ghein (u/ghein) - Readit News

ghein commented on Cisco Said to Be Cited for Bias Against U.S. Workers news.bloomberglaw.com/dai... · Posted by u/altoidaltoid

cc-d · 8 years ago

This may work for tech, but I'm guessing there are quite a few other industries with low volumes of h1b applicants/workers which could utilize a "bidding system" to hire well below market rate due to decreased demand when compared to tech.

$150k cap across the board ensures that all industries are kept honest. A bidding system can be added on top of that, if needed, but this extremely simple fix would ensure that the system fulfills the original goals it was created for, while adding no bureaucratic overhead.

ghein · 8 years ago

No controls for any other industry - if you want an H1b, bid.

So anyone who desperately needs someone on a visa can get them. Low-end body shops go away and a bunch of industries that are being cheap don't get their visas. This is called a good thing.

There are many sectors where hiring managers want degrees and other certifications and pay minimum wage or damn close. Then they complain about worker shortages.

This is all solved by higher pay and better conditions, but people want to bring in indentured servants as it's easier. As someone who has run businesses and bootstrapped, that's utter BS.

ghein commented on Should computer science researchers disclose negative social consequences? nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/rbanffy

goalieca · 8 years ago

What!? Professional engineers do consider the greater good of society in their code of ethics. Introductory courses in ethics are a mandatory part of the curriculum where I’m from.

ghein · 8 years ago

I'm appalled at the lack of ethics in civil and mechanical engineering!

Automotive engineers willfully destroyed opportunity for stablehands, whip manufacturers, and train conductors out of hundreds of other occupations annihilated.

Civil engineers with their oriented strand board trusses, reinforced concrete, and dimensional lumber stole the livelihoods of masons, carpenters, foresters and so many more.

Engineers have centuries of unethical practice to atone for. They need to stop their work because everything that they do is harmful and unethical!

ghein commented on GE Engineer Linked to China Stole Power Plant Technology, FBI Says wsj.com/articles/ge-engin... · Posted by u/propman

dmvinson · 8 years ago

  In 2014, GE’s corporate security learned that Mr. Zheng 
  had copied more than 19,000 files from a GE-owned 
  computer to an external storage device, according to 
  the FBI affidavit.
  
  In late 2017, GE discovered he had saved about 400 
  files on his desktop computer using encryption software 
  not used by the company.

I don't understand why GE would keep him employed after the first offense. Can someone who understands corporate bureaucracy explain this? Especially knowing that he was literally running a competing business in China while employed at GE.

ghein · 8 years ago

Sometimes you catch a spy, fire them, and have them arrested.

Sometimes you identify, feed them false information, and watch who they talk to...

Sometimes you screw up.

There can be good reasons for GE/FBI/CIA to let a spy keep their job.

ghein commented on Evolving Floorplans joelsimon.net/evo_floorpl... · Posted by u/prakashk

eadmund · 8 years ago

The author describes the results as 'irrational,' but I'd hardly agree with the negative connotation of that word: I think that the generated floorplans look lovely, and I wish that I'd gone to school somewhere like that. Far from irrational, I think it's quite rational to try to design buildings to be pleasant to live in, not just easy to draw with a straightedge.

Also, the generated rooms look much like the sort of rooms one would build with cob. A cob schoolhouse could be awesome.

ghein · 8 years ago

The reward function was horrible!

You need good sightlines for the kids, room for desks, and need to ensure kids aren't isolated in a corner. Plus light (not just to a small courtyard), ability to escape in case of fire or other emergency!!!!!!! and for minimal noise intrusion from other classrooms.

Minimal space and building material are just not the right constraints and speak to absolute ignorance of the actual problem on the part of the designer.

ghein commented on Evolving Floorplans joelsimon.net/evo_floorpl... · Posted by u/prakashk

ireland352 · 8 years ago

I was at a vehicle AI conference early this month discussing how AI will only output based on the quality of its inputs. And the fear coming out of that conference was if space wasn't correctly dedicated or allocated, the AI will optimize the systems as much as it can to squeeze out every single ounce of efficiency.

Qualitative items such as the ones listed are important for customer focused environments, however, I'm not sure if AI can account for such factors.

This post is quite timely.

ghein · 8 years ago

It all comes down to how explicitly preferences are originally understood and then if the reward function can incorporate implicit analysis.

There have been recent studies about AI powered shirt design - the original input uses existing designs in terms of color and shape rather than the basic naive description of requirements that an engineer would give. Then the designs can be assessed by a review board or put up on a site and not produced until some n quantity of purchases.

You wouldn't try to detect cats in images without labelled data why would you try something MUCH harder without labelled data?!?!?!?!?!

ghein commented on Santa Barbara approves jail time for straw ban violators sfgate.com/bayarea/articl... · Posted by u/Xcelerate

beeclimb · 8 years ago

Santa Barbara resident here. Where is this coming from? Jail time? Fake news? I'm cringing for even typing that out.

https://www.keyt.com/news/santa-barbara-s-county/the-last-st...

ghein · 8 years ago

The proposal was fine and jail for repeat offences, now it's been kicked to "review".

Like Seattle's job tax once you get serious attention on something, not to mention the teeming hordes of trial lawyers drooling at the opportunity to sue Santa Barbara Council for ADA violations, the idea is going to die a quick death.

They would have gotten away with it without all those people blowing it out of proportion...

ghein commented on The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy wsj.com/articles/the-pens... · Posted by u/kimsk112

taurath · 8 years ago

What I can't understand is that the stock market in the past 8 years has been one of the best in history. Wouldn't that make up for losses somewhat, and what would happen if the market tanked during that time?

ghein · 8 years ago

Many pensions have ambitious assumptions of 7 or 8% annual returns.

S&P went from 1565 Oct 07 2007 to 735.09 Feb 27 2009.

We're now up to 2818 but if we had delivered 8% since october 07 we'd be at 3649 by this Oct 5. So we're 28% short!

If you use S&P peak in 2000 it's 1552 and to deliver 8% since then we'd need to be at 6209!!!

Catching back up to steady state growth, especially after a 50% loss, is unfathomably hard!

What makes it worse is that the present value of obligations skyrocketed as interest rates went to 0. In 07 the Fed Funds rate was 4.5% and it's currently 2%. This rate was 0.25% until the end of 2015. For a payout of $50k per year for 10 years, ten years in the future, the present value is $481,031 at 0.25%, $368,442 at 2%, and $254,761 at 4.5%.

So the current obligation is 44% higher than it was in 07 and the amount of money is 28% lower than expected. And this is AFTER the S&P has had an incredible run from 735 to 2818!

ghein commented on What Economists Still Don’t Get About the 2008 Crisis bloomberg.com/view/articl... · Posted by u/paulpauper

zwaps · 8 years ago

A rational actor is one who is able to decide what he thinks about an option, and who makes decisions that are transitive (ie. consistent). In that sense, rationality is still the basis of economics, but this is not what a normal person understands as rationality.

Instead, a more narrow view (partly due to difficulties of dealing with uncertainty, partly due to the context of preferences in a dynamic setting) required adding other behavioral theories which are now rightly considered mainstream in economics as well. All these non-rational actors are still rational in the general sense, in that they make choices based on preferences at some point in time.

There is, by the way, no other science dealing with human behavior that does not assume rationality. In business, this is called "bounded rationality" after Simon, but nowadays is basically and excuse to use rational actors even though we know "they ain't". All sociological actors are rational as well, even though you will rarely find a sociologist write this as a statement. Still, choices are made as responses to the environment of social forces.

Quite generally, it would be impossible to theorize about human behavior if it were irrational. That, in the general sense, would mean that it is not consistent and not predictable and thereby inherently not accessible to science.

What you econ Professor told you is basically correct, but the correct formulation of this you will probably see the first time when you take a course on decision theory or graduate microeconomics.

ghein · 8 years ago

Well said!

Too many critics focus on pure dollar optimizing rather than value optimizing. We all have different value maximization functions - if you understand that dollars are just one type of value so called irrational behaviour is coldly rational. Dynamic time preferences for money are accepted but dynamic preference functions for other things (status, sense of self, stress level..) are ignored.

ghein commented on What Economists Still Don’t Get About the 2008 Crisis bloomberg.com/view/articl... · Posted by u/paulpauper

dv_dt · 8 years ago

Physics was able to go on from the simplistic models, refine and extend them to both a wide scale and very high quality of theoretical and empirical concurrence in exquisite detail and generality.

On the other hand, economics goes on from Homo economicus into a mass of mathiness with very poor empirical correlation except perhaps in very very narrow circumstances.

ghein · 8 years ago

The second part of your analogy is off.

It's not billiard physics to general relativity, it's billiard physics to fluid dynamics and predicting the exact route of a stick through a set of rapids.

In economics our biggest complaints are around failure to determine that we're near a singularity and failure to predict behaviour through singularities (in a signal processing sense). It's understandable, as we all strongly care about the path of the stick, yet still unreasonable.

Macro is a decent enough tool most of the time, as are traditional fluid mechanics approaches. What we don't have are ultra precise CFD tools but in our arguments we act like we should/do. Sometimes traders think that they do have a great CFD solution and that's how we get LTCM crashes!

ghein commented on The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy wsj.com/articles/the-pens... · Posted by u/kimsk112

betterunix2 · 8 years ago

Well, let's just say that somehow what you are saying is correct. How comfortable would you be investing in a long-term muni bond after that? If you were a contractor, how would you feel about working on a long-term project for a state or local government? Who would want to work for the government when there is no way to trust that any of the benefits will materialized (other than the salary; then again, who knows?)

It's not just former employees that will suffer. Everyone suffers when states have to pay higher interest rates on their bonds because of poor credit ratings (that's what bankruptcy does to a state) or have to pay more for workers and contractors. Everyone will have to pay higher taxes and everyone will receive less from the government.

I cannot understand the logic of not making good on government obligations. You can take the position that the government should stop promising pensions, but how can anyone think it is a good idea for the government to fail to pay for the pensions it already promised people (or, frankly, any other promise the government made)?

ghein · 8 years ago

This is exactly why people have been screaming about this problem for a couple of decades.

It is going to be HUGE and do incredible damage. Retirees will be hurt catastrophically, costs of government borrowing will skyrocket, programs will be cut massively, workers will abandon government.

The issue is that the costs of meeting the prior obligations will be completely impossible. States, cities, and school districts will go bankrupt, massive numbers of people will be fired, and taxes will go up while service goes down.

Unfortunately the politics prevent a fix today and prevented a fix 10 or 20 years ago when it would have been much cheaper. The fix will happen in 10 to 20 years and it's going to be horrific.