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omurphyevans

Re:Will London Fall? on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @11:49AM (#14089147)
It's not saying that. It's pointing our how London is very much the emblem of a modern, integrated, multicultural city, and this is bound to change.

It doesn't say it'll fall into the sea. It wonders how such a city might change, most likely in directions opposed to its current identity.

Re:Will London Fall? on Tuesday April 11, 2017 @11:46AM (#14089111)
London voted overwhelmingly against Brexit, but will this change as Brexit continues.

Quite a lot about how it feels different, about how London is a multicultural hub, about how migrants are thinking about leaving, about how London will change.

It's a mood piece, but a fairly accurate one from my point of view (lived in London for 20 yrs)

Re:UK triggers the official Brexit process in a letter to EU on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @09:10AM (#13985793)
What about the brains who never moved now moving away?

I am British and have lived here for nearly 40 years. I'm currently looking at an Irish passport (Irish wife) or maybe France. My taxes and know how will be better put to use somewhere our values (openness, tolerance, mutual respect) agree.

Re:Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky on Friday January 20, 2017 @05:33AM (#13442785)
The Peter Dinklage bit annoys me, as this is precisely the issue - survivorship bias.

I happen to have a few actor friends. All talented, harder working than me, and dedicated to their craft. And no-one is interviewing them because they haven't made it.The talent and hard work pays off because you also get the lucky break.

Re:How can I protect myself from government snoopers? on Friday November 25, 2016 @10:56AM (#13037555)
There's a more specific example of this - in the Netherlands for years before 1939 they had a wide ranging census and an excellent civil service. On that census was an option for religion.

The Nazi's took the census records and then used the excellent civil service to deport the overwhelming majority of Jews to the camps. The Netherlands had some of the lowest rates of survival of Jews amongst occupied territories. The Nazi's knew who they were, and where to find them.

Who knows what piece of information could be used to hound you to your death, years after you divulge it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Net...

Re:Ask HN: How much do you make in London? on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @10:56AM (#12590029)
Senior Infrastructure specialist, big bank, 14 years, £450 a day, annualises to about £110k
Re:What is the Nash Equilibrium and why does it matter? on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @11:06AM (#12443988)
I remember the auction - it delayed the intro of 4G as the big players had spent so much money on the auction that they had to sweat their 3G assets to try to recoup their costs.

It worked for the govt - it certainly didn't for the customers...

Re:David Cameron announces resignation on Friday June 24, 2016 @10:18AM (#11969914)
You do.

You're in the top 10% of the country:

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

Re:The Financial Industry Is Having Its Napster Moment on Friday April 08, 2016 @09:28AM (#11454472)
The classic hedge fund used to be able to find niches in the market where they could make money - and the good ones used to be able to do it well.

They could do things other money managers couldn't - short stocks (i.e. hedging against a fall, hence their names), better analysts, investments in more diversified instruments, early HFT.

They would often take a fee of two and twenty - that is to say 2% of the money you lent them (every year), plus 20% of the profit they made from that money.

If you gave them $10 million, they'd take $200k as a fee every year, then 20% of the profit they made. So let's say they made you $1 mill a year, they'd be paid in the first year $200k fees and $200k performance fees.

However nowadays there's millions of them, and almost all of them lose money as there weren't that many profitable niches to begin with, and a lot of them were lucky anyway (survivorship bias).

Re:When Is the Singularity? Probably Not in Your Lifetime on Friday April 08, 2016 @09:01AM (#11454305)
No, it's predicated on exponential growth, of which Moore's law was one small part...
Re:The Sugar Conspiracy on Thursday April 07, 2016 @09:21AM (#11446995)
You're confusing knowledge and application of that knowledge in a personal situation.

A cosmologist may know all about the orbit of the planets but still say 'The sun rose this morning'.

Re:How the war on drugs creates violence on Wednesday October 21, 2015 @11:08AM (#10425931)
When given positive other life experiences, rats do not prefer cocaine to food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Re:Google in Kansas City: A Tale of Two-Speed America on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:15AM (#10190619)
There was a recent This American Life episodes about this. Apparently the best way to raise poor black children's scores is to remove segregation, but white communities don't want it:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...

I'm from the UK and was genuinely shocked. While there are disparities and issues over here, they're on a different scale compared to the US.

Re:UK trader in fraud arrest over US 'flash crash' on Wednesday April 22, 2015 @09:48AM (#9420355)
It's possibly because your original downvoted comment was a vague hit out at 'the man' castigating the establishment and placing this trader in the same bracket as Madoff.

It had no facts, no real argument, was unspecific, ad hominem and didn't advance the debate in any particular direction that was useful or informative.

Much like your second comment.

You could have pointed, for example, to the rise of HFT, and perhaps asked why this particular trader was being penalised unlike several larger HFT operations when he was front-running or pulling trades before they could be completed. (See Flash Boys by Michael Lewis). Then, chances are you might have been upvoted.

We can take dissonance. We just prefer it to be informative.

Re:The evolution of dog breeds on Thursday April 09, 2015 @09:18AM (#9347251)
There's a v amusing sketch about Crufts and the rise of the dog show by John Finnemore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG0BGqOKer8

I've tried to talk friends out of getting problem breeds such as bulldogs, considering so many dogs are left in shelters, but to no avail. To breed an animal to extinction for fashion is an extremely odd thing to do, when you think about it...

Re:Friendsgiving, a new tradition to be thankful for on Wednesday November 26, 2014 @09:18AM (#8662360)
I do this at Xmas - since my parents split acrimoniously, it was too difficult to do a 'family' holiday. So I see both a weekend around Xmas, then have friends over for Xmas - other people with split families, Aussies and Kiwis who can't get home this year etc. It beats a family Xmas hands down.

(British here, so no Thanksgiving)

Re:How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA on Thursday October 30, 2014 @12:23PM (#8533913)
Just a tiny nitpick - Arendt was a woman - Hannah Arendt to be more precise.
Re:Up All Night: The Science of Sleeplessness (2013) on Tuesday October 07, 2014 @09:59AM (#8421105)
Until recently I thought I had a serious sleep issue - perhaps apnea. I would be tired during the day, and by mid-afternoon almost asleep at my desk. I would even feel my brain shutting down while people were discussing things with me. I'd drink several cups of coffee a day just to stay awake.

Then for an unrelated reason I stopped drinking alcohol in the evening during the week. The effect was immediate. After a day I felt better. After two days I was alert all day - no coffee, nothing.

It seems I could drink in my twenties and it didn't matter too much. Now in my mid-thirties a couple of glasses of wine is enough to make me a tired the next day. Any more and I'm a wreck...