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qdpb

154 karma · joined March 21, 2012

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qdpb··on Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself
Yep.

At a certain level promotion is not about just doing something well. Funnily enough, his plans now are to go do other things (presumably well) without a particular sense of direction and hope that it works out.

qdpb··on California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B
How many minutes before the flight do you usually arrive to the airport? If not 15, why?
qdpb··on Victory on “The Price Is Right” Made Them Change Their System
The whole story is shockingly boring. It's like a counting cards except you don't even need to know probabilities.
qdpb··on Puerto Rico Tax Incentives for Startups and Freelancers
Wonderful to see people reinventing taxation from the first principles: "awesome country to live in, with great education and social security, but these are expensive countries, from a Tax perspective"
qdpb··on Inside Obama's stealth startup
It's not appropriate to use the word "confiscate" in this context. If you're not satisfied with the social contract of this country, you're free to leave and earn money elsewhere.
qdpb··on USCIS Completes the H-1B Cap Random Selection Process for FY 2016
Perhaps an interesting way to interpret what you're saying is that SF is bad enough that people no longer want to move there since all their surplus income will be consumed by housing costs (valid concern!).

But new immigrant salaries are as good as american salaries in terms of how much they can push prices up; so hiring H1-B is essentially similar to a pay cut for people (same $$, higher housing costs); following this pay cut some existing engineers will leave.

In the end you just end up with replacing some old engineers with new ones through a costly lengthy process.

This is the kind of absurd logical games one has to play in order to not acknowledge basic economics of supply and demand.

qdpb··on USCIS Completes the H-1B Cap Random Selection Process for FY 2016
If there is nowhere to house new engineers, why do companies apply for H1-B?
qdpb··on USCIS Completes the H-1B Cap Random Selection Process for FY 2016
> let's be real, this country doesn't have nearly enough STEM professionals to meet demand

... at current salaries.

qdpb··on Why I’m Giving Up My Passport
Do you also have to pay "thousands" of dollars to accountants? This particular bit seems to be an exaggeration, as I would imagine any tax software should be able to deal with foreign income. And with only federal income to report, this should be cheap too.
qdpb··on Review of Thomas Piketty's Capital: Capitalism vs Democracy
What is so good about growth if proceeds only go to the people who already have capital?
qdpb··on OkCupid urges users to abandon Firefox
Does he have any control over future development of javascript and how this future development will affect a wider community? I don't think he does.

But he is the CEO of the company, and what the company does going forward does depend on him a lot.

I think this is the key difference between boycotting the browser and boycotting the language.

qdpb··on Cross-Country Love: Help Fly NYC Women to SF
Alternatively, they could probably make all the dates happen at home by offering NYC men some of the money that would otherwise go towards the flight.
qdpb··on Consumer Reports Calls Tesla Model S The Best Car Of 2014
Note that I'm criticizing this beliefs, and not the distribution of future probabilities. Of course company might be overvalued now at $250, and sure, it might hit $500 later.

But if you're certain it will be $500 in three years, you need some serious risk aversion (~2500bps) to think it's not worth buying it now at $250.

In other words, by saying it will grow to $500 you're expressing your view on value; this value is higher than price, so stock is undervalued.

qdpb··on Consumer Reports Calls Tesla Model S The Best Car Of 2014
Is stock overvalued at $250 or is it going to be worth $500 within 3 years? It really can't be both.
qdpb··on San Francisco Startup ZenPayroll Raises $20M, Finds Novel Ways to Lure Workers
He absolutely can do whatever he wants. Just as long as he doesn't call it "taking some responsibility"*

*correction: as explained elsewhere, this is potentially a misquote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7265916

qdpb··on San Francisco Startup ZenPayroll Raises $20M, Finds Novel Ways to Lure Workers
> Mr. Reeves said he’s been “amazed at the changes” and has watched housing prices rise. Local companies should take some responsibility, he said.

And to take "some responsibility", he made it easier to push housing prices even higher by subsidizing already well-off employees?

qdpb··on 1/9998 = 0.0001 0002 0004 0008 0016 0032 0064 0128 0256..
I think that's what you would call a break in a pattern though. Of course, the infinite series will stay infinite.
qdpb··on Why I’ll Never Return to Singapore
TL;DR: the country is all right, just didn't like it that much
qdpb··on At Twitter
> I went home that day and realized that Twitter, and the ensuing social media explosion, would dramatically alter the landscape of not only what I do through my blog, but design, fashion, lifestyle, culture, everything.

Sounds about right.

qdpb··on Medium Sucks
There must be a name for a logical construct where you imagine an obscure explanation for a phenomenon, reject this explanation and then extrapolate this rejection to phenomenon itself.
qdpb··on Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal
Perhaps it helps to clarify that the evil here is not that college loans exist, but how easy it is to get them to pay for any kind of education, how much you can borrow, and how impossible it is to get rid of this debt burden.

The choice between no loans or bad loans is fallacious.

qdpb··on Did Goldman Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer?
He most definitely is an American now. Otherwise he would be deported by now.
qdpb··on They're using Windows RT
The article concludes that Windows RT meets students needs perfectly, but it's hardly surprising since the college's workflow is so heavily skewed towards Microsoft applications.

It's equivalent to saying Mac OS X is an excellent development environment for iOS apps.

qdpb··on Who Says C is Simple?
Nobody?

What these examples demonstrate is not that C is "hard", but that it's powerful.

qdpb··on Pirate Bay Founder: “Future copy fights will need something better”
This is not a very accurate quote, very link baity.
qdpb··on VC for Hackers
I found it very unsettling that there is no way to know how many slides were left -- I know that's probably github limitation, but maybe worth inserting summary/progress slides?
qdpb··on Jordanian citizen was denied re-entry to the US on eve of his PhD defense at JHU
Nobody is forced to go deeply in debt. College education is voluntary.
qdpb··on New college grads: Don’t sell your time for a living
Don’t sell your time for a living. Starve.
qdpb··on Facebook paid $4.5K for disclosure of my user account exploit
One other thing to consider here is that these $4,500 are not packaged with a felony.
qdpb··on Google Glass is Ridiculous
> Puke. I find Glass to be ugly, impractical and completely ridiculous.

Well, that settles it then.

If only in the past we had examples of innovations that were previously considered impossible.

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