That would be a good hypothesis if politicians wouldn't be constantly being caught lying, cheating and breaking promises, starting wars or saving bankrupt industries with people's money. But since they do that, with little consequences, the theory that they are actually good at getting what they want without paying the cost we would pay for something far smaller seems more likely.
That's a good point :) But they are breaking laws in the process. God, the US government is even breaking the habeas corpus, the most important law of all, and nobody bats an eye.
So do I. There is a selection process. It is not selecting for non-criminality. It isn't selecting for criminality necessarily either, but it certainly is not strongly selecting against, in the sense intended.
Yeah, that's exactly what I look for in problems like that. How does this person approach the problem? How do they decompose the problem?
For that specific problem, I'd probably be satisfied if they wrote a function that took a number like 341 and returned [3, 4, 1], and then mumbled something about a set or a hash (or a list even) for storing the already seen numbers.
A better question is why shouldn't it? We all like to think that hard work equals success. For those without success, they want to believe this because that means that they can be successful simply by working hard. For those with success, they want to believe this because it means that they earned and deserve their disproportionate wealth.
Nobody wants to think that success is due to luck. For the wealthy, that means that they are not as great as they think they are (damages ego), and for the poor, that means that there is no sure way to become wealthy.
Of course reality is a bit more complex, hard work can lead to wealth, but it's not a guarantee. Luck factors into everything in varying amounts. Aside from extreme cases like this, luck comes into play in terms of where you were born, who you met and became friends with, or even when you live or whether or not you were first to some arbitrary line.
To me, all of this means that people should be a hell of a lot more humble and realistic than they are. I get the impression that the author of Flappy Bird might realize this, so props to him.
Charging $400/hour does not mean he does not need extra money. His nature of business is a short term projects, it's not like a regular web developer who has to work 40 hours a week for many month to finish a project, he only does audits which don't last long because of that you see this "high" (I personally don't think it's high) hourly rate.
It's actually a good strategy to price high hourly but over-deliver (doing lots of free work behind the scenes, or speculative unpaid work, etc.) -- rather than the market-clearing rate of ~100-150/hr, at least when you're trying to build a brand. At $400, he's clearly a specialist, and will get more interesting work; at $100/hr, you could hire him and just treat him like another developer, have him do cookie-cutter assessments, etc.
Personally, I think he'd make more money at $400-600/hr if he could also get some kind of manager to handle the interactions with clients; it doesn't seem to be what he enjoys, or is particularly good at.
(I've had drinks with him before, so probably the most effective way to accomplish my goal is to buy him drinks when I'm in town.)
Personally, I think he'd make more money at $400-600/hr if he could also get some kind of manager to handle the interactions with clients; it doesn't seem to be what he enjoys, or is particularly good at.
Completely agree. I'm not doing security, but my hourly is similar, and it was a game changer for me to have someone in a manager-like role working with me. Client relations are a huge time suck, but are also absolutely necessary. If he can find someone (or maybe someone on HN should volunteer), it'd be more than worth it.
BTW My manager takes a flat 15%. I'm much happier, clients are way happier, and my total income has increased as a result—not to mention another person is gainfully employed at something they're good at and enjoy. A win-win all the way around.
I meant manager in the sense of a band's manager. It's more than just introducing you to deals; it's handling the communications back and forth with the client on an ongoing basis; not merely the negotiation to set up the deal but the actual work-product communications as well.
conspiracy nuts have been screaming all sorts of stuff from the rooftops for years.
if i say 'twenty' every time, eventually i'll correctly predict the outcome of a d20. this doesn't make me good at doing so, nor does it mean that you should have listened.
This site lists articles going back to 1982 about the NSA domestic spying programs. A whois lookup on the site puts the information on the site around 1997. It's fascinating to me people seemed to have no idea, yet the information had been out there for years and years.
I liken it to Jose Canseco. For so many years he was telling people guys in the MLB were all juicing. He got blacklisted and people hazed the crap out of him for the mere suggestion. A few years after his book came out, every player he named was confirmed as a steroid user.
... but really it's always been more than just conspiracy nuts saying this.
It's essentially been common opinion in the tech community for decades that the NSA looked like they were building the capability for mass surveillance, and that in all likelihood was probably doing it.
Snowden provided a greater degree of proof, but anybody that was really surprised by what was going on wasn't really paying attention...
> Doesnt this take away from the real issue of fossil fuels? Pollution, increased CO2 and climate changes.
No. Any CO2 released when these fuels are burned has to come from the algae. The algae gets it from the air. So CO2 is cycled, but not added to the atmosphere.
For my understanding, the problem with the fossil fuels is that they are trapped in the ground and we are releasing the carbon that was trapped in the ground into the atmosphere.
That is true for fossil fuels. But for oil produced from algae, the carbon came from the atmosphere or the immediate surface environment, so it's not introducing any "new" (or long-sequestered) carbon.
the solution is probably a moving-knife procedure[1]:
have a list of rewardable issues. grow the reward for each issue with time. once the reward makes the time spent on the project worthwhile, people will be incentivized to commit. they won't let the reward grow too high, for fear that someone else will take it.
you could let coders freeze the reward for some amount of time, and get exclusive rights to claim that reward, until the time expires.
