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thecage411

147 karma · joined November 7, 2011

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thecage411··on I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it
What is the basis for the claim that income tax in NYS and CA pushed prices and income up? This seems extremely unlikely, unless you are looking at pretax income or something.
thecage411··on The data are clear: The boys are not all right
That is overstating it a bit; there are mentions decades (but not centuries) after his reported death.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus has a good overview of the non biblical sources.

thecage411··on 61% of Americans paid no income taxes in 2020
This isn't accurate if you are talking about the federal level. A better model in terms of spending is that the federal government is an insurance company with an army.

The federal government spends something like 10 times as much on defense as direct educational expenditures and it's still significantly more than education if you include things like loan financing in education.

thecage411··on Facebook launches PyTorch 1.0
What are the scientific Python ecosystem conventions that PyTorch breaks?
thecage411··on Venture investors blast US decision to withdraw from Paris Climate Accord
Paris agreement is non-binding.

Who cares? What matters is if it's working or not. Of course it's hard to untangle if it's due to accords, scientific/engineering breakthroughs, government investment, etc. but India and China are far ahead of their Paris targets: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15052017/china-india-pari...

China has no obligation for 20 years.

This statement is wrong in multiple ways. As you noted above, Paris is non-binding, so there are no "obligations" beyond developing a plan and reporting on progress. Next, China's goals begin in 2030, which is 13 years away, not 20. Finally, according to the link above, China is on pace to meet its goals almost a decade (!) in advance, i.e. early in the 2020s. So even a charitable interpretation of your statement looks to be wrong by about 4x.

It's not ratified by Congress.

This is as far as I can tell, just a negative thrown in that has nothing to do with the thesis. Is agreeing to the accords bad for the U.S. (cost billions!) or does it not matter, because it's not ratified. Which is it?

Nothing from agreeing to this was going to affect your descendants other than draining American coffers of billions.

So basically every other country is willing to drain their coffers. Why is that?

thecage411··on Facebook will lose 80% of users by 2017, say Princeton researchers (2014)
there isn't a presidential election in 10 years.
thecage411··on Downside of Lower Manhattan’s Boom: It’s Too Crowded
The correct answer is probably to allow car deliveries/parking at certain times of the day (late evening and early morning?) and have the streets be pedestrian/biker only outside of those hours.
thecage411··on Unraveling of the tech hiring market
I'd guess most are more concerned that if they give you a private office, others will request one and they aren't equipped to give lots of private offices. And if they give just you one, it will cause resentment in the team that isn't worth it.
thecage411··on A New Breed of Trader on Wall Street: Coders with a Ph.D
What would be the choices now? Most references to alternatives suggest Haskell.
thecage411··on Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer
A decent analogy for most governments is that they behave similarly to an insurance company with an army. You absolutely pay a percentage of the value of what you are insuring (here your life, wealth, earning potential) not a flat fee.
thecage411··on What We Talk About When We Talk About Distributed Systems
Distributed Systems for Fun and Profit is pretty good: http://book.mixu.net/distsys/single-page.html.

Focuses on theory results that are applicable to real systems and analyzes those systems.

thecage411··on Theranos, Facing Criticism, Says It Has Changed Board Structure
They told you they rejected you because you don't have a degree from a top tier school?
thecage411··on Stocks Off Sharply as Market Upheaval Grows
Not only that, but cause and effect isn't obvious either. Let's say there's some correlation between high ratios of debt / gdp (our proxy for "unsutainable levels of debt") and low growth. Is the low growth caused by the high debt or did the country get into high debt because they've had low growth (and thus lower than expected revenues)?
thecage411··on A Plan to Turn Engineers into Managers
I'm not sure you have demonstrated what you are trying to show.

If I understand correctly, you've calculated the chance a manager is promoted to director as 1/15 * average number of directors that leave over the relevant time period.

But you haven't made any argument about the chance an engineer is promoted to distinguished engineer besides stating promotion non rivalrous. A system in which no one is promoted to distinguished engineer is non rivalrous, for example.

thecage411··on Landlords are trying not to rent to startups in San Francisco
Caltrain doesn't have a stop at Montgomery or Embarcadero. You have to switch to BART before SF, walk, or take one of the muni lines that is slower than walking.
thecage411··on Buffer's transparency dashboard: Public salaries, equity and more
In California they are public and searchable by name, see http://transparentcalifornia.com/.
thecage411··on After simple dental surgery, William lost his ability to form new memories
I asked an anesthesiologist this question and am transcribing from memory (hehe), so I may have screwed some things up.

The answer to your question in is no, you aren't suffering enduring horrible pain while under general anesthesia. That doesn't mean you won't experience things you would rather not remember. Some examples: 1) patient may experience burning sensation from propofol (induction agent) entering the body 2) patient may see something disturbing before general has kicked in (e.g. a big saw before an orthopedic procedure) 3) in certain cases (e.g. emergencies) or due to human error, patient may not be fully under pre-surgery, e.g. patient may remember breathing tube being inserted.

The high level answer for why you are given midazolam (at least in the US) is because anesthesia is a "patient satisfaction" service and giving it increases patient satisfaction.

thecage411··on Elasticsearch node crashes can cause data loss
No, search for MergeIndexes or --go-live.
thecage411··on Rust for Clojurists
Great point. Also -- at least at the hospital I'm familiar with in SF -- those registered nurses work 36 hours a week (three 12-hour shifts a week).

It's hard to see how being an RN isn't a better job than being a software developer in SF...

thecage411··on Why the world's biggest military keeps losing wars
The term is actually "Weaponized Keynesianism", http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/more-thoughts-on... for reference
thecage411··on Working at Netflix
I could see having that perception if you were coming from a large company that never fires anyone.

I can say that for some people, it is absolutely scary, even if you are competent and capable. For example: - You suffer from imposter syndrome. Not that uncommon. - The companies you work for have fired people regularly (read: startups). You notice these people are not always incompetent, but more often bad at politics or unlucky. - You have others to support where the risk of being fired just isn't worth it.

Or, put it another way. Incoming netflix hires already have this expectation, so you'd expect the incompetent to self-select, as you've suggested. Yet netflix is reportably still firing often, which suggests one of the following is happening: 1) people who are so incompetent that they don't know they are incompetent are getting through netflix's hiring process 2) something else is happening and incoming netflix hires should absolutely be worried about being fired.

thecage411··on How to Get a Job in Algorithmic Trading
I guess it depends on how you define nerd. I would describe a large percentage of students at top schools to be incredibly goal oriented, but not really nerdy. They'll outwork everyone to score their desired internship or spot in medical school, but learning a new programming language for the fun of it? Not likely to happen.
thecage411··on San Francisco rents increased by 13.5% in 2014
people admit that their goal is to launder their money?
thecage411··on Leaving Academia (2013)
> its leadership is completely inept at fighting for its people against the cost-cutting mediocrities

The worst thing about the "cost-cutting mediocrities" is the cost-cutting doesn't extend to themselves:

"Forty years ago, America’s colleges employed more professors than administrators. The efforts of 446,830 professors were supported by 268,952 administrators and staffers. Over the past four decades, though, the number of full-time professors or “full-time equivalents”—that is, slots filled by two or more part-time faculty members whose combined hours equal those of a full-timer—increased slightly more than 50 percent. That percentage is comparable to the growth in student enrollments during the same time period. But the number of administrators and administrative staffers employed by those schools increased by an astonishing 85 percent and 240 percent, respectively."[1]

[1] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2...

thecage411··on How to Get a Quant Job in Finance
I haven't read up on game theory in a long time, does "best strategy to follow" mean "the strategy that maximizes my expected payoff for all the strategies my opponent could employ"?

So, an explicit counterexample would be my opponent picking a strategy of only re-throwing above .25. His expectation is then .25 * (0 + .25)/2 + .75 * (0 + 1)/2 ~= .40, so I should not rethrow if I get above .40 and below .50, even though it would raise my own expectation.

Am I thinking about that correctly?

thecage411··on Why Silicon Valley Works
I have those same concerns about working remotely, but some have made it work.

In any case, good luck to you.

thecage411··on Why Silicon Valley Works
I'm married to a doctor and have considered medicine, but probably won't go for it.

On your individual points: 1) City-focus of software engineering. Have you considered trying to work remotely? That isn't for everyone (I couldn't do it), but it would probably solve your problem

2) Salary wise, I would worry too much unless your first priority is to really help people (more on that below). I've interacted with a lot of doctors and frankly if you are smart developer you'll most likely have a leg up intelligence wise on all but the most in demand specialities.

3) I wouldn't necessarily count on being able to directly help people every day. It depends on your speciality and where you work. A lot of private pratice places often push unnecessary procedures to make money. If you are in a non-procedure speciality or at an academic center you probably won't have those pressures. That being said, if you want a comfortable life where you can actually help people, a job at an academic center outside of a major city sounds like a great fit. I doubt you'd make much more than a software engineer though.

4) I'm not sure how to parse your statement about status-seeking. A lot of people who go into medicine are status seeking.

thecage411··on How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA
> Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and cons of various employers' benefits and policies

Sure, if you are in high demand you can probably do this. If you work an entry level job you won't have much leverage and since you probably can't afford to take extended time off, you may find taking care of children somewhere near impossible.

> We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.

I'm glad you qualified it with always. But a look at U.S. history shows a lot of societal problems were helped by those bureaucrats in DC and elsewhere (school segregation, voting rights, equal access to public transport, public accommodations [restaurants can't deny your service based on your race], equal opportunity employment, etc).

thecage411··on My Day Interviewing for the Service Economy Startup from Hell
I don't think that school of thought is actually prevelant. They make you go to training classes so if there is a lawsuit they can point to all the training and say it's the individual's fault, not the company's.
thecage411··on Why firms don't want you to be brilliant at your job
I'm curious, why is it your dream job and why would you be exceedingly happy to work for any of those companies listed?

Is it the money? Prestige? You think you'll learn more at one of those places than others? Stability?

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