgages. We forecasted 2 variables: frequency and severity of default. The total loss prediction was the product of the two. If your severity is always 100% at least it makes your model simpler.

Difficult to comply with (aka expensive) regulations create a barrier of entry that helps these entrenched megabanks. Also, in finance, whenever regulations impede business, after some time bankers learn how to circumvent the regulations with new products or business process changes.

I'm sorry to nitpick and I mostly agree with you, but similar to a casino game that favors the house, if you are lucky and quit while you're ahead, you can avoid capture. Your statement is only true in the long run. Of course criminals usually become addicted to their risky behaviors just like gamblers... It's a frequent trope in crime movies: one last job before the criminal retires, but that last job is the one where he makes a key mistake.

Propaganda. It's a highly effective tool for manipulating public opinion by API. What do you think all of this talk about hacking the election is about? It wasn't just publishing private emails.

And more easily manipulated with automated techniques.

Yes, and when someone is a great musician they "make it look easy." And to them, it is easy, because they put in so many hours practicing. Once you've achieved an advanced level it becomes easy, but it's never easy to get to that level.

I like to publicly discuss my shortcomings. I try not to do it too much because I don't want everybody I work with to think I'm an idiot. Sometimes I use self deprecating humor. Sometimes I just act brave enough to ask stupid questions in a public forum. And sometimes I try to discuss the difficulties I'm having with technical issues also in a public forum. Generally people are really nice and want to help.

Also, I refuse to believe the hype about almost anyone that people believe to be great programmers. There's usually a facade and glaring holes in their knowledge.

When stuff is difficult to do technically for me, I like to complain about it. It makes me feel better and forms comraderie with my colleagues. If it's hard for me, it's probably hard for everybody. And if not then there's some sort of trick that they know and I don't. An example of this is when the c++ compiler gives pages of indecipherable output for using the wrong type in a template argument.

Credit accounts + gift card balances is almost the same thing.

There's one key difference that the retail employees are interacting with customers whereas the distribution center employees are hidden away in the factory. Not sure how important this difference will be, but it could definitely influence the company's behavior.

If I am to believe HBO, then sometimes those goals are drinking beers on the rooftop.

It strikes me as an honest statement and if you were pitching me I would give you honesty points :-)

But the problem you are dealing with is the problem in many questions here: these are complex financial instruments and most people don't understand them. Some people will hold false beliefs about these things. Some people will be afraid of the unknowns.

Also the problem is compounded because the word option has different meanings and if you wrongly believe that these employee stock options on private equity are the same thing as listed equity options you're in for a big surprise.

Generally when analyzing a compensation package if you have to do extensive scenario analysis to evaluate the package I think it is worse for most people than a simple package.

Also, the number of scenarios where the founder or investors can make decisions that render the option package worthless is fairly large. This creates a dynamic where if the employee takes an options heavy package they either were foolish / duped, or they are pledging their utmost trust and loyalty in the management team. It's a lot to ask.

If dilution is a non issue then why do professional venture investors demand anti dilution clauses?

It's not just the time spent studying, it's the right kind of studying. "Teaching to the test" so to speak. I liken it to my driver's ed class in high school. My teacher wasn't teaching us how to drive, he was teaching us how to pass the test. Every single thing he taught us was about how to pass the test. I passed on my first try because I was very well trained.

Unfortunately, the whiteboard thing is not as standardized, so it's somewhat harder to teach to the test, but it is not impossible. People waste a lot of time I think when they can memorize a small number of basic algorithms and then learn to map the question given to one of those techniques.

But writing the code with a marker on a board definitely takes practice as well.

The available training materials are good, but they are not great. A focus on shortcuts would be nice. I remember my verbal SAT improving significantly just from the single tip to read the reading comprehension questions before reading the passage. I suspect there are similar tips that can improve your speed at figuring out the trick that solves these interview problems quickly.

You could compare it to other interview techniques if you were willing to test them.

It's not possible to compute the false negative rate because once you turn down a candidate you get no more information. I suppose if people apply multiple times and are accepted later and then go on to do well on the job, you can count them as false negative in the first interview. The sample size for that would be small though. And I'm sure the true believers would say that these candidates improved their programming skills between the two interviews, not their interviewing skills.

I am quite interested in the false positive rate which can be computed by correlating performance reviews with interview performance.

It is awesome how the tactics keep changing to respond to strategic changes. There will also be a shift towards training to hit towards both sides of the infield. Not everyone can be a power hitter, and classic baseball includes a lot of "small-ball" hitting.

The increase in power hitting is also cyclical in baseball. Remember last time it dropped it was due to changes in drug testing policies and procedures which may also be a cat and mouse game.

I found this:

http://www.highheatstats.com/2013/01/reliving-the-hits-how-h...

Marc DiMarco gave really entertaining presentation on user interface algorithms at acm applicative conference a couple of years ago including covering the voronoi diagram.

I think this is an earlier version of the same presentation

https://youtu.be/8_75wViQQY8

It was interesting to hear about the use by an early epidemiologist to find the bad water source during the cholera outbreak in London.

:-)

Beyonce agrees with me too.

I believe that is rising sea levels. The sea is not a static thing with a constant level as seen from land. The local level rises and falls with weather conditions and tides. As the general level rises, you would expect land close to the shore to wash away. Like when you build a sand castle on the beach and then the tide comes in and washes it into the sea.

I always say that visual studio 6 was the best version they ever made. At least somebody out there agrees with me.

"As noted in our attribution post last year, use of Visual Studio 6.0 is not a significant observation on its own – however, this development environment dates from 1998 and is rarely used by malware coders. Nonetheless, it has been seen repeatedly with Lazarus attacks."

There is no hedge against excessive leverage. Except of course being too big to fail.

It's more than many other jobs. Everyone gets to work early. Many front office personnel get to work before 8 and the floor is mostly full by 830, but many people leave at 5 and most by 630. Most people eat lunch at their desk.

There are a lot of extra curricular activities though. You need to do dinners and events to build relationships.

No, it's not a race to a finish line, it's a race to find a random number that when placed in the block header hashes to a value that is less than the difficulty. The difficulty is adjusted as desdiv said above based on the network performance in the previous period. When network hashrate increases significantly, the next difficulty adjustment happens sooner and if the hashrate dropped dramatically then it would happen slower.

The better analogy would be a race to turn over stones looking for the one with the secret on the back but the number of stones was adjusted for the previous number of searchers and now with fewer searchers it will take longer for any of them to find it.

Neal Stephenson writes about this in my favorite "the diamond age," he calls it honer and forger. The type of engineer that is better at improving an existing thing vs. creating something new.

There's a need for all types.

There are many methods of debugging as you can see sprinkled through these comments:

Using the interactive debugger Reading log files and adding more logging/trace. Writing unit tests Making some sort of test program or script to exercise the problem area so it's easier to reproduce the problem. Depending on your environment, tools and problem, different combinations of the above will make more sense.

Always opt for Intel hardware. They have Linux device driver developers on staff. Sometimes the newest chips are not supported, but they always release something within a few months.

Yeah, but you can look them up.

Bullsh*t. Seriously, these questions are all tricks. If you memorize the tricks you can win the game. Even the "really easy" questions like reverse a string involve a trick -- swapping from the ends and stopping in the middle. The interview game involves memorizing tricks and identifying which memorized trick applies to the question.

That's true only up to a point. Look at baseball players, they frequently outperform in the last year of their first (lower value) contract, but then underperform after getting the longer high value second contract. People are motivated by money only up to some point. The point varies by person and some people are far more motivated by other factors.

thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HozBKiWGsQ