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pbadenskion Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2018)

Pricing Monkey | London, UK (Old street) | Full stack | Full-time | On-Site

We are building web-based real time pricing and analysis tool for financial derivatives market. We are strongly inspired by Git and UNIX pipes - powerful abstractions hidden away in a simple user interface. Currently 4 people self-bootstrapped team with clients including hedgefunds, brokerages & top investment banks.

We are looking for a truly full stack talented generalist with at least 5 years of experience (or equivalent talent). Hopefully someone who's equally excited about coding in D3.js, scripting Ansible & wiring RxJS streams.

Examples of interesting stuff we do: Domain Specific Language parser for traders written in Python, reactive pricing engine working realtime in user's browser (RxJS & WebWorkers).

You can contact me directly, contact details in profile.

pbadenskion Do “sin taxes” work?

But they should be aware that the bulk of the damage that smokers, drinkers and the obese do is to themselves, and not to others.

Erm... really?

"Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin' says Prof David Nutt" [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210] based on his research available here: http://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lance...

pbadenskion How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

One way to resolve this tension is to limit the corporate personhood. If CEOs of this multinational corporations earn tens and hundreds of millions maybe they should have a tiny bit more accountability.

pbadenskion Scrum disempowers developers

Milton Friedman famously said that “one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

pbadenskion Scrum disempowers developers

for your daily dose of reflection replace "Scrum" with communism (or capitalism if you like) and developers with citizens

pbadenskion A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

It seems that the logic is: "We know this will go bad, are we capable of taking PR hit when (not if) this goes bad". Many companies failed that risk assessment. IBM concluded - "Yes, let's make a run for the money. We are likely doomed for failure, but this will not damage us.". I hope I'm just overly cynical...

pbadenskion What happens when patients find out how good their doctors are? (2004)

> Your views on bodily autonomy seem bizarre. Patients own their own bodies and have the right to make fully informed decisions about what happens to them

Their statement only seem bizarre when you view it from the perspective of individualism. Another way to look at it is - let me (ab)use Star Trek quote: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". You seem to make absolute statements that in fact are relative and rooted in one ideology you chose to follow.

> If a provider's or facility's (or entire speciality's) numbers look bad, that's important information for the consumer to possess. Hiding the numbers should not be an option.

Forgive me the harshness - I believe this is a simplistic way of looking at the problem. OP clearly showed systemic forces at play, and those are important to consider. You're saying "hiding the numbers", as if they were perfect numbers hidden away in a safe. Problem is there are not, and even when they might be very nuanced. A point raised by OP: "best providers (particularly surgeons) will engage in metrics arbitrage by refusing to treat patients" - I think it is a perfectly reasonable threat, which you chose to ignore.

> Or do you think that car crash test results, and airplane crash data, and health department inspection findings should also be kept secret?

Again going back to OP's example - doctor's might be incentivised not to treat patients which make their numbers look bad. None of your examples share similarity in this sense (and possibly in many more).

pbadenskion After the end of the startup era

Honestly, this is a simple problem with a simple answer. If you look at the real life, Play Store is like a state-owned bazaar where you can find all great high quality products next to useless crap that breaks minutes after you have bought it. Google is the state.

In order to fix it Google should open up "Play Store" to other providers. You could then end up with equivalent of both high-end stores & corner shops, selling products of quality that matches their brand, rather than mishmash of everything.

If you think about it, Apple suffers from a similar problem. In their case they allow in only high quality, impeccable software and there's no place for corner shops. Still - "the app economy" is state-owned.

pbadenskion Equifax website hacked again, this time to redirect to fake Flash update

Makes me think. Can I ask my bank to stop sharing my data with Equifax. Would they honour the request? Anyone working for a bank, what do you think?

pbadenskion My work as a prostitute led me to oppose decriminalisation

This is a sensitive and complex topic. I found it clear after reading the article how even people personally involved struggle to address it well. It’s unsettling to me how definite and confident some of the comments in this thread are. This will sound patronising, yet.. Please do think twice before posting - you’re talking about someone’s life.

pbadenskion Equihax

Presumably if someone wanted to sell this data for big bucks they would have found a way to provide a sufficient and satisfying proof.

pbadenskion Equihax

There are results showing up on the web, eg. here:

http://www.techjamaica.com/forums/showthread.php?110860-Bill...

pbadenskion Equihax

These seem to have been leaked before [1, 2], so that's not very conclusive...

[1] https://www.facebook.com/HydraHackingUnited/posts/9614975439... (November 24, 2015)

[2] http://www.jeuxvideo.com/forums/1-50-138814262-1-0-1-0-qui-s... (June 20, 2013)

pbadenskion When all job differences are accounted for, the pay gap almost disappears

Is anyone aware of the existence of similar data for the US?

pbadenskion UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia ruled lawful

We should find out in 20 years it seems (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/our-role/plans-poli...)

pbadenskion Ask HN: What good alteratives are there to Google News?

http://eventregistry.org/search?type=events if you're looking for an API source

pbadenskion EventRegistry – Real-time, annotated feed of world news

A query to Google Scholar and quick skimming through the papers yields this as interesting start:

Event Registry – Learning About World Events From News http://wwwconference.org/proceedings/www2014/companion/p107....

Using news articles for real-time cross-lingual event detection and filtering http://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/f917/c0cff24fed1af45f94c...

pbadenskion EventRegistry – Real-time, annotated feed of world news

Neat!

- What did you use it for?

- What where the alternatives you considered?

- What was your overall experience? (eg. data quality or API ease of use)

pbadenskion Marketing automation is getting out-of-hand

Overall I found your response rather cynical. Implying law being broken is required for a previous comment to be a valid point is harsh. There's campaign law and there's ethics. Just because some behaviour was never codified into law doesn't make it right.

Having said that, I think the ethics of this political strategy depends on the intentions. If a politician has true respect for the people, wants to give personal touch, and just doesn't have enough time to handwrite the letters - that's okay in my view. If a politician is purely looking for means of influence - that in my opinion is "not okay".

pbadenskion Talks that changed the way I think about programming

Additional two on "software design and evolution" that were hugely influential for me in my career:

* Responsive design, by Kent Beck https://www.infoq.com/presentations/responsive-design

* The Grand Unified Theory, by Jim Weirich https://vimeo.com/10837903

pbadenskion COCREATE

http://cocreate.online/submit-idea returns 404

pbadenskion Ask HN: Who is firing?

You can always mail hacker news admins and ask to edit.

pbadenskion Ask HN: I have only this current year left of school as of today. What now?

Knowing what I know now (7 years after graduation) I would do the following. Find at least 3 people with around 5-10 years programming experience who are still coding. Offer to buy them lunch in exchange for a conversation. Share your concerns and listen to their perspective. Consolidate all their opinions and draw your own conclusions. Make a decision and keep your fingers crossed - life works in funny ways.

pbadenskion Ask HN: What has been your experience with TopTal (and other similar agencies)?

<rant>Oh how I wish all people would include their country of residence when answering region-sensitive questions...</rant>

I'm recruiting with Toptal right now. The interview is long and arduous. I realize when it comes to global freelancing living in London puts me at a disadvantage. Lack of details about rates makes it challenging to make an informed decision on whether you should even bother. [UK, London]

pbadenskion I Hire Engineers at Google--Here's What I Look for (And Why)

I wonder what this Google recruiter would say about this: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768.

pbadenskion Bret Victor, Inventing on Principle (2012) [video]

I’m developing Halik - time traveling debugger for JVM inspired by Learnable Programming. Emphasis on the ability to explore and visualize your program. See http://meet.halik.io.

pbadenskion Eventsourcing for Java 0.4.0 released

How is different than Axon Framework?

pbadenskion I tried to fly to London on a fake passport [video]

I was wondering if it's legal what this person did. I thought others would too. Here's what I found:

"Although some asylum seekers might enter the UK illegally, once they have applied for asylum they are no longer ‘illegal’. Anyone seeking protection is entitled to stay in the UK while awaiting a decision on their asylum claim." (http://www.asylumaid.org.uk/the-asylum-process-made-simple)

pbadenskion It's Kinda Like CNN for Web Developers

CNN metaphor didn't speak to me at all.. I was born in Poland and have barely watched American TV channels. Now that I live abroad nobody watches TV anyway.

pbadenskion Show HN: Halik, next-generation time traveling debugger for Java

Thanks!

It keeps the session local. It will upload to halik.io when you tell it to. There's a share option in the top right corner. Once shared, your session can be accessed by anyone.

I will make sure to clarify that better going onwards.