Litost

It turns out that driving in london or using public transport (bus at least) is noticeably less healthy than walking [1]. I imagine if you could fit in a run through some less busy and/or green spaces you might be overall better off??

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2014/aug/12/lon...

"Am I an "avarage joe" going to work from 9-5, or am I being wasteful? You tell me. I know what I'm going to continue doing :-)"

Arguably both ;), but then i'd blame a broken system for coercing you into those choices :).

I'm sure, even in only a semi-enlightened world, you wouldn't need to wear a shirt to work, assuming you even needed a job?

This might well be the dumbest thing i've ever said on the internet, but extrapolating from "data on 7% of americans just got hacked" to the premise nothing is actually secure

a) What would happen if we embraced this and just made all information freely available?

b) Is one of the likely/possible end or transitional states of the human race, all information being freely available and presumably along with it, a more enlightened approach to dealing with it?

c) Are there any good sci-fi books where this is explored?

and then what happens when you do? Reminds me very much of the classic 1974 film "The Conversation":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_LJ5ICMbP4

[EDIT: And this interesting analysis as it pertains to the modern world in light of the Snowdon revelations]

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/why...

I've only had a cursory introduction to Nash's work through brief flirtations with game theory, but this is the best explanation i've found so far on Nash's Equilibrium which i still remember vividly for highlighting why a "Socially Optimal Solution" is pretty rare in real life [1] (apologies in advance to the ted-talk averse).

Has anyone got any other good pointers to examples of his work?

P.S. Can anyone recommend A Beautiful Mind, i'm kinda put off by the description in here which makes it sound very hollywoodised [2]?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILgxeNBK_8

[2] - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/science/explaining-a-corne...

This happened to me in my 2nd job, a long time ago. Customer went tits up owing us £150k, we were only a small firm, around 10 employees so would have meant significant layoffs.

So the owner asked if we'd all take 20% or so paycuts, with some of the older/better paid staff and the owner himself taking bigger cuts. As the business was otherwise profitable (being in a pretty niche market) we all agreed. Something like 9months later we all got paid back with interest and a bonus.

Smaller scale, and a bit more recently at a different (also small) place, all the non-management staff offerred to forego the (expensive) christmas party so one of the contractors could get paid back pay they were owed due to problems with a difficult client.

It's obviously very situational, but in both cases it felt like the right thing to do and both places were smallish firms where loyalty and morale etc. at the time, were high.

That's a very good point about RAWs, in my haste to dismiss it out of hand, i hadn't realised it doesn't backup RAW. But then just another sign of where it's target demographic is.

^This - as summed up in more detail here [1]

And these changes don't do anything for me personally.

1) Uploadr - as a semi-pro user, i.e. still using real cameras and lightroom (with plugin) to sync to flickr this means nothing.

2) 1TB of online storage, again as a semi-pro user, and i assume like a lot of other semi-pro users, i'm perfectly capable of running my own backup solution and wouldn't trust an online 3rd party online with hi-res versions of my pics anyway, so again useless.

3) Albums, search - again perfectly happy with the way these were before, i have a workflow that includes creating an album to sync to flickr which isn't cumbersome and i can guarantee the pics i want will be in it.

Flickr used to have a great community of people in it's groups (often pros), with great discussions with threads that were reasonably easy to navigate and search (much better than facebook has ever been) but that whole social side has died.

All these changes, just smack of dumbing down for the sake of smartphone users, but without any social side to it, i can't see why anyone, who already uses facebook or instagram (bizarrely considering the terms and conditions), would switch?

[1] http://www.shutterphoto.net/article/the-flickr-debacle-what-...

1 in 10, or 3 out of 500? The problem with comparisons like this is it's horribly

a) Judgemental - what you might class as a success can differ wildly from what someone else does.

b) Situational - the success rate you get from differing events, shot under different conditions with different equipment, technique, time constraints and expertise etc. etc. can vary hugely, even when judged impartially.

About the only time i ever feel like i can objectively judge a day a good one, is either

1) When i've been to the same event as any of my peers, using comparable gear and felt like i've held my own.

2) Achieved whatever it was i set out to, be that a great picture worthy of putting in a portfolio or sticking on the wall, a satisfied client, a new technique or lesson learnt, a memory captured or just enjoying whatever i did on the back of the excuse i was out with my camera.

I wouldn't worry about the numbers, worring about the numbers would be when you got roped in at the last minute to be the main photographer at best friends wedding and all you had was a kodak brownie with half a roll of film left in it anything nowadays would be a cakewalk in comparison.

Yes, don't stop pushing yourself, but at the end of the day, for me anyway, it's the experiences that count, the pictures are generally just reminders of things i've forgotten, can no longer experience or because the people in them are no longer with us.

Glad you found them useful, i was mildy surprised mainstream media (the bbc) was publishing them.

There's a digest and comments more eloquent than i can muster from the guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/26/bitter-l...

But yes, quite an eye opener and in place beautiful and haunting. If anyone has any similar pieces i'd be interested in them though Curtis himself seems to tackle some quite interesting topics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis

If you watch pt1 and pt2 of this series, and take them at face value, you'd arguably be hard pushed to see a huge difference in them either? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwboEpZe88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDeT2tD97s

I watched a Noam Chomsky youtube video recently, where he said something similar about TV news. The amount of time you get is only about enough to throw out some half-baked soundbite i.e. "XXX are terrorists", "All benefit claimaints are scroungers" and if it doesn't reiterate whatever the perceived wisdom of the day is, there's no way you'll get enough time to make a point.

I don't use twitter but i imagine the 140 character limit must be much worse. Facebook might be generally vacuous but at least there's enough space and persistance of thread that it's possible to have something of an intellectual discussion.

Many thanks for the post, and the link which eventually led me to this, in which Martin Crawford also appears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM

which also explains why both old (reliant on intensive manual labour) and modern farming methods (almost entirely reliant on oil) are unsustainable in the long term.

Thank you, thank you. That Bertrand Russel link is simultaneously one of the funniest and most poignant things i've read in quite a while.

Always seemed odd, this keep everyone so busy working (and consuming), they won't have the time or the inclination to question the reason they're spending so much of their time working.

And your observation about smart people having free time, links into this recent article about Peter Higgs (of Higgs Boson fame) saying "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964." (http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-b...)

Thanks, i was using this: http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ in a similar fashion to described in here: http://box.matto.nl/dnsadblok.html but will look into this one as well.

I'm not sure how qualified i am to answer this post, when i got approached by google i didn't actually reply because i'm 99% sure i wouldn't even have got to a first phone interview so your way ahead of me in employability already.

But i've had enough canned responses and no responses to job applications or redundancies from startups going tits up, failed promotions or the right thing said at the wrong time and vice versa to suggest the following: a) Never ever take rejection personally, learn what you can from it but definitely don't beat yourself up over it. I know it's easy to say but in the first place it's obviously downright unhelpful, in the second, there's just so many ways from the apparently sensible, to the outright stupid, people come up with to reject you it's unfunny. There's probably a good reason half the time you get no feedback at all. A number of factors are out of your control. A number of them involve prejudice and herdthink. A number of them involve people making mistakes, politics, or having bad days, asking the wrong questions or just not happening to ask the right question that would make you shine over the other person. A lot of them, e.g. they found someone better, don't even involve you not being good enough to do the job anyway or are just luck, taking a path through domain A rather than domain B, not having buzzword X on your CV when your otherwise excellent CV got binned by someone non-technical in HR.

b) At the risk of getting too metaphysical, quite often it's very difficult to know what the job's actually like until you've started it anyway. So the fact you didn't get it might not be as big a deal as you think (putting to one side your current one sounds far from ideal).

Obviously a lot of these are mistakes you wouldn't expect a decent employer, e.g. Google to make, so the fact you got to a final stage interview with them must put you in the top small fraction of the population anyway so don't take that for granted. And on the flip side, given the fact Google have just come to the conclusion that great exam grades don't necessarily mean great people [sure this popped up on HN recently] just shows how random it can be.

c) Obviously farm your cv around as much as possible to friends, other people in the industry on here etc. for feedback. Hone your technique. Don't give up on google, i gather a lot of people fail on first attempt but get jobs after reapplying later on.

d) Applying for jobs, always reminds me of going through school/college/university. Loads of my friends dropped out at various points, got labelled stupid, unemployable etc. etc. but have since gone on to get one (or more) degrees, MBAs, very highly paid and/or very technical jobs or possibly average jobs that they are just really happy in. The one thing that unites them is that they didn't give up even if when things seemed pretty hopeless and then took one (sometimes very small) step at a time.

Good Luck.

As an aside, obviously your current work situation with long hours isn't helping. I'm assume you have to be aware of the general consensus (mythical man month, agile/xp, amongst many) about how counterproductive repeatedly working long hours is. I'm not sure i'd necessarily go as far as quitting if it's possible to salvage the current job with more sensible hours, a break, go part time etc. or even just work contracted or sensible hours and make them fire you. Though often in these cases it can be the person themselves contributing to the pressure, through fear of failure, perfectionism or just taking onboard other people's monkeys (One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey) and they find kicking back and just letting some stuff fail actually works out better in the long run.

On a slightly related note, i used to ask at interviews, "What was the worst mistake you've ever made?".

I found out later when stopped by the (UK) police once, that their "Have you ever been in trouble with the police before?" is a similar one. After i answered it pretty dismissively, he said "It's amazing what some people will tell you".

Upvote to the top replier for this anecdote, which i'll keep for special occasions: > "[A guy in charge] said the military didn’t need to reinforce the spots that had bullet holes. They needed to reinforce the spots that didn’t have bullet holes."

"They need to dial it back some."

I had the same thought about Glastonbury, when they were talking about not running it a few years back, because it had got too unwieldy and a lot of the regular goers were complaining it had sold out and become too big.

As you suggest, if you could split the festival (and the crowds) in two and have one festival cover all the larger (Lady Gaga, Oasis, Rolling Stones...) or more mainstream/hyped acts along with the people who primarily aren't interested in the more obscure bands/experiences to be had away from the main stages, that would then leave the rest of the festival to the regulars who want to wonder around the green/healing fields and see all the lesser known (but often better/more interesting) bands.

I'm not sure how the logistics (or planning) would pan out given that i suspect the majority of money the festival forks out are for the bigger acts. But if they were to run these two festivals in consecutive weeks perhaps the economies of that would make it more viable.

Fortunately Glastonbury has managed to stay resolutely non-corporate, unlike most of the larger UK music festivals (V, Reading, Leeds etc.) and still manage to host a shedload of really good bands across the fame/size spectrum.

But maybe, in a similar fasion, if SXSW were to split and leave the corporate shilling to the mainstream crowd/event, maybe the other half of the festival could return to more how it was, discovering new music with people who care about new music and not having to queue for ages for the privilege?

I still find it slightly bemusing, that 2.5 billion people lack access to any sanitation [1], but only 1 billion lack electricity and access to a mobile phone, especially given that it's estimated that 700,000 children die every year through lack of access to sanitation alone before you consider all the other negative effects [2].

Obviously we've the luxury of taking both for granted, but given the choice, how many people on here would pick the phone over the toilet?

And whilst a lot of us in the west, complain quite vocally about the 1% who own something like 46% of the world's wealth, to the 2.5 billion that don't have sanitation, we might as well be the 1%.

[1] http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/25/more-people-have-cell-ph... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/girish-menon/lack-of-toilets...