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bb611

1,175 karma · joined October 21, 2016

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bb611··on I Only Work Remotely
Sorry, apparently I didn't include the critical fact that she worked 100% remote.

Updated my original comment.

bb611··on I Only Work Remotely
Not always true, my last job had one director who worked 100% remote. She had multiple years of process knowledge she chose to share only when specifically needed to answer a question in a meeting or email. Much of this was critical information like "last year we published this report this way, but we promised to change the format this year." Even better, "we agreed not to change for 3 years but we're doing a ground-up rebuild in 2018."

A significant subset of my job for a year and a half was figuring out how to maximize the number of answers I could get from her, and recording them in the team wiki.

bb611··on Dow Hits 20000 for First Time
Okay, that was a good read.

Also the 2nd very solid Matt Levine article I've read in this thread, I think I detect a pattern.

bb611··on George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon
I disagree, he was paraphrasing early 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker

Another theologian for sure, but pretty squarely in the context of black rights in the US.

bb611··on Librarian removes controversial list of "predatory" journals and publishers
> Cabell’s, which offers services that help librarians, researchers and others discover scholarly journals, has since 2015 worked with Beall on developing a journal blacklist. That list is slated to launch this spring.
bb611··on Peak Millennial? Cities Can’t Assume a Continued Boost from the Young
You're absolutely correct - the average American theoretically believes that every child is entitled to a high quality, equal education, but in reality only if it doesn't cost them anything.

In light of that, there's very little that the state can do to force middle class families to stay in integrated school districts, and that issue destroyed integration efforts in the '70s and '80s in most of the northeast.

The real solution to the larger problem is probably a completely different education system, but the solution to this particular problem is to expand busing to the suburbs. If desegregation is the only solution to highly unequal educational outcomes, we simply need to pursue to greater lengths.

bb611··on San Francisco Asks: Where Have All the Children Gone?
> $/pupil in public school operating costs is mandated to be equal across the state

That's not accurate, a major part of Jerry Brown's education policy changes have been improved funding for title 1 schools (low income criteria - which most or all SF public schools meet) at the expense of non-title 1 schools. The measure is the Local Control Funding Formula.

You are directionally accurate in that CA law greatly reduces the ways cities can put money into the operating budgets of their school districts. However, there are plenty of ways around this, if people were strongly invested in building better schools in SF they would be using them.

bb611··on Lavabit Reloaded
He never spent time in prison, but he was investigated intensely by the US gov't.
bb611··on VESA HOTAS Mounts for IKEA Markus Chair
I've had one for 4.5 years, and about 2 months ago this problem got bad enough that it started to really bother me, and I looked into what was actually causing it. Turns out the foam is pretty worn out so sitting for a small amount of time compresses it completely. I bought a new chair (lightly used for cheap on craigslist) and I'm back to comfort. I think the is probably the result of any chair with a foam seat, but at the annual price it's hard to beat this chair for value and comfort.

I'm 92 kg and 188cm for comparison.

bb611··on VESA HOTAS Mounts for IKEA Markus Chair
Il2: Cliffs of Dover is what you want if you're looking for WW II multiplayer.
bb611··on What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn
Any days you accrue past the cap disappear though.

If you accrue 15 days a year, work for 3 years, and never take a vacation day, you are paid for 3 weeks and lose 6 weeks of compensation, almost 4% of your pre-tax total over that period (assuming no raise for simplicity).

bb611··on What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn
It should be noted that unlimited vacation is not expressly legal in CA, it's just never been challenged.
bb611··on What I Wish I'd Known About Equity Before Joining a Unicorn
> Sarbanes-Oxley is a big villian here. It pushes the cost of legal compliance through the roof for public companies, forcing companies to delay IPOs until revenue is higher.

SEC compliance costs are significantly higher than SOX for public companies, why not complain about that instead?

Neither the few hundred thousand dollars for SOX compliance or the million dollars for SEC compliance are significant pressures on the IPO scene right now. Wider availability of VC cash, better strategies for repeatedly going to that well, and big investment deals for private companies with large public companies (i.e. the Uber/Lyft model) have changed the market pressures so that IPOing isn't as valuable as it once was.

bb611··on 13M Pages of Declassified CIA Documents Posted Online
> Both are stories about deleting information that doesn't fit a political agenda.

One set of information is public, one is private.

The information we're discussing is public - this recently released trove of CIA documents and NOAA & NASA climate data for instance. The DHS' internal database of terrorism suspects is private unless used specifically to prosecute individuals for crimes.

If your claim is that the DHS should publicly release data about terrorism suspects, that's another debate, although a spurious one. We've done that before, it was called McCarthyism, and it left an indelible negative mark on the US government. If DHS were to engage in such behavior it would likely be challenged and reversed on 6th amendment grounds.

bb611··on 13M Pages of Declassified CIA Documents Posted Online
There is no equivalency between deleting criminal justice records, which should and normally do remain private unless used in a court of law, and removing information that's been released the public sphere.
bb611··on How much does employee turnover really cost?
Presumably the article in question: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-...
bb611··on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence
I appreciate many of your points but this:

> No one has the actual Pentagon Papers outside of very specific news agencies

is patently false, they're available in full from the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers

There are very good arguments made elsewhere in this thread about releasing in full vs. releasing to a group that has the ability and willingness to appropriately vet documents before release. Certainly Wikileaks' blanket release caused a large amount of unnecessary controversy that could have been strategically avoided, and would have served as less distraction from the issues presented in them.

bb611··on Wide Impact: Highly Effective Gmail Phishing Technique Being Exploited
You can go on to facebook's privacy settings and disown previous logins. You are right that they don't let you manage it with enough specificity to prevent someone who's using the same IPV4 address and browser as you.
bb611··on Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years
> From an engineering perspective, the 'best' long term approaches are those which produce either the largest number or largest percentage of desired outcomes.

Given that activists have been working on this for several decades, what would you have done differently, and how would it have been more successful given the same resources?

> Also, getting people to change their historical mindset is a big part of effecting progress.

Would you say that getting people to change their historical mindset such that they no longer countenance animals being used for circus entertainment progress?

bb611··on Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years
> Regardless, in my view, anyone concerned enough to protest the treatment of animals in circuses and/or zoos is being hypocritical if they're not working just as hard (or harder) to end the suffering of all the other sentient creatures we subject to 'unnatural' conditions on a vastly larger scale.

It's unreasonable to expect someone to solve all problems at once. If you went to work and your boss complained you weren't working on enough problems, you'd likely tell them that you need to focus on the most pressing or solvable issue first, and yet you're saying the opposite about this group of people.

Making a decision to focus on one element of the problem in order to move towards a solution is what practical people who solve problems do. Calling them hypocritical for not solving the (massive) related problem of animals as a human food source isn't reasonable.

bb611··on I Turned a Routine Traffic Ticket into a Constitutional Trial
Torts exist in the civil system, not the criminal system. The driver in this scenario would likely be criminally liable for negligent homicide, manslaughter, or one of their many legal equivalents in state law.
bb611··on Tesla details how it’ll charge new owners to use Superchargers
I did read your articles, and didn't find them particularly compelling. Technology failures happen all the time, the fact that Tesla wasn't successful at rolling out battery swap but was successful with superchargers seems pretty unplanned, given the engineering time spent on the system and the constraints this all put on the chassis.

Tesla hasn't released anything on their own, but the battery swap patent is now public: https://electrek.co/2016/10/25/teslas-battery-swapping-magic...

They essentially designed and built an industrial robot, R&D costs for which easily range into 8 digits.

This looks like a failed good faith effort to me. They thought they had something (as did much of the rest of the car industry), turned out they were wrong and they're cutting their losses.

bb611··on Tesla details how it’ll charge new owners to use Superchargers
I'm sure the tax credits play into the decision to build the station, but its position was intended to allow people to swap batteries for the trip from SoCal to SF, which otherwise requires a fair amount of time at a charger. For that it's pretty perfect, it's just that Tesla users apparently don't find it worth using. I do think that's pretty clear and useful data, and it's clearly informed their current efforts (i.e. no new battery stations).
bb611··on Georgia Tech Offers Online Master of Science in Analytics Degree for Under $10K
I would also be a bit hesitant about job prospects. My last job was at a large nonprofit in SF on their data team, and both my boss and my only non-contractor coworker were PhDs who fled academia. Salaries for the tech teams in general were 25-50% below market and overtime was high, and there were still PhDs taking these jobs.
bb611··on Tesla details how it’ll charge new owners to use Superchargers
They gave up on them because people didn't use the only one they ever ran: http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/

Realistically, it seems likely that there just wasn't enough demand among existing Tesla owners for that use case. If/When Tesla gets more market share, that could very well change. My understanding is that they are still engineering all their chassis to support the fast swap technology, so they haven't entirely trashed the idea.

bb611··on Why I switched from OS X to Linux
Two I've noticed in the past 3 years: - Better compatibility with modern hardware. In particular, working out of the box just the way you'd expect from windows, without having to go find some drivers and build them yourself. Still some ways to go here on some peripherals (wifi adapters in particular), but a lot of progress. - Much more emphasis on user experience. Ubuntu in particular really has tried to create a non-power user friendly desktop experience. If you need a program you can get it without having to compile from source and decide where to put it yourself. Once again, this is much longer term and also requires the people actually creating the software to make changes, but it's definitely improving.
bb611··on Why I switched from OS X to Linux
I totally disagree. I've installed Ubuntu on 4-5 systems over the last 3 years, I find it exceptionally quick and easy compared to installing Windows. Obviously, I can't compare it to OS X for install because it's not possible to buy it standalone.

Additionally, if you're installing on a raspberry pi you're fundamentally at a power user level - my non-techie friends and family are nowhere near that level. If you actually install it on a desktop it's a breeze, I think your frustration stems from engaging in an activity that's fairly challenging no matter what you do. There are plenty of alternatives for your pi, but neither OS X nor Windows are among them.

I'd be more interested to hear how the linux laptop went. Did that come preinstalled? Did your brother like it?

bb611··on Why I switched from OS X to Linux
I really don't understand why you wouldn't pay $3,000 instead of $1,500 to have the work laptop you want for the next several years. Assuming it only lasts two years (my last Macbook Pro lasted 5, and I wasn't nice to it), and you work 240 days per year, that's $3.13 per day to have your preferred development environment.

I'm a huge linux fan and have ubuntu on a desktop and laptop, but if you hate it there's really no reason you have to use it.

bb611··on Silicon Valley's prosperity paradox: 76000 millionaires can't fix local poverty
"Seventy-one percent (71%) of respondents reported they were living in San Francisco at the time they most recently became homeless, an increase from 61% in 2013."

It's true, it doesn't measure length of stay, but they came from SF and claiming it's still an external problem with no evidence seems particularly disingenuous.

bb611··on Silicon Valley's prosperity paradox: 76000 millionaires can't fix local poverty
70% of SF homeless from SF: http://sfmayor.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/...

Page 33, under the subtitle "Place of Residence"

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