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sfrechtling

203 karma · joined March 18, 2013

Me.
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sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Where do you find new music to listen to online?
https://hypem.com/ - its a website that aggregates new music from music blogs.
sfrechtling··on I Am Fully Capable of Entertaining Myself in Prison for Decades If Need Be
I think an objective summary is going to be hard to come by.

The only thing I can add is that this view is common throughout history - think Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. The stereotype of Jewish people as being involved in the processes of finances and money lending may have been one seed for this.

sfrechtling··on How an Army of Ocean Farmers Are Starting an Economic Revolution
Some countries like New Zealand and Australian have these - called Marine Reserves and limit commercial activities. They normally are in areas of great diversity (Milford Sounds) or international importance (great barrier reef).
sfrechtling··on How “no worries” infected American English
Nope, very Australian, with another varient being "no f$&king wucks"
sfrechtling··on Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager (1996) [pdf]
One of the last times this popped up, I printed it out and annotated it. I wanted to see if it was possible to take something so different to my working world (risk management) and apply it. Annotating it for my situation made it clear that this document should be seen as more far-reaching than just differentiating product managers. It really is pointing out the difference between good workers and bad workers in any organisation.

Every single point made has an element that can be applied to any organisation and career; Productive workers understand the context of business ("Good PMs take all important factors..."); successful workers solve the issue, not the symptom ("Good [PMs]...proper deeper into the [problem]"). Sometimes I look back at my annotated pages and score myself about whether I fall to "Bad" or to "Good". I'm still working at it.

I urge everybody to read, and apply this to their own careers. Don't pigeonhole this document just because it is defined as important to product managers. I see this as just as influential as Ray Dalio's Principles (http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...)

sfrechtling··on Risk-weighted Capital: Whose Model is it anyway?
This article basically just outlines regulatory capital and (I think) avoids economic capital. In very very shorthand - regulatory capital is the capital needed to comply with local regulations (with guidance from BASEL and BIS), while economic capital is the more nuanced calculation used to calculate the risk of capital using the bank's own deduction and modelling. A great metaphor for the actual difference is "Regulatory Capital is to Economic Capital as Road Test Is to Driving" (http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/regulatory-capital-r...). Good banks use both, alongside other metrics to evaluate deals.

Economic capital takes into account the particulars of individual companies, while regulatory capital takes a broad brush approach. In reality, using reg capital leads to set ratings without taking into account the actual risk of the asset to the company. I would argue that the best approach would be economic capital as the main capital calculation with review and monitoring by regulators of the model and its assumptions.

sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Does a brilliant engineer like Tony Stark exist in real life?
I don't know if there is an engineer who is able to invent a new form of energy and a complete weapon while captured by the taliban, so no I do not think there is an exact analogue.

However, the film makers have claimed to use Elon Musk as inspiration for Tony Stark in the new Iron Man movies (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10544247/Meet-tec...)

sfrechtling··on Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making
Link to journal article referenced: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/17/8/083023/
sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Blockchains
Oh that first answer is very interesting - my thoughts at the moment is when/if is this technology going to be included by governments alongside their currencies. Eg each currency being "digitised" alongside standard paper currency. Doing some background reading, this reads as the opposite of the goal of bitcoin/blockchains.

I feel as if a more achievable goal would be not to have a blockchain as a currency or reserve currency, but rather a settlement mechanism shared between banks and individuals (who don't have direct access to ACH etc). That means the coin would be the vehicle of transmission and record. Is this a common viewpoint?

sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Blockchains
Hi, thank you very much for your answers.

Part of my questions were piqued by this blog post (https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/08/07/on-public-and-private-b...) which defined a private blockchain as a "blockchain where write permissions are kept centralized to one organization". I think that it might be the case of people piggy backing on the buzzword and that people are using blockchain as a sort of computerized ledger.

So, generally speaking, a coin with a larger number of loyal miners will be more resilient than another with less loyal miners?

I think I made a mistake with the rising transaction costs - in USD they have risen with the price of BTC but have been rebased a few times.

sfrechtling··on Gigster (YC S15) Does The Dev Work To Turn Your Idea Into An App
Sorry, I agree with the OP. I interpreted the "Success Stories" page, especially when it is sub-titled "Our prior work speaks for itself" as referring to the work performed through Gigstar. There is a difference between allowing somebody to claim work they performed versus assigning that claim to the body that employs them after the fact. This example, just because of the lack of clarity, presents itself as the latter which is a little unfair in itself.
sfrechtling··on China’s Market Rout Is a Double Threat
Hard to tell with the noise out the Eurozone. Together, the next week will be a bit of a bumpy ride.

Definitely agree with your first statement; maybe you should look towards Australia as an example country that over the past 5 years has been increasingly following Chinese financial markets (Commodities and now property).

sfrechtling··on Sand Hill Exchange Fined $20,000 by SEC
Especially interesting in light of this, their analysis of traffic from the sec: http://sandhill.exchange/blog/sec-analysis
sfrechtling··on Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
You have to keep in mind that to get to Europe, any Australasian has to stop over at least once. Dubai is the most convenient; so really this route is Australasia to Europe.
sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Are there any NLP projects that use context?
Yes, some NLP POS (part of speech) taggers do use context. I'm not entirely sure if they work in the way that you describe. I believe that they use the grammar of the sentence to derive what the tags over the sentence are. That is, they can tag the sentence on what they know and then iterate over the sentence until everything can fit into the grammar (or corpus) that it was trained on.

If you want more background - the nltk book, in particular chapter five is a good place to start: http://www.nltk.org/book/ch05.html

What library did you use? NLTK on Python 2.7 gave the following:

[('We', 'PRP'), ('will', 'MD'), ('project', 'VB'), ('our', 'PRP$'), ('earnings', 'NNS')]

sfrechtling··on Magic
I do. I feel as if this solves nothing important, but makes it easier for people to be lazy - if they have money.

While businesses have to be focused on the markets that have money, I feel like this has gone to far; how can this be used to solve the problems of people who are busy but do not have money?

sfrechtling··on What makes software engineering for climate models different? (2010)
The context is also highly political. The results can be misconstrued and used to fit a storyline. The author states it has a huge societal impact, which is true - but I feel like climate change models are more important to politians than the majority of citizens.
sfrechtling··on Why would Flickr prohibit Facebook/Google sign ins?
I would guess that it is part of Yahoo's strategy to keep everybody within the same "walled garden".
sfrechtling··on Offliberty – Evidence of offline life
I found there was a visible link on the page that said "FIRST TIME HERE?! Better late than never - Read THIS", which takes you to http://offliberty.com/#about. The below content is what appeared.

-------------------

Offliberty lets you access any online content without a permanent Internet connection. Today many websites offer nice content but most are difficult to browse offline. If you have limited access to the Internet you can use Offliberty to browse any content later - being offline.

If the Internet bus visits your village only once a week or your grandma doesn't let you use Internet more than 1 hour a day - Offliberty is for you.

Offliberty DOES NOT host and has NO RIGHTS to any content. You must agree with our Terms of Service and other sites usage rules before you take them offline. Sometimes browsing offline content requires permission from its author or owner. Remember to be sure that you have it. We ARE NOT taking any responsibility for Offliberty users activity.

sfrechtling··on Ask HN: What is the easiest/quickest way to buy bit coin?
I think a lot of it depends what currency you are using to buy the btc. For AUD I've heard positive things about https://www.coinjar.com/, for USD I've heard that https://www.bitstamp.net/ is alright. I am not making any claims about either - just heard from others that they have been decent to use (quick, alright customer service).

This market list might help - http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/list/

sfrechtling··on Ask HN: You're building a new house. What tech features would you want in it?
Do not underestimate the power of just simply wiring every room in the house with cat6. Instead of planning for every eventuality, you can just extend your house when you need to. Need a server rack - put it anywhere! Bought a new smart tv - just connect it to the open port!
sfrechtling··on Ask HN: What's your favourite notebook and pen?
Favourite notebook - leuchtturm1917 Pen - Uniball eye
sfrechtling··on Don't want your laptop tampered with? Just add glitter nail polish
Based on the comments here, I can see that this tamper evidence method is not foolproof. Is there anything that is better (harder to detect, harder to replace even if known about)?
sfrechtling··on Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules
Can somebody explain why american law is relevant here? Please excuse my ignorance, but shouldn't British law supercede American law as Holmes was first published in Britain?
sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Best books you read in 2013
In no particular order:

The Tartar Steppe, Dino Buzzati

True Grit, Charles Portis

Thoughts, Marcus Aurelius

Its not all about me, Robin Dreeke

The unwinding, George Packer

Lives of the Laureates, William Breit

AntiFragile, Nassum Taleb

sfrechtling··on Norway Rejects Bitcoin As Currency; Taxes As Asset, Instead
I'm no economist, but isn't that congruent with how similar things like Gold are treated?
sfrechtling··on Is this the most value-dense information on Earth?
As an alternative to this, what about ICBM/Nuclear Launch codes - they have the potential to destroy a lot of value (both natural, material and psychological)?

Or even a terrorist's planning information prior to an event?

Or even genetic code?

sfrechtling··on Is JavaScript slowing the Internet down?
What exactly do you mean? Because your question could be asking - 1) does using JS slow average page loading times? or 2) is JS actively slowing THE INTERNET down?

If 1 - it could be; it is hard to pinpoint the cause exactly. The average page loading time is increasing (http://marketingland.com/retail-website-load-times-continue-...).

If 2 - I don't think so; Bandwidth is increasing, and average internet speed is also increasing (http://www.akamai.com/dl/akamai/q2_2013_soti_infographic.pdf)

sfrechtling··on "You're not qualified to join our team"
The thing is that employers are looking for more than just fitting requirements - they are also being influenced by subjectives (how you act, look etc) and even by pure luck. Their excuse may be that you are not qualified, but it is just as likely in my opinion that it could have been a change in market conditions, or their opinion of you as a person, or even the job description may have slightly changed during the process. You can always ask for specifics.

A long time ago I used to work in recruitment, and the two biggest things I learnt was that the requirements mean almost nothing, and that apart from entry level jobs (grad positions), how you frame your experience to what they are looking for is the most important part of applying.

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties, but the fact you passed i) the resume screen, ii) multiple technical tests and iii) some interviews is a good sign - I would be positive and just look for another company that feels you fit better.

sfrechtling··on Ask HN: Why isn't Amazon the largest online wine, beer & spirits merchant?
I think a big part of it is regulation. Namely, the difference in regulation between countries (and even local laws), their need to follow regulation (not only age verification, but also licenses) and then also duty of care and insurances. That is of course on top of sourcing, storing, distributing, shipping, warehousing, training.
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