arpyzo

I was under the impression that the surprise is that their authoritarian political system doesn't stifle the conditions required for this level of innovation.

My observations suggest that this applies far more to lower performing employees than higher performing ones since the barrier to change jobs is lower for top tier talent.

In effect this means that while companies that give paltry pay bumps that don't keep up with the market may successfully hold on to lower performing employees, they'll be continually churning through top performers.

The gist of this blog post seems to simply be that C++ has a lot of momentum.

I assume the board needs to approve this. What is their motivation for doing so?

On the surface this seems like a terrific idea for the reasons listed in the article, but my experience has been that SSM is not as nearly reliable as SSH.

A full disk is enough to prevent SSM access, whereas SSH will still let you in.

Being a renter has afforded me many memorably terrible experiences. For example, having no heat for multiple days in the middle of winter with sub-zero temperatures because the management company didn't have their act together. I'll be damned if I ever rent again regardless of financial incentives.

What about the quality of practice? I'm using quality very broadly here to include things like: the content of the practice, good spaced repetition, focus, etc. Perhaps 10k hours of mediocre practice doesn't get you far, but 5k hours of high quality practice does?

No mention of arguably illegal browser bundling and anti-competitive tactics by Microsoft, Apple, and Google to push their own browsers over Firefox:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3674858/mozilla-apple-...

No mention of Google's sabotage of its web properties' operation and performance on Firefox:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

edit: grammar

If ROI is more interesting then why not a comparison with what the ROI of other individuals might have been had they had a starting investment?

Also, why should ROI be most interesting? Is money all we care about? Why is it that we have money?

"Nothing could be done about the muted sound. It’s like hearing a drum roll — the ball charging down the lane — with no crashing cymbal at the end. That crescendo and climax, Mills insists, is a visceral part “of the experience of smashing pins with a heavy ball.”

I haven't tried the strings yet, but the sounds of bowling are a big deal to me. Just walking into a bowling alley and hearing the sounds of pins being hit makes me feel good, and puts my in the right frame of mind. Without the crash, I feel like bowling would feel empty to me.

I could do without a significant amount of what constitutes "innovation" in the US.

From the article: "software is still pretty dumb". I would prefer my software remain dumb. Every time technology is made to be "smart", it seems to get much worse.

I agree, and I wonder if we all "wasted" more time, if we would be healthier and happier. Perhaps that would make us more productive during the time we weren't "wasting". Paradoxically, it might even be a net gain in aggregate productivity.

There's some truth here, but this is a one-sided view. Let's turn the tables on this:

Engineers see CEOs as entitled, mediocre performers.

Furthermore, the "solution" these mediocre CEOs are espousing seems to simply be a version "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

Why should there be a ceiling on this at all? Just because someone makes more money does not mean it should be acceptable to abuse their time in the workplace. Most people earn high incomes, not because they signed up to meet arbitrary demands, but because they invested in education and training, and/or agreed to take on a high level of responsibility.

I second this. I've performed many jobs around my house, and while I don't regret any of them, there are many I would never do again.

This kind of work has turned out, in almost all cases, to be far more difficult and time consuming than I expected.

It helps me to have my plans/goals written down. When life gets complex and overwhelming I refer to them to remind myself what's important to me and therefore what I should prioritize. When I get off course, they guide me back.

I kept them simple and achievable. For example "lift weights 3 times a week".

Next step was to pick one at a time and schedule them. For example "MWF right after work". This helps make them a habit instead of a constant battle with your willpower.

Don't punish yourself for getting off track. Just get back to it. Eventually it will become part of who you are and you'll rarely get off track.

Create the habit. Results will follow.

Between atoms and the void (which is not even a thing science recognizes), there is a potentially infinite amount of knowledge yet to be discovered. I use the word "infinite" literally here. Not only that, but it's possible some aspects of the universe and existence are undiscoverable by humans.

Who is to say that purpose cannot exist within this? It is unknown and possibly unknowable.

I believe the author has drawn the wrong lessons from science.

As others have pointed out, people don't care about these things. Either at all, or simply not enough for forgo the value they get from social media.

Perhaps the question you're really trying to ask is why people don't place a greater value on these things?

Disappointingly little discussion in the article about the moral and ethical problems associated with the US military. If military service were simply about "defending freedom", I suspect there would not be a recruiting problem.

While it feels to me like US military service may exist for the purpose of "defending freedom", it's mostly utilized for defending and promoting the interests of the wealthy. As others have mentioned, this has been the case for a long time, but there is a far broader understanding of this now than in decades past.

Who wants to sign up to put their life, or the life of a loved one at risk for the purpose of making someone else wealthier? It's completely absurd.

Legacy admissions are not just a few spots. They constitute a high percentage of admissions. I've seen estimates ranging from 10% to 35%.

If you agree with this decision on the grounds of supporting meritocracy, consider that the real travesty with regards to meritocracy in college admissions are legacy admissions.

I don't understand why the prevailing opinion is that it's acceptable for software development to be complex. It's simply the nature of the beast! Not infrastructure though. Infrastructure should be simple because...?

Perhaps the reason your organization is only deploying once a month is the same reason it takes it a month to make simple code changes, which is because you haven't hired sufficiently capable engineers, and not because you're missing some magic.

edited: grammatical error

Tacoma has/is going through quite a renaissance and has become IMHO a pretty nice place to live.

Indeed, our new unelected, unaccountable leader of AI technology Sam Altman, who has no serious conflicts of interest, will be that arbiter. I feel safe already. /s

San Francisco's problems are the predictable result of inequality that's completely out of control. All US cities suffer the same problems as SF, and the only difference between them is a matter of degree.

The wealthy and powerful that created this problem would like to solve it while simultaneously continuing to exasperate it. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this will never work. At best, a temporary, politically palatable status quo can be achieved which is basically what US cities which are considered functional have.

San Francisco may recover or it might become the next Detroit. To some extent it doesn’t matter because without fundamental systemic changes it’s only a matter of time before the next city suffers the same fate.

I'm roughly your age and I still play regularly, but how I play has changed quite a bit:

- I spend a lot less time playing than in years past.

- I play the whole spectrum of retro to modern games depending on what mood I'm in.

- I do retro gaming entirely with emulators because I don't enjoy messing with old hardware.

- I've significantly narrowed the games that I play. Many retro games and even entire genres like 4x just aren't fun for me anymore.

- I ditch games quickly and start new ones when I'm not having fun.

- I'm happy to cheat (single player), or play on easier difficulty levels if that's what makes a game fun for me.

If you have a yearning to play video games, go for it, but do it with some thought.

- Edited for formatting

Would scanning packages be a perfect job for an AI?

edited for clarity

My experience with western medicine has been very black and white. Either you're completely broken and it's so obvious what's wrong with you that you barely need a doctor, or you're partially broken in which case doctors know very little and rely on experience, murky clues, and their gut.

This made sense once I realized doctors know much less about the human body then they pretend to. Not only is our understanding of physical health far less "advanced" than advertised, but the system is far too complex for any one doctor to comprehend. Medicine is far from the only field in which this is the case.

Computers have become too complex for any one engineer to understand in full. Leadership has always had this quality. These are fairly obvious, but I wonder if most (all?) domains of life share this. Consider the recent discovery that the varnish used on Stradivarius violins gave them their amazing sound. Hundreds of years ago, this was almost certainly discovered through luck or intuition.

In contrast to the author, I find joy in this. Not only does it reveal boundless territory waiting to be explored and discovered, but it gives meaning and purpose to being human since no technology comes close, or perhaps will ever come close, to matching the extraordinary abilities of human intuition.

You're claiming people in conservative states have better quality of life? Do you have any evidence for this?