bgutierrez

I'm interested in hearing more of her perspective. Does she agree because she is a jewelers daughter and has a better view of the industry?

I know exactly what you mean. Then I worked at Barnes and Noble where we tore the covers off of mass markets that couldn't sell to send back to the publisher and discarded the rest of the book. Every now and then a decent book would go into this pile (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, once) but the vast majority of time it was harlequins and similar stuff that was churned out for indiscriminate tastes. Imagine whole garbage cans of this stuff. Stuff that would be replaced the following day and then thrown out the following month.

Sometimes books simply aren't worth the shelf space.

I eventually felt the same about a $50 guitar that I bought out of musiciansfriend catalogue when I was 16. Tuning pegs that wouldn't sit still, poorly aligned frets… the rosette was printed onto a piece of paper. It's hard to believe that something as beautiful as a musical instrument could be built so poorly.

I don't know gte910h's reasons, but I'm also curious to know how many executives are excellent poker players. Poker has elements of chance, betting, and partial-information that make it a great environment for exploring game theory and information theory. Optimal strategies have to have a solid mathematical foundation, but must still be flexible depending on opponent's experience and demeanor. Good players know when to fold and when to bet, even if it hurts to think about the risk. They have to become comfortable losing money occasionally, knowing that if they continue to make good decisions, they'll come out ahead in the long run.

Chess is perfect for a world where we make our decisions with full information in a deterministic environment. For the partially informative, stochastic world that we live in, I'll choose poker.

I agree that people are not rational and will fear the outliers and that the biggest barriers will be social. I'm hoping that there are very few glitches along the way, since we'll be safer if this happens. Most people feel confident about their own driving, but I think they also remember a lot of the close calls they've had.

I think—and hope—we'll be surprised at how quickly we acclimate to magic. Sure, we'll be completely freaked out by letting go of the steering wheel. Then we'll be irritated at how our car thought the leaves blowing across the road were an obstacle. Finally, we'll wonder how we ever survived our own driving and we'll mourn for those that didn't.

It doesn't need to be 100% error-free, it just needs to be on average way better than human drivers. Even if there are occasional major catastrophes (e.g., 1000 cars drive off a collapsed bridge) it will still be better than what we have now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...

All of the greatest under-achievers I've known were constantly told how smart they were by people with the best intentions, and they had experiences similar to yours.

There are probably a lot of talented engineers not in the top 1,000, but there are also a lot of non-talented engineers not in the top 1,000. I guess it's a reasonable cut-off. Thankfully it's not the only way to get into a great company.

Of course, the revolution actually started back in 1985, with The WELL and the idea that YOYOW (You Own Your Own Words.)

Thinking on such a long term scale is so weird that it seems hokey or even wildly eccentric at first glance. But crafting a message for generations beyond ourselves is too beautiful an undertaking to ignore.

Jason Shen said that voluntarily taking cold showers increased his discipline. Can you imagine a different experience if you chose cold showers instead of being forced to take them?

I don't feel like I've properly had a shower unless the shower has raised my core temperature, but I'm going to give this a try. The easiest life hacks are ones that don't require a time commitment and only minor changes in routine.

People will pay for instant gratification. There are movies in here that aren't available for instant play on Netflix.

Careful what you wish for.

Thanks for the tip. I'm slowly reading this aloud with my wife, and she's pretty distracted with Harry's flaws.

Thinking long term isn't the same as scaling a site up for occasional increased traffic. The vast majority of the time, the traffic is extremely light on this site and the server (and its network) is more than adequate.

For a long time I expected to marry someone that I met online, since I was meeting lots of friends that way. I finally found love at the bookstore I worked at.

Summary: So far, only the iPad has been an awesome enough e-reader to make Stephen Wolfram willing to release "A New Kind of Science" to be viewed on it.

It's a term used to scare people. There won't actually be a physical switch to kill the internet.

If anything, it will be the authority to disconnect portions of the net. Probably by asking ISPs to cooperate.

Trulia is one that's looking: http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qzZ9Vfwm&...

Trulia.com in San Francisco is hiring engineers who know PHP, Java, or system administration.

http://www.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?c=qzZ9Vfwm

I also live is SF. If you want a cheap bike, you must buy second-hand. My wife bought mine off a friend for $200 (discounted because of the friendship, but still: it happened.) A coworker of mine scored a bike for $40 after a conversation with someone that was riding a bike they didn't like. It's possible to find cheap bikes, you just have to be willing to buy something that may need some work.

The attitude of many cyclists in this city needs improvement, but there are lots of organizations in the city that do their best to help out new cyclists, like the Bicycle Coalition and the Bike Kitchen, and on Bike to Work Day you can find a lot of really helpful people.

I completely agree. They had something great going, and then got carried away with the theatrics.

I left school when I was 16 to do homeschool, which turned out to be nothing more than my parents buying me books when I asked for them and nothing more.

I did my GED and dropped out of college, so I think that I can relate to how you feel. There's a huge inferiority complex that comes from having less education than others. Filling in the gaps is difficult but I've found that whenever I fill something in, I've benefited pretty quickly. Lately I realized that I sucked at systems programming concepts, so I've been reading about that, which has been really helpful. I make a living as a programmer, but I have to continually be studying to try and fill in gaps before I'm hurt by lack of knowledge.

If someone can work through a discrete math textbook and do the exercises, I think they could get a lot out of it. Calculus has some important ideas, but I think the discrete math is much more relevant to every day programming. I took a course last year at my community college that used Discrete Mathematics with Applications, by Susanna S. Epp. I don't recall it requiring higher math than algebra, but it did require sharp thinking. Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science is probably a good textbook, but I haven't used it, so can't say anything about it.

Dr Tamami Nakano should monitor people playing Guitar Hero, and watch how infrequently they blink their eyes.

My middle school was willing to make us play frisbee dodgeball (with the expected results), and then spent millions tearing apart a couple of classrooms after some kids dropped mercury on the floor and stomped on it.

I think Phys. Ed. would be a good target level for danger in the classroom.

This isn't just for great speakers. It's how I'd like to live my life.

Steve Yegge turns wine into blog entries.

I did the diet for about a month while I was poor. This was a bad time to try it, since finding raw nuts and other things is difficult on a budget, even in San Francisco.

I lost weight, I was often hungry, and I couldn't stop craving meats and cheeses. When I looked at pictures of people that were also on the raw diet, they looked gaunt and unhealthy. So I decided it was all bullshit and gave it up.

The same month that TV stations began to stop broadcasting analog signals. I don't think it'll be long before Hulu is number two.

Same here. I couldn't fathom why Erlang would be that hot of a topic all of the sudden.