ReadingInBed

This is a really good interface but the assumptions backing the results seem weak. The growth rate on conservative and aggressive portfolios are high. The recommended amounts of saving should be as % of income. Recommending someone that makes 100k save 100 dollars a month is not great. It's also sad that the maximum amount saved per month is 1k where even just maximizing 401k is 1.5k a month.

This is a good point. As far as I remember Amazon had/has a contract with the CIA for 100s of millions. When the rich own the media there is always a risk that they will hire those that push their agenda. Amazon could greatly profit from government contracts. I wouldn't argue one article proves a conspiracy, but it's so incredibly hypocritical that you have to wonder why WaPo would publish it. Especially when it means future leakers might not want to go to them for fear they will work with the govt to imprison them.

One critical point I feel this piece does not touch on is how diversity of experience is great in the workplace. It's a huge benefit as a developer (and obviously other professions too) to work on teams with people who have lived very different lives. The Mirrortocracy[0] covers this well, but it should be clear to us all that being exposed to different views helps refine our ideas and process.

It's partly up to us to make diversity happen. We can prioritize offers that have diverse teams, and when we get a chance to hire to value diversity of experience.

[0] http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html

If you can get a remote job Portland Maine is an amazing place to live. Don't expect to get any kind of high quality tech job in Maine though. I've lived in both I don't think sf is so bad.

This happened for a short while at an old workplace that had an extremely toxic environment, this didn't improve the environment. People were expected to clock in/out when they arrived as well as for lunch and breaks. Developers were salaried not hourly. I suggest leaving as fast as you can, asking to have tasks add up to 40h a week of work shows a fundamental misunderstanding of development by management.

One thing to remember if you keep him on and he continues this behavior you might not find out about it for a while. People won't always speak out and tell you. What happens when he starts harassing your new hires? If he is new to the company and already this bold what happens in a year or two?

This actually happened last year at their biggest tournament. A well known bug caused several champions to be disabled midway through the tournament. This happens regularly that champions are disabled due to bugs at international events.

I thought this was a pretty good follow up to show the strengths and weaknesses of this approach: https://vwo.com/blog/multi-armed-bandit-algorithm/. Personally I think this approach makes a lot more sense than a/b testing especially when often people hand off the methodology to a 3rd party without knowing exactly how they work.

Having spent countless hours working with third party apis that are poorly documented and business critical I can understand how unexpected changes can be frustrating. But asking people to do things your way with no incentive is even more frustrating for everyone. It comes off as you not respecting their time or the product and apis they have already built.

I would guess someone showed them an a/b test where showing the clown led to less mistakes. Of course it's still fairly disgusting behavior for a company to take. But are morals really that important when you have algorithms and data?

That was updated later, after she got let go for writing that piece.

It's very possible that many people used the vending machines as impulse purchase vs planned purchase. My understanding is lots of effort goes into having people make impulse purchases (example: grocery store layout). They would not make as much money from a pre purchase system.

If someone is threatening violence to suppress speech it is even more important that speech be heard. Huge failure on sxsw part.

I really enjoyed the post and the idea of proposing alternate theories, but it doesn't discuss the mentality of those without a strong opinion of Airbnb. I assume that people who are fairly neutral will see their social networks express a negative opinion and internalize the negative opinion. The biggest impact isn't the people who read this 50 times rather the people who vaguely associate Airbnb with being out of touch and negative.

That's actually exactly why US and Israel make great allies. Both have great interest in aggressive imperialist foreign policies with little international oversight. I think the best chance of the US breaking away from Israel internationally is to change foreign policy in the US, versus specifically targeting Israel.

Edit: I'd like to add that I am not trying to make value judgements here. I'm not arguing that either the US or Israel foreign policy is bad or good, just very similar.

I think we can agree that there are genetic differences between men and women. The issue is reverse engineering them by cultural results is really hard. We can see the start point (DNA) and the measuring point ( For example: Higher IQ), but how we got there is really complex. Do the genetic differences really mean that much? I honestly don't know, and I think the key here is to study genetics not a genders achievements or test results. DNA is a lot less biased than the culture and world we have created.