amh

10 ms·

1.
by amh 16y ago
Having spent some time in the academia sausage factory, I think this guy is fairly close to the mark. A lot of time and effort is consumed simply writing grants and genuflecting for government money. A perpetual stream of cheap labor (pos
2.
by amh 16y ago
"Parasite" may be an unkind word for them, but there are certainly people who produce nothing but expect to be kept in a high standard of living at the expense of those who are productive. This arrangement is not sustainable, despite peopl
3.
by amh 16y ago
The problem with asking a financial advisor is finding a good one. By the time you've learned enough to know the good from the bad, you may as well DIY and save the fees. Although, there's definitely value in getting help from specialists
4.
by amh 16y ago
I'm not that other guy, but my advice: There's no substitute for doing your own reading and research. Some good authors to start with are John Bogle, Larry Swedroe, Rick Ferri, Peter Bernstein, Nassim Taleb, William Bernstein, Burton Malki
5.
by amh 16y ago
I think the uncertainties inherent in writing software that depends on many other complex libraries/frameworks will tend to discourage strong liability for bugs. The average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies
6.
by amh 16y ago
6. You don't have a Twitter Account Seriously? This would never in a million years have crossed my mind as a reason to avoid using something.
7.
by amh 16y ago
Although it has little recent activity and could be bitrotted to uselessness, there is a standalone acme package for various other systems: http://code.google.com/p/acme-sac/
8.
by amh 16y ago
Bruce Schneier wrote an excellent article on PKI risks ( http://www.schneier.com/paper-pki-ft.txt ). Should be interesting to see how many of those are addressed as this scheme comes to fruition. It has the potential to become a highly us
9.
by amh 16y ago
Problem is, precious metals have an expected return of 0%. One gold bar sitting on a shelf is still one gold bar ten years later. Commodities are not necessarily a bad idea to own in moderation, but stocks and bonds are what allow your po
10.
by amh 16y ago
I know a guy who's really, really into football. Watches hours of games every other night or so, has a "fantasy" team that he's constantly fretting over and checking online stats for, etc. As far as I can tell, the only thing that distingu
11.
by amh 16y ago
Not all index methodologies are created equal, the way that Russell handles periodic reconstitution is particularly susceptible to front running. Other indexing methods are not as bad.
12.
by amh 16y ago
I think "godisnowhere" is more an example of a straight-up badly chosen name (identifiers should not be complete sentences) rather than a case where caps are better than lowercase. I'm not against camelcase and its variants, but there are a
13.
by amh 16y ago
It's far from clear that the things you list couldn't have been developed without government intervention. Unfortunately, without an alternate fork of reality to try the experiment, we'll never know. But the idea that because something was
14.
by amh 16y ago
The benefit of the IRL approach is that it gives you an immediate opportunity to show positive qualities which don't always carry over very well into a dating website profile -- and you can leverage any physical attraction right off the bat
15.
by amh 16y ago
Treasurys are "safe" in the sense that the US will never default, since the government can simply print dollars as needed to cover the debt. So yes, you're guaranteed to get your 1% interest in nominal dollars... the question is, how much
16.
by amh 16y ago
You might find JWZ's experiences interesting: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/ Then again, it might scare you off. Maybe it's just that CA is particularly bad, I dunno.
17.
by amh 16y ago
Don't these societal conditions apply to "good" and "bad" software developers alike? All other things being equal, if you're successful and somebody else fails (selling to the same market), then the most obvious explanation is that you met
18.
by amh 16y ago
It bugs me when stuff like that is described as "xenophobia". It's possible to dislike something (or have a preference for the alternative) without fearing it. Even when the basis for the dislike is irrational -- if you prefer chocolate i
19.
by amh 16y ago
So, just curious; where's the dividing line between "poor government schlub just doing his job" and "Nazi prison guard who knew he was doing evil", assuming you'd agree the Nazi guard is culpable on some level? Fact is, government employees
20.
by amh 16y ago
Designs are easily copied, physical widgets are not (until we get nano-replicators anyway). Innovations in design and manufacturing tend to dovetail and drive each other. Doing both under one roof reaps more of a benefit from that dynamic.
21.
by amh 16y ago
This observation is hardly new, but computer/tech stuff tends to attract the kind of people who will spend hours delving into the minutiae of an abstract system but don't care to spend much time understanding other people. It's also a comm
22.
by amh 16y ago
I'll agree on one thing, there's a very strong need for kids and teens to get a better understanding of personal finance. Although it's probably a lot more effective coming from parents than from the state. But I think you are giving the c
23.
by amh 16y ago
I'm sure it had nothing to do with racking up an average of $10-20k in credit card debt and taking out highly leveraged mortgages with the assumption that ever-increasing real estate values would make up the difference. Saving early is more
24.
by amh 16y ago
I'm amused how the snarky, content-free comment critical of Bush gets upvoted, while this snarky yet entirely correct response is downvoted. I think some people here don't grasp the seriousness of the US government's financial situation, an
25.
by amh 16y ago
People who save nothing until 30 likely have poor money management habits, and are in for a rough ride no matter what the expected return of the stock market is.
26.
by amh 16y ago
To arrive at the scary 40% required savings rate, the article assumes an accumulation period (working lifetime) of 30 years. How many people do you know who started working at 30 and retired at 60?
27.
by amh 16y ago
I think a 1% estate tax is too much. The point of the comparison is that if we're basing how much someone deserves their windfall by the tax rates, then the message being sent is that eating Fritos and playing the lottery is a more acceptab
28.
by amh 16y ago
That argument happens to be full of shit. Even if you win $36 million in the lottery (surely the stereotypical "windfall"), the feds won't tax you 55%. The highest marginal tax rate is 35%. Estate taxes are morally repugnant. If the idea
29.
by amh 16y ago
I don't know about other countries, but most states in the US do not recognize common law marriage.
30.
by amh 16y ago
Yeah, the "do everything inside emacs" lifestyle slowly became obsolete as web browsers in particular got much more advanced. I followed much the same path as you did except I still haven't found an editor I truly prefer, so now I only spe

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