chris_va

76 ms·

781.
by chris_va 12y ago
Experience is significantly more valuable than reading 200 articles (and as a result, I am inclined to view CS grad school as a waste for many people). Build stuff. It doesn't really matter what it is, there is enough overlap between a
782.
by chris_va 12y ago
While there are exceptions, the majority of the valley is more the weekend biking, hiking, 40-50 hour a week with good work-life balance. There is a lot of stereotyping, which always has some grain of truth, but it is not the median.
783.
by chris_va 12y ago
People keep worrying about filter bubbles, which is a rational but misguided fear. Having written some of these systems (Google News), it really does not happen the way people imagine it would. At the end of the day, the factors that define
784.
by chris_va 12y ago
It's easier than you might think. Machines are, if nothing else, good at identifying things other machines have created. People also often forget that Google doesn't just have to look at the page content to analyze something. Read
785.
by chris_va 12y ago
I'm not sure if you are asking for sources/apps, but for sources... I was the TL for Google News many years ago, and I had to read/deal with a lot of news sources. There is a lot of poorly researched noise out there, and my a
786.
by chris_va 12y ago
It costs society a lot to deal with unsophisticated investors (illegal securities, debt, bankruptcy, family issues, lawsuits, etc), so this regulation, like most laws, are to protect society and driven by historical experience.
787.
by chris_va 12y ago
Get a lawyer, it will almost certainly be cheaper than paying your defunct company's debt (unless you were a sole proprietorship, in which case you are probably on the hook still).
788.
by chris_va 12y ago
Apologies, you are correct on the EU vs EU member distinction. I used "EU" above when I was internally thinking "EU member states". On the various points, thank you for adding detail, but I don't see any contradicti
789.
by chris_va 12y ago
Maybe this is a semantic issue. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you or Starbucks wrote the UK government the tax check. None of Starbucks' money started with them, it all starts with the UK consumer. Without Starbucks
790.
by chris_va 12y ago
Starbucks also makes very little net margin the US, and as an entity pays very little in taxes directly, but that does not mean that the US does not make a lot of tax revenue from Starbucks. After cost of goods, the gross margin is spent on
791.
by chris_va 12y ago
You have to love politicians ability to dissemble and appeal to emotion rather than just fix the problem. 1) Taxes: This tax structure is legal, and used by the majority of large international companies operating in the EU. The EU has the p
792.
by chris_va 12y ago
> So in 10 years will everyone have one? > “I’d say yes. Ten years from today the probability that you are depending on wires hanging on tree branches is as likely as that you’ll still be installing land lines for telephones. Close to
793.
by chris_va 12y ago
They were leaving before it was cool.
794.
by chris_va 12y ago
'The company stopped using the system “years ago.”' Hm, as a former Google engineer, that statement (from the journalist) is not accurate. Though the definition of map reduce is malleable, so it's hard to say what was meant i
795.
by chris_va 12y ago
From their FAQ, they pick up RF pulses, tag it with a GPS timestamp, and correlate on a central server. "A lightning is a pulse not comparable to a broadcast signal on a single frequency. Such a pulse can be described best as a interfe
796.
by chris_va 12y ago
Point. Incorrect assumptions/starting points: * Customers pay Uber, and Uber takes 20 percent of the fare, while the rest goes to the drivers. [actually, this varies by uber type, and can be significantly less than 20%] * How you estim
797.
by chris_va 12y ago
This article makes a lot of hand-waving, possibly incorrect assumptions to arrive at its conclusion. It may or may not be the right conclusion, but it provides very little analytical insight, and is mostly useless.
798.
by chris_va 12y ago
I've gone down this path. If you are a decent engineer, go speak with academics at your local university. I spent a lot of time with the bio/comp-bio folks, and they can always use collaborators.
799.
by chris_va 12y ago
Occasionally I feel like there should be a wall of shame for the patent attorney that wrote the claims (and possibly the named Inventors by extension).
800.
by chris_va 12y ago
Meh, the content is the same. The same content should be consistently ranked. Granted someone else posting the link is a good signal, but that reflects more the prior probability rather than the outcome.
801.
10 minute pro-russia crimea pre-roll ad(dropbox.com)
1 points by chris_va 12y ago|0 comments
802.
by chris_va 12y ago
So, I had tried to submit a "Show HN" a couple of times, and it never worked. A week later, someone else submitted the link to my project and it made the front page of HN. Thus, I suspect there is a great deal of variance/cha
803.
by chris_va 12y ago
Some loss can be stopped with better enforcement of laws/treaties (e.g. overfishing, destruction of reefs, poaching). The countries most responsible (e.g. China) do not really care or do not have the resources to do enforcement. The US
804.
by chris_va 12y ago
Solar panels add momentum to existing electrons. This is actually quite exciting.
805.
by chris_va 12y ago
To summarize the situation for those curious: 1) Oscar is a UX play on top of health insurance (they license a provider network, etc). 2) Building an insurance company is extremely difficult. 3) Successful insurance companies require huge c
806.
by chris_va 12y ago
Actually there are a lot of geo-engineering solutions to climate change. Price tag is probably ~$1T, which honestly is not all that much when you think about the costs. When climate change really starts to hurt, that money will get spent. O
807.
by chris_va 12y ago
From the original paper: "The effect sizes indicate that on average, student performance on examinations and concept inventories increased by 0.47 SDs under active learning (n = 158 studies), and that the odds ratio for failing was 1.9
808.
by chris_va 13y ago
Technically, nuclear is safer than solar. But who needs logic.
809.
by chris_va 13y ago
(source: doing research into this) For those with a computational/hacker background wanting to make a difference: There is actually a lot of opportunity in the Computational Biology/Drug Development/Genomics space, with the c
810.
by chris_va 13y ago
8% per order. Yikes.

More ›