264 karma · joined July 6, 2013
Ideally, headcount can be seen this way: our company is giving many people the chance to do honest work and live dignified, meaningful lives. I think that should be a company's main social responsibility not superficial marketable stuff.
As the style, images seem weird at first, but they help conveying emotions, point of view. Somehow, they also help with attention for me.
As another commenter said, it seems that guardrails will be important. I believe, 'software is managing complexity' at the end of the day. The complexity and decision-among-options will continue to exist. They need to live and taken care of somewhere.
Geological mysteries, pleasant scenery, and calm explanation. Great for listening in the evening.
For example, if you focus on oral traditions you experiment and create more poems, songs, etc. If you focus on preserving food you discover jams, dried meat, etc.
Is it useful to focus on everything, or global optimal? Is it possible?
Also regarding competition and evolution, what stopped humans to get more capable brains? Is it just resource constraints, like not having enough calories(not having mini nuclear reactor with us)? Or are there other, more interesting causes?
I categorically erased developing mobile apps from my work/dreams after my bad experience:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37903489#37911184
I also advise against it to people around me with my limited ability.
As a newbie in low-level programming, being able to return "heap-allocated pointer" instead of "stack-allocated pointer to a struct in heap" was a challenge at first :) But I love how everything is explicit in Zig.
Here is more information: https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Report-Memory-Leak...
Let me tell you my trauma then, with the hopes that it will give you some comfort/consolation...
It is one thing if users don't use your application/project. But, when it is more out of your control, it hits harder.
I was young, I spent all my nights and even my whole summer holiday thinking/coding. I dreamed about the success or career it will bring with my friend.
Then it was a success and we were generating some ad revenue, which was great & much needed for two university students. The money was absorbed by our lives like water dripping onto dry soil. The morale was high, there was an air of optimism for the future!
It was an android app, and one day, I woke up with my friend's call. He was literally crying because the google algorithm deleted and banned our account, without any explanation or recourse. You are right that it never goes away, I can still feel the pain.
After that, I remember walking up and down a popular and long street with my friend, without speaking much and trying to process "end of the adventure" feeling. Not related to google we had other human/life problems in our lives and the simple hope we thought we built for ourselves was also gone. I was heartbroken and lost all my enthusiasm for mobile development.
I still wonder what would happen if I could continue down that path, with initial little success, enough money to survive as a student, and an opportunity to build upon that... It is just a parallel universe now. Google could delete our app, but guide us to the right path. If I could know the rules, I could continue and be a good citizen in google's walled garden. While spammers can always found a way, and find motivation with their low-effort tries... google lost a developer with good intentions. I don't think it had any effect on the algorithm or overall corporate strategy.
On the bright side, this event thought me to never trust a business partnership where I can not shake hands with a human that I trust and who geniunely wants my success/not treat me as some replaceable number. (Also insert some rant about why AI overlords can be harmful and why human history created law-based order with human judgement...)
I think it happened over 10 years ago, I can't even pay money to use a Google service now :) I don't change my email, just so that it reminds me this lesson. But if I was a scammer/spammer I would find many solutions to circumvent google AI. I tried contacting via forms when I couldn't pay for a service and when I felt like doing so. Surprisingly, in some cases I could even reach some people via these official channels. Alas, they are powerless, they had to give template answers. I assume the last word is spoken by the Algorithm, and I'm banned for life :)
Overall, It is the first time I wrote about this online. I hope it helps a little. I should also say that I have no hard feelings for people working at google, they brought us great value over the years. But the brand of the company will always remind me those days, and I will always upvote when someone criticize google :) (What power do I have as a little, disposable developer? ;) ) And, no you can't escape by changing your name to Alphabet or Alphabet soup...
If you are a Rust developer and planning to visit Istanbul let us know! (We know good kebap/baklava places ;) )
I think another interesting dilemma is that the Armenian diaspora is living in large numbers in two world powers. I feel like they can get more powerful economically and politically than the regular Armenian folks living in Armenia. Thus there is a foreign(?) influence in their democracy. (I'm not an expert...)
Lastly, maybe I'm optimistic, but I think there is an opportunity for peace in the region. I support recent forward-thinking and peaceful messages from Turkey and Azerbaijan. As a Turk, I want to see peace, friendship, and economy flourish between the nations. This will only give more options and prosperity to all of us who live here, and take options from others.
I have just read the last blog post and I believe it is about the amygdala and creative process.
"Dance with it." is probably a reference to a topic he has written in several blog posts and books. He just plants some ideas here and there. As an example, yesterday, I watched MIT OCW video "How To Speak by Patrick Winston" where he tells to repeat the subject at least 3 times. I immediately remembered this blog post: https://seths.blog/2010/12/you-will-be-misunderstood/
I agree with 1123581321's points. In addition, he always narrates his own audiobooks. The Dip is one of the first audiobooks I have listened to. He has a clear easy to understand voice.
While I can understand Seth's content may not work for everyone. It works for me. I like the man enough to regard him as a role-model so my channels are open for him(permission marketing maybe?). I also find his writing fun.
HT to Seth :)