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durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

This is what +/- and its variants are for. Especially useful for sports like hockey where scoring is rare. Of course, in a work environment this is even harder to try and measure, if for no other reason than that people are almost never 'off the court' and if they are there are many confounding factors.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Coinbase Wants Wall Street to Resolve Its Bitcoin Trust Issues

If a new investment firm took this long to have securities show up in your account, they'd be shut down faster than you can say SEC. Coinbase isn't exactly a new t-shirt company working out issues with their silk screener, they're an allegedly $20B (alleged) currency exchange. They have a higher standard to meet.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

The NE also went from 30% forest to 70% open/farming land to 70% forest 30% open in about 100 years as agriculturalism gave way to industrialization. So that could also contribute to giving deer more cover/habitat. Also we killed all the wolves east of the Mississippi 50 years, and coyotes have yet to fill their niche.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: University of Chicago Graduate Students Vote to Unionize

The wages will never be high. Thats just the nature of the job. But unions can fight for things like working conditions for TAs and helping students deal with abusive advisers. Students are strongly incentive not to bring complaints against professors since they hold all the power over potential career advancement. Unions could help here too.

Really more than students unionizing its adjunct faculty that are being severely exploited. Whereas PhDs at least get a degree for their troubles, adjuncts just get straight up robbed, and too many of them are living on public assistance and non-guaranteed contracts.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Fiat is Effective: fiat for the crypto crowd [pdf]

The president can’t spend money without authorization from congress (see Authorization for Use of Military Force congress keeps renewing) It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. Congress doesn’t just control how tax receipts can be spent, they also control how much can be borrowed and when, and directs the president in how to use it. And neither the president nor congress control monetary policy.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Barbarian Virtues

counterpoint: nuclear-armed USSR, and since then nuclear armed former Soviet Republics with poor nuclear security, definitely including Russia in this. second-counterpoint: global warming is also bad, actually damaging the earth instead of potentially damaging it.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: The Supreme Court discussed my research on gerrymandering: some misconceptions

Actually, it is an act of Congress that mandates single-member geographical districts (1967 Single-Member District Mandate). Several states over the years have had at-large districts, and it has been a debate since at least the 1842 Apportionment Act. The debate has gone from one focused on federalism (states should decide how to elect reps) to equal protection (black people should get not get drowned out by racist southern states. flip side, gerrymandering is easy to do, hard to prevent). Nothing in the US Constitution prevents at-large House reps.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: The Supreme Court discussed my research on gerrymandering: some misconceptions

Several US states have in fact had a various times at-large representatives (most notably Hawaii and New Mexico since the time they were admitted into the Union). In 1967, the Single-Member Districting Mandate (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/2c) was passed to mandate geographically based single-member districts. One reason it was passed was because of fears that southern states would use at-large districts to dilute the black vote. The other is that at the time, Indiana was under court-order to elect all 11 of its representatives at-large unless it could come up with a satisifactory districting plan. This was an attempt by Congress to claw back some power from the judiciary after the 1962 Baker case declaring the one-person/one-vote principle that districts must be of roughly equal population. I think that it is an interesting debate and definitely doesn't get talked about enough (or at all!) in school.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Why people believe in conspiracy theories – and how to change their minds

One interesting thing about conspiracy theories that I've seen is that people with more education are more likely to believe them, and believe them strongly. One theory for why this might be true is that education teaches you to reason about and debate evidence, and with more education, you are able to convince yourself more effectively that the conspiracy is true and that countervailing evidence is false. This of course makes it difficult to convince believers that they are mistaken...

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

Is it really that hard though? Being professional and polite is the LEAST that you can do. Just say hi to people, don't talk over them, make some small talk, shake their hands when you meet. LISTEN to others. Don't make 'jokes' involving anything remotely sexual. If you follow these steps you are almost certain not to get in trouble, and you will be liked by most people in an office setting. It is not hard to be nice.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Workplace flexibility is the way to win the war for talent

I personally don't get the love for working at home/remote. I HATE working at home. To me, home is home and work is work. I don't want to mix them, and I feel awful when I have to stay home all day, or don't get to interact casually with my coworkers. Its just so depressing to be alone all the time.

That being said, a bad office environment is definitely a turn off, and at this point in my career free lunch and the ilk isn't that much of a perk anymore. I want reasonable hours, decent vacation and health-insurance, and a big income.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Why Is Google Building a New Operating System from Scratch?

Why is this nefarious? Nothing is forcing these allegedly top employees from staying at Google. They get to work on something cool and get paid presumably a disgusting amount of money, and Google gets to maybe have a groundbreaking technology at the end of it, and their competitors don't get the allegedly top guys. If those employees would feel more fulfilled working somewhere else, and many do end up leaving, they can.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: How to Pick Your Next Gig: Evaluating Startups

True, but when you are graduating, lots of companies are looking at you at you on their schedule, whereas later in your career, just the way schedules line up might make it hard to get more than two or three offers (if you are lucky) you could respond to at the same time...

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: How to Pick Your Next Gig: Evaluating Startups

How can you learn anything in a chaotic and disorganized environment? Either nobody has time to teach you anything, because everything is chaotic and disorganized and they need to fix it, or they are the reason everything is messed and you don't want to learn from that.

I feel that you would be much better off learning the right way to do things first, then going somewhere that is chaotic and seeing why best practices are in fact best. Much harder to unlearn the wrong way than just learn the right way in the first place if you ask me.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Small functions considered harmful

This basically boils down to 'bad code is bad'. DRY and short-functions are supposed to be guidelines, not rules, and when you find yourself violating them, you're supposed to question why. Sometimes there's a good reason for it, often not, and it will help newbies get to the point where they can answer these questions themselves.

durgiston | 8 years ago | on: Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour

While crime is certainly a possibility, rich people just have so much money and they don't have that many options for where to put it. This is part of the reason why the housing crash happened; some new investment vehicle was created, and people with way too much money ate it up. And now with interest rates so low, the demand for high yield investments continues to grow.
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