Recently referred a friend for an opening at the company where I work. He didn't even get an interview because someone from HR has decided that all developers should have a four year degree (he only has an associates degree despite 15+ years experience). Maybe this would be fine for entry level positions, but it is straight up age discrimination for senior level ones (since there are still talented people in the workforce who went to school when CS programs were much less common).
One theory I have is that HR depts are pushing back against the upward trend of developer salaries; if they create an onerous process that tries to make candidates feel inadequate, it might make it more likely that they can land a low ball offer with whoever is desperate enough to stick it out. Also, if the HR department itself is incompetent and not capable of attracting talent, they can always point to their tests etc to "prove" that there are just no qualified candidates in the workforce.
Also, what is with all the coding tests etc? That stuff is obviously useless. Why don't hiring managers just ask candidates to read some code that is similar to what they will be working on, and observe how they approach stepping through it and how quick they can understand it? That is far more similar to what real work looks like most of the time.
Many people correctly surmise that the benefits to individuals are temporary and will sunset, after which their taxes will be higher than when they started.
Also, provisions such as repealing the individual health insurance mandate lead to an increase in other expenses, though admittedly those are not federal taxes. I work for a health insurance company, and earlier this year the company filed with the state regulators to say there might be close to a 50% hike in premiums, depending on whether or not the individual mandate was repealed. Whatever your feelings are about that politically, the increase in premiums will be real and directly related to that bill, and the money is fungible so people can't be blamed if they consider it an increase.
One more thing, a deficit funded tax cut today means a tax increase tomorrow to pay for principal+interest. People could be thinking of that when they say their taxes will go up.
It's mathematically impossible to pay back a "deficit" in general I think, once the time period in which it occurred is over. But more to the point, the deficit and the debt are important despite the fact that the debt is not expected or desired to be paid off. In order to maintain our way of life, the growth of the debt needs to approximate the growth of the economy in the long run, and be reduced if it overshoots. This is a concept I rather think some conservatives have given lip service to in the past. Are you one of the "fiscally responsible conservatives" I used to read about? The idea that there is a middle ground between hyperinflation and paying the debt off isn't terribly difficult, I would've thought.
I am not a conservative at all, but I can do basic math, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the federal government's debts will never be paid back.
If the US federal government is well run, there is no reason to pay the debt off, as a liquid market for treasuries is beneficial, and the debt can grow forever with the economy...and if the government is poorly run, it would presumably default at some point.
So while I more or less agree it is at least 99.9% certain the debt will not be paid off, I feel like you are making some implicit point with your comment about "basic math" and "100% certainty" that I would not agree with. Why belabour the obvious?
If there was some reason the debt needed to be paid off, I don't see why in principle the US couldn't stop running deficits, as we have oscillated between trillion dollar deficits and much smaller ones.
Bitcoin absolutely could go full bust. It is not a physical commodity, there is no utility outside of its perceived value. It is not a company, so it doesn't even have book value as its floor. And the technology is open source and well known, so there is nothing special or scarce about Bitcoin technology at this point. Even the companies that have capital investments in Bitcoin hardware could just repurpose that for a forked coin or possibly some other purpose altogether
>Bitcoin absolutely could go full bust. It is not a physical commodity, there is no utility outside of its perceived value. It is not a company, so it doesn't even have book value as its floor. And the technology is open source and well known, so there is nothing special or scarce about Bitcoin technology at this point. Even the companies that have capital investments in Bitcoin hardware could just repurpose that for a forked coin or possibly some other purpose altogether
Disclaimer: I own zero cryptocurrencies, but have a decent knowledge of the space
Here's why I think Bitcoin will never go bust entirely, regardless of the day to day price: it's the area under the curve of POW energy expenditure. At this point, so much energy has been expended mining bitcoin that that in itself creates value. Even if the price crashes 100x it will always be worth something. And whatever that "something" is, no one can say yet. But I would wager that it's much higher than whatever the initial players bought in for (in terms of cash or energy spent mining). Sure plenty of other altcoins can come along in the future, but catching up with the level of work that has been done on the Bitcoin blockchain at this point seems impossible to ever do. It's simply a matter of compute power that is physically available.
Fair enough, maybe it depends on your definition of "full bust".
But consider this... if the price were to go back to where it was just a year ago before the current mania (which is a common thing to happen when a financial bubble pops, after overcompensating to the downside) then it would be a 95% retracement from the highs (where, almost self-evidently, many people were buyers). And BTW a 95% retracement requires 20,000% gains to break even.
If you gave me a $1000 and I gave you $50 back, I think most people would say that I took all their money, even though technically they could still buy a couple pizzas or something.
So, again, it just depends on your definition of "full bust"
>At this point, so much energy has been expended mining bitcoin that that in itself creates value.
Bitcoins security relies on current hashing power and is completely indepent from past computations. If bitcoin falls to let's say $100 then major mining pools can do a 51% attack and make all the expended energy worthless.
The best thing for Bitcoin as a technology would be to stabilize in price and have lightning networks solve the scalability problem. The moment we can actually use it for it's original intended purpose and not a speculative asset, the sooner we can see innovation take hold.
Of course this ignores how hamstrung the technology is by the IRS treating it as property subject to capital gains tax. If I have to worry about paying tax anytime it is converted to fiat or exchanged for goods and services of real value, the less motivated I am to do so.
I'm not sure about this argument. You can also make a perfect copy of Facebook and you wont have a facebook. The brand is what makes Bitcoin, just like most of the companies that have perfectly good competitors with the same or better product utility but nowhere the market or profits.
For Bitcoin to die out, every single person needs to decide that doesn't want it.
There is a social network using facebook. If that network moved, it wouldn't matter how respected the facebook brand was. The brand primarily has value only in the effect it has on growing the network. The same is true for Bitcoin.
Since people want bitcoin primarily because they believe other people want bitcoin, if 90% of the userbase shift to monero or ether or some other coin, there's really no reason for the 10% to hang around. Zero is a very plausible price for bitcoin.
Definitely, it's just that moving away from Bitcoin is not much more easier than moving away from Facebook.
I agree that it can happen, like the exodus from Digg to reddit, but the brand is strong and it will have serious financial implications making it significantly harder than creating an account on the competitors product and continue as is.
> About one-third of internet users stream cable TV without paying for it by using credentials of someone they don't live with
There is no way this is true. Not saying that it isn't a problem, but statements like the above are approaching the same level of BS as when the ad industry says most people would prefer to trade their privacy for the privilege of being manipulated by targeted ads.
> "On the other hand, we still lack a decent high-quality JSON Schema language."
This turns data integration with JSON into a total nightmare. And to make matters worse, Swagger is a total shitshow. Combine the different flavors of JSON schema with OpenAPI/Swagger and you have are left with a regression from SOAP/XML that approaches the same complexity with with fewer features and no standards.
Even mf COBOL has a standard schema definition for data. For new projects I'm still cranking out XSD definitions and doing transformations to JSON if I have to. Even if they come out with a decent schema format I would probably skip it and jump straight to gRPC, Thrift, or some other IDL and just continue to treat JSON as an "also supports".
This should give the big Wall St banks the ability to muck with crypto prices however they choose, just like they can do with gold and silver and other commodities (for example, Goldman magically closed gold positions and sold short 2 days before historic 25% price drop in 2 trading days in 2013[0])
Hopefully people will read those contracts and understand how delivery actually works and realize that COMEX or whoever can halt delivery and settle in cash if they want to, etc.
Futures exchanges will have to buy large sums of underlying assets (one reason for the recent spike.) So, in the end a lot of exchanges will be some of the largest crypto holders.
The currently proposed CME and CBOE futures are cash settled. No actual bitcoin is involved. Neither the buyers or sellers of the futures, nor any other entities involved, will need to buy/sell/hold any bitcoin.
That's what the insurance industry is for. Just make the companies liable, and they will seek insurance. Insurance companies will force them to take reasonable measures in order to carry a policy. Nothing new under the sun.
It is correct to hesitate to guess ethnicity based on names. Quite sure there are plenty of people of color named Smith and Johnson.
Also, even if these were Caucasian names, the article states that the system disproportionately targets people of color; looking at the 10 most common combinations proves nothing one or another with respect to the assertion in the article.
Critical thought often requires intentional effort, even by those who value it. And many people that I come across do not even seem to value critical thought, especially when it comes to politics... to the contrary, there exists a movement promoting the idea that thinking is a practice that makes you some sort of elitist.
One theory I have is that HR depts are pushing back against the upward trend of developer salaries; if they create an onerous process that tries to make candidates feel inadequate, it might make it more likely that they can land a low ball offer with whoever is desperate enough to stick it out. Also, if the HR department itself is incompetent and not capable of attracting talent, they can always point to their tests etc to "prove" that there are just no qualified candidates in the workforce.
Also, what is with all the coding tests etc? That stuff is obviously useless. Why don't hiring managers just ask candidates to read some code that is similar to what they will be working on, and observe how they approach stepping through it and how quick they can understand it? That is far more similar to what real work looks like most of the time.