HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

rdouble

5,728 karma · joined May 9, 2008

submissionscomments
rdouble··on The Outrage about PRISM spying is wearing off already
You can't legislate social cohesion.

Singapore does. I don't know enough about Singapore to know how well that is working out, though.

rdouble··on Facial scrubs polluting Great Lakes with plastic
My uncle does supply chain for a major american cosmetics manufacturer, and it's pretty lean. There's few stockpiles, AFAIK.
rdouble··on Yahoo Has Acquired Rockmelt, Apps To Shut Down On August 31st
They couldn't do that because it would break with the valley's tradition of engineer salary price-fixing.
rdouble··on Yahoo acquires Rockmelt
Yahoo basically IS a long history of crap acquisitions.
rdouble··on The Outrage about PRISM spying is wearing off already
Then they came for the basement dwelling nerd, validating his entire existence.
rdouble··on Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?
you make 130k, you have a whole team working under you, and you are 21 years old, and you have trouble getting laid.

That is the description of the entire SF tech industry.

rdouble··on Soylent reaches $1M in pre-orders
You probably don't need to worry too much about the risks. It's almost certain nobody will eat it for longer than about a week.
rdouble··on Soylent reaches $1M in pre-orders
Supplement companies get sued all the time.
rdouble··on Ask HN: Shouldn't a recent CS grad know how to throw an exception?
A CS program would not necessarily teach that. Some schools which use Java as an intro language might have one lecture on exceptions. Otherwise it might be covered in a "Software Engineering" elective.
rdouble··on Should I go to college or keep working in Silicon Valley?
I think you are right that we are at the high point of the current tech boom. The emergence of dozens of pay-to-play "coding boot camps" is a good signal of this. Milk it for a while, save money, and then go back to school.
rdouble··on Scientific Breakthrough Lets SnappyCam App Take 20 Full-Res Photos Per Second
This is a great app. What you need to do is market it to skateboarders.
rdouble··on Pressure cookers, backpacks, and quinoa, oh my
Except the Atlantic Wire article states that both the FBI and the JTTF denied visiting the house.

FBI spokesperson Peter Donald confirmed The Guardian's report that the FBI was not involved in the visit itself. Asked if the FBI was involved in providing information that led to the visit, Donald replied that he could not answer the question at this point, as he didn't know.

We asked if the Suffolk and Nassau police, which The Guardian reported were the authorities that effected the raid, are part of the government's regional Joint Terrorism Task Force. They are, he replied, representing two of the 52 agencies that participate. He said that local police are often deputized federal marshals for that purpose — but that the JTTF "did not visit the residence." He later clarified: "Any officers, agents, or other representatives of the JTTF did not visit that location."

rdouble··on Solowheel
I agree that a Brompton is a better choice. It folds up to about the same size as this uni-wheel thing. However, they are pretty expensive. Mine was pretty close to $1800. I think the cheapest one (1 speed, no lighting system) is $1000.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
Singapore is a major point of failure in banking, oil and cargo.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
I don't know if that's necessarily true. The downtown of the small city where I grew up was destroyed by a simultaneous flood and fire and most of the downtown businesses simply disappeared forever. Many small businesses are in economically tenuous positions and a catastrophic event will wipe them out. This causes all the employes to lose their jobs, and a chain reaction to other small businesses who relied upon the destroyed businesses. Applied to NYC scale, suggesting the job loss numbers mean "direct" unemployment in this sense seems reasonable to me, but I could be wrong.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
I've seen other figures that suggest that about 80K people lost their jobs immediately. I guess I'm not convinced that the rest of the job losses were due to economic pessimism and fear in the financial markets. I was assuming it included the bodega guy, the guy working for the bodega guy, couriers, tailors, every other small business owner in the area, people servicing those small business owners, the carpet cleaners, window washers, the outsourced IT guys, people servicing the physical infrastructure of the area, people who worked in the other buildings. etc. I could be totally off base, but blasting out part of the infrastructure of a city of 19M people seems like it could cause a relatively "direct" 2% job loss over 3 months.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
Well to be honest, I don't know what to say to you, either.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
In New York City, there were approximately 430,000 jobs were lost and $2.8 billion in lost wages over the three months following the 9/11 attacks

That's just the number on wikipedia. 430,000 people lost their jobs in the 3 months after the attack. I supposed you could argue that it's not direct damages in the sense that 430K people were not all office workers in the WTC, but if they lost their job within 3 months of the attack it seems like the job loss is pretty directly related.

And, as a former NYC resident I would not at all be surprised if 430K people really did directly lose their job. The sheer number of people working in that area is immense. I remember an interview at the time with a guy whose bodega located down by Wall Street was destroyed, and he said he did $80K per week in business. And that's just one dude selling sodas, bottled water, cigarettes, etc.

rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
Sure, but I'm saying a single event caused this. You're talking about the sum total of all auto accidents over 12 years. Even 12 years of auto accidents don't add up to one major terrorism event. I'm not saying I agree with the way the USA handles terrorism, but it does seem like something you want to avoid. If there was another 9/11 or a Boston bombing happened every year, the country's economy would be massively screwed. My numbers are all from wikipedia's page about the economic aftermath of 9/11 and a Boston Herald article about the Boston bombing.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
The figures I gave were the direct damages, from wikipedia.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
The numbers I gave were the cost of damage alone, not the response.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
If you're going to do a quantitative analysis of the effects of terrorism you'd need to analyze effects other than deaths. 9/11 caused the loss of 430,000 jobs, $40B in insurance payouts, damage to lower Manhattan that still isn't fully repaired, $100B losses in the financial exchanges, probably close to $1T in economic losses total, even before taking into account the misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Likewise, the Boston Marathon bombing was far less devastating than 9/11 but still caused an estimated $333M in damage.

It does suck that more people die in car accidents but no single car accident can cause a billion dollars in damage.

rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
If you never intend to pay your taxes the government can garnish your wages. The individual state governments are far more vigilant about this than the federal government, however. California will dip into your Wells Fargo account almost immediately but one can not pay federal taxes for quite some time. You occasionally hear about some celebrity or fiancier getting busted for not paying their taxes for the past 20 years. Your passport is never revoked, though. Congress has tried to get a bill to do that but it has never passed. Certainly "men with guns" do not show up at your house if you miss the April 15 deadline as seems to be suggested in these ridiculous discussions. This is a country where at least half of the government officials themselves also hate taxes and dodge them as much as possible.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
You don't need a passport to leave the USA.
rdouble··on Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
What happens when you don't pay your taxes is that a couple years later you get mail that says please pay your taxes.
rdouble··on "Accidentally" Freelance
If anything it's the opposite. NYC has way more freelancers because that is typically how it's been done in agency work.
rdouble··on From PhD to Data Scientist: Tips for Making the Transition
It's too bad you got downvoted. Your first question was pretty good.
rdouble··on Why Travis Kalanick is going to be a Transportation Rockefeller
Right now, everyone's hiring pretty young white people as drivers

The Uber drivers I've had were old Russian men, and a middle aged Chinese guy.

rdouble··on From PhD to Data Scientist: Tips for Making the Transition
Getting a postdoc at Stanford has the same probability as playing in the NBA. Only you get paid $60K instead of $60M.
rdouble··on Why Travis Kalanick is going to be a Transportation Rockefeller
$125M means they have 1/4 the SF Taxi market revenue.
← PreviousPage 2 of 34Next →