I can’t really answer that, but I can say I find the subject matter fascinating and relating it to a show with which I’m familiar helps ground the material a little for me. So I really enjoy it, even knowing that the Dothraki have little basis in real world history.
I agree it's an interesting read, but it would actually be more accessible if it wasn't confusingly dressed up with things like "Mongols never did this, ergo Martin erred seriously!"
I mean, okay, maybe real world Steppe peoples would have been subject to variations in dialect. Do I need pages of stuff telling me that the absence of a sentence like "Dany couldn't understand that one guy very well because he spoke a confusing dialect of Dothraki" is a glaring oversight? If there's one thing the series doesn't need it's a whole other novel that goes even further in detailing the misery of navigating the cultural differences on Essos. One ADWD is plenty.
"Do I need pages of stuff telling me that the absence of a sentence like "Dany couldn't understand that one guy very well because he spoke a confusing dialect of Dothraki" is a glaring oversight"
As a reader, you certainly don't need that to enjoy the books.
But since GRRM claims that the Dothraki are based on reality "seasoned with a dash of pure fantasy" it's worth pointing out that based on what's actually in the books themselves it's the other way around: the Dothraki are fantasy seasoned with a dash of reality.
I did downvote you because you said I could, but this is absolutely true. But, it kind of should be true. Government employees need to strongly know the industry they’re regulating to regulate effectively. I can’t imagine someone with zero financial ties and only knowledge from school going to direct how the SEC does investigations any more than I can imagine the same happening at the FDA.
I don’t think there should be so much regulatory capture (there is), but I do think a revolving door of sorts for many positions is helpful from a perspective of knowing the regulated industry and acting with the best knowledge of regulating that industry.
Former defense contractor at (Relatively) small company here, this is a reasonable and common sense explanation, especially from what I know from being inside the defense industry. It’s not even far fetched at all. I don’t think this goes to the level or being conspiracy or fringe at all.
Isn’t that the purpose of money laundering, to create an income stream so that you can pay taxes on it? I don’t know tax law in depth, but it seems like if one could just report to the IRS anonymous money it would largely obviate the need for money laundering at all. Of course there’s the question of other gov agencies.
You can always cash out "Bitcoin you [allegedly] bought back in 2010", or Monero you mined back in the day so there's no way to even prove its source, and declare that to the IRS. With a cost basis of almost zero, you'll pay long term capital gains tax, 15% or 20%.
BTW when you declare your crypto gains, the IRS not only does not care about the source, there's not even a place on the forms to list the source.
I love these great, though utterly useless, projects people do for the love of things and for no other reason than it’s something interesting to them. I will be following along.
Yes this!! Its normal to read comments like that in linkedIn but not on HN...same as why use 9front/*BSD/Haiku/Inferno? Just take a normal Linux Distribution.
Those are probably more accurate. Steve King was a recent elected rep, and Paul Nehlen was a strong candidate. While Spencer espouses the same views as them, I think he probably vocalizes those views more than the current mainstream party is comfortable with.
“ For years, Shipt has used a clear commissioned-based pay model that ($5 plus a 7.5 percent commission on all orders),...”
Outside the context of algorithmic pay models, I’ve always had a lingering doubt in the context of the restaurant industry. I typically tip 20% across the board, more for great service. If I order a $120 bottle of wine versus a $20 bottle of wine, the wait staff is getting an extra $20, but what did they do to get this extra $20? Everything else is the same. (Putting aside the situations where you order a very nice multi-thousand dollar bottle and a special person with wine knowledge comes out and handles everything, etc.)
Analogizing now to Shipts situation, should one person get paid more because I got the fancy cheese rather than the store brand? They’re next to one another and everything else remains the same. I’m not surprised pay drops substantially when algorithmic pay only considers effort.
Tips make no sense ecomically, at least not the way we use them. Restaurants don't pay their waiters enough, so customers are effectively obligated to tip X% on top of the price.
What should happen is restaurants should pay their workers a living wage and charge customers accordingly, so there's none of this stupid guilt trip stuff.
They do have an economic explanation that makes sense. They’re a form of price discrimination, where some people pay more for a product that is potentially only marginally different. For example, the steep price increase for various storage sizes of iPhones. Price discrimination can be a good thing. In the case of iPhones, it allows Apple to put out a base model at a lower price than it would to make the same profit without price discrimination. In the restaurant industry, it is probably good for both consumers and wait staff. Tipping culture allows restaurants to keep the base price of a meal lower, and allows wealthier customers to tip heavily. At nicer restaurants, it’s not uncommon for wait staff to make a healthy amount in tips.
That's the point: the offering changes are marginal (you get some extra storage space on your phone; you get PX status at the restaurant) but wealthy patrons will behave differently than price-sensitive patrons, and you want to extract the maximum value from both market segments.
Many servers have opposed efforts to replace tips with a “living wage” (because servers and bartenders can make $20-30/hour with tips). Back of house staff tend to lose out from that system, so they tend to favor eliminating tips.
I don't know if it's true, but I recall reading somewhere that working class people tend to tip Uber drivers more, because "they know what it's like" to have that kind of job.
If so, that's a really twisted form of price discrimination.
Maybe for a $1200 bottle, but not a $120 bottle. Even my local BBQ spot has a $200 bottle and there it's self service except for drink and food orders. I'd say most of my frequent spots ($20-30 for most expensive entree) have at least one bottle in the three figure price range.
However, tipping 20% on a $120 bottle would be more than half of what I tipped the last time I went to a fancy place where the staff folded the napkins every time someone got up to go to the bathroom. That was a 40% tip on a $100 meal for two (with corkage fee) where I felt the service was excellent and included far more than just pouring a few glasses.
Those sound like exceptions more than general trends. The tip algorithm makes more sense for the general trend, and less so for the exceptions. That's a reasonable situation.
The other poster answered this I think pretty succinctly. But I’m sure you could get a $100+ bottle of wine at pick-your-random-chain-restaurant similar to Chili’s or whatever is in that range, where there is certainly zero company-mandated difference in service regardless of what one orders.
I have become less and less convinced on this. Most recently I had choices for what would ostensibly be a Go-centric job between generalists who had a little Go experience, and people really good at Go, but not as much at the rest of our stack.
We went with the generalist under the theory you’re advocating and it was a disaster. The people we hired learned Go, but it takes a while to grok the paradigms and really develop a mental model for what’s going on under the hood. Those hiring choices cost us a lot of grief and probably several months of development time as they made choices that were ostensibly reasonable in other languages/frameworks, but didn’t necessarily hold in Golang.
In the future if I require someone for something specific, say k8s, I’m hiring someone with direct lengthy experience in k8s and not a devops expert who has some experience with k8s.
The optimal strategy depends on the timeframe in which you're looking for the employee to provide a net contribution and how long you expect them to stay, among other particulars.
If you're scaling up quickly or employing a bunch of people to immediately work on a new project, and expect them to stay an average of 2 years, you need preexisting experience.
If you're in a company where people stay on average 4-5 years and, and there's already a well established team with a good set of conventions and technical leadership, a generalist is probably a better call.
Well there is no silver bullet right, and there are many factors in a situation like yours.
Lets say you're hiring for a Java position to make web apps. Is a better candidate someone with lots of desktop Java experience, or someone with lots of Django experience? The answer is of course, it depends. On the person, the job etc. I'd interview both and it's probable the second person has more relevant skills.
The problem with putting emphasis on years of experience is that the second person might not get through the HR filter.
Obviously it is better if the candidate has experience in the specific work, but you didn't chose between two generally good candidates but with and without that experience did you?
