exogenousdata

Same. Only one. And they were a real multiplier.

Fair point. We should probably have some way to refer to US gov’t funded scientific orgs & their research/recommendations before vs after the 2nd Trump Administration.

Sadly the goal of vaccine-autism energy has largely become to destabilize western nation states. But I share the sentiment!

In THIS economy?!

If you want a deeper understanding of how rainbows work, this incredible video on the Veritasium channel is a delight!

https://youtu.be/24GfgNtnjXc

Apple wants to prove to investors that users are enabling their new “Apple Intelligence” feature. It should be labeled market manipulation.

As a 3rd anecdote, I used vim for 10 years as my primary editor and “shell”. Then 10 years ago I learned tmux and fell in love with its window multiplexing. Now I use vim strictly as an editor/splitter. But I use tmux to split my code from my repl window. And maintain multiple windows where I’m working on different projects.

Fear mongering was certainly not my intention. The simplest explanation for why this didn’t happen during President Trump’s first term was because the order was effective Oct 21st, 2020. Which was less than 2 weeks before President Biden won the popular & electoral vote.

I share your hope that the incoming Trump administration will uphold the usual norms of hiring & firing careers federal employees!

Historically you are correct that only around 4,000 employees of the US federal government are 'political hires' that the President can change/hire/fire. However in October 2020, Trump ordered Schedule F [0] that effectively increases the number of career bureaucrats that could be made by political appointment rather than by a competitive process. The Order was promptly rescinded by the Biden administration in Jan 2021. [1]

The Trump administration said that they believed Schedule F would increase the number of career positions to roughly 50,000 existing jobs. However many think tanks and union members believe that Schedule F could be interpreted much more broadly and could include well over 100,000 positions.

If the Trump administration revives the Schedule F order, it could mean very significant changes for many career bureaucrats.

[0] - https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-10-26/pdf/2020-2... [1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...

Agreed. However containers make maintenance much more difficult. A year after a container was deployed, it needs an update. And then you discover there are a set of deprecated libraries that need updating. It can get messy. Not sure any solution is perfect.

Simple answer: Jail

Any company that accesses/uses Personally Identifiable Information (PII) must register a “PII Czar” with the proper authorities. That person (or persons, depending on the size/scope of the PII data) can be held criminally liable in the event of a data breach.

If a jury finds that the PII Czar enacted the correct policies/procedures & took the right precautions, a jury could find them innocent. But if there was willful or negligent handling at the company, the PII Czar goes to jail.

In the US, one of the big lies told at the corporate level is that no one ever sees jail time because the regulators are too underfunded in comparison with large companies. What’s necessary is clear personal ownership of PII and criminal liability in the event of a data breach.

Martingale, baby!!!

I'm not sure it was like that. Back then they had scams. Postal scams, work-at-home scams, beauty product scams, etc.

One possible different might be the internet. Allowing scammers access to so many people makes it easier to fish. There was probably an increase in scamming after the mainstream use of the telephone.

Can’t stress this enough. Thank you for mentioning it!! In my career I’ve encountered many engineers unfamiliar with this concept when designing a distributed system.

I have no evidence that CMG is doing this today. However the archived page [0] from CMG’s site describing “Active Listening” specifically mentioned smart phones. From the page:

“Active Listening begins and is analyzed via AI to detect pertinent conversations via smartphones, smart tvs and other devices.”

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230923075217/https://www.cmglo...

I generally like to apply Occam’s Razor to news that seems speculative.

However the Way Back When machine archived CMG’s “Active Listening” page [0] from Sept - Nov 2023. And the wording on the website appears very clear that a) this is a technology that is actively being used and b) the data is obtained through devices like a smart phone.

Additionally, CMG’s current page [1] describing their “Targeted Display” offering has wording that sounds somewhat like Active Listening. For eg, the page mentions, “Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in.”

It’s nowhere near conclusive, but it doesn’t appear that the company is making much of an attempt to make clear that they do not listen to devices. And it’s hard for me to dismiss this as complete rubbish.

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230923075217/https://www.cmglo...

[1] - https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/solutions/targeted-display...

I’ve often thought that the Northeast of America heavily suggests an “Intelligent Hand”. The sheer amount of plants that are edible is mind boggling. Apples, acorns, elder/choke berries, walnuts, hazelnuts, onions, garlic, cattails, dandelions, cabbage — just to name a few. And that doesn’t include all the medicinal plants like willow bark for aspirin or aromatics like violet, lilac & sage.

And it’s not just the sheer number of varieties, but also how incredibly accessible and nutrient rich that they are. It always feels to me like magic that I can eat entire meals for weeks at a time just off the land in the northeast during the spring, summer & fall seasons. It feels like someone tweaked things to grow these kinds of plants specifically for easy human consumption.

Then again, could be I’m just overthinking. :o)

Lloyd’s of London is a large insurer and is very interested in the potential liability that they are exposed to from the various insurance policies that they’ve underwritten.

In 2013, they published a report[0] considering the effects of solar storm risk to the North American electric grid.

tldr; it’s all about the transformers

[0] - https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the...

Acorns come pretty close. Protein, carbohydrates, and fats, as well as calcium, phosphorus, potassium & niacin. Just leech those tannins!!

This article is great for getting a practitioner to understand how to calculate a logarithm. For non-math friends, I still reach for this[0] as a great way to get an intuition for the utility of logarithms.

[0] - https://betterexplained.com/articles/demystifying-the-natura...

Your analogy is sound but your conclusion is not. There are many home owners that live by the shore that can’t purchase flood insurance from any provider. Similarly with life insurance, if I die engaging in certain risky behavior, it voids my insurance policy.

The purpose of insurance is to socialize losses. But if a few participants in the insurance pool engage in outsized risky behavior, that’s not fair to the rest of the pool that chose significantly less risky decisions.

This title is wrong. It should read, “Startups learn the easy way how to manage cash…”. Because there are truly no long-lasting repercussions for the mismanagement of their cash balances.

Perhaps a better story would be, “Fiscally Responsible Startups learn the hard way that their work didn’t matter.” Because the market taught them that spending time considering their cash management was a waste of time. They should have just done what their peers did — act surprised and beg for immediate access to funds that are literally defined as ‘uninsured deposits.’

Just like catching a kid that’s about to fall off a fence, I sympathize with emotional toll that founders had to deal with during that long weekend. But it wasn’t the ‘hard way.’

It may not hold up in court. But at that point, you’re trying to claim assets back from a bankrupt entity.

This isn’t true in the case of bankruptcy. Note that in early 2022, Coinbase updated it’s disclosures to include that customer coins could be used as collateral to pay debts. That would leave customers as unsecured creditors (ie, stuck at the back of the bankruptcy line).

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coinbase-keep-customer-balanc...

Agreed that the lack of docket support is frustrating given how pervasive docker has become. However I’ve been using jails[0] in my home lab for 12 years and it’s a delight to use.

[0] - https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/jails/

Sadly too late. It's called a SPARC. Huzzah!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobwolinsky/2021/12/16/odeys-...

Or you could you allow the market to price those professions. If enough 60/70 year-old plumbers retire and there's no one to pick up the slack, those costs will rise and people will take those professions. Or someone will innovate in the space and make those professions different and more efficient.

The alternative is a top-down approach that requires policy-makers to pick winner & loser professions. Imagine being given the task of investing tax-payers money into incentive programs for trades/professions? How do you know which ones will be viable in 10 years time and which ones will be obsolete?

I'm not recommending a fully market-ist approach. But market forces can help appropriately price scare resources (professional services, in this case).

It’s a US federal holiday. The filing won’t be posted to SEC’s EDGAR system[0] until Monday morning.

However this press release was posted on Twitter’s official Investor Relations feed[1]. So it’s probably fair to treat it as gospel.

[0] - https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1418091&owner=exclude

[1] - https://twitter.com/TwitterIR/status/1515001122603388928?s=2...

I did this about 5 years ago. My suggestions.

  1. Find a lieutenant asap: That's your start towards building a coalition of folks who get things done.  They can give you a head-start on institutional knowledge.  In return, you can give them a new boost they need in their career.

  2. Meet with everyone twice: In the first week meet with everyone that is either a consumer of your tech or someone that you rely on for data/processes.  Let them talk about their business, what's working, what's not, etc.  Write it all down.  Then at the end of that first meeting, set-up a follow up conversation with them soon after.  By that next meeting, you'll definitely have follow up information/questions.

  3. Identify your value & execute:  Why did your new boss/c-level bring you on?  What are they looking for you to do within your first 3-6-12 months.  Figure that out, make sure it's reasonable, then drive it with relentless precision & focus.  You're not 'the guy' anymore that knows everything.  You can't keep a bunch of plates in the air at the same time because you have all this institutional knowledge of systems and people.  So the simplest way of standing out is being known as someone who can be given a task and delivers.  Eventually the experience you get from delivering on that goal(s) will give you the knowledge you need to be a domain expert again.

  4. Ask for help:  Simplest way to get someone to like you is to ask them for a favor.  Doesn't even matter if it's all that important.  It's very counter-intuitive.  You'd think the best way to get folks to like you is to do stuff for them.  But a) you don't have that much value at the moment and b) they wind up feeling indebted to you, which isn't all that great.  Instead, ask someone for help.  If they give it, genuinely thank them.  This helps in two ways.  1) It makes you seem like a real human and 2) it gives you an opportunity to follow up with them later and say something to the effect of, "Hey, thanks for helping with <the thing they helped you with>, it allowed me to do <some goal for the company> which means <positive thing for the company>."  Don't worry if it doesn't affect them directly.  Then ask them about what they're working on.  That positive feedback loop makes it possible for you to find the best talent at the company and they will start approaching you with questions/information.

I've used IF now for a few years and have enjoyed the benefits. I usually only eat dinner. Three observations.

1. It's not for everyone. Give it a try and see if it works. 2. Drink lots of water. 3. Try having a salad or a plate of veggies 20mins before eating your dinner. That helps me avoid over-eating.