pyoung

I would argue that with the right setup (sensors, gyros, on board computer), an automated system could do a much better job than the cyclist. My guess, is that most cyclists stay well under the 'thrown over' threshold when braking, which could be part of the reason some collisions occur (i.e. too little, too late sort of thing). An automated system could probably get you right up to that threshold, and then use gyros for stabilization (to balance the bike). The reason that this won't happen is because no one is going to install this on their bike (whereas most modern cars already have fairly sophisticated on board computers and sensor systems).

I agree that there is some risk, but I am not sure how I would be able to diversify any more than I already have. I have my money split into about 6 different index funds, primarily diversified globally, although I have a few industry/sector specific funds. And then I have about 30% of my savings in stocks that I picked, most of which are pretty stable companies with fairly long term future/outlook (so they would, in theory, come out of a recession in good shape, even if they took a few hits).

If there is some other asset class I am missing, let me know. In the meantime, I think I will take my chances with the market. Worst case, if things get bad, I can just go back to work (left my old company, in a fairly recession proof industry, on good terms)

Yeah, I have seen it first hand. Admittedly, there was some redundancy and some excess in the folder names, but it was for a relatively large project that was organized with fairly deep levels of sub-projects and tasks. If you happened to be working on one of the sub-projects that had a longer, more verbose title, you would run into this issue.

Vangaurd low cost index funds. Supposedly, you can count on 8-10% annual return. I also did/do some occasional stock picking which has gotten good results (but I wouldn't count on that being sustainable). I probably spend about 20k a year, and have savings in the low 6 digits.

I waited until I had 5-10x my annual expenses, but obviously you can do it with less. My main recommendation would to be have at least an extra 6 months of living expenses beyond what you need (so if you are taking a year off, have at least 1.5 yrs of living expenses) in case it takes a while to find work again. The main advantage of saving more than that is you can use the returns from your investments to offset some of your costs a bit.

I am currently taking a sabbatical of sorts after slaving away and saving up for 5 years. I threw most of my savings into index funds, and then set up automatic withdrawals to my savings account. This forces me to try and live within a certain budget. If all goes well (i.e. market stays healthy), I will have only spent down a small amount of my savings by the time I return to the labor force. In the mean time, I have been taking some coursera classes, toying with some side projects, and doing some R&R. I highly recommend it for people who can afford to do this.

In this case, it's not a huge deal, but if someone wrote on their resume that they had some experience with machine learning, and it turned out that they had only done linear regression modeling, they might be poorly received.

Not to bag on the write up, as it was well done, but does linear regression really qualify as machine learning? Almost every stats 101 course covers the topic, and probably 99% of people who use linear regressions in their day-to-day work would not call it machine learning. I know that linear regression is sometimes presented in Machine Learning courses, but I always thought is was done as a refresher, and not as actual course material of any significant weight.

I am in a rent controlled building in SF. Our building recently got sold and the new owner evicted the lowest paying tenant. She (the new owner) has to live in the unit for two years before she can re-rent the unit, but considering the previous tenant had been there for 15-20 years, the increased rent she will get after those two years will more than make up for the lost rent (assuming that is her intention). Additionally, she is starting to repair/update the building. I was initially excited about this (the building is a bit old/outdated), but after reading the rent control laws, found out that she is allowed to pass on 100% of the cost to the tenants (through a 5% annual increase until the costs are paid off), and additionally, can deduct 100% of the cost from her taxes. Also, I found out what the sale price of the building was, and after doing a little back of the napkin calculations, realized that her mortgage is probably going to be less than what she collects in rent from the remaining two tenants. So for the cost of the down payment, the landlord is getting a place to live, all of the building upgrades paid for by the tenants, the mortgage paid for by the tenants, and a small income from what is left over from the rent as well as any capital gains on the building. This sounds like a pretty good deal (and I was actually upset that I didn't move on it myself).

I agree with the sentiment that rent control can result in an increase in market prices. But it's not as if the landlords are getting completely screwed, they still have avenues in which they can evict tenants, profitably upgrade the building, and achieve close to market rents. Additionally, a major factor that gets overlooked in the rent control debate is that the 'secondary market' (rooms for rent in rent controlled units) provides fairly affordable housing for young newcomers. Almost everybody I know who lives in SF does so by renting a room in a rent controlled unit that they found through friends or through craigslist. These rooms are significantly cheaper than market rates (rent control by-laws actually require that any rooms in a rent controlled unit must be re-rented at an evenly split price, or normalized price based on square footage, not that everyone abides by those rules), and probably the only reason people with marginal means can afford to live here. So, while rent control may result in an increase in market prices, it also creates a secondary market that allows for economic diversity to continue to exist in SF.

I am somewhat split on rent control, but my gut feeling tells me it is the right thing to do. Allowing landlords to arbitrarily raise rent or randomly evict tenants is unfair and disruptive to people's lives. Rent control allows for a secondary market that lets young and lower income folks get a foot in the door. I think the 'lazy rent controlled tenant who pays nothing because they lived there for 30 years' is largely a myth (or such a rarity that they have only minimal impact on the macro trends) because rent control still allows for evictions, just with a bit more red tape. Also, another factor that doesn't get discussed is the effect of rent control on a downward market. Because rents aren't ruthlessly increased to market rates during the boom times, it means people who get laid off in the bad times can actually afford to stick around and look for a new job for a while, rather than having to lift anchor and move somewhere cheaper. From what I recall, the vacancy rate in SF rose a little bit during the great recession, but no where near as bad as other places.

Sounds like they do a pretty good job of controlling the emissions. My primary concern, and this is a fairly uneducated concern, but I always envisioned a (bleak) future where we had already mined all the precious and rare-earth metals and minerals and were forced to use our garbage dumps to re-claim those materials. Of course a good recycling program, would in theory, prevent this from ever being necessary, but in general, burning stuff to create energy feels sooo 20th century, we should really be using renewables and nuclear.

re: "management people"

That is part of the problem. You will often find that the skills it takes to climb the corporate ladder are not the same as the skills it takes to be a good manager. Management in bigger companies tends to be littered with well connected but incompetent people who are really good at bullshitting and 'looking the part'. This doesn't apply to every manager, but it is common enough that you are almost guaranteed to work with plenty of them throughout your career.

Ahh, that would be hilarious. Urbanspoon should open up a co-location server rack and charge people a monthly fee to set up their servers there.

Well, looks like they do actually respond to the contact form, got an e-mail from them a few moments ago saying they were "aware of the situation". Although, looks like this blog has been picked up by some mainstream news outlets, who have been getting comments from Urbanspoon:

http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2013/07/25/are-automate...

How long did it take you to land your first gig? This definitely seems like the way to go, but as you can imagine there is a heavy amount of luck involved with your process (i.e. if all of your friends are not associated with companies that need your skills, then you probably aren't going to find many offers).

I am currently on a sabbatical of sorts, and am keeping the option of doing freelance work as a way to extend it, but so far, all of the 'dude, this would be great for you' opportunities from friends haven't panned out. Part of the problem might be that I don't really need the work, so I haven't been following up too aggressively, but it still feels like I would probably have to go outside my network to land the first gig.

On the flip side, I made my first reservation through opentable a few weeks ago, and I was surprised when they DIDN'T ask for any cc info. Granted I was new to the experience, but the first thing that crossed my mind was I could not show up and it wouldn't be a big deal.

Feel like if they market this move a little better, they could convince their loyal customers that this will allow them a better chance at getting reservations.

Seems like Urbanspoon should be using some sort of scraping counter measures to make things a little more fair. I sent them an e-mail through their contact form (of course I wouldn't be suprised if those are sent straight to the trash/spam folder).

Also, is scraping legal? I would imagine, at the very least, the OP and others are violating the TOS. I have written a few scripts of my own for fun, but I would be careful about bragging about it on a public blog.

There was a 'bagel start up' in the SF area that got some press. They basically rented out a commercial kitchen and made NY style bagels, and then sold them to coffee shops and bakeries for re-sale. I believe that they closed up shop (although supposedly it wasn't for lack of profitability). Might be worth looking into their story.

Maybe offer one of them a full time position? From their description, seems like there is enough work.

If you are doing freelance and consulting work, and not product development, then you should set up some type of hourly billing system, or consider setting up some type of'finders fee' for the work he brings in. It should be noted, that most freelancers/consultancies do not need a full time bizdev guy until they have at least a handful of employees and are working on a few projects concurrently. With that said, if he can bring in enough work, it may be worth it (and it should be noted that you will need a lot more than $3000 to keep you both afloat).

Also worth noting, equity in freelance/consulting companies is relatively worthless. Billable hours do not scale, so your revenue will be directly tied to the number of hours you and your employees can work. Because of this, you need to focus on making sure you get a decent salary/hourly wage as soon as possible.

I can see a few potential flaws that could have caused them to not get follow up funding (although I am in no way suggesting that they didn't get follow up funding)

1. Cost. People in Africa are poor, so unless these can be produced and sold for pennies a piece, it probably won't take off. Using the 'buy one, donate one' method probably doesn't scale enough to solve the malaria problem. 2. Behavior. Condoms are a fairly effective method to practice safe sex, and despite a massive amount of money and education, adoption has been slow, or non-existent in Africa. I can see similar issues with Kite. 3. Effectiveness - While they may work, they may not have been shown to be effective enough to warrant further funding. 4. For-profit? I can't seem to find anything on the companies website, but the gates foundation prefers to give their money to non-profits. If they are a for-profit company, I could see reluctance on the foundations part to continue providing funds.

On a personal note, this seems like a cool product that I would use when camping/hiking. But for some of the reasons mentioned above, I would be skeptical to declare this as the solution to malaria in third-world countries, not that I would mind to be proven wrong. I wish them the best of luck.

Everybody who has ever spoken at PyCon for one (and volunteers as well): http://jessenoller.com/blog/2011/05/25/pycon-everybody-pays

It looks like the OP is an established consultant/teacher, so he probably only goes to conferences that invite him to speak (and my guess is, from what I have heard about you tptacek, that you are in the same boat), so he may be unfamiliar with the practice. But for us peons, with little to no name recognition, conference papers and talks can be a big resume booster, so it's not out of the question to pay-to-speak (you still have to go through the proposal process though). In my old industry, this was standard practice, and because almost everyone had their conference registration and travel paid for by their employer, it wasn't a huge deal.

As a counter example, I have been to a number of conferences where the speakers/presenters/panelists and volunteers were expected to pay the full registration fee, so as you can imagine, friends/family and +1's wouldn't get special treatment.

While some events are pretty laid back, it looks like the registration for this event cost ~$2000, which is a pretty penny. My gut instinct would be to check with the event organizers first before trying to bring a +1, but I think the OP assumed that because he was able to negotiate with the travel coordinators for two one way tickets, one for his wife (instead of one round trip ticket), he probably assumed that this was implicit consent for his wife to tag along at the conference. Seems like a big mis-understanding that was confounded by poor treatment from security staff (and before we start ragging on the security staff, it is worth mentioning that event security tends to be a thankless, miserable job. Crappy wages and hours, and depending on the event, you spend most of your time dealing with people who treat you like shit.)

I guess it depends on how badly they enforce the ban on "internet for non-work-related" browsing. Could make it difficult, although it sounds like he is a programmer at a tech-ish company, so he should probably have access to most tech/programming oriented sites. Worst case, he could get a wifi hotspot and go to town.

At my last job, I kept a few programming books at my desk, and during slow periods would crack those open and do some self-learning. It was a consulting job though, so those moments were few and far between (as much as I hated having to fill out timecards, billable rates were a good approximation of employee productivity, if you weren't billable, you needed a really good excuse).

I get the space-time vector thing. You said that, when moving at the speed of light, one moves through time at a velocity of zero, thus giving the appearance of infinitely fast movement. So if one was able to achieve zero movement (which would probably require achieving zero energy?), wouldn't time also appear to be moving infinitely fast (even though it was actually moving at the speed of light).

Interesting explanation. What happens at the other end of your example? If you reduce movement through space to zero, would time move infinitely fast?

Before contributing, you should probably read this:

http://hackaday.com/2013/07/15/were-going-to-buy-hackaday/#m...

Ideally, increases would get tied to the CPI, or some other index. I also wouldn't mind a provision that would automatically adjust payments to ensure solvency.

Regarding the amount, it should be small enough to make it difficult to live off of. I don't think it would be a good idea if we created a class of BI dependents. There should still be fairly strong incentives to work. I think the main purpose of the BI would be to alleviate the need to rely on corporate america as a de facto social welfare provider. If you look at what happened to Detroit, for example, after the car industry tanked, the local economy went down with it. At the very least, BI would have provided a stabilizing force, slowing down the decline, and possibly giving residents a chance to re-build the local economy.

You have some good points, but some of them miss the mark. I entirely disagree with you sentiment that "you have to take the bus (or ride a bike)" is a downside. I consider this a major selling point to SF, you can get drinks with friends and not have to worry about driving under the influence. Almost every other city I have been to, you either need a DD, or you have to pony up a ton of money for a cab.

Regarding the old houses, roommates, and homelessness, by themselves none of these are really that big of a deal, and are probably pretty common in any major city. What is a little absurd (and you sort of alluded to this), is that we are paying some of the highest rent in the country, for these 'privileges'. However, I imagine most people who live here, including myself, don't exactly look at it that way. Instead, we look at it as we are paying high rent, for the privilege of living in SF and all it's perks (good jobs, active social life, etc..), and the old houses, roommates and homelessness are just a part of SF life.

I mostly agree with this. Any rational business model would probably require some demand and usage based pricing, and if you are using a shared car the same way you would if you owned it (i.e. commuting to work during peak hours, weekend trips), than it should come out to roughly the same cost as ownership. However, in high density urban areas, parking is still a real pain. In my opinion, this is really where the potential for driver less cars is. A dedicated parking spot can be expensive, and street parking can be a nightmare.

Regarding you point on peak demand, I would expect that any 'autonomous taxi service' would use demand based pricing to mitigate the impact of peak hours. Essentially this means, that for a lot of people, the cheapest way to get to and from work will still be public transportation/biking/walking (at least during peak hours). Of course, if autonomous vehicles become cheap/ubiquitous enough, at some point along the price curve, it would make sense to have a ton of extra capacity to satisfy peak demand. Also, car sharing services would add another factor into the equation. Taxi companies would need to be profitable, whereas car sharing companies would only need to return enough value to the individual car owners to convince them to participate (i.e. participating in the service does not necessarily have to be 'profitable' for the owner, it just needs to offset enough of their costs to convince them it is worth it).

On your point about sprawl, I can just as easily envision the opposite happening. As car ownership becomes less of a necessity, I do not need to worry about a garage or parking when considering where to live. Additionally, I don't think that autonomous vehicles will necessarily make car use cheap, I think more realistically, the marginal cost of driving (i.e. cost per mile) will still be a non-insignificant amount, but the convenience will increase dramatically (especially for people who do not own cars), but I imagine commuting an hour to work each way using an autonomous taxi service will still cost you a pretty penny (partly due to the demand issues mentioned above). Also, long commutes still suck, even if you aren't driving the car. I participated in carpool for a year (one hour each way, my car was too crappy, so I never drove, just pitched in for gas), and I was able to get some work or reading done, but I still hated it.

uhhh, essentially we already have this service. It's called Lyft, and it is wildly popular. The only difference, is that the owner has to drive the car.