Xichekolas

8 ms·

31.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
The reason is the $265 billion tax break given to employers for providing health insurance. During WW2, there were wage controls, but employers needed to attract workers, so Congress gave them this small (at the time) tax break for providin
32.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
The entitlement unsustainability is entirely a problem of demographics. People are living longer and having fewer children, so the ratio of young working people (who pay) to old retired people (who benefit) is diminishing. The classic answe
33.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Just curious, but understand if you don't want to share, is your "pre-existing condition" diabetes? I know two people with Type 1 Diabetes that are basically stuck in their jobs due to their insurance situation. One has a PhD and works in a
34.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
And you should be proud of that. I'm currently a CS grad student, with zero debt, working as a GTA/GRA (depending on the semester). I get my insurance through the University for an awesome $94 a semester, but if I were still young enough, I
35.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
So you'd be ashamed to be in grad school? (Or doing a startup right out of college?) Often the insurance offered by a parent's plan blows away what can be had through the University. Of course, you can buy individual insurance fairly cheapl
36.
House Passes Health Care Reform(latimes.com)
152 points by Xichekolas 17y ago|263 comments
37.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Oh, and I forgot to mention that part of the reason I'm such a huge fan of ING Direct is because they have Sharebuilder, which I think is the best platform I've ever experienced for managing my Roth IRA (and stocks in general).
38.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Huh (just checked), it is indeed $25/$20 right now. Even better. grin
39.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I'm also a huge fan of ING Direct (have been with them since 2002) and would gladly send out invites to anyone that wants them (disclosure: you get $25 and I get $10 if you use my invite to open your account).
40.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
But my point was that the complexity matters. If you throw complexity out the window, everything in the Universe is probably 100% predictable (unless you presume a deity with a sense of humor, or some other layer of non-determinism). The is
41.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I totally agree with you in aggregate . If you take the entirety of the VC/Angel scene and figure out the overall return, it's probably not that much different than other investment vehicles (it's probably a bit higher, since there are bar
42.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
f = (+ 2) (I'm not a huge fan of point-free, I'm just being facetious ;)
43.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
Wanking is a good word for it. I've never understood how people looking for upside measured in the hundreds to thousands of percent can complain about a 3.8% tax with a straight face. If you invest $100k in a startup, it goes well and you w
44.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
> BTW, if you want, you could build a mathematical model of every program. 100% predictable Have you ever tried to do this? Once you get past fibonacci functions, the amount of time and effort required is measured in PhD-man-years. An
45.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
> Since all engineers do this, why would developers do things differently? Because, as arethuza said, programmers don't have the tools that other engineering disciplines have. Most notably, the equations that allow for predictive anal
46.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
While the 8 hrs of just about any manual labor job is much more work than 8 hrs at school, at least you don't have to worry about it when you go home. I worked several manual labor jobs during summer breaks in high school, and the freedom t
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
Well if you buy into the idea of doing productive work on it (which Apple bent over backward to push during the unveiling), then all day shouldn't be out of the question. But personally, I just read a lot (research papers, online, and recre
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I used to have mine set at two minutes, but recently changed it to one. I found that I edit pretty hard for the first 2-3 minutes after submitting, but all the major changes come in the first minute, and whenever I reconsider and delete it'
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I was excited too until I saw the battery life. To me, a tablet needs to have the stamina to last at least a whole day without being charged. Six hours isn't quite there.
50.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
I'd read it on anything without a backlight, it doesn't necessarily have to be e-ink. (Mirasol or Pixel Qi come to mind.)
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I have a $100 gift card burning a hole in my pocket so I'm planning to spring for an X25-V, but if you are considering the same, it might be worth noting that IMFT's new 25nm flash is coming in Q4 this year, promising double the capacity fo
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Anandtech: Battle of the $125 SSDs(anandtech.com)
16 points by Xichekolas 17y ago|10 comments
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I'm not sure I'm understanding your point, but I would definitely argue that society now is better than that of the 1920s. The medical/tech advances alone would make my point, but you seem to want to ignore those, so I'll stick with socia
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
It amuses me that, since it's inception, America has essentially always moved from one jeremiad to another... and yet every year we keep pretending that there is something new about this. According to Americans, things have been "going to h
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I think a really simple and sort of bash-you-over-the-head means to get this across to homebuyers would be to tack on the monthly utilities to the mortgage+tax number that people see. If you were comparing the price of two houses, you often
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I know someone that works in Dr. Berggren's group, and they are indeed doing some nifty things. She is working on taking electron beam lithography down to a 5nm feature size (as opposed to 28nm-32nm currently in production flash memory and
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
Other fun Japanese inventions (culling from Wikipedia): The Biplane Graphing Calculator Solar powered calculator Camcorder Digital Camera Blue lasers VCRs Anything made by Nintendo Flash memory Various types of steel
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I was impressed by the number of interesting concrete ideas he listed for improving efficiency and retrofits. Usually policy at that level is almost entirely focused on enticements to lower levels of government and other types of stick/carr
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by Xichekolas 17y ago
I almost threw Topeka in there, but I wanted to keep it simple. I know a lot of decidedly cool people from Wichita... but I also know quite a few crazies.
60.
by Xichekolas 17y ago
One place to check out in your job hunt is Perceptive Software. A lot of the really good people I knew from my undergrad days (I went to KU, which is about 40 minutes from KC) ended up there. They have a dodgeball court, and seem to try and

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