tdees40

25 ms·

181.
by tdees40 13y ago
This might be the single greatest comment in the history of Hacker News.
182.
by tdees40 13y ago
My (very non-affluent) school started at 7:20, and the stated reasoning was to maximize the earnings opportunity for those students who had after-school jobs.
183.
by tdees40 13y ago
The sad decline of Google Finance from best in class to also-ran is really depressing. I use Yahoo Finance now, which includes an outrageously easy API.
184.
by tdees40 13y ago
But this isn't the only natural disaster California should be concerned about... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862
185.
by tdees40 13y ago
Looks like this has already made it to the Wikipedia page for Kiss Trust: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Trust
186.
by tdees40 13y ago
This is why it's important to differentiate between Marx's preferred political system (Communism) and the ideas of Marx more holistically (Marxism). Many of Marx's ideas remain compelling ways to explain our modern world (al
187.
by tdees40 13y ago
The New Yorker actually wrote a wonderful article on solitary confinement that's a must-read for anybody who cares about the subject. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...
188.
by tdees40 13y ago
I'm saying that the bathrooms in Penn Station mostly consist of homeless people peeing on the walls.
189.
by tdees40 13y ago
Bitcoin folks need to understand that fractional reserve banking doesn't mean holding less in assets than you have in liablilities; it simply means that you hold less cash (or very liquid assets) than you have liabilities. What the au
190.
by tdees40 13y ago
Just to be clear, there are rooms that get peed in. Whether they meet the technical definition of "bathroom" is up in the air.
191.
by tdees40 13y ago
"Nutrient deficiencies are common, and supplements don't always work." *Citation needed
192.
by tdees40 13y ago
I suspect they mostly want a compliant political infrastructure and relatively easy construction. NYC and SF aren't really known for either. Also, NYC would probably be biting off more than Google Fiber has any interest in chewing at
193.
by tdees40 13y ago
I knew I shouldn't have joined that Hezbollah playgroup!
194.
by tdees40 13y ago
We were flying with my son (then six months old) recently, and he has a reasonably uncommon name. He was flagged by the TSA as being on the no-fly list, which caused us to have to submit to onerous additional security procedures and miss o
195.
by tdees40 13y ago
I do feel like they may be underestimating the difficulty of putting together automatic translator code...
196.
by tdees40 13y ago
Dude, it's marketing. If you want to promote your language, don't make it offend people. It doesn't matter if the offense holds up to your personal views on what should and shouldn't be offensive.
197.
by tdees40 13y ago
And somehow we've gone from a minor request for the removal of vulgarity to "cultural imperialism". Sheesh.
198.
by tdees40 13y ago
If by "heavily" you mean there are a few notable (and exciting!) projects out there, then sure. But what percentage of working quants code in Haskell ever? Probably <5%.
199.
by tdees40 13y ago
The problem with Excel is a problem of state. It's great for viewing immutable information (although custom web apps aren't difficult for most basic tasks), but as soon as you get into running production processes in Excel things
200.
by tdees40 13y ago
Matlab, C++, C# and Java rule the roost in the finance world. Anything else is treated with intense suspicion by finance companies. (I was once at a very large financial company that wouldn't approve Python for use internally at all
201.
by tdees40 13y ago
This is probably true. Competition is sometimes destructive. But these business practices are still completely illegal.
202.
by tdees40 13y ago
I've never understood this part of Taleb's argument. Of course, constant vol Black-Scholes does not hold. BUT NO ONE USES THIS. Everyone in the financial industry is well aware of the volatility skew, and spends lots of time ad
203.
by tdees40 13y ago
People always focus on small, dramatic causes of death (bike wrecks) and ignore the infinitely more common causes (heart disease). Biking frequently has tremendous benefits on heart disease in exchange for a modest increase in the risk of
204.
by tdees40 13y ago
The jive talk really adds to your story.
205.
by tdees40 13y ago
For most hauling cases, you can rent a truck/van from Home Depot for $20/hour or so. It takes about five minutes to do. Obviously that isn't everyone's use case, but Enterprise will pick you up, or Zip Car or even cabs
206.
by tdees40 13y ago
Ah yes, even better. But that couldn't even fly in NYC, arguably the place with the least car friendly political environment in the US.
207.
by tdees40 13y ago
The odd thing to me about cars is that people pick the most unusual use cases and then buy their cars off of that. So my dad likes to haul plywood once in a while, so he bought a pick-up. But 99.99% of the time he could use a subcompact.
208.
by tdees40 13y ago
This is easy enough to fix from a policy standpoint: (1) make free parking a taxable benefit for companies (2) tax the hell out of gas/car registration, or at the very least tax it enough to pay for infrastructure (3) no mandated parki
209.
by tdees40 13y ago
The point of this is obviously that the USD is just as much as a construct as Bitcoin, which, sure! But of course the difference is that the dollar's value doesn't change by 20%+ in a day, so you can rely on it to execute transac
210.
by tdees40 13y ago
If a majority of Americans prefer extremists, then extremists we shall have. Such is the way of democracy.

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