aurem1

yeah like solve an actual problem, you know what I mean?

I hope you end up using your talents for something worthwhile in the future

extreme claims have low probability of being correct. For example, I am not sure that it is impossible due to laws of physics for 5-6 men to pull all the strings, but common sense would tell you it is extremely unlikely. If your friends don't see that, nothing you can say will convince them otherwise, so just don't engage in pointless debates :)

Your argument is silly for the following reason. Imagine that a firm was able to profit from discrepancies between values of two stocks that last 100 microseconds. Say this firm makes 1 billion dollars a year - it pays 350 million in corporate taxes to society, which is one direct way to measure the value it is adding. Looking at it differently, what value does a pizza cutter provide to society? why not ban pizza cutter production? Why can't people cut pizza with a knife? instead of having all those smart engineers work on making pizza cutters, let them make something worthwhile. Follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion and you end up with Soviet Union circa 1975 - i.e. system that does not work

done

what possible justification could there be for this article to be posted to Hacker News?

man I am glad my parents were nothing like this nutty woman

the reason is it is not as big a deal as it seems is that it only applies to affiliates who have a physical presence in the state. For example, if I buy an e-book for my Kindle, it would not fall under this law.

thanks. performance and reliability both

it is very unlikely that you will be able to successfully start something that is outside of your area of expertise and the opportunity cost of failure is quite high for you. Instead, I would recommend thinking about what tools and/or applications would help you a lot in what you are doing now and if you think you came up with a good idea, either try to mock it up yourself or look for a partner/co-founder who can create a working prototype for you, or just hire a contractor to do it. None of this requires quitting your job, just the opposite

if my children could vote, they would vote for cookies and cake