TLA+ and the like could help here. You model the system, and run a simulation to see if it hits a failure state.
1,299 karma · joined December 16, 2013
I’ve been meaning to learn emacs for almost 20 years at this point. This was the first time I’ve really understood the core data structures around emacs.
Both junk food and pornography hijack the reward center of your brain. Whereas real food and sex are both normal, healthy things.
Basically: eat boring food. I live in the USA but I grew up in Australia. The USA is big on highly rewarding food. Australia is too, but not to the level the USA is.
Whenever I go back to Australia, I will always lose 5-10 pounds without changing anything about my diet. It’s just less rewarding to our cave man brain.
When I come back to the USA, the weight comes back just as quick as it comes off.
Killing random components can be useful, maybe not like this though.
I don’t know how to scale something like that to a global scale. A global audience have hugely different values.
> I very frequently get the question: "What's going to change in the next 10 years?" And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: "What's not going to change in the next 10 years?" And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection.
> It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, "Jeff, I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher." "I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly." Impossible.
https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/20-years-ago-jeff-bezos-said-...
Systems Thinking. It helps you understand how components interact to form a system, and how to change it. Books:
- The Goal: https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...
- Thinking in Systems: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp...
Pertinent for 2023, learn about costs. If you're an engineer, understand how much the services you're responsible for are costing. How can you reduce that cost? Can you optimize costs enough to save your monthly salary?
The business side is figuring out a revenue stream. Choosing ads constrains your business models. But there may not be viable alternatives.
The social problems are trickier. Network effects, ensuring bad submissions are removed, etc. are all tricky problems in their own right.
We saw increases in products such as lumber, delays in deliveries, and other things. These are all indicators to show increased demand without increased supply.
If companies are selling goods and services, and more money is chasing those goods and services, why wouldn’t companies make record profits?
Here’s the kicker, these companies have made record profits from a number perspective, but the currency is devalued. So in Real value, these companies have made much less profit than they think.
The e-bike goes up to 25mph but the acceleration is poor, due to the 750W (1hp) motor.
My dream commuter is a dual suspension, 2-3kW motor, under 150lb, and detachable battery. I’ve been tempted to build my own if the parts were easy to find.
Revenue has increased 6% YoY. Average revenue per User is down to $3.11 Q3 2022, from $3.49 Q3 2021.
Net loss is $360m Q3 2022, from $72m Q3 2021. $155m of that was due to restructuring.
Where does Snap go from here?
EDIT: I think this is the one: https://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/engelberg/pub/portfo...
https://miro.medium.com/max/786/1*Q-DyKa25eozOeMdN5YQONA.png
Monetary policy and stimulus during COVID caused a currency devaluation. If nothing else changes, the value of assets should increase, relative to a currency.
The same thing happened with monetary policy in March 2022. Interest rates went up, stocks went down.
I'm curious what others think.
IMO service oriented architectures should be adopted when your engineering organisation has gotten too large to manage a monolith.
The service interface generally can’t be modified after it’s available. You can do the same with a monolith but it’s harder to enforce.
Low blood sugar? I’ll be in a negative mood, both at myself and others. I eat and it goes away.
Stressed? I’ll want to close off and do something mindlessly. I go exercise, and the desire to be productive/be social comes back.
Probably TMI, but I have to take synthetic thyroid. I was taking too much when I started. As a result, my thought patterns were very anxious and debilitating. Once I realised how it was impacting me I reduced the dose and I went back to my usual self.
That isn’t to say that negative self talk is caused purely by the above. Breaking judgemental thought loops using CBT is important!
Are there other places where power generation is going to be a constraint in the future? Any chance us-east-1 won’t have enough juice for all the data centers?
Back when Heroku first arrived, PaaS was a new idea. It was available ~2009, well before services like AWS Lambda existed.
This was such a paradigm shift that no one knew what to think of it. It takes time to build trust around such a big shift. The best way to do this is to offer to try it for free. Hence, the Free Tier.
People tried it, and were blown away by how easy it was to build services. It was so much easier than managing hosts directly. Fast forward to today. Engineers are generally comfortable with higher-level services. They know what to expect.
So the free tier is used as as part of the funnel to onboard new customers. Back in 2010, that funnel had a /lot/ of customers going in! Here in 2022, that funnel may be basically zero. On top of that, the free tier costs heroku to run.
Cutting off the free tier is in Heroku's best interest. It saves them money and allows them to focus on their current customers. But it does mean that there's no growth in the product any more, unless they offer something new.
For reference (and for other great laws): https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws#goodharts-law
> Is losing weight an important health goal?
I would argue having that as a goal sets you up for failure. You can lose weight a bunch of different ways, most of them probably aren’t in service to your actual goal.
Instead, keep asking yourself “why” do you have a specific goal to get at the root cause. This is sometimes called the “5 whys”
eg:
- why do I want to lose weight? To be physically attractive
- why do I want to be physically attractive? So others find me attractive
- why do I want others to find me attractive? Because I want to have more physical relationships
You could go another way:
- why do I want to lose weight? To feel good about myself.
- why don’t you feel good about yourself? Because, uhh, maybe it’s not about the weight?
- why don’t you know why you feel bad? I don’t know! Let me find out.
“Losing weight” is a catch-all for solving some underlying issue most of the time. Figure that out and work toward a solution.
I’m curious what the core argument is from these books. Could you tell me more?
Now I’m being a lot more deliberate about my choices in food, exercise, etc. the weight is slowly, but consistently disappearing.
I’m finally feeling like myself again. My overall mood is better and I’m not compensating with food that I don’t need.