FooBarBizBazz

If you give up on unit tests and code review then the code is "yours" instead of "ours" and your coworkers will not want to collaborate on it with you.

However, this has to be substantive code review by technical peers who actually care.

Unit tests also need the be valued as integral to the implementation task. The author writes the unit tests. It helps to guide the thought process. You should not offload unit tests to an intern as "scutwork".

If your code is sloppy, a stylistic mess, and unreviewed, then I am going to put it behind an interface as best I can, refer to it as "legacy", rely on you for bugfixes (I'm not touching that stinking pile), and will probably try to rally people behind a replacement.

Why do students need to be inside the US in order for Harvard to issue them a degree? Surely there is an international network -- collaborators abroad who could host students, etc, etc. For example , Harvard already has an infrastructure of exchange programs. It's not ideal for the students, but I don't see why they can't continue to "be Harvard students" from anywhere.

Hopefully, though, this is an "escalate to deescalate" thing, and this whole discussion will become moot.

The article has absolutely nothing to do with "hashes vs. PRNGs". Literally nothing. It's all about the linear algebra and floating point operations that happen (in this case) to be used to transform those numbers. It has nothing to do with PRNGs.

Also, PRNG and hash functions are extremely similar, and there's no reason why one should be deterministic and the other not. They're both built out of simple integer and bit operations. If a certain PRNG is implementation-defined, that's a detail of the specific (possibly standard) library you've chosen; it's nothing fundamental.

Really the way to do it, AFAIK (say, per How Asia Works), is to apply selective subsidies, not tariffs, and to subject the subsidized industries to substantial export discipline. That's what gets you South Korean world-beaters. Autarkic tariffs just get you Indian industry, where consumers have learned that the few goods marked "export quality" are superior.

And, I don't want to be partisan about this stuff, but, that's basically what "Bidenonics" was trying to do, in a small way: Subsidize a few industries like semiconductors and batteries and solar panels, that were deemed strategically important.

Whether the US was ever going to be as serious as South Korea or Japan about this remained to be seen. Frequently the subsidies seem to be handed out and then nothing happens (e.g., "Gigafactory" in Buffalo, NY).

Why not 1 because 2?

> what Britain did was import massive amounts from India and made high value goods at home and provided high value services that couldn't be provided elsewhere

Does this story really describe a trade deficit? Trade is measured in units of currency, not in kilograms.

If I import a quantity of sugar from the West Indies for $1, turn it into rum, and export that rum for $10, then I have, net, produced $9 of exports.

This word "fascism" is unfortunate, because the symbolism of the fasces is actually good: We do all need to bundle ourselves together if we are either (a) to accomplish anything, or (b) to resist capital. The only question is whether all the many twigs have to be the same color.

The Left has spoken of "bundling" for many years now (of issues or complaints, or, looked at another way, of identity or pressure groups). That too is the idea of the fasces. The word "bundle" again suggests it.

I also note that there is a certain irony here, because, besides "fasces", we already have a succinct two-syllable word meaning "a bundle of twigs".

There is also the tasty cognate, "fajita".

Can condo or co-op (legal) structures solve this problem?

Honestly that seems high enough, yeah.

People are overthinking this.

It's about power, and inculcating fear.

The CEO who "cuts" people at a company is like the Aztec priest who plunges the knife in atop the pyramid. The bloody spectacle is the point. It's as much about everyone who's watching as it is about the specific victim. It says, "I can do this to you. I can inflict pain without reprisal. Behold my power."

That's the whole point. Who is afraid of whom?

These people have the money. We depend on that money in order to live. They are reminding us of that fact. Now they demand obedience and harder work. 40 hours? Not enough. Elon sleeps at the office, why don't you? You have to be "super hardcore".

Partly, this is punishment for the challenge that was raised to CEO power from around 2016 to 2022. CEOs have been furious that they have felt fear of their workers. Now they want those workers to feel fear. In interviews, Andreesen has said almost exactly this, if not in quite so many words.

A similar theory is at the root of Fed policy, which hinges on the idea of a "wage price spiral". In their view, inflation is caused not by the accumulation of capital within a price-insensitive upper quantile, or by the constriction of economic chokepoints by consolidation, but by workers' ability to bargain for higher wages. The solution to inflation, they essentially come out and say, is to put workers in their place.

There is a united front here. It is about who fears whom, the end. It is about your emotional state. In a literal sense, it is terrorism.

So in that sense, yes, layoffs work. Are you financially independent? No? Are you afraid? Yes? Then they're working.

When I go down this chain of thought, I eventually end up at --

Legs. I have legs. They are built in. I can just use them. I can always bring my legs onto the subway.

If they don't go fast enough, then I have two options:

1. Give myself more time.

2. Jog or run. This will make me sweaty. Maybe I will want to shower at the office. That's an option. It will make me healthier, if I do it.

There is also a third choice:

3. Obtain real estate in such a way that substantial travel is not required.

Clearly most people will look at these options and say, "FooBar, you are insane."

It's simultaneously the easiest solution to the problem, and the most difficult.

When today's children are old, "house" may well imply "billionaire" in many places. At 11% appreciation, it only takes 67 years to gain a factor of a thousand.

Then we will be ruled by trillionaires.

You have to assume that anyone wearing these things is filming you. It's creepy. People who use them are creepy.

Your point #3 is concerning. It is almost saying that people are now unable to assume other peoples' points of view. That the skill of empathy -- in a narrow technical sense, not even loading it with positive moral associations; hell, a scammer may use their ability to take another vantage point in order to mislead -- is disappearing. That people are losing a "theory of mind". Mass solipsism. Excellent, autistic sheep, confused by the people around them.

I ascribe to the Rent Theory of Everything. People can afford to be weird, where they don't have to be perfect corporate people in order to pay rent.

Just get a bus pass and you'll be in the biggest passenger vehicle on the road.

This monopoly right is roughly equivalent to a bond (it is a bond in the archaic sense of "law"), given by the Falklands government to the satellite company, in exchange for the satellite infrastructure. The Bond's "coupon" isn't precisely fixed; it's the revenue that the company makes from its customers. To dissolve the monopoly would be roughly to default on this bond.

You can imagine an alternate timeline in which the Falklands literally sold bonds to finance this infrastructure. They would have sold bonds; the proceeds would have paid for the satellites; tax dollars (rather than subscription dollars) would then go to service the bond.

The core problem is that the infrastructure just isn't as valuable as people thought it would be, as a result of technological disruption.

There is probably value in the Falklands maintaining some infrastructure of its own for reasons of national autonomy. If they destroy this national monopoly, they'll be left dependent on a Starlink monopoly, over which they have even less control.

They should probably split the difference: Remove the monopoly, subsidize the company with tax revenue to keep it alive, and allow people to use Starlink if they want. This is a "partial default", but it doesn't totally screw anyone, and it looks out for their own autonomy.

> convert to my usual funds as ETFs

Do you mean that you sold mutual funds at Vanguard, and used the cash to buy ETFs at eTrade? This means you had to pay tax on capital gains, right? Or is there some trick I don't know about, vis-a-vis converting mutual funds into equivalent ETFs, without a taxable event?

Just over half of Castle Bravo. Not the end of the world. And the Earth's surface is 71% water.

I suppose that's true normally, but I was pleased to read that you can probably reverse it if you make radical enough changes:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/ask_the_doctor_i...

Spreading "cope" hurts other people who read it and believe. Bomb-calorimeter energy is an upper bound on what your body can extract from the food, and limiting an upper bound works.

But ok, there is a problem with "CICO": Although true, it does psychologically put "CI" and "CO" on an equal footing -- whereas 90% of your attention really needs to be on "CI". The body is very efficient; exercising doesn't burn much. It's more for the purpose of maintaining some muscle mass as you drop weight. But junk food companies like to skew perception ("balance what you drink and do") to make it seem like a Big Gulp would be ok if only you ran more. Yeah, they're happy to shame and mislead overweight people, so long as they keep buying.

He's saying that, in the places where people do work harder, they don't actually have more/larger/better houses. Rather, the work just becomes part of a zero-sum competition that bids up the price of the (fixed) quantity/quality of houses.

This partially contradicts your point.

What I would add (to reconcile the two points), is that one kind of work is not fungible with another kind of work. Yes, people work very hard in Silicon Valley -- but they are not working hard at building houses. If they were, there'd be a lot of supply, and the price would fall.

Overall, this is perhaps a comment about the (mis-)allocation of work in society.

Many people, myself included, are skeptical of "therapy" and do not automatically consider its practicioners to be legitimate authorities. These are people who need a job just the same as you, and this is the one they landed in. Whether they do anybody any good is hard to say.

One source of skepticism is that they are not really invested in you. If you succeed or if you fail, if you're happy or if you're sad, what's it really to them? Will they have to live with the consequences? At least in a relationship the "therapist" maybe "has some shares" in the other person. (Granted, you can also reverse the logic, e.g., "my parents didn't pay attention to my happiness and just pushed me to become a doctor" / "my wife just wanted me to have money because she wanted to spend it".) This is also why I am skeptical of startup advisors: I'm sure they mean well, but, if you really don't know what you're doing, it's probably better to be an employee for a while, under a boss who succeeds only when you succeed.

Another is that, when I hear therapistic language, a lot seems to embed assumptions of omnipresent psychic violence, and this disturbs me. Perhaps there are people who truly are trapped in situations of "psychological abuse", "gaslighting", and so-on, but my sense is that these words usually become weapons that people wave around, as they adopt darker and darker interpretations of their own, imperfect but basically good, relationships. Then the cynic in me says: Wouldn't causing people to reject their "organic" relationships, create dependence on the relationship with the therapist?

That "therapy" grew out of psychology also is grounds for caution, to me. There is an underlying manipulativeness in the field. Many of the famous experiments, stories of which attract students into the field, were quite manipulative. Some of the core theories of psychology that you learn in school, like operant conditioning, are fairly inhumane. If this is the ground that you build on, what kind of structure do you get? Who is attracted to the field to begin with?

Also, the very fact that the meme is gendered tells you something. Sure, men don't trust therapists, any more than college-educated women trust bearded imams. If a whole school of thought seems somehow not to be on your side, you're not going to trust it. (And I do not mean to imply that to be "college-educated" is ideology-neutral, or that the hypothetical imam is not actually on the hypothetical woman's side.)

...

In the context of this blog post, though, I kind of get it. The guy literally climbed, if not Everest, then some similar peak in the Himalayas. So when you focus on that it's kind of funny.

I'm not sure how what he's doing is "wrong" and what other thing he could be doing would be "right" though. What is the therapist going to tell him to do, and why would that thing be superior to climbing mountains at random? Does existential angst even have a solution?

...

Some of the religions have their own answers, which would encourage different behavior, I suppose. E.g.:

a.)

> 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

> 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

> 38 This is the first and great commandment.

> 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

> 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

If the author of the blog repeated the second half of verse 39 to himself over and over, he might do something different. You do pushups, you develop muscles. You repeat mantras, and, if those mantras are really meaningful, you can shape your own mind.

Or, the works of mercy:

> feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead

> admonish the sinner, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offenses willingly, comfort the afflicted, pray for the living and the dead

Add in Galatians 3:28 and you've got the high points of Christianity. If you take the words seriously they can affect how you think and what you do: "Right thought, right speech, right action".

b.)

I recall also once reading a Jain text and seeing the Ten Virtues, and reflecting on them altered my behavior at the time, in a positive way. These can be found e.g. here: https://jainworld.jainworld.com/pdf/Ten%20Universal%20Virtue...

One virtue that it emphasized, which is not emphasized to the same degree in Christianity, is honesty. Yes, Christianity inherits the Ten Commandments (which are actually good), but "thou shalt not bear false witness" seems like a somewhat more narrow thing. In much the same way that "though shalt not kill" is really, debatably, the more limited "though shalt not murder". Indeed, Jainism seems to go further than Christianity in many respects. Those virtues, by the way, are (per the previously-linked text):

> 1. Uttama Kshama - Supreme Forgiveness (To observe tolerance whole-heartedly, shunning anger.)

> 2. Mardava - Tenderness or Humility (To observe the virtue of humility subduing vanity and passions.)

> 3. Arjaya - Straight-forwardness or Honesty (To practice a deceit free conduct in life by vanquishing the passion of deception.)

> 4. Shaucha - Contentment or Purity (To keep the body, mind and speech pure by discarding greed.

> 5. Satya - Truthfulness (To speak affectionate and just words with a holy intention causing no injury to any living being.)

> 6. Sanyam - Self-restraint (To defend all living beings with utmost power in a cosmopolitan spirit abstaining from all the pleasures provided by the five senses - touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing; and the sixth - mind.)

> 7. Tapa - Penance or Austerities (To practice austerities putting a check on all worldly allurements.)

> 8. Tyaga - Renunciation (To give four fold charities - Ahara (food), Abhaya (fearlessness), Aushadha (medicine), and Shastra Dana (distribution of Holy Scriptures), and to patronize social and religious institutions for self and other uplifts.)

> 9. Akinchanya - Non-attachment (To enhance faith in the real self as against non-self i.e., material objects; and to discard internal Parigraha viz. anger and pride; and external Parigraha viz. accumulation of gold, diamonds, and royal treasures.)

> 10. Brahmacarya - Chastity or celibacy (To observe the great vow of celibacy; to have devotion for the inner soul and the omniscient Lord; to discard the carnal desires, vulgar fashions, child and old-age marriages, dowry dominated marriages, polygamy, criminal assault on ladies, use of foul and vulgar language)

In particular, I note both Arjaya and Satya.

(A new thing to me, that I notice now, is the inclusion of abhaya (fearlessness) as a kind of tyaga -- a kind of renunciation, a giving-away, a charity. This is food for thought.)

(And personally I would moderate Sanyam.)

My point is, if one needs direction, perhaps these are where one should be looking?

Just miscellaneous thoughts.

Moreover, when this kind of attitude prevails, there are costs to the society at large. In a low-trust society, everyone needs to invest in walls around their house-compounds, and to avoid going out at night. You need to keep your wits about you to avoid scams and pickpockets -- mental energy that might otherwise go to other purposes. These small costs then compound across the whole of the society: There is less economic growth, there is less technological development. More individual wealth is required to maintain the same overall quality of life. Would you rather be a middle class person in 2024 or a medieval king? In those societies you're, at best, more like the medieval king. It's not as good.

The solution to these kinds of game theoretic issues is strong social norms, and punishment for violation. If this woman is scamming people, she needs to face consequences -- ideally within the official legal system, but perhaps also informally.

Interesting points about those calls: "Go shorter but deeper in the money, and roll more often". Would be a pain to do by hand, unless you enjoy it as a hobby. Makes me think about moving to Interactive Brokers so I can play with the API. Probably won't happen, but who knows; I might get bored one month.

I don't have a great way to think about the distinction between computation and communication. It seems to me that the "bits/s" measure they're using doesn't even have the right units? That said, information seems fundamental and almost physical, whereas something like "FLOPS" feels tied to a general class of implementations.

Maybe you can imagine that some part of your mind really doesn't need a very high bitrate description of the world. For example, we read novels and play text-based adventure games, and that's sufficient to conjure a rich inner world. And at what rate do we read? Probably not more than a few bits/s, I would guess? Let's see... Google's AI says

> The entropy rate of English is between 0.6 and 1.3 bits per character.

Let's just say 1 bit per character for round numbers.

It also says,

> A typical novel page usually contains around 3,000 characters

so, 3 kbits/page. Divide by 10 bits/s, and you get 300 seconds/page = 5 minutes/page.

This seems too long to me. I think we read faster than that.

And that's ignoring that "a picture is worth a thousand words".

So, if there is a single information bottleneck into the "conscious mind", my guess is that it has a higher bitrate than the quoted 10 bits/s.

> You can back door around $70k per year into a Roth currently I believe.

You can only backdoor $7k/year into a Roth IRA. That isn't much.

If you have access to a qualifying 401k plan, you can mega-backdoor $46,000 into a Roth 401k. Many 401k plans do not support this, however. In practice, a plan is unlikely to support it if the company doesn't give a 401k match (it's basically impossible for a plan to meet the "non-discrimination" requirement without matching).

> And I’m not sure why you’re talking about LEAPS. [...] Theta is only one of the Greeks.

Because the effect of theta is least for LEAPS. They're the "most share-like" options.

> Options are naturally leveraged: you have synthetic positions on [complicated Greeks math]*100 shares with every option.

I agree that the "natural leverage" is the reason for the appeal, but the 100x multiplier is priced in.

In practice, IIRC (it's been a while) I've found that, with long-dated calls near the money (ideally a little bit in the money, for lower risk), you end up with about 2x leverage. The "100% loss" downside sort of gets "balanced" (debatable) by "2x upside". In the past I've felt really smart doing this until it's blown up in my face. Given the multiplicative nature of gains/losses, I'm not sure it's a good deal at all.

> Same with futures contracts re: natural leverage.

Curious about this. I suspect that it's a sucker's game, but wouldn't mind learning more.

A retirement account is a ship in a bottle. You can't put much into it. The only way to make it huge is to take huge risks inside and have them work out. Which isn't a plan.

And -- options? The most leverage I can think of reasonably getting would be LEAPS (calls) and rolling them. But, even with LEAPS, you have limited timing flexibility, and are forced to realize more gains/losses.

There's nothing on par with a house. They're almost $1M everywhere now. You can't get that much into a retirement account when you're young.

I know SALT went away, but there's still 1031 exchanges, which mean that "capital gains" can be tax free, which is a big deal in an inflationary environment. So long as the government keeps printing money (which it will), there's a de-facto wealth tax that only real estate avoids.

A 20% down mortgage is a 5x levered bet. Plus you can roll capital gains into new real estate. The S&P 500 cannot offer these advantages.