641 karma · joined August 11, 2011
I developed the original curriculum, taught the course, and trained several hundred students who subsequently became software engineers. It was very fun, and a privilege to work with so many talented and highly motivated students.
If you want to reach me, my email is ruggeri@self-loop.com.
Whether you are Rasmussen or Ruggeri or live in Denmark, Italy, or the United States, when you respond to a thread about France it is not mysterious that others will interpret your reply with the context of that country, rather than substitute, post hoc, the context of Denmark.
To be clear: Vichy was a client state of Nazi Germany, but from 1940 to 1942 its southern portion was not occupied. It was collaborationist, but Vichy was not simply ruled from Berlin.
It would not be accurate to imagine Vichy as an entirely foreign invention. Like in much of Europe at that time, there were many domestic supporters of reactionary conservatism and authoritarianism. As for the strength of democratic sentiment in France, remember that a President of France (and republican) once gave it only the faint praise: "republicanism is the form of government that divides France least."
The domestic political situation was in no way unique to France. There existed significant authoritarian movements and tendencies in every European country at this time. You are probably aware that both Portugal and Spain had adopted authoritarianism, and not simply by foreign imposition. My point is: the Nazis found an existing domestic reservoir of authoritarian French willing to collaborate.
Just to provide a few more facts about Vichy:
Vichy was the French government formed after invasion and occupation of northern France by Nazi Germany. Its head of government was general Philippe Petain, and Pierre Laval was its prime minister. Both had been significant domestic political figures in France. Vichy France was formed after the National Assembly voted to give full powers to Petain.
Vichy had its own paramilitary militia (the Milice) consisting of about 30,000 Frenchman. This was similar to the SS and Gestapo, but considered more dangerous by resistance French.
Of course, unoccupied Vichy adopted anti-Semitic policies and deported Jews to be murdered by the Nazis. Maurice Papon (later the prefect of police in Paris 1958-1967) participated. You can look up yourself his subsequent misdeeds during the Algerian War. Unfortunately, even after the fall of the Nazis, there continued (and continue) to be significant reactionary and authoritarian political elements in France.
If you wish to learn more about this period, you can start here:
The parent wants equitable tax policies that apply to everyone.
I think this policy is not a very effective means to that end. QSBS does not reduce the probability of startup failure. You can increase the financial rewards of startup success, but at a certain point this becomes less-and-less effective, because of risk aversion, and because of the declining utility of money.
This is why I say it is a give-away. Because in most cases it won't change the calculus of starting/investing in a startup from "not worth it" to "worth it." It just changes how rich the founder/investors are in the case that the startup succeeds.
I reflect on my own experience: the existence or non-existence of QSBS did not and would not have any bearing on starting my own business. This is of course N=1, so take it with a grain of salt.
I would just conclude by saying: QSBS is not a give-away only if it changing behavior. I'm not sure I believe that it actually changes startup or investing behavior.
I will grant that my experience is as a founder, and not an investor. It's more plausible that investors, who can diversify their investments, would have their behavior affected by QSBS. QSBS changes expected value of investment, though I have no idea how much early-stage investors can calculate that.
I also don't subscribe to the theory that more investment entails more creativity and innovation. I suppose that's a founder-biased point of view.
Some people will say it doesn't apply to California, but this misses the point: you still avoid federal income taxation (and AMT). California is simply smart enough (IMO) to not follow the federal government's lead on this. So yeah, you'll still have to pay some tax to California. Big whoop you just saved 28% of federal tax.
The QSBS exemption is an excellent reason to remain a C corporation. Please don't ask how I know.
If you are a founder, you should definitely study/inquire about the benefits of this exemption.
The problem with these conspiracy theories of everything is that they actually never explain anything.
The reason the war was continued was not only and not primarily because a transnational security elite was washing money blah blah blah.
It was primarily because those voters who supported the war had hope for a better outcome. And their hope was greater than their reason.
Without hope, no manipulation would work.
But also no: learning more about this age made me realize that pre-Napoleonic Western Europe was even less liberal than I had expected. It is hard to learn about this age and not feel that policy was set entirely by and for the benefit of a small clique that held the levers of power.
Certainly some Western monarchies had more liberal pretensions than others. England of course is the prototypical example, and probably was the most liberal in practice. But it was a pretty big outlier amongst Western monarchies.
Learning more about Charles XII (Sweden), Augustus II (Saxony and Poland), Louis XIV (France): which one of these considered the suffering of the common people when they embarked on their wars of conquest and personal aggrandizement? Consider also how readily nobles traded realms when a larger or more prosperous fief came along. It's hard not conclude that these rulers treated their states as nothing more than inherited estates, to use and dispose of as they wished.
Comparing France, Spain, Austria to Peter's Russia: how much more liberal were these Western states?
https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Great-Robert-K-Massie-audiobook...
On the other hand, it seems that all the monarchs of this time basically treated their land as their inherited, God-given wealth. So in that respect, Peter and practically all others were extremely ego-centric and shallow. Modernization did not extend to democratization.
Proofs in ZFC can be enumerated by a machine. In theory, we could devise a machine that (1) will certainly eventually halt iff ZFC is inconsistent (proves two contradictory statements), or (2) will never halt iff ZFC is consistent.
(Caveats: naturally, if ZFC is consistent, we'll never learn whether we should just keep waiting for the machine to find a contradiction. And our machine will require unbounded storage space.)
Can we build a corresponding device that would have different behaviors depending on whether the continuum hypothesis is "true" (whatever that means)? I suppose the computational model would be Turing machine as above.
Perhaps a better (but also possibly fictional) example is sabotage of the Soviet trans-Siberian gas pipeline in 1983. Certainly there appears to have been a US suggestion to surreptitiously provide the Soviet Union with compromised technology it was seeking in the West. But it's not clear whether compromised technology was provided, or whether the US caused the pipeline explosion.
Here is one (controversial) source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss
I wasn't going to comment at all, since the US does a lot of - ahem - "disruption" throughout the world. However, I'm not aware that the US does a lot of civilian infrastructure attacks outside of active military theatres. If true: it's a notable/interesting fact.
But I'm also not sure that civilian infrastructure attacks are further beyond the pale than rendition, bombing, arms sales, embargoes, et cetera. I worry that we in the States are more sensitive to infrastructure attacks because (1) it's a weapon readily available to our national adversaries and (2) for the first time, we are the victims.
NSO seems to be trying to distance themselves from how its software is used by its "clients," but that seems undercut by the plausible supposition that NSO knows exactly who its clients' targets are.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-08/san-franc...
But it's easy to fail to maintain enthusiasm/momentum when working on the side, simply because you don't have the time/brainspace to devote to it. Experimenting with/failing at a side-project won't prove that trying to start a full-time project/startup isn't for you.
It sounds like you would be able to find a similar job with similar income if you quit, tried to start your own project, failed, and re-entered the work force.
If you are at a life stage where the opportunity cost of trying to start a company for a year is approximately one year of salary, then I would try it.
Unless you have dependents/need a steady income, then it is probably too risk-averse not to try collecting new experiences.
A strong suggestion: I would find a cofounder or someone else to work with before quitting or trying a startup on your own.
Basically: if you are secure in a high income bracket, you might want to optimize more for exposure to positive, exciting opportunities, rather than play super-conservatively in a way that minimizes variance, may or may not maximize expected value, but certainly eliminates exciting upside.
As other poster has noted, I think you have to apply on Schwab to trade options. I've never done that.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070610154429/http://www.cs.ber...
If I pay you upfront for the first block, what stops you from then saying: actually I still want more money to start transfering the first block?
If they send you the data first, then why should you pay them? If you send them the payment first, then why should they send it?
I'm sure there's a piece I'm missing, but have I missed something obvious?
You presumably agree with the node to pay for the transfer out, but if both counterparties are anonymous and do not trust each other, how is this accomplished?
When I am a non-expert in a complicated subject, I want the advice of experts. When I go to my general practitioner, I want to know they have a certificate that says they went to medical school. When I need open-heart surgery, I want to know the doctor is a cardiothoracic surgeon.
When I read a doctor's take on coronavirus in the WSJ, it would be a plus if they were an expert in infectious disease or epidemiology. It's kind of sad that the nation's 2nd highest circulation paper can't find someone with more expertise in this area.
Amplifying non-expert advice is dangerous, just like having an orthodontist try to do heart surgery is dangerous. C.f. Scott Atlas, of course.
"South African health officials said they would inoculate health workers in the coming weeks with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has strong efficacy in preventing severe cases and hospitalizations caused by the new variant."
So: some encouraging news, and some discouraging news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...
But for me what really helped was Quantum Computing Without the Physics by Nannicini. Aaronson is not formal enough or really a textbook to teach and explain quantum algos like Simons (a good first algo) or Grover. It is an amazingly fun book though.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.03684
Nielsen and Chuang is the standard textbook but was not useful to me sadly. I wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner outside the framework of a course.