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It doesn’t of course, but it seems reasonable to hope that people (particularly “smart” people) would try and support arguments/suggestions with data.

Confirm results through orthogonal means where possible.

If it comes to it write two solutions (possibly one optimized, one not) that solve the same problem in different ways, and confirm the results against each other.

Don’t count on just picking good edge cases.

I love discrete math, it seems so much cleaner in general. I wish there were more reformulations of calculus, other numerical methods into discrete maths.

I think Knuth’s concrete mathematics might have been an attempt at this, but I’ve never found time to dig into it in depth. Perhaps I should try again...

But you generally can’t get a degree in it (I don’t believe I’ve seen one). But wow, a discrete mathematics undergrad degree sounds like a lot of fun.

In my experience the 12inch Macbook is not an Air replacement. The CPU is super-slow, and the keyboard is very poor (maybe I just got a bad one I don’t know... but I find it almost useless).

I think this is a neat idea. I also think I would not want to touch this code base. Then again, I rarely want to touch the relatively simple messy bash scripts I write either.

I agree, I personally can justify moving to a new shell. Bash is horrific to script in, compared to most everything else. It’s sole advantage for me is that it’s almost literally the default everywhere.

I think globally, most societies are follow this trend. My hope would be that we find a way through it. In part, the solution might be more even distribution of the benefits of automation. Less concentration of wealth, lowered cost of living or support which allows both parents to take time off work for the first few grads of their children’s lives.

Having two kids, the answer feels really obvious to me, but I’d love to see data supporting any viewpoint.

Raising multiple children in western society is really hard. In many (most?) cases you need to move away from family (parents) so there’s limited support from the community or family. There’s limited childcare available, and on top of that kids are expensive. Often both partners are working (or want to get back to work as soon as possible). So if you can satisfy your procreative desires with one child, you just do that.

Compare this to (totally unjust) prior social norms where people didn’t move as far as they do now. Meaning parents could help out. Where it was common to have one non-working partner (so more available time to look after kids).

We’ve created a modern society where raising one child is super-stressful. Why would any sane person have two? I predict that as more societies transform toward the western model we’ll see a massive population decline.

True, but their competence isn’t is science based startups. In all honesty I think that makes them in general gravitate to Bio tech plays which involve a lot of traditional Tech. The thesis is easier, but much less likely to result in high reward.

Nope, that’s not what they do in my experience. When a VC says they “invest in the team” what they generally mean is has the team already had a successful venture. Either that or, we’re they referred by a friend, or did they went to a university they like.

They rarely dig into how the background of the team and their ability to deal with unforeseen problems. That is, in my experience.

And here’s my take on how this will play out...

Tech investors are almost totally unequiped to do the necessary DD. They either therefore go for plays that are easy to understand, largely computational exercises or in the rare cases they do go for something higher risk, they back something crazy (e.g. Theranos) because they don’t do good DD.

Getting an “expert” to vet the play rarely works. Because tech VCs don’t know how to choose good experts.

So most of (all?) these plays will ultimately fail. It won’t matter much to seed round investors though, because they’ll take 10 years to fail and they will likely have at least partially exited by then...

Interesting, do you have any search terms I could use to google for the semiconductor devices (I’ll try myself, but if you have a jumping off point that would be helpful).

Don’t you need SPDC to get entangled photons anyway?

If you have a link to a good study, I would be interested in reading.

Regarding beard, curiously enough I’ve just started using a bread maker. Takes 5mins to setup in the evening and can be timed to have the bread ready when you wake up, recommend.

Does education work, in terms of improving health? Does it work better than regulation?

I guess there should be data on this (in relation to tobacco/ alcohol).

My personal biases tell me that people don’t have great self control. Shifting social norms, such that over-consumption is less socially acceptable might help. But that’s hard to do (and something different than education).

It doesn’t really try to mimic the way humans learn and evolve...

The article is well written and interesting.

The kit looks fun, but I don’t think it as (easily) be used to replicate this work, it’s just too different.

The issues mentioned in the article also apply.

They’ve cured color blindness with gene therapies already. It’s likely possible that you could add receptors for more wavelengths.

It just doesn’t seem to be commercially viable (colorblind-ness therapy was never persued because risk/reward/commercial aspects don’t work out IIRC).

Personally I somehow doubt this (in this case).

The disease effects a small number of people (1 in 4000), and doesn’t cause complete blindness in all those effected.

It’s delivered in a viral vector, kind of not so easy to do yourselves I’d guess. Probably the easiest way would be to get hold of some and culture the virus yourself? Then just make as much as you want.

Still injecting something made without strict QC into your eye might not be so appealing.

The story is about the pricing, but the drug itself was more interesting to me:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voretigene_neparvovec

It’s a gene therapy delivered in a viral vector. They inject it (into your eye which much be fun). It appears to be one of the first approved gene therapies.

Interesting, you view the list as an amusing take on things to avoid.

I view it as sport to keep me going at the corrupt, horrifically depressing companies I’ve had to work at, and have been unable to escape.

Obviously fine when there’s a reason. Drives me crazy when there isn’t.

For example, I’ve been asked to join a meeting (online), I join, organizer is 10mins late, spends another 5mins trying to get the conferencing system working. At this point, I’m generally super annoyed. As a programmer, there’s not much of value I can do with that 15mins. I’ve also lost another 5mins because I’ve made sure to log in early so I don’t keep you waiting. I do find it very disrespectful.

Right, but you can certainly grab a couple of people and go for coffee. Or chat on Slack, or email.

It’s just having to explicitly set up a meeting means something has gone wrong in my opinion.

Personally, I think if you’ve reached a point where consensus hasn’t formed naturally in some other venue then it is kind of a failure.

Trying to hash thing out in a meeting is ok as a last resort, but it seems less than ideal. Particularly when people often need time to form coherent ideas.

Group meeting with lots of presentations? Just sounds like my idea of hell really. I’d much prefer to read some notes on a subject and then later sit down with someone if I need to go into more detail.

The first thing I want to say when I go into a group meeting is “how did we fail”.

If people are communicating well, slack, grabbing coffee, email then group meeting seem unimportant. When you need to setup a meeting, in particular to discuss a specific issue, it feels like something has gone wrong that we’re all not well aligned already.

Ultimately I feel like the payday comes when you’ve bought something you actually want. Prices of all things can go up and down.

If you goal was to buy a house and house prices suddenly increase, even after you cashed out your bitcoin, you might still be disappointed.

You can open a transferwise account without going to Estonia. Opening a UK company is easy, taxation seems not so easy. How do you handle taxation, what advise were you given? Accountant of my UK company basically suggested I close down my company when I became non-resident, but that might just be because they didn’t know how to handle international business.

You appear to be correct as far as I can tell. From what I’ve heard the tax situation is a pain, I believe the company becomes non-tax resident. At least that’s what the accountant I talked to told me.

Having zero corporation tax on non-distributed fund in Estonia also seems nice.

Estonian e-residency lets you create an Estonian company.

It’s useful to some people to be able to create a company not tied to a particular location. For example, UK citizens generally can’t operate a UK company if they are not resident in the UK.

So, if you’re a digital nomad type, you’re scratching around to find a jurisdiction where you can run your company and moving around.

There are a few options. But Estonia is in the EU, the tax situation seems reasonable and they are positively welcoming. So, this is one problem that was solved.

I guess they could have just made it easier to start companies, without the e-residency. But being tied into the same ID system seems to make managing the company easier.