Viewing profile — mcbrown

Former professional investment manager here... The biggest problem with things like this, which almost nobody talks about in the context of investing, is publication bias. 100 peop…

If you buy a MacBook Air: Once in a blue moon you might be stuck without access to power for hours and hours, and you will be thankful for the battery life. Every other day you wil…

Yes, like the fact that there is not a single accessible Uber vehicle in New York City... we THOUGHT the ADA had outlawed that sort of thing, but apparently not.

Because of malware delivered through unblocked ad networks. (FTFY)

'Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time...' I think you mean that truckers FEEL like they deal with that dilemma all the time. If they ACT…

Without more context, the information here is titillating but not ultimately all that useful. Let's generalize the content so you can see what I mean: "A massive trove of documents…

BayesDB and BQL are great ideas in theory. But the problem with building any "general" analysis tool to abstract away underlying complexity is that it must either be (a) a least co…

If so, it's the cohort I see (the "survivors") that are routinely underestimated by tech bros. Which suggests the problem is even worse: if it visibly affects the best of the best,…

"With age comes experience and also comes a strengthening of biases. Older people, so the stereotype goes, are inflexible and set in their ways, if very experienced in those ways."…

This (partly) explains a major paradox I see: all the best software engineers I know are over 50, and yet the young'uns who dominate the tech zeitgeist assume these same people are…

I will generalize his argument, since it's not really about MBA's: "If you make major life decisions against your clear preference in a vague effort to please your parents, you wil…

Well you're just engaging in the tactic of discrediting the defenders. You must be one of the foreign agitators threatening the community. Then again, the authoritarian dictator ha…

One simple solution would be to require employers to pay at least the workers' prior base salary for the duration they wish to enforce the non-compete. I've held senior positions w…

See my comment on why that is a poor example.

All the men I know who view the dating "game" as zero-sum in this way are divorced, on their way to divorce, or on their way to another marriage without having addressed any of the…

I'm pretty sure the premium-only airlines have all failed because (a) it's hard to start an airline, (b) there are only a few routes where there is enough demand to fill a premium-…

That is just... stupid. Calling out a major corporation for deceptive practices is "stirring up trouble"? A non-profit organization is supposed to be "on the same side" as some com…

The advantage of vine-ripening is a myth, as I have discovered first-hand by growing tomatoes in a home garden. For optimal flavor, tomatoes should be picked when they have just a …

Dense cities also have higher cost per unit of infrastructure. Just think about the cost of digging up a gas line in Manhattan vs. in the suburbs. Which effect dominates - revenue …