brianclements

This concept really resonates with me in many ways. I like to also think of the mind/body problem in the same way. Physical processes in the universe construct the brain, and while in a different form, the same algorithms, patterns, math, emergence form consciousness and the mind. These artificial walls of difference/understanding/categorization only hinder our ability to understand the true nature of things.

Most of these seem to just be general Vim suggestions that work in any language, but they aren't bad.

The real lubricant for Python and Vim for me has been control over virtual environments. I've hacked on a popular plugin that allows Virtualenv inheritance from the terminal and relative Virtualenv directory support among other things.[1] The original author didn't incorporate all my changes, so I've sort of kept the fork lingering around. But try out the original as well.[2]

[1]https://github.com/brianclements/vim-virtualenv

[2]https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-virtualenv

The poll data can be found here[1]

[1] http://www.marketplace.org/sites/default/files/marketplacepo...

I have 2 stages of news reading: The first is discovery, the second is digestion.

I've used Feedly as a backend ever since Google reader went offline to keep my lengthy RSS library usable, but never ever use the web interface, which this product reminds me of. It's too overwhelming to have everything there all at once. 100's of hours of reading starring at me all at once. Instead, I prefer to use android widgets across my various devices to display random snippets from across various categories which catch my eye over the many times daily I open up my phone. That's my discovery and selection method.

When it comes to digestion, I will sometimes read it in pocket or some other reading app on my device to optimize that experience, but curiously am compelled to send it back to my computer for social media sharing and/or saving/bookmarking/note-taking.

So I guess for my obscure usage pattern, having a type of dashboard or headline section that shows you LESS, perhaps using some type of popularity or personal preference metric would be a much preferable main interface. Keep feeding me more once I reed it, but it stresses me out to see LISTS and LISTS of stuff to read that I might be missing out on and don't have time to read!

Batteries, sure, but solar leasing was the big idea that helped alleviate the upfront cost barrier of the panels themselves.[1]

[1] http://www.solarcity.com/residential/affordable-solar-lease

Supply and demand only influences prices when there is actual competition out there.

I'm bracing myself too for the inevitable Tesla battery revolution and see how power companies handle the competition. Municipal utilities are very dusty parts of industry and local law; desperately needs a shake-up.

How do you reconcile the greater incentive for efficiency and distributed generation vs city profit motives?

While in theory, I agree that this could really give underdogs a way to crowd-fund against well funded adversaries, I think in practice, the added obstacle of needing to organize will always give singular entities that are already wealthy the upper hand to jump in with large sums of money and turn the tables. This is exactly what has happened with the Citizens United ruling. In theory, it gives everyone equal chance, but that's assuming that wealth and prosperity and the ability or organize is equal amongst all interested parties. And that is turning out to be very far from the truth.

There was a story within the past year or two I remember that was in a similar vein: where the hackers were able to obtain some address info from Apple support, which led to CC info from Amazon tech support, which led to interception of the users phone number and then bypassing of 2FA, which led to primary email takeover. I felt then, as I do now, that there should be a standardized process for identifying user information across all companies that doesn't allow for this patchwork gathering of info and incorporates a type of 2FA.

I remembered this thought again recently when dealing with major banks over the phone. All I needed to identify who I am was confirmation of my home address, and last 4 digits of my social. That is hardly secure! A single data breach for SSN, cross referencing an email to social media or DNS if you don't use private registration and boom, you can pretend to be me as far as some banks are concerned.

The SSN is the most abused number in the ID world. It's a de-facto federal ID number and it's simply not meant for the task. Everyone gets all upidy about having some type of federal ID number whenever I mention it, but I feel like some type of public key cryptographic federal ID number plus cross-signing, changeable password, AND a 2+FA should be used to truly identify who you are.

I'll add too that I think the palm pre was the best form factor I've ever had: small, physical keyboard, yet gives me the full screen look and sleekness. And android still has yet to match it's universal search on type feature.

Same phone, same story. The loss of a physical keyboard on my device removed the "input" use of it. Now it's really just voice and ready-only features. If there are websites I find or any other "work" that needs to be done I just forward it onto my computer and do it there.

For knowledge and facts, I mostly agree. I would add that doing your own research is what you do while attempting method 3 and get stuck. But I think the article, and my original point, was about subject area wisdom. The larger lessons behind past failures, and the stuff that can save you unnecessary detours. There is much value in digging into a problem for a long time; you really do own it. But some things are just a waste of time to learn that way, and are better primed with the guidance of someone who can present that collective wisdom to you in a way in which you understand.

The only ways people learn important lessons from the past is by 1) being taught them by someone willing to teach it 2) overhearing someone else being taught it, or 3) reinventing the wheel and learning it yourself.

If 1 and 2 aren't happening, then you can't blame people for resorting to method 3. Perhaps some blame should go to teachers/curriculum, but bagging on people for what they don't know only creates frustration, not progress.

An example from the music world. I've taught the same "wisdom" about voice leading, what it is and why we like to use it, to both AP music theory students in high school as well as middle school band students learning to improvise. You can bet I change my analogies and vernacular to match their knowledge, but they've both been exposed to the concept and have some core vocabulary to research it further if they like.

Curious what you think about why boards aren't incentivized to reign in CEO salaries. Is it because they all sit on each other boards?

> But in all these words he never gets around to explaining how as President he would actually make the reform happen, other than saying it'd be his "first priority" and (twice) that he would "work with Congress."

That's about as exact as any politician gets on the campaign trail. They say no plan survives enemy contact? I'd include that no path to achieving a campaign promise survives the election. By swear-in time, a large chunk of congress is brand new and it's an entirely different game of chess when you actually get in there.

> Lessig is such a paradox to me. His heart's in the right place, he's clearly earnest, and he's managed to accomplish some remarkable things, like Creative Commons. But every time he wades into electoral politics he does so in ways that are so desperately naïve that they'd be funny, if the stakes weren't so high. It's Mr. Bean Goes To Washington.

If running a country was based solely on the ability to understand complex problems and provide novel solutions, I'd say Lessig is a top candidate among US citizens to run our country. But unfortunately, before any of that gets to happen, someone needs to get elected. And you must first play The Game before you can get a crack at getting something positive done. And therein lies the problem. How can one play the a game that runs counter to the fiber of their being? Yes he's running, but he is not playing The Game.

What I find incredibly interesting about the Uber story is that it seems to be a sped up history of the relationship between workers, unions, and customers in the market place. At first Uber drivers jumped at the chance to make "extra cash", not a career, out of their work. Then, somewhere (what do you think was the turning point?) this transformed into a viable job alternative. The workers wanted more pay, and thus, rights. We then have the current legal discussion regarding their independent contractor status. Now, we have them wanting raises in pay and the ability to get tips. I don't see how that cost won't be passed down to consumers. But somehow this picture transformed from "extra cash" into a viable job alternative. How do you think that occurred? People have done similar things with selling stuff on ebay, but I don't see them unionizing. Is it because it's different when it involves human interaction?

Side note: If we're learning anything about tipping from the minimum wage battles in restaurants, it's that it's probably cheaper for Uber to allow tipping.

Your experience point by point matches my own, the customer service feels exactly how it should. The premium product I need from Amex isn't the lounges and the prestige, just a credit card company that has my back and isn't trying to avoid me when I need to contact them.

Let me also note that since Amex has become a commercial bank, they offer a FDIC insured savings account[1] at an extremely competitive .9% APY. That was the highest I could find a couple years ago when I started looking. That product too, to me, feels very premium.

[1]https://personalsavings.americanexpress.com

I uninstalled flash completely from all my systems upon the last major vulnerability news. My biggest loss? No videos in Facebook, which seems to have been fixed recently anyway. I'm chillin.

Sometimes I get really excited when, in rare circumstances, the bottom line is suddenly tied directly to the quality of a product, and not just the roll-out from the sellers PR machine. Frankly, I didn't expect online reviews to have that much of an effect, but it feels so good to have the money do the talking in this case.

IMO, this is what Thomas Jefferson's "periodic rebellion" looks like in the 21st century.

For me, it's simply because it's been incredibly easy to swap out broken parts as they come and go. I don't have extreme performance needs with my main machine, and various spare computer parts always find their way into my life, so it's been very cheap to maintain from the beginning, and I don't have worries about running it into the ground.

Laptops and other portables are harder in this regard, especially regarding batteries and intense usage. Other then that, I really don't see how adding keyboard/mouse/screens couldn't do the same thing though really. In fact my plan is to masquerade a laptop as my main desktop computer to save space and use less electricity. It will have no other purpose then to be my "desktop" as I have another laptop better suited for portability and battery life. Built-in power backup for my main rig is a plus though!

Meta: I didn't know if that was an option technically on your end, but my two cents is that should be default behavior for this repost experiment.

I was asked to repost this as part of the new HN reposting experiments. Original located here[1], thought it was a good original comment and wanted to carry it over.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10375093

Business's are amoral entities, designed with just a single charter: to increase the bottom line for it's majority stakeholders. Nothing about that is inherently democratic or good for their customers, for the environment, for the nation that company occupies, for anyone not in the company, or even for any one of their bottom tier employees by default. Any adoption of altruistic practices are either part of the companies branding and therefor good for business, or are core beliefs held by the majority stakeholders and are adopted by force. This also works for adoption of not so altruistic practices as well, and we shouldn't leave it up to chance.

If anything, corporate structure creates a multiplier effect on the influence of single humans or small groups of humans thereby corrupting the one-person one-vote intent of democracy. While I agree with the philosophical kernel of the Supreme Court's citizens united ruling that money is free speech, just like many things, at large scale, it has unintended side effects that need to be thwarted by campaign finance reform so that some people don't have MORE free speech then others.

That covers pretty succinctly a big chunk of a very complex problem. Thanks for that.

That's another great point, the more expensive house might not be because of size, but because of the strengthening bind between where you live and what that means for your chances at upward mobility.

So many people live paycheck to paycheck that saving is just this intangible concept that "wealthier" people do. No one they know saves, no one taught them to save growing up, and even if they tried, they probably couldn't. Cost of living has outmatched wage growth; it's a mess.

On the personal responsibility side of it though, I'm willing to bet that over recent decades, another thing that has also inflated is many peoples "minimum standard of living". I've seen people who, for probably very cathartic reasons, will make very poor spending choices on food, electronics, gas guzzling cars and other things instead of plan for items that move their lives forward.

And the sad part is that everyones minimum standard of living SHOULD be going up, we all SHOULD be living better then our previous generation. But the actions of many in the governance tier of our society have chosen otherwise for us.

I've actually moved all my bookmarks from Firefox to Workflowy recently (and pop it open in the side-bar). That way they live where I actually USE the information: in some type of context in a project. This has forced me to do something with my bookmarks and delete the ones I don't need instead of just store them.

This reminds me a bit of Lee Smolin's book "The Trouble with Physics". In it he defines a concept about how innovation happens. He defines revolutionaries into two categories: craftsmen, and seers. Craftsmen take current constructs and raise the bar (his example: Newton), where seers create completely new constructs that involve more imagination (his example: Einstein).

Jumping of his idea, I would say large institutions (business, academia) have a bias toward creating craftsman, and thus the point in this article that while it takes all kinds to innovate, sometimes it takes seers to really stir the pot up.

Like many subjects in recent times (last 50 years or so), they've gotten really entrenched and dusty because they're afraid to go beyond their well defined borders (and then get more difficult to teach and make industry out of).

IHO, from a bigger anthropological viewpoint, philosophy and religion are extremely rich areas of idea prototyping. They came first. They are based on intuition and are good-faith efforts to understand our world. Science came later and was much better at it. What needs to happen culturally is that people need to all be philosophers, they need to have a reverence toward the sacred and toward the cultures that hold it dear. However, they can't let religion, or philosophy, prematurely cut off in their minds what the realm of science can embody. There are long lists of famous scientists that did this, and even they were proven too quick to place arbitrary limits on science and prescribe "everything else" as religion, or metaphysics.

To me, philosophy/religion/metaphysics are all "pre-physics" in a way. Intuitions without proofs...yet. The intuitions of many individuals, over many centuries, however seemingly incorrect scientifically, aren't completely worthless. It's like saying art is worthless. They may not explain mechanically how something behaves, but they offer insight and new ways of thinking, which are really at the core of how to truly understand something difficult.

For me it was:

1. a similar interface across all platforms with similar features and behavior (android vs desktop text editing is a very different experience)

2. tagging/enhanced search

3. hyperlinks to other nodes and the Internet. This is incredibly powerful to me for nodes that are relevant in multiple contexts. You can put copy/paste the URL of any node into any other and viola, workflowy symlinks!

4. FOCUS. I have ~15k lines of notes in workfowy, but am still able to "zoom in" and focus on the content of just one note. That is super powerful for my productivity. A text editor with 16 spaces of indent and squished text to the right just does not do that for me. In fact, that will probably stress me out more.