jyriand

Yes. You are paid to write working software.

It's strange how obsessed software engineers are about methods of working. At a surface level it's just: sit down and write the code. But actually there are thousands of programming languages you can choose from; there are build tools, code standards, testing(to TDD or not to TDD) and mental models you have to wrap your head around before you even can start to consider yourself a decent programmer. It's fascinating, but at the same time I wish it was all simpler. I wonder if there are other occupations in the world that are so much focused on tools, paradigms and methodology as software engineering(investing and trading come in mind. And it's interesting that these notes use so much investing and business lingo).

Paraphrasing Robert Anton Wilson: "You know how dumb average American is. Well, mathematically speaking, half of them are even dumber than that!" I would argue that current bitcoin speculators are not fools. It seems to be pure greed. How can you withstand the temptation?

And to quote Warren Buffett: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful"

This can happen only if they solve the problem of facial expressions. The more realistic the characters look, the more we expect them to behave like humans. You probably noticed how weird animated human characters are, it's like something is off but you can't really tell what. I suppose it's the microexpressions that animators can't express.

When we start render digital "people" as actors, doesn't that mean that whoever is the pupeteer needs to be a good actor himself. This possibility poses some interesting questions. Can AI learn the script and, given some personality traits, behave like and actor? etc

I subscribed to Amazon Prime, thinking that I can stream series and movies that I was interested in, only to find, that only things that I could watch were shows produced by Amazon itself(Man in the High Castle etc), channels and movies were restricted content because of my location. I don't understand why it's still an issue.

I seems that reading 100 books a year as a goal will filter out lot of books that might be too long/difficult. For example. Would you take "Gödel, Escher, Bach" into your reading list when it's obvious that reading this book with some understanding retained will take lot of time? Instead of 100 books a year I would go for some specific author and his works, trying to read everything by them if possible and let these authors lead you to next authors etc. etc.

For example. I was interested in psychology, this led me to Carl G. Jung, this led me to gnosticism, this led me to Philip K. Dick etc. And now I'm mostly reading his fiction.

This seems like an organic path of discovery, instead of constructing artificial list of possible books that might interest you.

These titles are driving me crazy. It's just something about some titles that you have to read ten times to understand. And usually, after reading the subtitle of the piece, you get the point.

I would suggest listening to Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on Kierkegaard. You can find some on youtube[0].Tried to read Kierkegaard before and did't really understand anything. But these lectures give some good context.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKIWraaouu4

I think the main reason someone chooses to invest money into index funds is either they just want stable returns without too much hassle, or they believe in efficient market theory that basically states that you can't beat the market, so no point in even trying(and that's true for most of the mutual funds). But looking at value investors, it seems you can consistently beat the market.

Also, what bothers me about indexing, is that a lot of money is going into same companies(S&P500). Look at any S&P500 companies Top Institutional Holders and without a doubt Vanguard is on top(wild guess). Not sure what happens with the price, when company is excluded from S&P500.

In conclusion, indexing is fun in the bull market, it's just you can't retire in the recession years.

Players are getting paid pretty well, but for some reason they don't know how to manage their money.

"According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 78% of National Football League (NFL) players are either bankrupt or are under financial stress within two years of retirement" [1]

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_finances_of_professio...

1) You could try doing TDD. Each passing test will give you instant gratification. You could even try doing Acceptance Test-Driven Development. Basically you start by writing end-to-end test and implementing minimal code to make it pass. After that you will go one level deeper etc. I would suggest reading "Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests", this will give you a good overview of the method.

2) Also, if you can choose language to work with, you can try languages that allow you to work in the REPL. That way you can have instant feedback loop and feel satisfied even when you get some small functions working.

3) Pomodoro technique.

Cant't read the story, submitted link is redirecting to medium.com.

Duolingo introduced japanese language recently. Here you go, now you have a reason to use your phone.

How come there is a white spot on this orange blob?

I would love to donate blood, but it seems I'm too sensitive to blood. Not sure why. But there have been cases where I have passed out after giving blood tests or cutting myself. Would love to hear ideas how to overcome this.

Location: Estonia

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Not right now

Technologies: Java, clojure, javascript(reactJs, emberJS), AWS, kubernetes, MongoDB, SQL

Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyriand

Email: jyriand [at] gmail.com

---

Edit: formatting

Offtopic. I was wondering what happened to guy who invented email. I kind of remember reading that he was living in poor conditions. Did a search on "inventor of email" and found a controversy about some guy who claims to be inventor of email(Shiva Ayyadurai). That's not the guy I was looking for. Instead I was thinking of Roy Tomlinson, as I found his name in an article called: "Ray Tomlinson's 'story' about inventing email is the biggest propaganda lie of modern tech history: Shiva Ayyadurai"[0]. But seems like Ray has already passed away.

[0] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/ray-to...

Too bad visitor counter doesn't work. It's interesting how back in the day lot of sites had visitor counters displayed. Still wondering why this was done, possibly because this was the only way author could see the count of his visitors himself.

Edit: typo.

"Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson.

This is the book that tied together lot of things that I was wondering about previously and it opened up few doors into new mazes of research that I'm still trying to traverse.

Also, started reading books that he suggested:

http://www.rawilson.com/bookstore.html#rec

Edit: Added Wilson's suggested reading list

Instead of "Be yourself" I would suggest "Own yourself". Take ownership of your mind, actions, personality, failures etc. There are lot of invisible tentacles sucked into your thinking process.

> It is possible I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State. -- Max Stirner

As a side note, Max Stirner has a great book called "The Ego and His Own". Gives a quite radical but refreshing view on individualism.

I have used Tarot cards to give me some perspective on some descisions. As a side effect I start to experience a lot more of unexplainable synchronicities in my daily life and in connection with the decision. Most striking example: I was at a point where I needed to decide if I should break up with my girlfriend. I was doing the taro spread to get the answer and at the same time my girlfriend called and told me that she met this one guy and she would like to go on a date with him.

Only Kent Beck can save them. :)

Somewhat related to following blogs. But how do I follow blogs anyway? Is there any good Google Reader like apps, that are easy to use?

That's quite ironic. http://isitdownrightnow.com is also down.

Only thing I'm concerned is touch typing. Rather annoying is to look away from the monitor just to locate correct key.

Do I understand correctly that pixie is using clojure's lisp dialect and the only difference is that it is not running on JVM?

This is quite addictive. Spend a good 15 minutes watching this before "waking up" from this collective dream. There were video-snippets that disturbed me(dog fighting, voyeurism of sleeping people in transportation[not sure if there is a special category for that]), but otherwise it was a pleasant experience.

I thought it's some kind of app store for android phones. Not sure why I made this association. But I guess their name might be one of the reasons of failure. It's simple and short, but doesn't really tell anything about the product.

Over the years I have see a number of posts about revamping emacs. Is there anything that actually works?

That's how I used to get over writers block. I just start off with deliberately writing crap.