nsedlet

There was this thread from awhile ago: "Cartels Are an Emergent Phenomenon, Say Complexity Theorists" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3494224

I highly recommend the documentary Last Train Home. It follows a Chinese family - the parents leave their children in their rural village to go off in search of work. They make the annual trip back to see them for Chinese New Year.

The film captures the awesome scale of the migration and its cultural importance, as well as the social impact of China's urbanization. It's really devastating.

We just completed an embedded signature integration with HelloSign. The HelloSign API plans were expensive - but still a fraction of what DocuSign charged (at the time HS was 20% as expensive - pricing seems to have gotten more comparable now).

Integration was easy. The Ruby SDK & JS lib worked great (we have Rails back-end / React front-end). Customer service has been good & responsive. They have to approve your UI before giving live access - but once we had the integration working it took < 1 day to schedule the meeting, do the screenshare, and get approved.

Two slightly annoying things: (1) they don't have per-request fees if you go over your allotted usage. You'll get automatically bumped to the next plan which gives you 3x the request and is almost twice as expensive. (2) they wouldn't let us go month-to-month since we had an existing annual plan that we wanted to be under the same account (so we can share templates). This is tough since it's difficult for us to predict how many requests we'll need.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, and I'd want to think this through more, but I've been feeling recently that libel laws in the U.S. ought to be stronger. We have a massive problem with propagandists (especially on the right, but also the left) using blatant lies to manipulate opinion. The net result is a huge amount of anger & distrust.

The media is a mess. Even mainstream outlets like Fox routinely lie to their viewers. Other countries with stronger libel laws (like the UK) don't have nearly as bad a problem, and I can't help but feel like it's related. Obviously the UK has its own issues but it feels much saner to me.

In this case, accusing a specific police officer of being corrupt with zero evidence IS an awful thing to do. It's different from saying that a department is corrupt, etc. There are tons of examples of police abusing their power but this just doesn't seem like one.

Note that the standard for criminal libel requires the person to know they are lying, and that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

It may be fairly safe, but it's not risk-free (and certainly not guaranteed by the government). Even if companies don't default, their borrowing rates can still increase, reducing the value of the bond and causing you to lose money.

The 3% return is compensation for the added risk. The financial markets are pretty efficient for liquid stuff like this.

Banks also provide services that consumers are willing pay for through lower rates on their checking accounts, and need to cover their administrative costs or have some other way of making money with the deposits.

Agreed. Perhaps this is an unfair reading, but it feels like the implication is that if there aren't technological solutions to problems, then technology companies don't play an important role in those solutions.

But Google has so much power to help, and in fact is better-positioned than almost any organization to help - and in fact has a duty to do so given that it helped create the problems. For instance, Youtube is one of the biggest sources of propaganda and uncivilized discourse there is.

It's also frustrating that Twitter didn't proactively do this - the DCCC had to figure it out and tell them. Twitter itself is obviously best positioned to detect patterns of suspicious activity, intervene before too much damage is done, and investigate and publish their findings. But they don't seem to take this problem very seriously.

Twitter is being brazenly used as a propaganda tool by terrible actors with terrible agendas. It's infested with strange accounts of dubious authenticity - which I think is fairly obvious looking through the replies to prominent political accounts.

In the last Off-Broadway show I saw here in NYC (I Was Most Alive With You), they had sign-language interpreters signing for their respective actors on an elevated platform. It was a cool effect that suited the subject matter (it was a play about deafness whose main character is deaf), but obviously not practical for every play.

In another (Light Shining in Buckinghamshire) there were subtitles projected at the front of the room. You could get used to it, but it was somewhat distracting and not ideal. This approach seems much better!

Both plays were incredible, btw. Light Shining in Buckinghamshire blew my mind and I highly recommend picking up a copy if you haven't read/seen it.

That's what I was thinking - maybe something under the link. Could be optional as well.

I'd been remembering how Marginal Revolution, which despite having a fairly educated/technical audience, still often writes its own link text when linking to papers: e.g. item #1 here https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/08/sa...

But obviously that would have a big impact on UX for submitters and readers which I haven't thought through in detail!

Really great - I signed up.

One useful feature might be for the index to show one-sentence blurbs about each paper (in addition to the title of the paper itself). Unless I'm reading papers very specific to my subfield, I need some context to know what I'm looking at & why it's important. Otherwise I fear that only articles with the most accessible titles (or disciplines whose titles tend to be most accessible) will be clicked, read & upvoted.

I would hope that the nature of the type of people who read scientific papers is to avoid sensationalizing too much (like popular science journalism does).

The article makes the case that our "emotional systems" can be understood as an effective way of internalizing and responding to our experiences in a complex world.

Maybe this is obvious but I think equally important is the emotional interplay between people, and the dynamics of that larger emotional system. Emotions are like a protocol that humans use to communicate their mental states to each other. If emotions were just about understanding the world, there would be no reason for humans to express them visibly & audibly.

A little bit of occasional anger can effectively communicate that someone has crossed a line. Laughter is positive feedback. etc. etc.

The possibilities for psychedelic drugs to treat and shed insight into mental health issues are exciting. But I think it's worth pointing out (especially if you are a recreational user or are considering it) that we don't understand the side effects very well. Low resolution, we know they don't kill you or lead to addiction (though they can cause problems in people with underlying mental health problems).

But I'm concerned about the subtler, not-obviously-harmful-but-not-necessarily-desirable ways in which they permanently alter the brain. Slate Star Codex has a few recent articles that are worth considering:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-specter-of...

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychede...

Yes! He's one of the warmest, nicest people. I did undergrad research in the lab next door to Prof Barrett's when he was Director of Undergraduate Studies. He always took time out to mentor me even though I wasn't his student.

We had a production Rails app running with postgres, and we decided to implement some of our models with Neo4j. Graphs felt like the right way to represent the data, and all of the models were new, so we felt more free to choose the approach that seemed best.

A month later we rewrote everything in SQL - the main drivers were:

- as we refined our model, we realized that a relational DB with a bunch of join tables was good enough

- our developers were more comfortable working with SQL

- it wasn't possible to run complicated queries involving both databases simultaneously

- the Rails ORM felt easier to use than the Neo4j Ruby APIs (though this was certainly a function of our own familiarity with Rails and relational databases in general)

- having the extra database complicated our codebase and complicated our deployment

There was nothing horrifying or surprising in our encounter with graph databases. It just felt like we just made the wrong initial architectural decision. We were still trying to define the problem and were trying to use something we didn't fully understand.

I'd hesitate to use graph dbs in the future unless I needed a high-performance app with a lot of data that only a graph could model well. Otherwise having two different types of databases is annoying.

I commute about 6 miles each way between Brooklyn (home) and Manhattan (work). I've been raving about it to everyone I know because it's legitimately changed my life. It feels amazing, saves money, keeps me in much better shape, gives me more energy at work. It's slightly faster than the subway, and significantly faster than driving/cabbing at rush hour.

I also love that transit time is very consistent (even relative to the subway, which has lately been wonky). It's great to arrive for our morning standup exactly 7 minutes early, rather than having to pad in 30 minutes of unproductive dead space in case the subway has some problem.

NYC bike paths have gotten pretty good over the years, such that I can use protected lanes for ~70% of the trip, and dedicated lanes for >90%. No accidents yet but several close calls, mostly with pedestrians. New York streets are crowded and aggressive, but the speeds are low and drivers are relatively vigilant.

I think we all can and should apply our values towards judging companies' usefulness to society. That doesn't mean regulating or prosecuting them - moral clarity goes a long way on its own. People work hard to be held in high esteem by their peers: when we refuse to honor a useless company with prestige, it makes it harder for that company to attract talent; it reduces consumer demand for its products; it makes vendors less excited to work with them. etc. We get companies and products that reflect our values, so let's affirm the right values.

To take your example: Coca-Cola doesn't kill people as efficiently as Oxycontin, but yes, it doesn't really add much. A balanced analysis would probably acknowledge that sugar plays a huge role in our obesity crisis and other public health issues, but also acknowledge that there are many sources of sugar besides soft drinks, that sugar isn't as terrible as heroin, etc. I think Coca-Cola executives should probably feel a little bad for devoting their professional lives to it. I think schools like Emory should feel a little ashamed for taking Coca-Cola money. The fact that Coca-Cola is constantly touted as a great American company (by e.g. Warren Buffett) helps normalize the damage it inflicts on society.

I'd advocate a nuanced view: Coca-Cola isn't great, but it's not the devil. There's worse (like tobacco companies, which are probably correctly rated by society). And there's better (Bank of America, Microsoft) - those companies have their own detractors of course, but on balance they add a lot more to our lives than Coca-Cola.

The Sacklers have ingratiated themselves at the highest levels of society using a fortune that's at best built on a product of dubious value, and at worst obtained at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of people. I think this piece points to a big problem: we worship money and those that accumulate it, and often ignore the question of how much societal value was created in exchange for it. The least we can collectively do is not confer status and prestige upon those who make money in a destructive way. I love the line of inquiry in this piece because it puts pressure on the high-society keepers-of-culture whose admiration the Sacklers likely most crave.

FYI you can also see an interview with the author on Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/19/who_profits_from_the...

(disclaimer: I am friends with the author)

Some friends and I built a jukebox with lights that react meaningfully to the chords and beats in the music (using Chordify). We brought it to Burning Man as an art project. It's nothing compared to the other crazy ambitious stuff people do there - but it was our first real electronics project, and we had to learn a lot as we went.

Here's a grainy video: https://youtu.be/sXVZhv_Xi0I

Here's the code: https://github.com/nick264/music-processor-master

I agree with many of the WFH benefits put forward in the article. However, I think it ignores & mischaracterizes many of the WFH costs.

Ignores:

* Face-to-face communication is often more efficient. Just my opinion, but conversations are usually faster and easier in person than over Slack or email. Asychronous communication can be nicer for certain things, but it sucks when that's the only option. Video hangouts are better, but there's a barrier to setting one up, and they're still not as effective as face-to-face.

* Presence in the office helps keep everyone in the loop. Team members are much more likely to speak to one another actively. They're more likely to understand what everyone else is working on. They're more likely to understand the business's main priorities and problems. Even physically just sitting a few desks away from someone, vs. right next to them, makes it less likely that two people will interact.

* The office provides important social interaction. If you work a lot, your office might be your main opportunity to have substantive interactions with other people. Some of my past coworkers have become my closest friends. People who work from home (I'd guess) are much less likely to form close bonds with their coworkers.

* A professional setting can be motivating. I find it energizing to walk into the office where everyone is working hard. My day is measured out in minutes and I feel a constant pressure to get something done. When at home, I feel the pressure less - it makes me feel better about what I get done, but it also makes me less productive.

* Boundaries between work & home are helpful for relaxation. The ritual of leaving the office helps reset the mind, I think. Otherwise, workdays easily bleed into evenings that neither productive nor relaxing.

Mischaracterizes:

* "Some people need close management". The internet is incredibly addictive & distracting. Sitting at home makes it much easier to succumb to that distraction. Obviously that can happen at work, but there's a limit: you can't watch Netflix, for instance. And you'd feel weird if your screen was constantly on Hacker News or Reddit or whatever every time someone walked by.

* "How do I know they’re working if I can’t see them?". This is a strong point and I agree that most managers over-emphasize face-time as a measure of productivity. But that doesn't mean it's useless. For non-routine, creative, or project-based work (e.g. engineering) it's hard to measure productivity. Deadlines can be great but oftentimes are artificial - much of the time, the most engineers can really promise is that they'll work efficiently, smartly, and to the best of their abilities during the workday. So it is of some benefit to the manager to see that the employee is there for 40+ hrs each week. Managers also want to know if their reports are frustrated, anxious, demotivated, happy, confused, etc. - much easier to get a read on that in person so that the manager can address it.

Many of my friends who are able to work from home choose to rent coworking space for many of the reasons above. Admittedly I rarely work from home, but I do manage people who work remotely. Also, neither me nor most of my friends are parents yet.

I think you're attacking a straw man - this situation is nothing like the typical pattern of "acquire company, shut down the product". Hackpad has been running for years since it was acquired (everyone in our company uses it regularly). Dropbox Paper is basically a newer, better version of Hackpad. Anyone using Hackpad can "upgrade" by moving all of their pads into Paper. We just moved over - it was easy and cost nothing.

I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. It seems unnecessary to achieve pricing transparency - anonymized salaries would be sufficient. It would require a dramatic cultural shift to be accepted. Discussing of one's salary is taboo (at least in the U.S.).

I agree with this: employees are at a huge information disadvantage. However, I think a better (& admittedly more radical) solution to this problem would be to force employers to publicly post anonymized salaries by job title. That way prospective and current employees know exactly how much they ought to be paid. It makes salary negotiation almost trivial.

Preventing employers from asking about previous salary does not prevent them from discriminating against women, which is the intention of the MA law. I can definitely see how this law might hasten a transition away from an era where salary was unfairly pegged to gender - but only to the degree that employers aren't still just blatantly discriminating by gender.

Yes Chordify has time information - it's pretty accurate too, and works for folk, rock, classical, whatever.

It's just a matter of timing the lights with the audio output. My setup is a Raspberry Pi as a master, and an Arduino to talk to the lights (which is necessary because the RPi's pins are too slow to send signals to an addressable LED strip). The RPi sends chord and beats in real time as they happen, over USB. Every few seconds it syncs the light show clock with the audio player clock.

I've been working on a weekend project to make lights that react meaningfully to music, by taking into account beats and chords. Here's a video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5sRgSmRGpg

It uses chordify.net to extract the beats and chords from the song. Code is here: https://github.com/nick264/music-processor-master

I agree - it's about focus and time. Recruiting is already a very manual process, and it's hard enough for most recruiters to identify candidates and get them interested in the role. The conversion rate from initial outreach to interested candidate is abysmal. Adding a layer of advising / resume help just doesn't fit with their model and would make them uncompetitive with other recruiters.

At HireArt we certainly do try to do this, but we're still a small part of the recruiting market.

I'm in the recruiting space. An enormous part of the disparity in applicant success comes down to "job-hunting skills". Will their resume, as presented & formatted, speak to the employers they're after? Are they applying to enough jobs? Do they tell the story of their career trajectory in a compelling way? It's very exciting to see a company trying to level the playing field the way Mentat seems to be.

Are you saying front-running is not an HFT strategy? Because that is incorrect.

In equities markets, for trades of a sufficient size it's not possible to place the order all at once. You'll hammer the order book, and take very suboptimal pricing for the latest marginal shares you buy/sell. Therefore you have to split up the order into chunks.

HFT firms will try to detect when equities traders are doing this. e.g. If they see a pattern indicating that chunks of shares are being bought, they will try to buy, too. When the rest of the order comes through, the price will rise and that firm will make money. That's why "front-running" is just a special-case of an algorithm to predict price movements.

I seriously doubt that a HFT fund as large as Rennaissance uses a single strategy, be it satellite images, or front-running or what-have-you.

Isn't front-running big trades just a subset of algorithms that predict price movements? i.e. They're not mutually exclusive.

Admittedly I have zero special knowledge of Renaissance and what particular strategies they use.

A few weird things stand out to me: (1) Renaissance is super secretive. If they want to use this strategy to make money, a patent reveals to competitors what they're doing and creates more issues than it seems to resolve. (2) Renaissance is an HFT firm. Why are they interested in thwarting HFT? (3) This really isn't that fancy an idea. It's fairly general: send orders ahead to co-located servers to be executed at specific times.

I wonder if what they're really trying to do is prevent banks or others from creating anti-HFT infrastructure, and then providing it as a service to market participants that want to place large orders. The patent would perhaps provide some protection in that case.

Seems like too little data to draw conclusions for a single company. But probably enough to draw conclusions by industry and company size.