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utnick

1,909 karma · joined August 30, 2007

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utnick··on Employee Wellness Programs Yield Little Benefit, Study Shows
Maybe paying more is something that should be explored...

I think for $500-$1,000 a month per person you would have widespread behavior change in most companies, and it wouldn't really even be that expensive in the context of total healthcare+wellness program spending.

utnick··on IBM acquires Red Hat
Wow this would be a very expensive purchase for IBM , redhat is currently worth about 20% of IBM's market cap
utnick··on An Update on Last Week’s Accident
Yup this also mean that Tesla's radar and camera systems had 5 seconds to realize it was driving straight into an unmoving concrete barrier and did nothing...
utnick··on Sierra Leone just ran the first blockchain-based election
by 'blockchain-based' they mean, a normal election happened with traditional voting, and then some of the vote counters uploaded the tally of the votes they counted to a private blockchain
utnick··on A Tiny Hedge Fund Made 8,600% on a Vix Bet
The real gem of that WSJ article was that 10% of daily trades on E*Trade were either pot or cryptocurrency related
utnick··on How Does MoviePass Make Money?
Is that data that valuable though? Its not that unique, off the top of my head there are several companies that have similar datasets, Every movie theatre chain, every online movie booking service, every movie review site
utnick··on Truffle: Ethereum Dapp Development Framework
Here were mine Here were a few of mine, I’ve tried to get into ethereum a couple times

- installing mist and getting it to sync is very difficult and time consuming

- connecting to a testnet and getting ether on the testnet is also very difficult

- most ‘cool’ dapp ideas rely on oracles to publish data about the real world into the block chain. When you dive into it you realize that such an Oracle would be very very expensive to run for even trivial usecases.

utnick··on Beer giant ABI bought many craft brews and is now buying beer rating websites
I think the hate comes from some shady stuff the big brewers have historically done to push out smaller brewers, limiting tap and shelf space for craft, sponsoring laws that reduce ways that beer can be sold direct from the breweries or adding fees that hurt small players
utnick··on The fight over preserving public land takes a twist in Montana’s mountains
Check out backcountry Hunters & Anglers: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/

They fight to preserve and add to the existing lands.

utnick··on Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged
Sportsbooks in general don't mind winning players though, especially big ones. They make money off the vig and move odds to get equal money on each side of the bet so that they'll make money either way.
utnick··on Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged
There has to be more to this story. I would like to hear the bookmakers side of this. Perhaps the researchers were scripting or triggered some other kind of security tripwire.

Winning $900 split across several different bookmakers is absolutely nothing in the sports betting industry.

William Hill, one of the companies that the researchers claim restricted them is a multi billion dollar company. They aren't sweating small time bets like this.

EDIT: I noticed that the screenshots they used as proof their bets were restricted are for bets on very minor football leagues (Australian semi pro football), its common for betting limits to be lower for games that don't see a lot of betting action & is not proof enough to me that the bookmakers lowered their limits globally

utnick··on How the Catalan government uses IPFS to sidestep Spain's legal block
A possibly simpler solution would be to not have assigned places to vote that are based on your ID & DOB.

Just vote at the polling place most convenient to you, and announce available polling places on posters around town, or facebook & twitter if you prefer.

utnick··on How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution
When do you think programming began to have high prestige?

I didn't think programming in the 80s or 90s was a particularly prestigous or high status job, salaries back then kind of reflect that too

utnick··on Despite S.E.C. Warning, Wave of Initial Coin Offerings Grows
If you want to really see what the environment is like now, read the bitcointalk ico announcement threads. It's absolutely insane. Very little of that stuff makes its way to hn.

People are raising money with 10 page vague 'white papers' with ideas that make no sense or are completely unworkable on the blockchain.

There is very little skepticism or research with these icos . Most of the commenters are trying to help the project and receive tokens in return, do tasks to qualify for free tokens ( bounties ) , or promote the ico so their token value increases

If there was a good way to short individual ico tokens it might bring some sanity

utnick··on Iron Yard code school to close all campuses
My hunch is location, iron yard had a bunch of locations in 3rd and 4th tier markets where there just aren't that many programming jobs. Even in Austin which is probably one of the better markets they had, entry level coding jobs are somewhat scarce compared to demand for them
utnick··on Architect explains why large development in LA seems to be luxury development
> in order to increase housing prices for their own private investment benefit.

I think its more that most people just don't like change and want their neighborhoods to remain the same

If they really just wanted to increase their investments, up-zoning greatly increases the value of existing land in most cases.

utnick··on Death pools can bring financial security for the long-lived
Also how would it work if everyone is anonymous? Don't you need to know when people die?
utnick··on Harland Clarke Acquires RetailMeNot for $630M
I use their papa johns codes frequently, they always seem to be good for 40% off - however lately I've noticed papa johns trying to cut out the middleman and run their own coupon adwords offers
utnick··on How Subtle Class Cues Can Backfire on a Resume (2016)
If I received a resume from a collegiate track person I would probably google them out of curiousity to see how fast they were, and in this case I would realize it's a fake name and resume, I wonder if that had any effect on the results
utnick··on Launch HN: Lively (YC W17) – 401(k) for Healthcare
Great idea, I think most people don't realize how great HSAs are. They are better than 401ks in almost every way besides the lower contribution limit.

Even if you are very healthy, the category of medical expenses you can use it for is very broad.

utnick··on “What’s your current salary?” is a trap question–Here's how to answer it
I don't really see the point of not telling them, if the company has no idea about your previous salary, they aren't going to be tricked into offering you some huge number, they are going to come in at the average wage in your location for that position.

What you should do instead is identify the number you want to get paid before hand. ( Which should be higher than the average ) And then honestly tell them , I'm currently paid X, but am looking for a job that pays Y.

If they say they can't do that, its too big of jump or whatever, just say that you understand and thanks and move on to the next company

utnick··on White House Opens Door To Crackdown On Recreational Marijuana
the headline doesn't really match the content of the article...
utnick··on Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters
The worst part for me is how long the process takes, and how much time is invested for an interview process where the success rate is so low.

My recent experience with AMZN was:

- get contacted by recruiter, schedule a call with recruiter a few days later

- take a take-home coding test a few days later

- talk to the recruiter again a few days later to tell me I did well on the coding test

- talk to another recruiter a few days after that, get scheduled for an all-day in person interview 4 weeks in the future

- cram cracking the coding interview for 4 weeks

- go to the interview all day, hear at the interview that I was close but didn't pass, they recommend I should try again in 6 months.

All in all thats a pretty big time & mindshare investment

utnick··on Let’s not demonize driving, just stop subsidizing it
I commuted by bike 8 miles in Texas for a while to an office that didn't have a shower

Its not too big of a deal, i just packed a change of clothes, wiped off using baby wipes, and took a sponge bath in the bathroom sink .

Also I didn't get that sweaty in the morning cause it was still somewhat cool, going home is another story though :)

utnick··on What is it like to be poor at an Ivy League school? (2015)
why are there no dots for humanities for schools with lower than 20% accceptance rates?

Most ivy schools have an acceptance rate lower than 10%

utnick··on CMU's Libratus builds substantial lead in Brains vs. AI competition
I'm not a great poker player, but I read a lot about them. And most great poker players say reading peoples emotions/cues/or tells isn't reliable or a big deal.

So in that sense , online poker is very similar to live poker, the strategy doesn't change very much

utnick··on When Node.js is the wrong tool for the job
It could be, but if the service calls generally depend on the response from the previous service call. Or if you need to rate limit your calls to these services, I think its easier to code it not async
utnick··on Martin Luther King on “Guaranteed Income” (1967)
It seems like it would be easier through technology to just reduce the minimum cost of living so much, that whatever basic income needed would be extremely small or even nothing at all.

I'm reading the Wright Brothers Bio right now and what struck me is how they came from a really poor family ( dad was a travelling preacher ), and they owned a small bicycle shop in a small town, yet they had no trouble owning a big house, and could afford to leave the shop for several years in their 20s to go across the country to do flying experiments.

That would be unthinkable today due to rent & food & healthcare costs.

utnick··on The People's Code
Its pretty backwards if you think about it, if the places you go or people you know or mistakes you make, can easily make you lose your security clearance and therefore your career could be ruined, it makes you much easier to blackmail than under a system that was more laissez-faire
utnick··on Tech firms shell out to hire and hoard talent
There is no way that is even close to true
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