Guy's been annoyed with bugs on his Android phone.
Guy notices phone is burning through battery with no clear explanation why.
Guy writes about it on his personal blog.
Story gets picked up by bgr.com.
Story shows up on the front page of yahoo.com.
Brilliant commenters like Daren say:
What an extremely smart guy Jason Kallelis must be. I mean look at his resume, even working for "Writing About Tech". You would think that somebody this smart would realize that it may actually be a hardware issue rather than a software issue? Like battery drain has NEVER happened on iOS
We also need people to somehow hold their emotions in check when a random person chooses a different phone for a different reason.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
The American People
Today's copy of TMQ tangent-rants about politicians using phrases like "frankly", "quite frankly" and "the American people" to superfluously emphasize their points. I'd like to pile on.
Easterbrook points out the obvious issue: no politician could possibly know that every American person agrees with their point. I'd like to go one more:
There is nothing that 300+ million people can agree on. Nothing. Consider that in our country there are pacifists and gun nuts, religious and atheist, pro-life, suicidal, racist, insane, ... literally anything you offer would be rejected by someone. Even food or air or shelter. This reveals a critical truth: any legislation we approach will NOT work for some people and we just need to accept this as fact. Thus, the question needs to shift to the much more appropriate question: what legislation does the most good for the most people?
Learning to phrase it this way would help us cut through the inevitable noise of those who are negatively affected and allow us to keep the perspective that the goal is to do net good. Granted there are many ways to define "good" and assess the benefit of a particular change, but at least we can start talking like adults instead of 9-year-olds.
Easterbrook points out the obvious issue: no politician could possibly know that every American person agrees with their point. I'd like to go one more:
There is nothing that 300+ million people can agree on. Nothing. Consider that in our country there are pacifists and gun nuts, religious and atheist, pro-life, suicidal, racist, insane, ... literally anything you offer would be rejected by someone. Even food or air or shelter. This reveals a critical truth: any legislation we approach will NOT work for some people and we just need to accept this as fact. Thus, the question needs to shift to the much more appropriate question: what legislation does the most good for the most people?
Learning to phrase it this way would help us cut through the inevitable noise of those who are negatively affected and allow us to keep the perspective that the goal is to do net good. Granted there are many ways to define "good" and assess the benefit of a particular change, but at least we can start talking like adults instead of 9-year-olds.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
A picture is worth a thousand words ... and vice versa??
While discussing art with my mom and Ben today, she asked about the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, she argued, there were words that could not be well expressed in pictures, or would certainly take a detailed picture.
After an initial reaction that this is right, I came upon the example of "addition". How do you draw addition? You kinda can't. You can draw a specific case of addition (ex: 2 + 3 = 5), but can you really express this concept with only images? You may be smarter than me and come up with something, but I suspect it'll at least meet the requirement that it's more complex than explaining the concept of addition using words. So what's the deal here?
Addition is an abstraction. I posit that abstractions are hard to draw. Why? Because drawings are concrete. They, by their nature, have details: a particular color, or arc, or shading, or specific item(s), etc. Instantly, there are many attributes to describe if we want to convey the picture accurately. Hence, a thousand words (you know, plus or minus) are needed. But, their concreteness also means they express only an instance of an abstraction, thereby reducing the generalization of the abstraction. Thus, an abstraction is worth a thousand pictures (you know, plus or minus, to give people a pattern from which to construct the abstraction, perhaps).
So a picture is worth a thousand concrete words.
And non-concrete words are worth a thousand pictures.
Since it's a disjoint set of words in the two statements, the pair of equations doesn't explode or spiral into some black hole.
After an initial reaction that this is right, I came upon the example of "addition". How do you draw addition? You kinda can't. You can draw a specific case of addition (ex: 2 + 3 = 5), but can you really express this concept with only images? You may be smarter than me and come up with something, but I suspect it'll at least meet the requirement that it's more complex than explaining the concept of addition using words. So what's the deal here?
Addition is an abstraction. I posit that abstractions are hard to draw. Why? Because drawings are concrete. They, by their nature, have details: a particular color, or arc, or shading, or specific item(s), etc. Instantly, there are many attributes to describe if we want to convey the picture accurately. Hence, a thousand words (you know, plus or minus) are needed. But, their concreteness also means they express only an instance of an abstraction, thereby reducing the generalization of the abstraction. Thus, an abstraction is worth a thousand pictures (you know, plus or minus, to give people a pattern from which to construct the abstraction, perhaps).
So a picture is worth a thousand concrete words.
And non-concrete words are worth a thousand pictures.
Since it's a disjoint set of words in the two statements, the pair of equations doesn't explode or spiral into some black hole.
No break for the socialist
What does it really mean to be a socialist country, and are we plummeting face-first into that state as some might claim? We've certainly made the beginnings of universal-ish health care (though in a markedly different way than other countries do it), we have some social security (which may or may not be adequate), but we're a long ways from providing universally copay-free health services, an adequate federal pension for workers, etc. We can argue back and forth about the weights of these, but I mostly want to focus on one slice of the socialist pie: vacation time.
Is vacation time really a "social benefit"? I think so, though employers foot the bill rather than it being paid from a federal tax. However, it's still lost productivity that is mandated. If employers have to foot the bill, they have to raise prices and therefore the consumer, in the aggregate, pays for my vacation time. This is not too much unlike taxes, or a benefit derived from taxes. In a totally different sense, it's a federal stance that the population needs time off to function effectively.
Lucky for us, Wikipedia has this handy chart of minimum leave by country. Scanning through it yields a single point that is not like the other ones**: the USA is the only country with no federally mandated vacation time for workers. Even our voluntarily given average 1st year vacation grant (about 10 days) is less than just about every country.
Even Colombia gives its drug mules more time off.
Even ordinary Russians can escape the iron fist of Putin for more days a year.
Even super-productive Germany can get by fine with its citizens doubling that time off.
** - a handful of countries are left blank, and probably some countries are in so much turmoil that these laws are moot or unenforced. However, none of those are countries we should cherish comparisons with.
If socialism is a measure of the baseline care a country takes of every one of its citizens, time off work is one of those. And we fail at it.
Is vacation time really a "social benefit"? I think so, though employers foot the bill rather than it being paid from a federal tax. However, it's still lost productivity that is mandated. If employers have to foot the bill, they have to raise prices and therefore the consumer, in the aggregate, pays for my vacation time. This is not too much unlike taxes, or a benefit derived from taxes. In a totally different sense, it's a federal stance that the population needs time off to function effectively.
Lucky for us, Wikipedia has this handy chart of minimum leave by country. Scanning through it yields a single point that is not like the other ones**: the USA is the only country with no federally mandated vacation time for workers. Even our voluntarily given average 1st year vacation grant (about 10 days) is less than just about every country.
Even Colombia gives its drug mules more time off.
Even ordinary Russians can escape the iron fist of Putin for more days a year.
Even super-productive Germany can get by fine with its citizens doubling that time off.
** - a handful of countries are left blank, and probably some countries are in so much turmoil that these laws are moot or unenforced. However, none of those are countries we should cherish comparisons with.
If socialism is a measure of the baseline care a country takes of every one of its citizens, time off work is one of those. And we fail at it.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
What tech worker shortage? This one!
This article is circulating, suggesting that the tech industry's claims of a worker shortage are really just complaints that it "can't hire them as cheaply as they would like", instead bringing in cheaper foreign labor on work visas. In general it's arguing that the software industry is trying to suppress wage growth. While there are cases like the non-poaching agreement between some major companies, overall the industry is thriving and there's more and more money to be made.
I find this a silly argument for a number of reasons.
1. Microsoft (and other large companies) hire lots of foreigners into their full-time staff. These people all make comparable salaries, bonuses, benefits to American full-time employees. Additionally, the company must sponsor their work visa, which requires significant HR, legal and financial resources. Essentially, the company is forced to prove needing this person to do the job because there are insufficient local alternatives. So, Microsoft (and other large companies) are saying they would rather spend more money (extra cost all front-loaded too!) to staff the same job. The only incentive to do this is that Microsoft (and other large companies) are unable to find quality employees from the USA (or it's costs more money to find a few diamonds in all that rough).
2. The argument about real-wage growth being flat since 1999 is cherry-picked. 1999 was the peak of the tech bubble. The industry was nascent and there were very few qualified people for a suddenly exploding area. Companies' stock prices were skyrocketing and they were desperate to grow. I expect significant compensation was given in stock and that stock was doing very well. We should see how real-wage growth did from 1999 to 2002, BusinessWeek/Josh Eidelson. I'm just a single data point, but since starting at Microsoft in 2007, my real-wage growth has been very significant (without being too specific, over 5 percent per year, compounded). While I may (or may not) be promoting faster or performing better than others, I know for a fact that a median performer's comp growth easily outpaces inflation. For other major companies to be competitive and not lose workers, they need to be keeping similar pace as well.
3. Higher initial salaries are unlikely to drive much more interest. Tech already pays very well, especially considering the high-paying jobs are available directly out of college, canonically at age 22. Many of my peers were single-family detached house owners by age 23, and could also comfortably afford a fairly nice car and had money to spend on travel/dining/entertainment. Unless wage suddenly jumped to day trader levels or something, I don't know that the industry's appeal would elevate. A smaller increase may serve to re-route engineering-minded people from other areas (like mechanical, civil, chemical, electrical, ... ), but then we'd have a shortage there. Or, it's all enough money that people will follow their passions (which is better for the industries anyways).
Of course tech companies (like any companies) want to pay their workers the least they possibly can while still getting good results out of them. Their competition with each other has lead us to the state we're in. And the biggest constrained resource in growth is qualified people. The end.
PS: I participate in interviews regularly, and can personally attest to the lack of amazing candidates.
I find this a silly argument for a number of reasons.
1. Microsoft (and other large companies) hire lots of foreigners into their full-time staff. These people all make comparable salaries, bonuses, benefits to American full-time employees. Additionally, the company must sponsor their work visa, which requires significant HR, legal and financial resources. Essentially, the company is forced to prove needing this person to do the job because there are insufficient local alternatives. So, Microsoft (and other large companies) are saying they would rather spend more money (extra cost all front-loaded too!) to staff the same job. The only incentive to do this is that Microsoft (and other large companies) are unable to find quality employees from the USA (or it's costs more money to find a few diamonds in all that rough).
2. The argument about real-wage growth being flat since 1999 is cherry-picked. 1999 was the peak of the tech bubble. The industry was nascent and there were very few qualified people for a suddenly exploding area. Companies' stock prices were skyrocketing and they were desperate to grow. I expect significant compensation was given in stock and that stock was doing very well. We should see how real-wage growth did from 1999 to 2002, BusinessWeek/Josh Eidelson. I'm just a single data point, but since starting at Microsoft in 2007, my real-wage growth has been very significant (without being too specific, over 5 percent per year, compounded). While I may (or may not) be promoting faster or performing better than others, I know for a fact that a median performer's comp growth easily outpaces inflation. For other major companies to be competitive and not lose workers, they need to be keeping similar pace as well.
3. Higher initial salaries are unlikely to drive much more interest. Tech already pays very well, especially considering the high-paying jobs are available directly out of college, canonically at age 22. Many of my peers were single-family detached house owners by age 23, and could also comfortably afford a fairly nice car and had money to spend on travel/dining/entertainment. Unless wage suddenly jumped to day trader levels or something, I don't know that the industry's appeal would elevate. A smaller increase may serve to re-route engineering-minded people from other areas (like mechanical, civil, chemical, electrical, ... ), but then we'd have a shortage there. Or, it's all enough money that people will follow their passions (which is better for the industries anyways).
4. Major employers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc are perpetually looking to hire. In other words, they're chronically unable to fill positions for all the work they'd like to get done. So, it's not like they are just driving some excess of employees to lower-paid/contract jobs.
PS: I participate in interviews regularly, and can personally attest to the lack of amazing candidates.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Overeager beaver
I'm currently in Houston. As usual, I flew United. This is the norm because Houston is a United hub and there are many direct options a day.
The flight was actually somewhat icky. We took off 20 minutes late, which is minorly annoying. We hit a lot of turbulence along the way, which happens. I'd never actually had the flight staff not come through the cabin for final cleaning before, so that was a little different. So was them over-explaining that they were being asked to sit by the captain. That was also a touch awkward. But whatever, I arrived in one piece, half an hour late, no big deal.
A day later they sent email, asking me to fill out a survey about my experiences. I don't like surveys because people have a hard time being honest when they are put on the spot. They either don't want to say anything too negative, or they go into bitch-rant mode, or they say nothing meaningful.
Here's the survey:
1. On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you with your flight.
I dunno? I mean, I got there. I was a bit late. The staff made me slightly unnerved, but through no real fault of their own. I was sitting next to a 4-year old who was wriggling around the whole time and kept kicking me. They only weigh like ... 30 pounds? So whatever, I barely felt it. It's not a big deal. The overhead light wasn't quite lining up with my book, so that was slightly annoying. Putting all that into the Gergely heuristic engine returns, in this case, a 7. Don't ask me to elaborate, cuz fucked if I know why I picked 7.
2. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend United to others?
... and, carry the 1, multiply by waxing-moon offset and polish: lucky 7 again! Ugh. The indicator bar, which clearly has 10 stages, is currently showing that this is the 2nd. I have to answer 8 more questions??
3. What is the top thing we can do to improve your satisfaction rating?
Hey, that's a solid question. It's actionable. It forces me to prioritize. It doesn't matter if I've given them a 1 or a 10. I said "be on time". I later regretted that and wished I could go back and say "don't gouge me for flying around Thanksgiving".
4. What is the primary reason for your satisfaction rating?
Aww crap, they've asked me to elaborate. And the best honest answer I can give is:
5. Please share with us any other feedback you have.
I decided to just roll with the above and give them a brain-dump, the essence of which is that sending me a survey is just annoying, and how come they can't learn what they need to know from telemetry they already have?
Thankfully the progress indicator was buggy and at this point I was done.
However, I really do wonder how much useful information they get back? or are they just trying to make me feel like I have input? or are they just unable to figure out where/how I fly and then cross-analyze when I use United (to/through Houston) and if I'm opting for other airlines for the same routes at times?
Or does this mean we can't tell if someone is happy unless we ask them? And then we may or may not trust what they tell us?
The flight was actually somewhat icky. We took off 20 minutes late, which is minorly annoying. We hit a lot of turbulence along the way, which happens. I'd never actually had the flight staff not come through the cabin for final cleaning before, so that was a little different. So was them over-explaining that they were being asked to sit by the captain. That was also a touch awkward. But whatever, I arrived in one piece, half an hour late, no big deal.
A day later they sent email, asking me to fill out a survey about my experiences. I don't like surveys because people have a hard time being honest when they are put on the spot. They either don't want to say anything too negative, or they go into bitch-rant mode, or they say nothing meaningful.
Here's the survey:
1. On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you with your flight.
I dunno? I mean, I got there. I was a bit late. The staff made me slightly unnerved, but through no real fault of their own. I was sitting next to a 4-year old who was wriggling around the whole time and kept kicking me. They only weigh like ... 30 pounds? So whatever, I barely felt it. It's not a big deal. The overhead light wasn't quite lining up with my book, so that was slightly annoying. Putting all that into the Gergely heuristic engine returns, in this case, a 7. Don't ask me to elaborate, cuz fucked if I know why I picked 7.
2. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend United to others?
... and, carry the 1, multiply by waxing-moon offset and polish: lucky 7 again! Ugh. The indicator bar, which clearly has 10 stages, is currently showing that this is the 2nd. I have to answer 8 more questions??
3. What is the top thing we can do to improve your satisfaction rating?
Hey, that's a solid question. It's actionable. It forces me to prioritize. It doesn't matter if I've given them a 1 or a 10. I said "be on time". I later regretted that and wished I could go back and say "don't gouge me for flying around Thanksgiving".
4. What is the primary reason for your satisfaction rating?
Aww crap, they've asked me to elaborate. And the best honest answer I can give is:
5. Please share with us any other feedback you have.
I decided to just roll with the above and give them a brain-dump, the essence of which is that sending me a survey is just annoying, and how come they can't learn what they need to know from telemetry they already have?
Thankfully the progress indicator was buggy and at this point I was done.
However, I really do wonder how much useful information they get back? or are they just trying to make me feel like I have input? or are they just unable to figure out where/how I fly and then cross-analyze when I use United (to/through Houston) and if I'm opting for other airlines for the same routes at times?
Or does this mean we can't tell if someone is happy unless we ask them? And then we may or may not trust what they tell us?
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Solar energy almost won
I was watching Cosmos last night. In episode 12 it addresses atmospheric carbon dioxide. Several interesting and daunting facts are presented:
1. There's no question warming is due to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
2. The CO2 levels are unprecedented in all meaningful historical contexts.
3. We produce orders of magnitude more CO2 than all the volcanic eruptions on the Earth, combined.
4. There's an easy-to-describe positive feedback loop contributing to the warming:
a. Higher CO2 leads to higher heat.
b. Higher heat leads to polar ice melt.
c. Less polar ice means less highly reflective surface, leading to more retained solar energy.
d. More retained solar energy leads to even higher heat, resulting in more [b].
5. The arctic tundra/ice has as much frozen organic material locked up as the total carbon currently in the atmosphere. If that starts to melt and the material essentially rots and is released, we get more [4.a]. This scenario is likely "catastrophic and irreversible".
So how did we get here? The culprit is really the invention of the engine. Before the engine, our primary carbon emissions were firewood and cow farts. The engine lead to widespread automation of mechanical tasks. A machine could be built once, then supplied with an energy source to produce way more work than any human is capable of. Humans started doing meta-work: they built the machines, which could then be leveraged to do energy-consuming tasks and to build other machines. In this way, we can essentially scale to arbitrary energy consumption capability. The only limit is how fast we can collect energy sources.
The particulars of the engine design were such that motion is driven by expanding gas. The first design (steam engine) used gas pressure to drive fan blades attached to a wheel. The gas is steam, and is created by heating water. The heat comes from burning coal. The design, in some sense hasn't been updated since. The internal combustion engine is the same concept, just substituting a self-contained piston for the wheel blade, and generating gas pressure through the direct explosion of an air-and-carbon fuel mixture. Even our mighty nuclear power stations use this approach; they just use nuclear reactions instead of burning carbon to produce the heat (hence why they are, in at least this dimension, much cleaner). However, this leads to a natural question: why, if the heat doesn't have to be carbon-powered, did we end up using carbon (and still are using it) as the primary source?
The easiest reason is that carbon is plentiful, distributed around the world, energy-dense, and highly portable. No special engineering is needed to store it or distribute it. Refilling a train with coal or a car with gasoline is a snap. Each can carry enough fuel to cover meaningful distances. We simply didn't have (and still are in the early stages of developing) other energy sources that fit the above criteria. Electric cars, for example, are becoming more common, but they are still limited in their role and convenience. And, if a solution is adequate and incrementally improvable (energy efficiency, mining efficiency, ...) and there seem to be no fundamental concerns, why change?
It turns out, we could and should have seen all this coming.
A 1932 paper by REO Hulbert described the theory of climate change due to atmospheric carbon dioxide change. And a 1938 paper GS Callendar actually called out observed warming (though he actually argued that they were a good thing because crops could grow over a wider range of latitudes). You read a thorough history here. And, we knew as far back as 1896 that doubling our atmospheric carbon dioxide would melt the polar ice.
And think, if not for chance discovery of lots of North African oil, solar power may have taken off a hundred years ago.
1. There's no question warming is due to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
2. The CO2 levels are unprecedented in all meaningful historical contexts.
3. We produce orders of magnitude more CO2 than all the volcanic eruptions on the Earth, combined.
4. There's an easy-to-describe positive feedback loop contributing to the warming:
a. Higher CO2 leads to higher heat.
b. Higher heat leads to polar ice melt.
c. Less polar ice means less highly reflective surface, leading to more retained solar energy.
d. More retained solar energy leads to even higher heat, resulting in more [b].
5. The arctic tundra/ice has as much frozen organic material locked up as the total carbon currently in the atmosphere. If that starts to melt and the material essentially rots and is released, we get more [4.a]. This scenario is likely "catastrophic and irreversible".
So how did we get here? The culprit is really the invention of the engine. Before the engine, our primary carbon emissions were firewood and cow farts. The engine lead to widespread automation of mechanical tasks. A machine could be built once, then supplied with an energy source to produce way more work than any human is capable of. Humans started doing meta-work: they built the machines, which could then be leveraged to do energy-consuming tasks and to build other machines. In this way, we can essentially scale to arbitrary energy consumption capability. The only limit is how fast we can collect energy sources.
The particulars of the engine design were such that motion is driven by expanding gas. The first design (steam engine) used gas pressure to drive fan blades attached to a wheel. The gas is steam, and is created by heating water. The heat comes from burning coal. The design, in some sense hasn't been updated since. The internal combustion engine is the same concept, just substituting a self-contained piston for the wheel blade, and generating gas pressure through the direct explosion of an air-and-carbon fuel mixture. Even our mighty nuclear power stations use this approach; they just use nuclear reactions instead of burning carbon to produce the heat (hence why they are, in at least this dimension, much cleaner). However, this leads to a natural question: why, if the heat doesn't have to be carbon-powered, did we end up using carbon (and still are using it) as the primary source?
The easiest reason is that carbon is plentiful, distributed around the world, energy-dense, and highly portable. No special engineering is needed to store it or distribute it. Refilling a train with coal or a car with gasoline is a snap. Each can carry enough fuel to cover meaningful distances. We simply didn't have (and still are in the early stages of developing) other energy sources that fit the above criteria. Electric cars, for example, are becoming more common, but they are still limited in their role and convenience. And, if a solution is adequate and incrementally improvable (energy efficiency, mining efficiency, ...) and there seem to be no fundamental concerns, why change?
It turns out, we could and should have seen all this coming.
A 1932 paper by REO Hulbert described the theory of climate change due to atmospheric carbon dioxide change. And a 1938 paper GS Callendar actually called out observed warming (though he actually argued that they were a good thing because crops could grow over a wider range of latitudes). You read a thorough history here. And, we knew as far back as 1896 that doubling our atmospheric carbon dioxide would melt the polar ice.
And think, if not for chance discovery of lots of North African oil, solar power may have taken off a hundred years ago.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
When in doubt, make a shitty connection
Oh no, a popular whiskey was recalled in 3 countries due to a toxic antifreeze ingredient!!
Good thing other countries still let people chug Fireball to their liver's content.
The issue at heart here is the attention grab of comparing the Fireball to antifreeze. Why? Because they have an ingredient in common. I suppose I'd better stop eating kale because it shares the ingredient "water" with extra-strength bleach ... and no one without a death wish would ever ever ever drink bleach!
As a smart reader, you already know this is all a logical fallacy. A and B contain X. Given that B is toxic, that does not mean X is the toxic component of B. Furthermore, even if X is toxic, we'd need to know a lot more: how much X does it take over what timeframe to harm a person? How much X is in A? How much A does a person ingest in a canonical and an extreme scenario?
The latter is a staple anti-vax argument about things like thimerosal and formaldehyde. Sure, both these ingredients are acutely harmful in large enough quantities. In both cases, there are key points not included in the argument: thimerosal is a much less absorbable mercury variant and poses far smaller hazards. Also, the amount per injection is well below the safe level limits. Same for formaldehyde. It's used in the production of vaccines (I believe to kill the infectious agents) and the removed. Trace amounts are left behind. So yes, vaccines contain formaldehyde. Turns out the body produces formaldehyde as a metabolic byproduct. And the natural concentration leads to something like 1 million times more formaldehyde quantity in you than what you'd get from a vaccine.
If something is dangerous, point to the exact reason why it's dangerous. I'm not arguing that Fireball should have propylene glycol in it, or that it couldn't maybe do with less or none, but if it's truly bad, let's talk about that. Not antifreeze.
Note: even some news outlets (Huffington Post, Gawker) who have mysteriously risen to non-trivial credibility are pointing out the antifreeze "link".
Good thing other countries still let people chug Fireball to their liver's content.
The issue at heart here is the attention grab of comparing the Fireball to antifreeze. Why? Because they have an ingredient in common. I suppose I'd better stop eating kale because it shares the ingredient "water" with extra-strength bleach ... and no one without a death wish would ever ever ever drink bleach!
As a smart reader, you already know this is all a logical fallacy. A and B contain X. Given that B is toxic, that does not mean X is the toxic component of B. Furthermore, even if X is toxic, we'd need to know a lot more: how much X does it take over what timeframe to harm a person? How much X is in A? How much A does a person ingest in a canonical and an extreme scenario?
The latter is a staple anti-vax argument about things like thimerosal and formaldehyde. Sure, both these ingredients are acutely harmful in large enough quantities. In both cases, there are key points not included in the argument: thimerosal is a much less absorbable mercury variant and poses far smaller hazards. Also, the amount per injection is well below the safe level limits. Same for formaldehyde. It's used in the production of vaccines (I believe to kill the infectious agents) and the removed. Trace amounts are left behind. So yes, vaccines contain formaldehyde. Turns out the body produces formaldehyde as a metabolic byproduct. And the natural concentration leads to something like 1 million times more formaldehyde quantity in you than what you'd get from a vaccine.
If something is dangerous, point to the exact reason why it's dangerous. I'm not arguing that Fireball should have propylene glycol in it, or that it couldn't maybe do with less or none, but if it's truly bad, let's talk about that. Not antifreeze.
Note: even some news outlets (Huffington Post, Gawker) who have mysteriously risen to non-trivial credibility are pointing out the antifreeze "link".
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Car, take me there!
Google and others have been playing around (quite successfully) with self-driving cars. Wouldn't it be great if we all had access to one of those? And while sitting in traffic, we could go ahead and do email, play on Facebook (or Instagram, or whatever is popular then), watch movies, etc. Or partake in any of these other activities?
However, I don't think moving to a primarily autonomous vehicle world would be as incremental as people think.
I've come to a similar conclusion as the linked article that individual car ownership would become obsolete. Even a heavy commuter only uses their car 2-3 hours a day, why would they pay for the other 21 hours if they didn't need to? If you no longer own your car, you wouldn't spend a bunch of money configuring it to your liking either. We'd probably end up with a smaller selection of vehicles in the world, primarily differentiated by size. Granted this is all on the pretty far end of the spectrum of possibilities, we may instead just see Uber-esque companies pop up that maintain a fleet that we can all share. Come to think of it, most usage would be in commuter hours, which would leave a lot of cars sitting around ... I suppose we'd see higher rates at those times.
All of the above would grow organically along some path. We can speculate all we want, but most likely it would just happen as it makes sense. What is a lot harder to figure out for me is the licensing model and responsibility.
If I buy a self-driving car, who is liable if it's found guilty of an infraction? I see two major possible models:
1. The company who created the software (or possibly shared with the automaker who put the software on the car). While some estimates state that accidents would reduce by an order of magnitude or more and fatalities would drop from 30,000 to around 1,000 per year, no company in the world would sign up for potentially being liable for all, some, or even any of those fatalities. So would the company make the consumer sign some blanket no-fault agreement? Would you, as a consumer, accept all liability when, inevitably, a bug causes a crash? This is essentially a central responsibility model and probably doesn't scale well.
2. The company who created the software sells a license to the user. The user then installs it and takes the robot to get a license. The robot is associated with the car and the person from an insurance and liability standpoint. The responsibility is shared somehow (though it's not quite clear to me how this would happen well).
Just musing out loud here, but I think the license/responsibility model is the biggest barrier to autonomous cars. That, and the lack of fun-to-drive-ness. Can software robots drive stick?
However, I don't think moving to a primarily autonomous vehicle world would be as incremental as people think.
I've come to a similar conclusion as the linked article that individual car ownership would become obsolete. Even a heavy commuter only uses their car 2-3 hours a day, why would they pay for the other 21 hours if they didn't need to? If you no longer own your car, you wouldn't spend a bunch of money configuring it to your liking either. We'd probably end up with a smaller selection of vehicles in the world, primarily differentiated by size. Granted this is all on the pretty far end of the spectrum of possibilities, we may instead just see Uber-esque companies pop up that maintain a fleet that we can all share. Come to think of it, most usage would be in commuter hours, which would leave a lot of cars sitting around ... I suppose we'd see higher rates at those times.
All of the above would grow organically along some path. We can speculate all we want, but most likely it would just happen as it makes sense. What is a lot harder to figure out for me is the licensing model and responsibility.
If I buy a self-driving car, who is liable if it's found guilty of an infraction? I see two major possible models:
1. The company who created the software (or possibly shared with the automaker who put the software on the car). While some estimates state that accidents would reduce by an order of magnitude or more and fatalities would drop from 30,000 to around 1,000 per year, no company in the world would sign up for potentially being liable for all, some, or even any of those fatalities. So would the company make the consumer sign some blanket no-fault agreement? Would you, as a consumer, accept all liability when, inevitably, a bug causes a crash? This is essentially a central responsibility model and probably doesn't scale well.
2. The company who created the software sells a license to the user. The user then installs it and takes the robot to get a license. The robot is associated with the car and the person from an insurance and liability standpoint. The responsibility is shared somehow (though it's not quite clear to me how this would happen well).
Just musing out loud here, but I think the license/responsibility model is the biggest barrier to autonomous cars. That, and the lack of fun-to-drive-ness. Can software robots drive stick?
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Musical cars
So, you've been driving stick, eh?
Next level: do you do double-clutching and heel-toe-ing?
I find both to be useful, especially with the close-ratio gears for higher speed situations when I need extra torque. Heel-toe-ing covers the added scenario of brakes being involved, usually that means going through a turn.
Double-clutch
Scenario: Cruising 70mph in 6th and suddenly you want power. Downshifting to 5th isn't quite gonna cut it, so you probably want 4th. However, the ratio diff between 6th and 4th is too big for the synchros to handle cleanly.
Sequence: Clutch in, stick to neutral, clutch out, rev to match (or really slightly exceed) speed in 4th, clutch in, stick to 4th, clutch out.
Why it works: the clutch disconnects the engine from the tranny, whereas neutral disconnects the tranny from the wheels (but leaves the engine attached). Thus, you can use the gas in neutral to get the revs from the engine transferred to the tranny. The wheels are disconnected, re-engaging 4th with the revs now matched connects everything. Clearly you have to do it fast enough that your revs don't fall during the post-neutral steps.
Heel-toe
Scenario: you need to slow down but want max power right after, such as in a turn.
Sequence: operate brake with toes of right foot. Execute double-clutch as above, but using your right heel/side of foot (depending on pedal layout) to operate the gas pedal.
Why it works: it parallelizes slowing down and shifting to the lower gear.
This one is a mental cluster-fuck. Ironically the first time I ever tried it, I just nailed it. Then I started thinking about it and it all went to hell.
Like so:
Both of the above require matching revs, which you can do mathematically based on gear ratios, however, you won't ever do math while driving. I rely on a "feel" of how deep and long I need to hit the gas depending on how many gears I skip, but this is naturally intermittently successful. It is possible to map it to music though.
Example: My car can hit 55 in 2nd, 80 in 3rd, 105 in 4th, 130 in 5th, 160 in 6th.
In the above example of 6th -> 4th, the ratio is almost exactly 2:3, which is almost exactly the ratio of a root to 5th in a scale. So, make it sound like a power chord :) Extend.
Friday, October 10, 2014
Salary disparity
Yesterday's comments by Satya Nadella at Grace Hopper have gotten a lot of people in tech talking about the inequality of pay between men and women. There's also the commonly quoted gap in percentage of each gender in tech, but I think that's a largely (or entirely) separate issue.
So why do women make less money for the same work? Multiple possibilities exist, and likely all of these (and more) are factors:
1. They typically don't demand higher pay
a. they don't promote themselves as effectively
2. Hiring managers undervalue them
3. Hiring managers know they can exploit [1]
As with all things free(ish) market, there's the buyer's side and seller's side. These two must overlap for there to be a mutually beneficial outcome.
The seller (business)'s side:
The business's interest is in staffing a position with a qualified person for as little as possible. Considerations for as little as possible can range from literally the lowest dollar amount someone will take to long-term retention and fairness considerations. A business can:
B1. Treat women equally. All is well.
B2. Be fundamentally biased and value comparable women less than men
B3. Be aware of gender-based trends and try to lowball women because they just might get away with it
The buyer (potential employee)'s side:
The employee's interest (assuming all else equal) is to get the most money for the job they are doing.
This amount is the maximum the business would be willing to spend to staff the position.
E1. Employee knows their market value and will ask for it.
If an employee fails to get to this number it is because:
E2. The employee does not know their own value
E3. The employee knows their own value, but for whatever reason doesn't make a push to receive appropriate pay (this can be fear of losing the job offer, non-confrontational personality, ... )
We can now look at each possible combination. Suppose the position in question's salary is fairly market valued at $100k.
B1.E1. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray.
B1.E2. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray again.
B1.E3. Employee is offered 100k. The system works!
B2.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She asks for 100k. Company doesn't think she's worth it, deal is off.
B2.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She takes it.
B2.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
B3.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She counters at 100k. Company accepts. Hooray-ish.
B3.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She accepts.
B3.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
I've simplified a lot of the details, but I think this matrix is representative and instructive (there are various sub-divisions we can make, but I think the principles emerge. For example, whether or not every man would get 100k from B2 or B3 isn't really relevant so long as they get more on average). Of the 9 outcomes, 3 are ideal and driven by socially responsible companies. 1 other achieves the same pay, but is driven by the employee. 4 others result in lower pay. 1 results in no job.
I think there's not much more to say about the 3 ideal cases. B3.E1 is interesting though. While the female employee gets max pay, she's now also burdened with the stress of maintaining her pay growth (presumably B3 will not grow her salary at market rate without her negotiating for it). This at a minimum makes her work environment less pleasant and/or feel discriminatory, at worst it causes her to have diminished capacity to perform her best, causing a real drop in value to the company. The remaining B3 cases would turn out at least somewhat better if the employee knew to negotiate for fair market value. Nothing the employee can do will get her market value at B2.
So how can any of this change?
Ideally, companies would all do the socially responsible thing and fix their practices. However, there will still be a very real desire for them to pay employees as little as possible, and I don't think that will ever go away. With transparency of pay, the B2 group should become non-competitive. However, pay is unlikely to become transparent ... but prospective employees can address this by applying for more jobs or to companies with good reputations. The real headway needs to be made in the B3 group. If employees can gain an understanding of their market value, they can push the B3 group closer to the B1 group. While there's still the stress of maintaining market value over time, this is still a much better position to be in.
Some industries address this with unions. Unions have not been a part of the tech landscape, and I don't think they would stick for reasons I won't enumerate right now.
Athletes address this with agents. Would we be willing to have someone else negotiate our contracts for us for a fee? Agents would have more visibility into actual salaries because they would represent lots of people. Thus, they would know the actual market. On the flipside, we'd probably need to move to fixed-length contracts (like in sports) so that the agents have motivation to keep negotiating for us. Is the prospect of higher pay worth going to this model for? The risk of not getting re-employed after a contract is over? The possibility of a pay decrease if the market softens? I don't know, but it's an interesting idea.
So why do women make less money for the same work? Multiple possibilities exist, and likely all of these (and more) are factors:
1. They typically don't demand higher pay
a. they don't promote themselves as effectively
2. Hiring managers undervalue them
3. Hiring managers know they can exploit [1]
As with all things free(ish) market, there's the buyer's side and seller's side. These two must overlap for there to be a mutually beneficial outcome.
The seller (business)'s side:
The business's interest is in staffing a position with a qualified person for as little as possible. Considerations for as little as possible can range from literally the lowest dollar amount someone will take to long-term retention and fairness considerations. A business can:
B1. Treat women equally. All is well.
B2. Be fundamentally biased and value comparable women less than men
B3. Be aware of gender-based trends and try to lowball women because they just might get away with it
The buyer (potential employee)'s side:
The employee's interest (assuming all else equal) is to get the most money for the job they are doing.
This amount is the maximum the business would be willing to spend to staff the position.
E1. Employee knows their market value and will ask for it.
If an employee fails to get to this number it is because:
E2. The employee does not know their own value
E3. The employee knows their own value, but for whatever reason doesn't make a push to receive appropriate pay (this can be fear of losing the job offer, non-confrontational personality, ... )
We can now look at each possible combination. Suppose the position in question's salary is fairly market valued at $100k.
B1.E1. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray.
B1.E2. Employee is offered 100k. Hooray again.
B1.E3. Employee is offered 100k. The system works!
B2.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She asks for 100k. Company doesn't think she's worth it, deal is off.
B2.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She takes it.
B2.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
B3.E1. Female employee is offered 75k. She counters at 100k. Company accepts. Hooray-ish.
B3.E2. Female employee is offered 75k. She accepts.
B3.E3. Female employee is offered 75k. She dislikes it, but takes it.
I've simplified a lot of the details, but I think this matrix is representative and instructive (there are various sub-divisions we can make, but I think the principles emerge. For example, whether or not every man would get 100k from B2 or B3 isn't really relevant so long as they get more on average). Of the 9 outcomes, 3 are ideal and driven by socially responsible companies. 1 other achieves the same pay, but is driven by the employee. 4 others result in lower pay. 1 results in no job.
I think there's not much more to say about the 3 ideal cases. B3.E1 is interesting though. While the female employee gets max pay, she's now also burdened with the stress of maintaining her pay growth (presumably B3 will not grow her salary at market rate without her negotiating for it). This at a minimum makes her work environment less pleasant and/or feel discriminatory, at worst it causes her to have diminished capacity to perform her best, causing a real drop in value to the company. The remaining B3 cases would turn out at least somewhat better if the employee knew to negotiate for fair market value. Nothing the employee can do will get her market value at B2.
So how can any of this change?
Ideally, companies would all do the socially responsible thing and fix their practices. However, there will still be a very real desire for them to pay employees as little as possible, and I don't think that will ever go away. With transparency of pay, the B2 group should become non-competitive. However, pay is unlikely to become transparent ... but prospective employees can address this by applying for more jobs or to companies with good reputations. The real headway needs to be made in the B3 group. If employees can gain an understanding of their market value, they can push the B3 group closer to the B1 group. While there's still the stress of maintaining market value over time, this is still a much better position to be in.
Some industries address this with unions. Unions have not been a part of the tech landscape, and I don't think they would stick for reasons I won't enumerate right now.
Athletes address this with agents. Would we be willing to have someone else negotiate our contracts for us for a fee? Agents would have more visibility into actual salaries because they would represent lots of people. Thus, they would know the actual market. On the flipside, we'd probably need to move to fixed-length contracts (like in sports) so that the agents have motivation to keep negotiating for us. Is the prospect of higher pay worth going to this model for? The risk of not getting re-employed after a contract is over? The possibility of a pay decrease if the market softens? I don't know, but it's an interesting idea.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Insurance and Odds
"But driving slower and within the law reduces your odds of getting into an accident", they say. While this may be true, there's an inconsistency in the model. Let's take me as an example:
1. I've been driving for just about 18 years now.
2. I've been in 1 accident, which was entirely attributed to the guy who rear-ended me.
2a. In other words, I've caused zero accidents, ever
3. I've been given 3 speeding tickets
3a. The first was dismissed by my taking a defensive driving course
3b. The second one stuck on my record for 3 years, costing me about $1000 in added insurance
3c. The third was dismissed under Washington state's deferral program.
The argument goes that since I have been confirmed speeding, my odds of getting in a wreck are higher. I would argue that since I've had almost 18 years of fault-free driving, my odds of getting in a wreck are no higher than if I'd never been [caught] speeding.
The core issue is that the argument only holds if I phrase it as:
"If I drive within the law, my odds of getting into an accident are lower than if I drive faster". It can only be compared by keeping the driver the same person. In a giant population model, certain factors are correlated because, without keeping the driver constant, they correlate with more accidents. However, after a large enough sample size is collected on a particular driver, the best predictor of future accidents is their past record of being in accidents.
The now-false statistical argument goes that "every time out has an independent odds of getting into an accident, and riskier driving habits increase those odds". However, the past track record establishes a likely upper bound on said risks each time out, which would then be applicable to future trips as well. These independent odds are now the same as anyone else's who has been driving without faulted incident for a similar period of time, regardless of their driving style. And yet, if they are a woman, or older, or drive a Cadillac, their rates are lower than mine. And that's just bad math.
1. I've been driving for just about 18 years now.
2. I've been in 1 accident, which was entirely attributed to the guy who rear-ended me.
2a. In other words, I've caused zero accidents, ever
3. I've been given 3 speeding tickets
3a. The first was dismissed by my taking a defensive driving course
3b. The second one stuck on my record for 3 years, costing me about $1000 in added insurance
3c. The third was dismissed under Washington state's deferral program.
The argument goes that since I have been confirmed speeding, my odds of getting in a wreck are higher. I would argue that since I've had almost 18 years of fault-free driving, my odds of getting in a wreck are no higher than if I'd never been [caught] speeding.
The core issue is that the argument only holds if I phrase it as:
"If I drive within the law, my odds of getting into an accident are lower than if I drive faster". It can only be compared by keeping the driver the same person. In a giant population model, certain factors are correlated because, without keeping the driver constant, they correlate with more accidents. However, after a large enough sample size is collected on a particular driver, the best predictor of future accidents is their past record of being in accidents.
The now-false statistical argument goes that "every time out has an independent odds of getting into an accident, and riskier driving habits increase those odds". However, the past track record establishes a likely upper bound on said risks each time out, which would then be applicable to future trips as well. These independent odds are now the same as anyone else's who has been driving without faulted incident for a similar period of time, regardless of their driving style. And yet, if they are a woman, or older, or drive a Cadillac, their rates are lower than mine. And that's just bad math.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Demoing the house
It turns out that demolition is not as awesome as it might seem. There aren't always sledgehammers.
We recently wanted to remove our old trim and floors so we could put in new wood floors and update our trim. Turns out it's a bitch. Removing trim is a pain in the ass and it's pretty easy to mess up the existing paint, which then leads to needing to do fixup work. Removing the floors is more straightforwards: prybar, circular saw, etc. All in all, there's a lot of trash and it takes three times as long as expected.
We recently wanted to remove our old trim and floors so we could put in new wood floors and update our trim. Turns out it's a bitch. Removing trim is a pain in the ass and it's pretty easy to mess up the existing paint, which then leads to needing to do fixup work. Removing the floors is more straightforwards: prybar, circular saw, etc. All in all, there's a lot of trash and it takes three times as long as expected.
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Kota postulate #2
Many one-hit-wonder bands have a barely-known song that is as good or better than the one they are famous for.
Examples:
A-Ha - Take On Me, The Sun Always Shines on TV
Lipps, Inc - Funkytown, Rock It
... and probably lots of others, but I'm bad at coming up with "examples of topic X".
Examples:
A-Ha - Take On Me, The Sun Always Shines on TV
Lipps, Inc - Funkytown, Rock It
... and probably lots of others, but I'm bad at coming up with "examples of topic X".
Kota postulate #1
(at the bars, clubs, ... )
The number of "whooOOOOoooooOOOOOOOOoooooo" are inversely proportional to the amount of fun people are really having. People really having fun sounds different. The end.
The number of "whooOOOOoooooOOOOOOOOoooooo" are inversely proportional to the amount of fun people are really having. People really having fun sounds different. The end.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Crepes, Hungarian style
or as we call them, palacsinta.
3/4 cup regular flour
1/4 cup gluten
1 egg
~1 cup milk
~ 1 cup soda water
Mix flour, gluten and egg. This mix will still be quite dry.
Add milk slowly, while stirring. The goal is to get to a smooth, but fairly thick consistency. The batter should flow, but slowly, like a thick paint.
Let sit until you are ready to go.
Stir up the batter in case it's settled. We always want to keep it nice and smooth. Now add soda water, while mixing, until the batter is quite runny. It should be runnier than oil.
Place a thin skillet/griddle on medium-high heat. The ideal temperature should be right around the smoke point of olive oil. When you add a half teaspoon of oil you should see some smoking. Ladle in some batter, maybe 100mL? Tilt the griddle this way and that to let the batter spread. Once the batter cooks and comes unstuck from the griddle (~20 seconds?) give it a flip. Let finish for about 10 more seconds. The first side will be goldened, the latter should have small charred spots.
Add sugar, jam, cinnamon, whipped cream, or whatever else you like asap while it's still hot. Roll up and stick a fork in it.
Perfection!
3/4 cup regular flour
1/4 cup gluten
1 egg
~1 cup milk
~ 1 cup soda water
Mix flour, gluten and egg. This mix will still be quite dry.
Add milk slowly, while stirring. The goal is to get to a smooth, but fairly thick consistency. The batter should flow, but slowly, like a thick paint.
Let sit until you are ready to go.
Stir up the batter in case it's settled. We always want to keep it nice and smooth. Now add soda water, while mixing, until the batter is quite runny. It should be runnier than oil.
Place a thin skillet/griddle on medium-high heat. The ideal temperature should be right around the smoke point of olive oil. When you add a half teaspoon of oil you should see some smoking. Ladle in some batter, maybe 100mL? Tilt the griddle this way and that to let the batter spread. Once the batter cooks and comes unstuck from the griddle (~20 seconds?) give it a flip. Let finish for about 10 more seconds. The first side will be goldened, the latter should have small charred spots.
Add sugar, jam, cinnamon, whipped cream, or whatever else you like asap while it's still hot. Roll up and stick a fork in it.
Perfection!
Friday, May 9, 2014
Cycling out the bottom
Microsoft's performance model has made the news a number of times. Recently, there was the perception that those getting the lowest reviews are insta-fired. I'm certain this isn't completely true, but there's some validity to the statement. This, of course, pisses off the "all-star degenerate case" supporters. In reality such teams don't really exist, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that everyone on the team is really good, and the bottom guy out of, say, 30, gets axed and replaced.
Naturally this sucks for the last-place really good guy. He needs to go find a new job. But remember, he's really good, right? So he should have no problem, really. Unless he's not, in which case perhaps the replacing was warranted.
Let's consider this from the company's standpoint.
There's really no way to grade/verify 'absolute ability'. In fact, this is a ridiculous concept. You can have a collection of very good engineers, generally speaking, but their relative strength will depend on the particular projects/work the company does. They have no other alternative than to stack them by "what impact do they provide me". Even if you could assign an absolute score, you can't just say "everyone over 85 stays" because you may not be able to get enough 85s, or you can find them in droves.
Consider a football team. There are 53 guys on the roster, the last 10 or so of whom are consistently in flux. These guys are all elite players on an absolute scale, but the bottom 10 don't make nearly the same impact as the top set, or are limited in up-side. It's clear that roughly that level of quality is easy to find. Since these bottom 10 guys aren't making an impact, your odds are better by taking a shot at someone else. Based on your demonstrated hiring ability, the replacements should be at least about as good and there's a chance they'll be better. And no fan has an issue with this because football's all about results.
Now back to Microsoft. They have a demonstrated ability to screen hires to a level where 29 engineers are better than the worst 1 (this is simple math, but putting it this way proves that 97% of their hires are better than the guy about to get fired). So they let one guy go, and have a 97% chance of replacing them with someone better. And oh yeah, Microsoft (and every other company) should be (and is) all about results. Why should this be different than football?
The real trick is to find the proportion to let go each year, based on the rate of hiring and growth.
Naturally this sucks for the last-place really good guy. He needs to go find a new job. But remember, he's really good, right? So he should have no problem, really. Unless he's not, in which case perhaps the replacing was warranted.
Let's consider this from the company's standpoint.
There's really no way to grade/verify 'absolute ability'. In fact, this is a ridiculous concept. You can have a collection of very good engineers, generally speaking, but their relative strength will depend on the particular projects/work the company does. They have no other alternative than to stack them by "what impact do they provide me". Even if you could assign an absolute score, you can't just say "everyone over 85 stays" because you may not be able to get enough 85s, or you can find them in droves.
Consider a football team. There are 53 guys on the roster, the last 10 or so of whom are consistently in flux. These guys are all elite players on an absolute scale, but the bottom 10 don't make nearly the same impact as the top set, or are limited in up-side. It's clear that roughly that level of quality is easy to find. Since these bottom 10 guys aren't making an impact, your odds are better by taking a shot at someone else. Based on your demonstrated hiring ability, the replacements should be at least about as good and there's a chance they'll be better. And no fan has an issue with this because football's all about results.
Now back to Microsoft. They have a demonstrated ability to screen hires to a level where 29 engineers are better than the worst 1 (this is simple math, but putting it this way proves that 97% of their hires are better than the guy about to get fired). So they let one guy go, and have a 97% chance of replacing them with someone better. And oh yeah, Microsoft (and every other company) should be (and is) all about results. Why should this be different than football?
The real trick is to find the proportion to let go each year, based on the rate of hiring and growth.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
The All-Star engineer squad
Hey you, get a team of 20 people to work on the next great piece of software. You want the 20 best people you can find, right?
I don't think so.
Given a project of sufficient size, there will always be areas that "just need to get done" and have relatively straight-forward solutions. It's best to have people who don't wish to be the top dog on these: they will do solid work, not cause turmoil with egotistical design discussions, and simply just get things working.
The simple truth is: there isn't enough interesting/novel stuff to go around to warrant an All-Star at every spot.
I don't think so.
Given a project of sufficient size, there will always be areas that "just need to get done" and have relatively straight-forward solutions. It's best to have people who don't wish to be the top dog on these: they will do solid work, not cause turmoil with egotistical design discussions, and simply just get things working.
The simple truth is: there isn't enough interesting/novel stuff to go around to warrant an All-Star at every spot.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Voting combine
The NFL draft is one of my favorite events of the year. For those unfamiliar, it's where NFL teams pick from former college players. Before the draft is the NFL Combine: a battery of tests performed on the top 80-90% of players most likely to be selected in the draft. Independent testing provides physical attributes (height, weight, wingspan, etc), physical skill measurements (40 yard dash, vertical jump, etc) and a medical evaluation. Most of the press goes to the first two groups of data, but the teams care most about the latter (because they watch hours of tape on players, so the actual numbers from these tests aren't all that meaningful). Sometimes an otherwise highly ranked prospect has an unknown chronic medical issue, or gets busted by a drug test, or is just in the process of healing from a known surgery/injury and that progress is evaluated. Teams can then factor in this data when deciding if a player is worth an early pick.
Occasionally in presidential campaigns, a candidate's health comes up as an issue (is Ron Paul too old? is McCain too old? is Chris Christie too fat?). Perhaps we need a congressional combine (or call it something else ... ). Candidates would be tested by an independent panel on awareness of facts around current talking points, given a test to establish roughly where they fall on the political spectrum and given physicals and assigned a health risk score on some scale (from "totally fine" to "imminent risk of blown pupil"). This would go into their portfolio of data along with their observed behavior and voters can decide who to back based on slightly more complete and less manipulated information.
Occasionally in presidential campaigns, a candidate's health comes up as an issue (is Ron Paul too old? is McCain too old? is Chris Christie too fat?). Perhaps we need a congressional combine (or call it something else ... ). Candidates would be tested by an independent panel on awareness of facts around current talking points, given a test to establish roughly where they fall on the political spectrum and given physicals and assigned a health risk score on some scale (from "totally fine" to "imminent risk of blown pupil"). This would go into their portfolio of data along with their observed behavior and voters can decide who to back based on slightly more complete and less manipulated information.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
The other 99%
Usually the 99% (or 1%, if you prefer the other side) invokes an economic divide. Perhaps the rise of easy money has amplified the difference between those who can generate it and those who can't.
I think a similar trend has happened in entertainment due to the internet. I really have no idea if "kids these days" are different from those "back in my day", but it certainly seems like they spend more of their time being digitally entertained.
"Back in the day", a person couldn't access as much entertainment. In fact, entertainment didn't scale. Unless you were big enough to make a major TV channel's program, you were stuck peddling your skills to people more in person, or local radio, etc. As such, the number of possible consumers you had was limited. Conversely, people had limited options for entertainment. Since necessity is the mother of invention, more people needed to generate entertainment possibilities.
Since moving to a connected digital model, content scales trivially (copies over the internet are free, after all) and outlets like youtube allow anyone with an idea to become accessible to everyone. The few of these people who are any good get consumed by the entire nation, or world. As such, the necessity from before is remove and "kids these days" don't need to generate unique content.
In effect we've gone from a multi-tier weakly connected model to a something closer small-large bipartite graph. For those not in the know, that means lots of people all consuming a much smaller number's creations.
I think a similar trend has happened in entertainment due to the internet. I really have no idea if "kids these days" are different from those "back in my day", but it certainly seems like they spend more of their time being digitally entertained.
"Back in the day", a person couldn't access as much entertainment. In fact, entertainment didn't scale. Unless you were big enough to make a major TV channel's program, you were stuck peddling your skills to people more in person, or local radio, etc. As such, the number of possible consumers you had was limited. Conversely, people had limited options for entertainment. Since necessity is the mother of invention, more people needed to generate entertainment possibilities.
Since moving to a connected digital model, content scales trivially (copies over the internet are free, after all) and outlets like youtube allow anyone with an idea to become accessible to everyone. The few of these people who are any good get consumed by the entire nation, or world. As such, the necessity from before is remove and "kids these days" don't need to generate unique content.
In effect we've gone from a multi-tier weakly connected model to a something closer small-large bipartite graph. For those not in the know, that means lots of people all consuming a much smaller number's creations.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Invest in education!
I had this idea from poker:
A rich guy who may or may not be good at poker may 'stake' a good player who is lacking his own money to play with. Usually the arrangement is that the stakee plays with the money and the staker gets 50% of profits (and incurs all the risk). The stakee is incentivized because they can also make money and they are relieved of the mental overhead of worrying about losing all their own money. Win-win!
Could we do the same for education?
Suppose I am wealthy and wanted to invest in a way that directly benefits our future. I could give my money as stake "grants" to students who would otherwise be taking out student loans and, regardless of their prospects after, be forced to pay all those back (and even bankruptcy won't wipe student loans!). Putting the risk onto the student could be a barrier to entry for many (I really don't know these details off-hand, but it feels true) and have a set amount they need to pay back could negate whatever income they start to get. With a grant+comission system, I could take on the risk instead. The student would be free from the pressures of immediate payments and could better find the job/direction/entrepreneurship they really want to do. I just wait until they start making money, and depending on the terms of the grant get some cut. Naturally my return should be higher than for a standard loan, but it could really be a win-win. We both do better if they perform. Because the grant would be incentivized for both the staker and stakee, the stakers could make more money available for high-productivity fields. Conventional loans would still be in place for other fields.
A rich guy who may or may not be good at poker may 'stake' a good player who is lacking his own money to play with. Usually the arrangement is that the stakee plays with the money and the staker gets 50% of profits (and incurs all the risk). The stakee is incentivized because they can also make money and they are relieved of the mental overhead of worrying about losing all their own money. Win-win!
Could we do the same for education?
Suppose I am wealthy and wanted to invest in a way that directly benefits our future. I could give my money as stake "grants" to students who would otherwise be taking out student loans and, regardless of their prospects after, be forced to pay all those back (and even bankruptcy won't wipe student loans!). Putting the risk onto the student could be a barrier to entry for many (I really don't know these details off-hand, but it feels true) and have a set amount they need to pay back could negate whatever income they start to get. With a grant+comission system, I could take on the risk instead. The student would be free from the pressures of immediate payments and could better find the job/direction/entrepreneurship they really want to do. I just wait until they start making money, and depending on the terms of the grant get some cut. Naturally my return should be higher than for a standard loan, but it could really be a win-win. We both do better if they perform. Because the grant would be incentivized for both the staker and stakee, the stakers could make more money available for high-productivity fields. Conventional loans would still be in place for other fields.
Civil suits in Europe vs USA
I learned a fun fact recently: in Europe, if the plaintiff in a civil suit loses their case, they are required to pay the defendant's legal fees. In America, there is no such obligation. This leads to an ease of filing frivolous lawsuits in America.
I heard about one such case where someone sued, completely illegitimately, for damages of $1M. They knew they would probably lose in court, but they also projected that the defendant would have to spend over $1M to get that verdict. As such, it's cheaper for the defense to just settle with a no-fault clause or similar. Essentially, lawsuits are an opportunistic business. The case went to trial, but after years and over $1M in fees, it was settled because there was just no end in sight.
In Europe, this scenario would have lead to the complete ruin of the plaintiff. The European model discourages (or even prevents?) frivolous suits because there's an additional consequence of losing. Isn't this a great system?
Turns out it has the same exact problem (or at least I think it does), in reverse: it would significantly discourage 50/50 lawsuits because the plaintiff fears they could be on the hook. It also discourages a small entity from suing a big one because the defense fees for the big guy could completely cripple the smaller. I have no idea if there's more nuance here, but both systems run into opposite ends of the same issue spectrum.
Is there a better way? Could the judge just rule "ok come on, that was a frivolous case" vs "yeah, you had reason to believe you might really win"? Is that too arbitrary? We don't want to put barriers (especially financial ones) in the way of small entities seeking justice, but we also have to rein in frivolity. Where's the line?
I heard about one such case where someone sued, completely illegitimately, for damages of $1M. They knew they would probably lose in court, but they also projected that the defendant would have to spend over $1M to get that verdict. As such, it's cheaper for the defense to just settle with a no-fault clause or similar. Essentially, lawsuits are an opportunistic business. The case went to trial, but after years and over $1M in fees, it was settled because there was just no end in sight.
In Europe, this scenario would have lead to the complete ruin of the plaintiff. The European model discourages (or even prevents?) frivolous suits because there's an additional consequence of losing. Isn't this a great system?
Turns out it has the same exact problem (or at least I think it does), in reverse: it would significantly discourage 50/50 lawsuits because the plaintiff fears they could be on the hook. It also discourages a small entity from suing a big one because the defense fees for the big guy could completely cripple the smaller. I have no idea if there's more nuance here, but both systems run into opposite ends of the same issue spectrum.
Is there a better way? Could the judge just rule "ok come on, that was a frivolous case" vs "yeah, you had reason to believe you might really win"? Is that too arbitrary? We don't want to put barriers (especially financial ones) in the way of small entities seeking justice, but we also have to rein in frivolity. Where's the line?
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