gjenkin

Good post. Reading when you're not doing something else - this is a good mindset. I've found that the more that I enjoy a book, the more time I have "not doing something else".

The key is getting immersed in a book in the same way that you might get immersed in a movie or a genre of music or some other thing that gets you in a zone. Fall into the rabbit hole. Joining r/bookclub or some other online book discussion group helps me fall deep into the rabbit hole. In lieu of an online book discussion group, chatting with my/your preferred LLM is a good tactic. I recommend finishing a chapter, then going to your LLM and saying "I just finished chapter 1 of Heller's Catch 22" ... that's pretty much enough of a prompt to get it to give you a synopsis with some questions to help you reflect on what you read.

The dual spidey meme is cool and is correct if you understand social networks in terms of functionality and not what matters - audience. Functionality is similar although Threads does have more of a sterile approach to product branding. So yes spidey meme works if that’s your lens. But the audiences are VERY different. Those that succeed in text-based microblog platforms have succeeded on and migrated to Twitter. That audience is dramatically different to the Instagram audience which is look-at-me visual types. Couldn’t be further apart. Ben and Zuck are looking in the wrong direction when making the spidey meme comparison. This is the 2023 equivalent of Eric Schmidt saying that Twitter is just email. It’s the audience, stupid.

> One of my big issues with the 'follow your passion' advice is it almost always comes from people who are already rich

This. My sister is quite an accomplished artist who decided out of college to follow her passion. https://instagram.com/carmeljenkin?igshid=YzcxN2Q2NzY0OA==

She is not rich and has to hustle like crazy to sell her artwork while also working tables at a casino and raising a daughter. I doubt that she would advise anyone to just follow their passion without first establishing some kind of financial base.

There tends to be a difference between the kinds of parties thrown by someone who is staying in a place for a weekend versus someone who has to face their neighbors days/weeks after said party.

Parties are one problem. I'd be more fearful of theft and destruction of property... and a general discomfort in having complete strangers coming and going from my building. That said, it seems extremely rare that an Airbnb guest would engage in the kind of behavior that would generate headlines.

I was writing for a slightly different audience but yes agree that Julie is a much better writer than me. :)

FRONTLINE seems to be the only investigative journalism program of note left on television. Will be interesting to see their report on the NSA, assuming that they're working on one.

While the author makes a good case that 'confidence' and 'ability to impress' are key drivers of the tendancy to promote incompetent individuals to leadership roles, another dynamic may be that some leaders who fear exposure of their own incompetence tend to surround themselves with 'yes' men/women who themselves aren't particularly competent or skilled in anything other than making the master feel superior.

In such a situation, when the incompetent leader exits, all those who are next in line are these incompetent 'yes' people, increasing their chances of being considered for and granted promotion.

This dynamic exists in some institutions in contrast to the 'surround yourself with people smarter/better/more competent than you' philosophy of leadership. Jim Collins talked about these approaches in Good To Great, comparing Bank of America's 'weak general' promotion culture with Wells Fargo's approach of getting the most talented people into the highest organizational positions possible. You could argue selection bias, but it's interesting to compare the financial performance of the two banks over the last 10 years or so.

Aren't most people trying to avoid being hassled by an online recruiter?

Full article (if behind pay wall)

Apple says child labour found at suppliers - FT.com http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8af2a286-6754-11e2-8b67-00144...

Apple found 11 facilities across its supply chain using child labour last year, the iPhone maker said in its annual “Supplier Responsibility” report. The California-based company, which has stepped up its auditing efforts in the past year under chief executive Tim Cook, said it had uncovered 106 “active cases” of children being employed by its suppliers over the course of 2012, and 70 people who had been underage and either left or passed the age of 16 by the time of its audit. None of those individuals is still employed by the suppliers, after Apple worked with its partners to help them spot fake identification documents or falsified records. In one extreme case, 74 of those 106 under-16s were employed by a single Chinese manufacturer of circuit-board components used in Apple products. A large local labour agency “knowingly” supplied the children, Apple said. Apple terminated its relationship with the supplier and reported the labour agency to the local authorities, who fined it and suspended its licence. “Our approach to underage labour is clear: We don’t tolerate it, and we’re working to eradicate it from our industry,” Apple wrote in its report. “When we discover suppliers with underage workers or find out about historical cases … we demand immediate corrective action.” As Apple extends its audits deeper into its supply chain, prevention of underage labour and juvenile worker protection were the only two categories among its eight human rights auditing criteria where violations had increased since the previous year. Apple found improvements among its suppliers during 2012 in areas such as anti-discrimination, freedom of association and wages. The Cupertino-based company is one of the few consumer electronics groups to publish detailed audits into its supply chain. Overall it found that just under a quarter of its suppliers failed to comply with its labour and human rights standards, with other breaches including 11 facilities using bonded labour.

We don’t allow suppliers to act unethically or in ways that threaten the rights of workers – even when local laws and customs permit such practices - Apple As it tries to reduce excessive working hours, Apple said that 92 per cent of weeks worked by 1m employees tracked across its supply chain met its weekly criteria of a maximum of 60 work hours and at least one day off. That figure marks an improvement from 38 per cent a year ago, while Apple said that it had changed some of the ways it measured working hours to be “more meaningful and effective”. Overtime increased among Apple’s suppliers during September, October and November, when Apple was ramping up production of its new iPhone 5 and iPad mini, but decreased again in December. “We don’t allow suppliers to act unethically or in ways that threaten the rights of workers – even when local laws and customs permit such practices,” Apple said. “We’re working to end excessive work hours, prohibit unethical hiring policies, and prevent the hiring of underage workers.”

Non-scientific press:

* http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/756205.shtml

* http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-res...

* http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/hiv-muta...

Sure. If you plant an acorn in crappy soil and fail to fertilize and nurture it, does it still turn into an oak tree (if it turns into anything at all)? Of course.

But does it turn out as well as it would have if it got off to the right start and/or was cared for appropriately? Probably not.

How the oak tree turned out is largely dependent on the environment it was raised in, the care and attention given to it, no?

Humans have more ability to control or change their conditions than oak trees but the principle still applies reasonably well. At the very least, taking on this responsibility as a parent minimizes the chances that one will be absent or non-attentive.

I'm unsure why this is on the HN front page, but while it's there I'll throw in an opinion...

If the father had done a better job parenting instead of permissively coddling his children or allowing others to parent them, he would never have had to write this email.

Parenting is coaching. It's a process of constantly weening children from dependency after dependency. It can be tough when they cry at every rule you put in place and at every missed chocolate or toy or tv show. But you have to be firm, stay true to your vision, and view yourself as saving your children from "the tyranny of their own desires".

If you want it done right, you can't do it from a distance. You can't oursource the effort by sending them off to boarding school and hope someone else will do your job for you.

It's not easy. I have 3 of my own. Perhaps the hardest thing to do is to realize that the way your kids turn out is largely due to how effectively you and your partner parent. Yes they make their own choices. But they should make those choices within a framework of confidence, intelligence and independence that you as a parent have cultivated.

That's a lot of responsibility. But you have to take it on if you want to increase the chances of your children having good lives.

Waiting until they're 40 to write them an email expressing your disappointment is far too little way too late.

SF http://here.net/37.822767,-122.4737476,17.91,138,77,3d.day

London http://here.net/51.5036954,-0.1183393,16.91,322,77,3d.day

Sydney http://here.net/-33.8589561,151.2111098,16.88,224,77,3d.day

Definitely getting there. Panning, pivoting (with SHIFT key) and zooming in 3D mode are all quite smooth.

Kickstarter could change their fee model to better align their interests with backers. For example, they could choose to not take their fee until the project creator has delivered on their project. This gives the Kickstarter team more of an incentive to vet the quality of projects and their creators.

The article failed to mention SVP of Commerce and Local: Jeff Huber. He's posted about 40 times. Seems pretty active.

Yes, do often. But also, not-do.

As Lao-tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching: "Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place."

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote...

By attempting to reject the importance of the awards, he was also acknowledging their importance. This was a calculated declaration of being "too cool" for the MTV awards aimed at extending his brand and identity. If he truly was against award-giving and the competition surrounding such, he would have ignored the nomination and simply failed to show up. Why even waste time on a response?

“In entrepreneurship, timing is everything. So we'll give Zuckerberg credit for launching his online social directory for college students just as the social-networking craze was getting underway. He also built it right, quickly making Facebook one of the most popular social-networking sites on the Net. But there's also something to be said for knowing when to take the money and run. Last spring, Facebook reportedly turned down a $750 million buyout offer, holding out instead for as much as $2 billion. Bad move. After selling itself to Rupert Murdoch's Fox for $580 million last year, MySpace is now the Web's second most popular website. Facebook is growing too - but given that MySpace has quickly grown into the industry's 80-million-user gorilla, it's hard to imagine who would pay billions for an also-ran.”

Quora has a stack of answers to the question "what do people think of AngelList?"

http://www.quora.com/AngelList/What-do-people-think-of-Angel...

Interesting data.

2009 Israeli military spending [1]: $13 billion*

2009 West Bank GDP [2]: $12.8 billion

- - - - -

*excludes the $3 billion per year in US military aid to Israel (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/07/29/afx3963706.html)

Sources

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...

2. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

They may be selling well, but the reviews are quite harsh. A common sentiment: "your phone is likely more powerful than this piece of garbage."

Context is important. A no-Photoshop approach makes sense for Quora since their product is text-heavy. For a product that requires, say, rich data visualizations like Google Analytics, some design ideas need to be mocked in a graphics package (Googlers often use Fireworks instead of Photoshop) first, then prototyped in code.

Context is also important in terms of what stage of the development process the designer is at. If a product design is already well defined (e.g. "top nav is global, 2 columns in the core content space, right column is contextual nav, left column is the content stream, here's the style guide ..."), then going directly to code makes sense. As Joel suggests, going directly to code is great for day to day new feature iterations.

But if your product is completely undefined, Photoshop or Fireworks can be excellent tools for mocking up design variations and sets of use cases or states within those variations.

Hats-off to Quora for going straight to code when it comes to design. It works for them but it's not going to work for everyone in every case.

If your startup does eventually take off, you will have to hire people. But I'm afraid that no one (no one of significant worth anyway) will want to work for you if your attitude is that "working at someone else's startup is a recipe for getting exploited". How will you, as a founder, do things differently?

This would be a great addition to the nav. I can imagine having 3 modes of viewing submissions: "top" (the current default), "new", and "popular" (for >100 votes). I already switch back and forth between the default (or "top") view and the "new" view. This allows me to get a good mix of seeing what the HN algorithm thinks is interesting, as well as what interesting stuff the community is discovering out there on the web. I can see this being well augmented by a third view that presents what's popular to the HN community.

Of course, adding another nav element gets tricky. How many nav links do you need before you start culling or redesigning? FWIW, it seems that grouping nav into 2 sections might be useful. One section would be focused on sorting the stream (top, new, popular). The other section would be focused on filtering the stream (threads, comments, ask, jobs). "Submit" is more of an action than a filter or sort, and might be better positioned as a control outside of the nav.

Yep true. You may have missed that I said "from a graphic design or typographic design perspective" in my example. There are various schools of thought to that "underlaying [sic] principle of thinking". Dieter Rams comes from one of those schools, but his is not the only school.

While I personally would prefer to follow the "good design is as little design as possible" mantra, it's not a principle that should be followed in all cases. Dieter Rams is speaking from a modernist school of design philosophy, and while many companies/brands are adherents to this school, not all are.

For example, from a graphic design or typographic design perspective, designers like David Carson (http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/) have demonstrated the power of postmodernist approaches for certain brands. If brands like ESPN or Wired adopted the "as little as possible" approach to graphic design, your experience with those brands would be much different to your experience today. Wired magazine would be black on white with symmetrically placed photos and no visual decoration. That's as little design as possible. For some people, this might be an improvement to Wired, but the problem is that if they delivered a magazine like that, you would have no idea that it was in fact Wired. You would forget the brand and possibly never buy their magazine again.

So this principle - and just about every other principle Dieter Rams lists as good design - is very specific to the brand he was working with when these principles were developed: Braun. That's not to say that these principles are not excellent. They are. But they are specific to their context. And the design principles that you develop for your product or brand should be specific to your context.

Yes, disappointing to see this behavior from the government, and also from corporations like Amazon.

Perhaps most disappointing though is that much of the MSM coverage is focused on Wikileaks itself and not on the actual content of the cables. The NYT and other media outlets are doing their best to push the substantive issues, but that's not what is being discussed by our so-called leaders and politicians.

The cable leaks have highlighted - as if we didn't know it already - how reckless and out of touch many of our foreign officials and diplomats are. To name a few random acts: bargaining with Slovenia to take Guantanamo prisoners in exchange for a visit with President Obama; threatening Germany against investigating the unwarranted kidnapping (is any kidnapping warranted?) of one of its citizens by the CIA; collusion with British officials to illegally stock cluster bombs in the UK.

Perhaps if the mainstream media was focused on these issues, we may have a serious public debate about the quality and purpose of our state department and our foreign diplomats ... and maybe even improve them. Now that would be progress.

But no, that's just too difficult for the Senator Liebermans of the world to take on. Much easier for these politicians to beat their chests in disgust at Assange's actions. While that may be good for Lieberman in the short term - he gets his bully pulpit - we're all still left with the same crappy state department, and the same foreign officials in the same embassies still making the same out-of-touch recommendations that end up making the world a less safe place for all of us.

Where is the leadership? Where is the "change" that was promised two years ago? I want to see a commitment from Obama that he's going to look seriously at the issues raised by the cables, and fix our state department. Not holding my breath though.

pg wrote this essay some time ago: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

He discusses the elements you need to create a successful startup. To answer your question of "when" to start a startup, it may be worth considering these elements. When you have them (or 2 out of 3 of them since the third element is to spend as little money as possible, and you can't really do that until you're in it) it may be time.

Another relevant pg essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html

Here he discusses some of the dimensions you include in your question (age, wealth, in/out of college) and analyses their impact on one's decision to start (or not start) a startup.

History and journalism. The story, from a journalist's perspective, becomes too complex if a more complete analysis was included. To write, for example, that the Soviets had a detailed system of approvals which were designed to act as redundancies in the event of errors in launch detection technology or decision-making would muddy the very clear, familiar (and frightening) story that a single man saved us from disaster.

There's also an element of western propaganda and bias here too of course. It was in the interests of western nations at the time to paint a picture of an incompetent and reckless Soviet government and to showcase stories of western-style individual heroics. 

All this said, if Petrov genuinely saved the day, it is absolutely worth celebrating. But we will never know for sure if he did. 

Super simple. It just works. Given that it's a journal, it might be worth thinking about how you would suggest to users that this service will be around for longer than a few months, or how they can export their data to another service in the event that this goes down. I wouldn't want to start keeping a journal on a site that may be gone tomorrow.