IronKettle
Joined 8 years ago
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240
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51
Member since
Dec 26
Recent submissions
Comment · 8 years ago
Comment · 8 years ago
> the MTA is a private entity which receives the bulk of its funding from the state
That's not really true. The biggest source of funding for the MTA is fares, followed closely by dedicated taxes (i.e. there would be no reason for the taxes to exist were it not specifically for the MTA). A majority of those taxes are levied specifically on people who live in the MTA's core area (basically counties surrounding and including the city) [1].
The state actually dips into these dedicated taxes to cover other budget shortfalls.
You make it sound as though the state covers for the MTA using the general tax pool, which is such a minor part of the MTA's budget (through subsidies largely) as to be not meaningful.
> the state government is (ostensibly) responsible for holding it accountable.
No, the board is. The governor appoints 6 board members, the city 4, and the other 7 are delegates from various counties throughout the state.
> New York is a special case
Special case according to whom? Georgia rated 3rd-to-last on Ballotpedia's "competitiveness index" for the 2016 election cycle [2]. If your argument is that:
1) New York overtly colludes to remain uncompetitive
2) Georgia doesn't
3) George still manages to hold less competitive elections than New York
then I think a logical conclusion is one of:
1) Georgia legislators collude but less overtly
2) There's less transparency about the collusion in Georgia
3) Collusion clearly isn't as large a factor in uncompetitive elections as other factors
1: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding
2: https://ballotpedia.org/2016_state_legislative_elections_ana...
Comment · 8 years ago
> We're talking about New York State, not New York City.
That's pretty hard to infer given the context, since the MTA is controlled by both the city and the state.
> but he is right that most districts aren't at all competitive
This is also true of say, Georgia. You can see for example that no one even ran against Buddy Carter in 2016 [1]. Most districts, period, aren't really that competitive.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia%27s_1st_congressional_...
Comment · 8 years ago
> One of the root causes of New York's government dysfunction (though not the only one) is that New Yorkers reliably vote in the democrat candidate regardless of pretty much any other consideration.
Er, what? That's not really true. Bloomberg was an independent and his predecessor was Giuliani.
Over the last 40 years, the mayor has been a democrat less than half the time (18 years over Koch, Dinkins, and now de Blasio).
Comment · 8 years ago
? The COGS for most software approaches 0 pretty rapidly, so it's just as arbitrary that Spotify charges $10/month for a premium subscription.
The price of software (and any good, theoretically) is rarely priced based on expenses.
Comment · 8 years ago
I think you can retroactively pay for COBRA, yeah?
You can enroll after an event and it'll be as though you had insurance the whole time. You'll have to pay for the retroactive coverage, but it's a pretty smooth way (assuming nothing happens) to avoid paying for COBRA while still technically "having coverage".
Though I think there's a time-limit on it.
Comment · 8 years ago
More than likely (in fact I would put it at like, 99% chance):
It's an OFAC thing. If they allow money transactions from Cuban nationals they run the risk of pissing off the Treasury dept.
Many companies do it in a very ham-fisted way (flag anything with "Cuba" in the title, etc.).
Comment · 8 years ago
Related, kinda:
Robinhood seems to be pulling in a lot of different directions and there's all these "early access" features that never seem to actually, well, launch.
I've now signed up for:
* Web access (otherwise it's mobile-only)
* Options trading
* And now, cryptocurrency trading (because why not)
and I haven't gotten access to any of them yet, even though Robinhood for web has been in "early access" for quite awhile now.
So I signed up for this, but I have very little faith that I'll get access any time soon (even with the vague promise of early February).
Comment · 8 years ago
> If you being late to your job causes others to start doing the same
You're missing the point entirely: Who cares if they're also late?
Short of them being late to something important like a meeting, it seriously couldn't matter less than any of the thousand other things you should focus on as a manager.
Unless you work in something with external time pressures (e.g. I used to work in equities and US market hours dictated our need to be available) there's no reason it should matter whether someone shows up at 9 or 9:45. If you're really worried about people missing each other, set core hours (11-3 say) where everyone's expected to be available.
Comment · 8 years ago
Semi-related question: Why is that? I've been looking for resources on why AMD is a non-starter, but most searches just turn up comparisons for low-level consumers.
Comment · 8 years ago
> this one has already been mitigated
Correct me if I'm wrong: It's been mitigated by applying a patch that has fairly severe performance implications, no? How does this not affect the institutional clients' bottom line in that case?
Comment · 8 years ago
Disclaimer: I know relatively little about differences between processor architectures, so this might be totally wrong because Intel might just have them over a barrel on this.
I think the major difference between this and, say, the Equifax blowup, is that Intel's institutional clients are affected by this.
I'm not sure what they're thinking internally, but it stands to reason that they're probably a bit upset at least: Their CapEx just went up to maintain the same level of computing power. I'd be surprised if internally Google is buying the "AMD is just as affected" line that Intel's been throwing out.
So, I wouldn't be surprised if they're at least evaluating AMD.
Or, again, maybe Intel just totally has them over a barrel and transitioning isn't feasible at all. It certainly doesn't paint a great picture of Intel's future if AMD does catch up, though.
Comment · 8 years ago
> If you're getting paid handsomely in cash, you should be able to weather that interruption.
Two glaring issues:
1) What people should do and what they actually do are two different things. People should eat sensible portions of healthful food. And yet, we have an obesity epidemic.
Saying people (even among those with high salaries) should be able to weather an interruption isn't very helpful when in practice many can't [1].
2) Which startups can afford to pay people handsomely in cash? (early) Startups offer equity to employees in large part because they can't afford to compete on salary.
> Amazon equity is publicly traded; you can buy as much of it as you want with any salary.
It's on top of Amazon's fairly generous salaries. The comparison was between being given Amazon equity, which is obviously worth something, vs. a private company's equity which is almost always worthless.
Which non-unicorn startup is offering $250K+ a year in salary and bonus for a plain old software engineer?
Comment · 8 years ago
> AmaGooBookSoft hires, to a first approximation, only pedigreed developers with their AKC papers in hand.
I think that is a very outdated view of those companies. IME at least, you've described Google's hiring process pretty accurately but are fairly incorrect about the rest.
In particular, Amazon is hiring like crazy [1]. Even back when I graduated, Amazon was known for being a place that was easy to get into if you were willing to stomach the sometimes-insane workload (which still pales in comparison to some startup sweatshop horror stories).
Again, I didn't graduate from a program with much name recognition and AmaGooAppleFaceSoft still snatched up 45% of my graduating class.
> (actually: pretty much just GooBook)
I'm not sure why you're only including those two.
Amazon share prices have quintupled over the last 5 years. If you were compensated with RSUs you've done very well for yourself.
I know several MS software engineers who were (very recently) paid roughly $150K + $100K in equity each of their first four years (admittedly after attaining their Master's, though I'm not sure how much it helped).
1: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?offset=0&result_limit=10&s...
Comment · 8 years ago
> shares I had to opt in to, at the cost of some salary.
I think this is a fair way to approach the situation.
> People on this thread are making comparisons to 300k/yr Google salaries. ... But for employers, it's a pretty silly comparison.
Why though? You're competing with them, whether you like it or not. AmaGooFaceAppleSoft hired 45% (including those going on to grad school, etc) of my graduating class, and I didn't go to Stanford. No joke, it was really 45%. These companies are vacuuming up everyone, and some of them are shockingly easy to get an offer from.
Sure, they didn't get paid 300k/yr to start. But with how much the equity has appreciated since then, it's probably not that far off.
So that leaves you with the remaining 25% who didn't get hired/didn't want to work at at one of those companies/didn't go to grad school, and you're competing with every other startup for them - including the larger, more established ones who can reasonably say they won't disappear tomorrow (e.g. AirBnB).
Wait, would it?
If you were an arb wouldn't you:
1) Buy bitcoin on a different exchange (with a temporarily lower price)
2) Transfer that bitcoin to, say, bitfinex (or another USDT exchange)
3) Sell that bitcoin for, say, ETH
4) Transfer that ETH back to the first exchange
5) Profit
Though I guess that would also flood the market and tank the ETH-BTC price as well (though I guess another arb could take advantage of that discrepancy as well).
Or are you talking about exchanges that only do USDT-BTC?