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ljd

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Arricor.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lukearrigoni

If you're in Seattle and want to talk about what you're working on, send a DM in Linkedin and I'll buy you coffee.

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As a counter example, a recruiter once called me asking if I could "put the angular in outlook," recognizing this as total nonsense I said, "Sure that's something I could do" knowing that I would be able to talk to the team looking to hire and ask them for clarification.

It ended up being one of my favorite contracts; I was able to be part of an industry changing technology platform. Had I said that I didn't have any experience putting angular in outlook, its doubtful any of that would have come to fruition.

The lesson I learned here is when I'm hiring to make sure I don't eliminate good candidates with bad requirements and as a candidate I'm inclined to say "yes" to non-technical recruiters even when I know 100% that its impossible.

  Location: Seattle, WA
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Machine Learning (neural networks/py3/jupyter/keras/tensorflow)
  Résumé/CV: https://arricor.com
  Email: luke@arricor.com

Let me know what stage of your machine learning project you are in and we can work on a path to get to where you need to go.

Yeah, I understand your point. I think I'm communicating why someone has a personal incentive to run for congress under our system since they won't be receiving lobbying money. I'm hoping the electorate isn't under the belief that congressional salaries are negotiable. I don't see why people can't feel passionate about this project and also be compensated for improving a system that is rife with inefficiencies.

With a ~10% approval rating for congress and historical lows across the board for most Americans, I'm not sure it's cynicism.

I don't think you could honestly find someone that feels like they are being represented in congress. Our lobbying system is an open joke that we wish we could do something about.

Also, our PAC is funding those true believers but most people don't realize that it costs thousands of dollars to run for congress and most Americans don't have that money. We can help these campaigns with a PAC.

We're looking for people that are tired of a broken system and have the desire to make change but need a strong toolset to do that. We're building that toolset. Part of that means we build the world's most secure voting platform that's has a clear audit trail and it also means that we can't turn a blind eye to the fact that it takes money to win elections in the United States.

Great talking again, Kevin!

Good question! We're not selling to politicians or political organizations. Our PAC is running candidates that are part of our community. People like you and I; professionals in tech that wouldn't mind making $170k to do literally nothing but proxy votes for their district.

Regarding what candidates need to tell voters, we're really looking to run a very centralized campaign, where people can come to our site to find out which name to vote for. We've found ways of legally hacking the election system so that we get ballot access, and differentiate our candidates in a uniform way. So we still see ourselves as a consumer product.

Is it wrong that we are adamant about remaining B2C? I want to find the best possible path, but I don't see how turning politicians that are so used to political donations for favorable voting will decide to shun their financiers to listen to the people they were voted to represent. It feels like that is a practice in futility.

We both agree on the last point, since we've spoken, we've picked up 11 new candidates in California and 9 abroad. We are trying to saturate the 2016 ballot with candidates.

Half our team are data people (I'm an algo dev myself) so finding the best conditions is something we are sorting out with data right now.

Company: http://PlaceAVote.com

Pitch: We're replacing congress with voting software. We are running 70 candidates in the 2016 Congressional elections on our platform, if any of them get voted into office we'll take all bills before congress and put them on our site where each voter in that district gets one authenticated vote.

Question: In your experience, what's the most effective way for B2C company to educate users that you even exist?

I know that signups and conversions are an art, but more than all of that, just telling people that you have something new that they may not be searching for but could still dramatically improve their life. We will take any demographic that will have us, so we aren't picky on that front.

We have 100% week-over-week growth during election cycles, and 10-20% when it's not, so we know the message is received, we just want to get more people in the top of the funnel.

No one is convinced by an "interactive colourful plot" it's the underlining data that it represents.

If data doesn't educate your actions you may find tech to be a hard industry to navigate.

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and it's one of the most impoverished areas I've seen in the United States. It's ranked the least educated, highest drug consuming population in American for a few years running. There aren't a lot of opportunities for tech or business outside of agriculture.

There are a few people changing that in Fresno though. If you're interested in what it looks like to bootstrap tech in an area like this you should checkout bitwise [0]. They have been doing some good stuff there and have started to turn Fresno in a hub for tech for the SJV.

[0]http://bitwiseindustries.com/

I think a speed bump solves your problem.

When I have to commute into the West Side I have a 1.5-2 hour drive ahead of me. Unless I use Waze, and I can cut that down to less than an hour. There is nothing quite like traffic in Los Angeles.

Also, you are assuming Los Angeles was designed correctly and anyone that lives here for longer than a month can tell you it has some serious traffic problems because of urban sprawl.

I've lived in Los Angeles for the last 5 years and I can tell you that Waze really uses neighborhood routes in the hills, which coincides with the most affluent residents in LA.

Unfortunatelly, Los Angeles is built with 3-4 choke points to get from the reasonably priced suburbs in San Fernando Valley to the companies that pay for $100k+ positions on the west side and mid-wilshire.

Waze helps alleviate that traffic and I not surprised that a politician here in LA is so out of touch that he would recommend shutting down a tool most people use to get to work so that the wealthy can have less traffic noise outside their house at 8am.

Streets are public domain, and until I'm relieved of my road tax liabilities I intend on using any one I choose.

I have a very close friend who this article described perfectly. None of us grew up in a great environment, so when his friends suggested Oxycontin it wasn't abnormal or even strange to do it. But it's been 9 years since and after being homeless, a methadone patient (it's hard to call it treatment when they themselves are so predatory), and endless amounts of family support he is slipping into the harder street drugs that are cheaper and more abundant to find.

Growing up in that world has given me an appreciation for the very slight difference between obsession, which drives us to be great and addiction which drives us into the ground and I wonder why I got one and he got the other.

This has been around for several years. I tried to get a large company I worked at to use it to complement our internal machine learning algos.

We decided not to send data to google because we weren't sure about how it would be used or stored. I wonder if that was paranoia from management or if anyone else on HN feels the same way about using a third-party for intellectual property initiatives.

There is one path for HackReactor to make money on this, they can act as recruiters between prisoners and companies.

I know as an employer of developers, that I would hire someone with a felony because I know their introductory salary will be lower but their skill set should be the same. Which may sound over opportunistic, but it's just economics, fewer offers mean lower initial pay. The downside is if they become excellent developers it'll be hard to keep them at the lower salary, even if they do have a felony.

I see this argument akin to something along the lines of, "A website is really a human because someone needs to maintain it and make decisions on it's appearance."

You are describing a tool. People don't say hammers are humans, either.

Netflix's special algorithm is indeed an algorithm.

Bribery/favor system isn't usually for personal gain, its to pay for re-election campaigns.

Like a corporate tax return, during a campaign you can write off a lot of seemingly personal expenses as campaign expenses.

Also, re-election IS personal gain.

It's interesting that it's seen as aid.

If countries like Norway feel that standing trees provide a service to them, they should pay to keep them up.

It's not charity, the trees are providing a marketable good by processing CO2 emissions.

While I'm not an environmentalist, I do believe in markets as a way of solving larger problems and I think it would be interesting if a market was built on resource preservation.

For instance, if a type of tree processes more CO2, they should be worth more than one that does not and that can be expressed in whatever this marketplace would be. If I had more connections at a government level, I might be interested in such an idea but as it stands now the sales cycles would be too long to get a market like that going.