mdda

47 ms·

421.
by mdda 15y ago
The main factors are whether each addition will incrementally add to P&L, and fit with the rest of the group. One key point in my business is that most of our wage costs are variable (we can see the direct P&L impact of every hire :
422.
by mdda 15y ago
I'm in the process of building out my startup - now at 13 employees. Would having 3-5% lower taxes give me an incentive to build out quicker, or change my plan? : NO.
423.
by mdda 15y ago
Even if they're separate companies, Qwikster and Netflix should license (for pay) the queue information between themselves. That way customers will remain happy, and the Qwikster brand could be sold to someone that wanted a business that ha
424.
by mdda 15y ago
But in the GP's case ("Which passport would you wave around if you were stuck in Cairo?") you're not really out to make friends, just survive.
425.
by mdda 15y ago
From what I hear from Americans abroad, it's an easier life to suggest that they're Canadian : Less hostility.
426.
by mdda 15y ago
What they owe is tax returns reporting zero income. The fact that they didn't file these on time causes them to owe penalties, that may now be crippling. All for not reporting 'ZERO' every year.
427.
by mdda 15y ago
Only if you deserve it.
428.
by mdda 15y ago
That's one reason that I lie in wait for Refurb deals from buy.com or woot. Every so often, a $300 Quad core comes along : The lack of decision points is a huge win. Upgrade something when you find the weaknesses. Or ditch it (pass it to
429.
by mdda 15y ago
"Nobody seems sure why so much data has the Benford distribution. " : Have a look at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-zipfs-... (cited in the previous discussion on HN) for an excellent exposition of the theory, and a
430.
by mdda 15y ago
But it's also partly to do with the kinds of businesses that the HN crowd are setting up. If your business is a plain old-style cash-flow business, rather than having a fast-growth trajectory, it does much sense to optimize for the cents, s
431.
by mdda 15y ago
High Risk is exactly wrong. The need for extreme caution (in the face of world-wide publicity for mis-steps in the space race) are what lead to many of their other 'sins'. Now that the problem has been 'solved' by the pioneers, the follow-
432.
by mdda 15y ago
Full Time Employee.
433.
by mdda 15y ago
While I'm sympathetic to the plight of teachers (my mother was a physics teacher, FWIW), I still can't shake the fact that education spending per student is higher in the US than in most of the rest of the world : http://mercatus.org/publi
434.
by mdda 15y ago
But everyone suing everyone else doesn't help anyone apart from the lawyers. And the fights in Washington are utterly unproductive. In order for job creation to take place, the USA needs less volatility rather than more : If a business own
435.
by mdda 15y ago
"Verify credit worthiness" : This is part of the problem. The documentation likely only specifies that the banks had to obtain a recent FICO score. Not do 'real due diligence' on the actual credit worthiness of the borrowers. And while FI
436.
by mdda 15y ago
Sidestepping the editorial : The basic problem with NINJA loans was that the historical payment/default characteristics were very encouraging. When the rating agencies modeled up new asset classes, they naturally gathered as much historical
437.
by mdda 15y ago
I don't claim to be an expert, but from what I've seen there's a typically a huge gulf between the software and hardware. Until recently, it's been difficult to put a lot of CPU on a mobile robot, so the software developer really has to be
438.
by mdda 15y ago
But surely the client could use human input as it's source of randomness too : After all, in this case (browser purchases) the user is going to be hitting keys and/or moving the mouse.
439.
by mdda 15y ago
It's easy to see that {process-id, parent-id, timestamp} can lead to a pretty predictable random number seed. But Amazon also had another easily available source of randomness : the timestamps of other customer's orders. Why not generate a
440.
by mdda 15y ago
October 8th? It seems like a decent % of people share your birthday (me among them). Certainly feels like a weird to me. How many thousand people read a page (given that it has a moderate up-vote)?
441.
by mdda 15y ago
FYI : Paster contains the CherryPy WSGI server - so that development and production server launching can be (practically) equivalent. CherryPy WSGI doesn't test too badly either.
442.
by mdda 15y ago
"The link will expire after August 19" This gives people a sense of urgency, but doesn't discourage them from trying the link if they're a little late. "Through" is (to my ears) an Americanism.
443.
by mdda 15y ago
Your point is spot-on, except that it really isn't foggy in London much. It's a US misconception that's a hangover from Victorian smog, Jack-the-Ripper movies, and various songs. More apt would be if the weather forecaster wouldn't be paid
444.
by mdda 15y ago
Not if they went through the gate...
445.
by mdda 15y ago
But the enterprise-wide idea only works if "the powers that be" are ready to insist that all company phones are Windows too. Just a few iPads and iPhones here and there in the executive suite makes the Microsoft-must-be-everywhere argument
446.
by mdda 15y ago
What always boggles my mind when I read this kind of article on an 'enterprisy' site is the comments. Many of them are extremely quick to defend Microsoft in the face of what they consider biased reporting. And J.Q.Public promises that MS
447.
by mdda 15y ago
But now S&P has provided the others 'cover' for downgrading. Since part of the reasoning of S&P was that US politicians were willing to play chicken with events of default, I don't see that this is an easy hole for the US to dig out
448.
by mdda 15y ago
So are you saying that the US shouldn't have been AAA? Or that S&P should be regulated so that its hands are tied behind its back? While the {S&P, Moodys, Fitch} sub-prime department obviously got completely ahead of itself modelli
449.
by mdda 15y ago
The implication is really the other way around. The USD was the reserve currency in part because of the credibility of the US government's financials (and also because of amount of trade, etc). But obviously, the US has taken a huge beati
450.
by mdda 15y ago
But the most important aspect is on the banking industry, where there are huge positions that look like (X-X0). X0 may rise, which is a problem, but the bigger issue is that the overall size of this type of bet can be enormous, because it'

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