pyoung

Worth mentioning, a major tax credit for US solar installations will expire at the end of 2016.[1] No one knows for sure how this will impact the industry, but before you dump all your money into solar stocks, or quit your day job to start a solar startup, you might want to do some research. The general consensus is that things are going to get pretty crazy over the next year as companies try and get installations done before the tax credit expires. And after that, no one really knows what is going to happen.

[1] http://www.seia.org/policy/finance-tax/solar-investment-tax-...

You don't need a real time central planning system for that. Just a few signs and some tow trucks. SF has a few streets that are traffic lanes during rush hour, and parking spots on off peak hours.

If you already have a working web app, why not just use something like flot[1] for your charting (or d3 if you are up for it). Seems like pyxley is more targeted at people who have some data in pandas and want to get some visualizations on the web quickly.

[1]http://www.flotcharts.org/

There is some funny math going on here. You are comparing single use consumables against multi use consumables. I can use a water filter for a few months before I need to replace it. The equivalent amount of k-cups (a few months worth) would be in the $100's (at least at the rate that I drink coffee). Additionally, most people probably buy bulk boxes of k-cups (in the $40 range), so the psychological argument isn't particularly valid (at least when comparing to the cost of the equipment price).

"I could flood github with all the miscellaneous crap I have on my testbench."

I would say the vast majority of projects on Github qualify as 'miscellaneous crap'. Most employers these days require a link to your Github profile during the application process, which can be a pain if you have been working with closed-source systems your entire career, or are relatively new to the field (Github isn't part of most CS curriculums). Throwing up a few toy projects can be enough to get you through the screening process.

With that said, I personally wouldn't submit a project like this to HN (I have a very similar project on GH). But if it got enough up votes to get on the front page, who are we to judge.

While I agree that feedback would be nice, I also think that if you objectively evaluate the application/interview engagement, you can narrow down the reasons for rejection. And after a few interviews you can start seeing what the patterns are and make adjustments accordingly. I think it is much more informative to try and get honest feedback on your resume, application process, and interviewing skills from friends and acquaintances. Pass your resume around to friends who work in HR and ask for feedback. Do a practice interview or two with someone who works in a similar job to what you are applying for.

It's also worth keeping in mind that the process for many companies is very random. At my old company, I have recommended a few very qualified candidates, only for their application to get stuck in HR limbo due to budgets or politics. And on the other side of that, every now and then we would open the floodgates, and any one with a pulse would get in. It was really frustrating, but that's just how it works.

You can get a good amount of conversion just from steeping. A lot of the extract brew kits use unmilled grain, which is good for shelf life but bad for conversion (but still adds flavor), which is probably where you got the impression that steeping doesn't work. I think the primary reason for needing a mash tun is to handle the volume of grain needed for 5+ gallons of brew. If you are brewing less than that, you can get away with steeping in the brew pot, and equipment permitting, sparge using a colander or grain bag. Just add a little extra grain to account for conversion losses.

From my experience, you only loose a few degrees of temp over the hour of steeping in the boil kettle. I usually put a towel or two on top of the lid to help retain heat, and if needed, will pour some hot water in from the tea kettle to keep the temp up, but that is rarely needed.

For a quick, hipstery, overview of the gallon batch method go here, I use this method for my gallon brews, and the results have been really good: http://brooklynbrewshop.com/instructions

I haven't tried this, but here is the brew-in-a-bag method: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/biab-brew-in-a-ba...

I have a buddy in a similar situation as yours (kids, no time to brew). He has a killer setup (15 gallon, all-grain), and his solution was to just cut back to brewing a few times a year, and invite some buddies over to help. I think one gallon brews are best left to people in small apartments or for experimentation. In your situation, I would keep in mind the yield-per-time metric. A 15 gallon brew might take a few hours longer than a gallon brew, but it yields 15x more beers. Gallon brews are a good way to keep your brewing instincts sharp, but it won't keep your fridge full.

You steep the grains in your brew pot for an hour and then sparge by using an additional pot and a large colander. Brooklyn Brew Shop sells one gallon brew kits, but if you already have brewing supplies, the only thing you would need to add is a one gallon carboy (I buy the gallon jugs of wine at the supermarket, and then just re-use the jugs).

I brew both 5 gallon batches and 1 gallon batches (mostly for experimentation). TO keep the costs down on the gallon batches, I use washed yeast and hops leftover from other recipes. The cool thing about the gallon batches is you can squeeze in an all-grain brew in an evening on a weekday, but the obvious downside is it only yields ~9 beers, which I find to be too small a yield for the amount of effort. Also, if you already have a wort chiller, you won't save that much time compared to a 5 gallon extract brew.

If you are dead set on all grain, others on this thread have mentioned the brew-in-the-bag method. It looks like you just steep the grains (using a really big mesh bag). It looks like this method gets you about 3 gallons, but if you already have a bunch of equipment, you could probably adapt this method to 5 gallons.

I am curious as to why you recommend avoiding meads? I made a gallon batch (still fermenting though) and it was by far the easiest brew process I have come across. Basically just heat up some water and dump honey in, then transfer to the carboy and add yeast. I think it took all of 20-30 minutes. Scaling up to a 5 gallon batch would add a trivial amount of time. Was it the taste? I tasted it when I transferred to secondary, and it was tolerable (I would compare it to a funky white wine). Or fermentation time (was told that it needs about six months total)?

If time ever became a big constraint for me, I imagine I would just cut my brewing down to a few big beers a year (high gravity or other styles that call for long fermentation) which would keep the carboys full, but would also stretch out the time between brews. And then I would try and mix in some meads or all extract brews.

I would imagine most of the laws and regulations are anti-fraud in nature. Outside of that, limiting the risk exposure of banks that carry FDIC insurance, or some other government backing, is in the interest in of all taxpayers. From my laymen's understanding, if you want to start a hedge fund, take some rich people's money, and gamble it all away, nothing is really stopping you. In fact people do it all the time.

Thanks for this, I think this a really good antidote for the misconceptions surrounding the 10,000 hour rule. Granted, this is still more 'pop science' than actual science/research. And I think calling him 'proficient' with the Uke, is a stretch, I think 'functional' is a better description.

For most of us, we are balancing jobs and real world responsibilities, and can't afford to put in 40 hours a week for 5 years on the long-shot hopes that we would one day be playing our instrument of choice in front of sell out crowds in Carnegie Hall. Realistically, I could afford maybe 1 hour/day of practice (and even that would be a bit of a stretch, probably closer to 3-4 hours/week) which would mean Carnegie Hall wouldn't happen for another 27 years. I think more than anything, the proliferation of the '10,000 hour rule' was very depressing for me, as a small part of the enjoyment of practicing my various hobbies comes from dreaming about the possibilities, and when you break down the numbers, those dreams become highly improbable (i.e. impossible).

I think a better 'rule' would be as follows, largely from my own anecdotal experience and observations with a number of instruments, sports, programming, and other hobbies:

10's of hours = functional; 100's of hours = proficient; 1000's of hours = professional level; 10000's of hours = world class;

As is noted elsewhere in this thread, these numbers are highly variable and dependent on genetics, previous experience, and practice strategies. But I think this is a better way to frame skill acquisition, its a bit more friendly and realistic. I would like to think that after a couple hundred hours of practicing a new instrument, I would be good enough to jam out in front of a small crowd in a shitty bar. And from my previous experience, that has generally been the case.

"Yet the buyers don't pay anything for the service."

Well, it is a bidding process. So if buyers believe there is enough added value in this service, they will overbid the 'CL price'. So if a couch would sell for $300 on craigslist, presumably it could sell for that plus whatever the value of having the item delivered, let's say $400.

I think the bigger issue with this service, is that the cost of delivery of a large piece of furniture is relatively constant regardless of the value. So if I want to sell a $1000+ dollar couch, I have no incentive to use this service, it would make much more sense to sell it on craigslist and offer to cover the costs of a professional moving service instead ($500 vs $100-200). It seems to me that this service is most valuable for lower priced items. So if I can sell my crappy $100 couch hassle free, but only get $50 back, I would be pretty happy with that. However I doubt that would be profitable for the company.

I believe I re-call an internet comment (most likely on HN) about how some publishers would instruct bookstores to shred the unsold copies. Apparently it was cheaper than shipping them back and trying to re-sell them somewhere else.

I don't re-call the exact details of the situation, but an old acquaintance was able to sue a seller for breach of contract after the seller backed out of the deal at the last minute. The settlement was in the lower 5 figure range.

I guess the point is, for many people this transaction involves a significant portion of their net worth and and there are plenty of people out there who would happily relieve you of that money. I agree that the incentives are slightly mis-aligned when it comes to final price negotiations, but at the very least, any agent should be concerned enough about their reputation that they will have done the basic due diligence to ensure that you don't get fleeced. That alone would be worth the price.

Not exactly. Those that are speeding have accepted the higher risk of accident in exchange for getting to their destination slightly faster (if at all). The choices of the speeders have externalities in the form of a higher risk of accident for all other drivers around them, regardless of others speed. The drivers who obey the law bear none of the of the responsibility for that increase in risk. If you want to argue that speed limits should be raised because everyone is breaking them anyways, I think that is a fairer point of view. But to blame people who are following the law for the externalities caused by those breaking the law is absurd.

For fun and as a learning experience, I built a simple CL scrapping web site. I set it up on a small aws instance about 6 months ago and after playing around with and making modifications/updates to it over the course of a month or two, I largely forgot about it. After seeing this thread, it dawned on me that I had not received an e-mail update on any of my search alerts for a while. I ssh'ed into the server and got a 403 with 'wget craigslist.com', so my guess is that they are doing some sort of blocking. Looking at the logs, the block probably started about a month ago.

From what I have read (previous 538 blog post on Messi), they are already tracking a good deal of data about the games. I think one issue with soccer is that there is a lack of discrete, measurable outcomes in the game. I read a while back that one of the breakthroughs in basketball analysis came when they started tracking the total point differential during each player's time on court. Because so many points are scored in a game, and because so many games are played in a season, this stat was a fairly reliable and accurate picture of how a player would impact the team's performance (which allowed teams to measure the impact of players who may not rank high in the more traditional stats).

In soccer, you don't have a lot of data points to model against. The number of goals scored is typically low. Because of this, there is probably a higher level of uncertainty and variance in the outcomes of soccer games (and the prediction models as well).

I don't know, I think I would rather have these people on motorcycles than be behind the wheel of a 2 ton SUV. As someone who regularly walks and rides bicycles (and I have a motorcycle license but am reluctant to use it for safety reasons), I would much prefer that we keep the idiots of the world out of the big cars and trucks and put them onto smaller, less dangerous (to others) vehicles.

The Koch bothers essentially own an entire political party. While their political contributions and influence has not resulted in any major changes in policy and legislation in recent years, they have successfully prevented a popular (at time of election) democratic president from making any major impact on policy. After the 2012 elections, a lot of press was written about how much money was spent on Republican elections and how little success resulted. But if you look at the House of Representatives, despite the fact that overall, more votes were democratic, the Republicans still walked away with a clear majority of seats thanks to redistricting. And of course, the majority in the house allows Republicans to obstruct just about anything.

If the Koch brothers weren't getting a return on their political contributions, I highly doubt they would continue to do so. After the recession there was a big push for wall st regulation, higher taxes on the 1%, and increases in welfare program funding, and yet nothing meaningful came from it despite popular support. My guess is the Koch brothers consider that a success.

Is that really a flaw? If I can learn better by reading books and then working through problem sets, why bother with the lectures, especially if I am strapped for time as many MOOC participants probably are. I am a huge fan of MOOC's, I've probably attempted about a dozen and have completed about half. So far the biggest reason for failing to complete a class has been time constraints. If I am already familiar with the material (i.e taking the class as a refresher) or don't find the lectures particularly engaging, I will still 'watch' the lectures, but play them in the background while I work on problem sets or do other stuff. In my experience, most MOOCs have a healthy portion of participants who are very familiar with the material, so it's quite possible a good percentage of them are just using the problem sets as a way to refresh their understanding.

Unless of course, you are insinuating that a majority of these people are cheating (i.e. copying and pasting answers on HW's) I don't really see what the big deal is.

Ignoring that fact that precedent can be overturned, this ruling still leaves open the possibility of using eminent domain to get public control of the access road (which has been mentioned as a possibility in other comments). My guess is that they are going to withhold approval until the issue is resolved. So they aren't necessarily demanding easement concessions, but they aren't going to issue permits until the dispute has either been settled in the courts, eminent domain has been used, or a settlement is reached.

EDIT: Actually, if you dig a little deeper into that case, the ruling has little impact on the Martin's Beach case. In the Nollan case, the CCC was requesting an access road/path where none had previously existed. The CCC's argument was actually pretty weak, they were claiming that the development would result in "psychological impediments to public access" which gave them the right to demand concessions. In the Martin's Beach case, the CCC should have the power to demand public access concessions if the road historically served as a public access point (assuming the federal treaty issues don't negate that power). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nollan_v._California_Coastal_Co...

Most businesses look for ways to increase their margins over time, which will balance out increases in costs. If that fails, then they will increase their prices. Attrition should result in relatively flat total salary expenses (adjusted for inflation). As people leave, you promote (and give raises) from within the company, and hire new, lower paid staff.

Have you ever used Lyft. In my experience (SF), it literally takes minutes for a car to show up. More often than not, I am still looking for may keys/wallet/jacket or brushing my teeth when the car gets here. I imagine an autonomous car service would be even faster, as car availability could be highly tuned to demand (Lyft and Uber are using comparatively crude methods of demand/availability management, surge pricing).

As others have mentioned, the car-sharing model works best in urban areas, and no one is suggesting that we ban individuals from owning cars. But I will also add that we have spent the last 100 years building infrastructure and public spaces to accommodate for a car-centric society, but this has had a negative impact on people who prefer other forms of transportation. Public transportation is severely underfunded and inadequate in most places, pedestrians and bikers are getting mowed down by reckless drivers, tons of public land is being poorly utilized as parking space, and our air is getting polluted to unprecedented levels. Your "peace of mind" comes at a high cost to the rest of society. Autonomous cars are not a silver bullet for all of these problems by any means, but they can go a long way in getting us to a better place with most of these issues.

Why couldn't Google just offer their own insurance plan? They could bundle the cost with a monthly or yearly service/maintenance fee. If the margins are so high on insurance products, I'm sure they would be more than happy to keep the profits themselves.

"just lots of rich people with less money."

My original take on the "bubble" was somewhat in line with this. However, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to believe that this will "trickle down" in many ways. Fewer investments will lead to fewer jobs. In SV, this could lead to a cooling down (or worse) of the labor market. The established players (Google, Apple, Amazon, etc) will probably pull through alright, but the VC money will thin out. If I was a software engineer and I wanted to hedge my bets, I would probably try get a job at one of the bigger, more stable companies in the next year. If things do cool down, I imagine that programmer jobs and salaries will be the most noticeable side effect.

Of course I could be entirely wrong. It's possible that VC money makes up only a small fraction of the demand for software engineers. After all, almost every industry under the sun is shifting towards (or wants to shift towards) higher levels of automation and efficiency using computers and software.

You are close, but not quite on point. The issue you discussed isn't really an issue that utilities face under normal circumstances, the law of large numbers tends to take care of that. Utilities typically use these systems to control the load during abnormal usage periods such as during a period of particularly hot outdoor temperatures. By throttling their customers AC usage, they can reduce demand and avoid risking blackouts/grid failures or having to resort to using 'peaker plants' which tend to be older and more polluting (and due to latency requirements, must be kept up and running for the entire peak period, even if they are never needed).

I am not 100% on this, but I think most of the US providers wont allow you to activate a smart phone without a data plan. It's kind of BS, but my guess is that they do it to ensure they re-coup the costs of the higher subsidies given out for smartphones.

Drone-toasters, they will literally take off!

They could have insisted that the original seller fix the violation/evict the tenant before the sale of the unit. This of course would mean a much higher sales price (or no sale), so they didn't. They could have reported the illegal unit to the DBI at anytime in the 10 years that they lived there. Instead they waited until they were basically ready to move out and sell the property.

They were probably hoping that the tenant would eventually move out on her own so that they could either re-rent the unit for a much higher price, or bring the unit up to code and re-sell it. They didn't let her live there for 10 years because they were being nice, they did it because they were hoping to avoid the messy and expensive legal issues that they eventually had to deal with. Regardless they walked away with ~$770K from the appreciation of their property, so not sure why they deserve any sympathy. As far as investments go, they hit a home run.

My guess is that the owners were well aware of the situation when they purchased the property. The owners stated that they were warned by "pretty much everyone" not to purchase the property, and the fact that the property came with someone living in it should be a pretty big red flag. For those that have been around SF long enough, it's easy enough to recognize when someone is playing the 'sf housing regulatory lottery'. The basic gist of the game is as follows:

Step 1 - Buy a property that is impacted by certain regulatory constraints (which depresses it's market value heavily). Step 2 - If you are cheap, sit, wait, and pray that natural forces relive you of the regulatory burden (or make life a living hell for your existing tenant in an attempt to get them to move out). If you have some money, actively spend it to rid your property of regulatory constraints. Step 3 - Once unburdened (or partially relived) of said constraints, sell the property and profit handsomely.

This game is primarily played with rent controlled units and TICs. The owners in question bought property on the cheap, evicted an old disabled lady who is now homeless, and made bank. Sure, the lady was a piece of work herself, but let's not pretend these owners were saints, they knew what the endgame was all along.