lsc

If you don't like William Gibson... you and I have very different tastes; Neuromancer is a particularly perfect example of the sort of thing I like.

There is a certain amount of calibrating for the awards group; for my taste? the nebula is... not 100%; much like how I enjoy '80s action films rather more than Ebert. like I've never read a Pulitzer for fiction book that I didn't think was incredible, while some of the nebula books I've read were only pretty good. (I haven't read anything by Liu Cixin yet, but it sounds like my thing? I mean, it was hyped, to me at least, as genre sci-fi written from a very different cultural perspective, which is totally my thing.)

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts.

Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc...

(Actually, that's a question. What is the award for the romance genre?)

I... personally don't understand why people even try to automate making better recommendation engines when highly skilled and respected experts are already doing it for just about any niche, and releasing the results for free.

>So taking time off doesn't have to be a career hit

My own experience has been pretty different. I took time off of my work to run a business. we even wrote a book [1] - Now, uh, I needed to run that business, on an emotional level, I mean. but it was a hugely bad idea financially.

When you show up to an interview after spending years running your own company? I mean, I'm sure it's different if you are management, but as an IC? Even though I had written a book[1] it was like I was unemployed for that time. There's no way my wages are anywhere near they would have been had I spent more of that time working for other people.

I mean, my own case would have come out differently if I was able to sell my company to someone big, which may have come down to a few obvious unforced errors of mine?

I mean, sure, sometimes it's still worth it to take time off of work to do something else... but don't say it's not a career hit. It is a huge career hit and you need to include that in the equation.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Book-Xen-Practical-System-Administrat...

(When doing the "is it worth it" math on writing books, consider the shelf-life; that shelf life doesn't just apply to sales, it also applies to the reputation boost. My own recommendation to my younger self would have been to get a job while the buzz for the book was at it's height.)

Driving is largely unregulated, so I doubt this is about preventing travel.

mm. in santa clara, redwood city, san francisco and Los Angeles, Starbucks usually have few places to sit (compared to local coffee shops) - and are usually way busier (compared to local coffee shops) and usually don't offer mugs; they just have to-go cups (or bring your own mug) - while most of the nicer local places give you a mug by default if you say it's 'for here'

I mean, sure, they aren't 'to go only' - but they are impractical places to meet or hang out compared to most smaller coffee shops, just because they seem to have a much worse (or, I guess as an investor, better) ratio of customers to seats; a lot of time there are more people in line for coffee than there are tables.

I'm not saying they don't have seating at all, just that they seem to be optimized in a thoughtful way to sell as much coffee as possible, making them superior (if you are an investor) but inferior if you want a place to meet up with other people or hang out, when compared to the locally run and less-optimized coffee shops.

>maybe atmosphere (a safe comfortable place to hang for awhile),

So I mean, coffee shops in general, yes. But at least in urban areas? Starbucks seems to be really well-designed to maximize throughput and profit; they have fewer seats, usually per cup of coffee sold than the smaller coffee places, and generally seem to be set up for 'to go'.

It's one of those things where if I look at it as an investor, I really like it, but if I look at it as a consumer, the opposite.

Thank you. I'll check it out. Huh. the format they use doesn't work with the amazon 'send to kindle' functionality.

>reputable public domain copies would be available at reasonable prices

so I read a lot. Mostly on the kindle. Lots of public domain classics; I love Conrad and Melville.

I'm also pretty happy to kick in ten or fifteen bucks to avoid spending time finding the best formatted/least incorrect copy, even if the book is public domain.

but you know what? when I buy public domain e-books, there's so much crap mixed in that is worse than gutenberg that I often end up going with Gutenberg first these days, if my favorite publishing houses don't have a copy.

It's actually easier, I think, for me to find quality e-books of books that are still under copyright.

I mean, this is mostly me complaining about amazon and how they aren't really serving my needs even when I'm begging them to take more of my money... but it's also a point that finding reputable public domain copies is awful hard.

For those of my taste looking... my favorite publishing house for that sort of thing is Melville house publishing; but they have something of a limited selection of public domain reprints. (they do have their 'art of the novella' series, which comes out in the cutest little paperbacks. And their kindle formatting is consistently good.)

on the other hand gutenberg formatting isn't great, but it's consistently not terrible, which is more than I can say for a lot of the dreck you find in the kindle store. And a lot of people have a different time/money equation, and sometimes books under copyright aren't available on the kindle at all and paper copies can get pricy (and are way harder to read, for me at least) so certainly public domain is a good thing that should be preserved. I'm just saying, it's not a panacea when it comes to badly-done e-books

>not sure why people are so obsessed with range.

so for newer/more expensive car with a 200+mile range? yeah, that's probably enough for most people, with enough reserve to get you to a supercharger. I mean, it is a pain, 'cause a lot of people like to park at the supercharger and it gets to be a problem, but geting gas is a pain, too... so sure, if your range is comfortably over 200 miles, for many people, maybe even most Americans, that should be plenty.

but that's the high end. and if they lose 20% range after 5 years, only the 'extended range' variants of the high end cars seem to have more than 200 miles.

As a more typical auto-buyer, (well, more typical than the 200 mile plus new car buyers) I'm looking to buy a car right now, as uber/lyft seem to be about 30% more expensive than they were pre-IPO, once you count the difference in special offers given to me. I've always regarded it as a luxury, but it slowly is getting too expensive for me.

One of the cars under consideration is a used leaf: a 2012 model year or thereabouts. It's an all around reasonable car, it's gone through most of it's depreciation curve, etc.. it's newer than the average car your average American is driving. It's got a usable range around 50 miles. (that's only down like 20% from what it advertised new)

this is... probably fine for me. I don't have charging facilities at home, and installing those in the shared garage would be iffy... would require HOA approval. but I do have (free!) charging facilities at work, 10 miles away.

But I am a bit unusual. I don't particularly like driving, not for daily, utilitarian purposes anyhow. If I buy the thing, as I'll be stepping down from taking uber/lyft everywhere, so I'm already all setup to use trains or airplanes for anything over 20 miles or so, and for that matter, I live with someone that owns a petrol car, so it's all just kinda extra.

but I work with a lot of people (a lot of very highly paid people, the sort who buy nice luxury cars) who have commutes that are more than 50 miles each way - and you usually want enough power that you can go a day without charging.

Now, I also have a bunch of co-workers who have Teslas with extended range packages, and there is some overlap with the long commutes. But... without those extended range packages, that would be pretty iffy. And these are people who have the luxury of replacing their car often; they really don't have to worry about things like battery degradation.

The average American is going to find a 50 mile range unacceptable; the average American would find the 150 mile range of the new base model nissan leaf to be pretty confining, for that matter. I'm gonna go ahead and say that 200 and change is gonna be the minimum for most people, and then only if they can install a charger (I.E. they don't live in an apartment.) or can charge at work.

(my work does tell me not to rely on work charging as my only charge... but eh, if the chargers are full/down one day a week or what have you, uber/lyft probably still has some legs.)

>As a starting point I think you will agree that someone who has a BAC of zero ought to be able to drive.

Not if they are tired or hungover. I mean, I don't think people should drive when they are tired for other reasons, either. It's a dangerous thing, and something you should only do when you are at your best.

Alcohol is just an easy target (and an important target) because it both degrades your actual ability, while at the same time, increasing your opinion of your ability. Because of that second effect, it's especially difficult to tell when you have had too much to drive... because one of the common side effects of alcohol is an increase in confidence.

It should be difficult to drive, and it should be easy to lose the ability to drive.

>Instead of tightening already reasonable standards to ridiculous levels we would save vastly more lives by actually enforcing the laws we have effectively.

eh, we already have rules against driving tired. they just lack an objective test.

I think that if you think you can operate a motor vehicle or a gun in public at 0.06, you are not being nearly careful enough. (And I suspect the additional confidence that alcohol gives you might actually contribute much to accident rates. I know I certainly feel more confident one drink in, and confidence is deadly when you are operating weapons or heavy machinery around other people.)

Yeah, the big problem is labor. if you are only making a few bucks a user, making enough money to make up for your opportunity cost (vs. working as a tech for a large company) requires a lot of users.

I've got a lot of experience serving the low-margin market, both for ISPs, WISPs, but mostly on the hosting side, (and hosting is actually easier; the less you have the customer on the equipment, the less time you spend fixing stuff they broke.) and let me tell you, low margin does not at all line up with low support expectations.

Even if you can charge your customer twice what it's costing you and making ten bucks a month per user, one tech support issue can end up eating all the margin that customer would have given you for years.

I read the article as a "just buy a low cost whole market index" - which seems to be the most common advice out there.

Assuming your randomness generator was fair and you bought enough stocks, your 'buy stocks at random' strategy, if you bought enough stocks, would eventually get you that maximally diversified index fund, I think?

I mean, I think the difference at scale is all in the weighting; if you bought one share of a random ticker on every throw of your random generator, you'd be overweight stocks with high per-share values vs. just buying, say, a basket of VTX, VXUS and VWO, which are weighted in more reasonable ways.

Yeah, they'll let anyone with a couple hundred bucks sit for the FE. The chances of getting a PE or even an EIT, though, without a degree are... slim to none. But that's not really my goal? (I mean, it would be if it were just tests) Mostly I just want to know those 'absolute basics' of which you speak, and I like to have a test to study towards.

I'll check out that edx class, thanks, that sounds like my thing.

I personally think it's utterly disgusting that people are allowed to operate what are essentially giant weapons in public with extremely minimal testing or training, and with minimal limits on alcohol usage. I think it's totally reasonable to ask people to give up some of the rights they'd normally have, when those people want to operate heavy machinery in public.

My understanding is that GA pilots are not allowed to fly within 8 hours of consuming any alcohol (my understanding is that most commercial outfits have more stringent limits) - I personally think this makes a lot of sense for operating a motor vehicle, too.

If they only have $120K budget, they are interviewing for relatively junior positions in this area and at this time, and thus they are mostly going to get young people interviewing.

I mean, a lot of times this is coded in the job descriptions. "rockstar ninja" "10x engineer" or similar words generally mean they are unable to pay experienced people wages and are looking for someone new to do the work of an experienced person.

A lot of people think this is bad, as it almost always implies overwork, but I have mixed feelings. My first programming job? I was 17, no education, and I was hired as a "Staff Programmer" but only paid slightly under $40K (this was in '97, so while that was great money for a 17 year old, that was... not market rate for an experienced engineer, much less a "staff" level title.)

In a lot of ways it was a great experience for me. My shitty C code ran on production and in turns vastly improved and degraded user experiences for literally millions of people. For a company that wants to 'roll the dice' - I was probably a good deal, 'cause I did some pretty amazing things. (in both directions, really... but it did work out well sometimes?)

(I can't find the quote right now... by Vixie; something about how many CERT notices he was responsible for, and how it showed that in his youth, he could code, but he didn't learn to manage risk until later.)

But, I mean, my experience of the valley (and SF is not silicon valley, but it is... adjacent.) is that startups hiring young people can partly be explained by the phenomena that startups aren't willing to pay market rate for someone with experience; even at my age, I see pressure to move to management.

If something bad happened and I had to work at a startup again, one of the big tells I'd look for would be the number of older engineers that are working as direct hires (not contractors); This is usually a good indicator that they are willing to pay reasonably.

The macbook is not a desktop replacement; it's a very portable laptop. Being as small as possible is a big part of it's function. You pay a lot extra for this, both in terms of actual money, reduced computing power, and probably decreased longevity.

(Interestingly, this used to be the norm. Back in the day, the smallest thinkpads were also the most expensive. If you cared about money, you'd carry around something much larger and clunkier. It wasn't until the advent of the netbook that "small" also meant "cheap")

If you don't think a laptop being as small and thin as possible is important and worth paying for, then you will be very disappointed with the current crop of macbooks.

(As an aside, I find it kinda weird to see people with these macbooks that are absolutely optimized for portability using them as desktop replacements. Like... maybe part of that was that for a long time apple sold really ancient hardware for their desktops, and maybe these people just really loved OS-X? But... this goes to your point... the fact that so many people use macbooks as desktop replacements does indicate that maybe there's a market for a more desktop-y macbook, maybe one with active cooling and a replaceable battery? But it's also possible that those users are willing to pay a cost in terms of longevity and in terms of expandability in exchange for their desktop replacement simply being more portable for the few times they do actually move it.)

Either way, I like my macbook even though I'd be seriously annoyed if I was limited to that much compute power for my main usage, and I'd go insane if I had to use the keyboard/trackpad for serious work.

But for me? I think the cost is totally reasonable for something I can put in almost any of my bags; something that adds almost no perceptible weight. I had a sony viao P series for a while; it was similar.

I mean, my other personal laptop is a thinkpad X220, which is exactly the sort of thing you would like; it's pretty easy to swap out all the parts, including the battery. It is actively cooled (and aside from the battery and hard drive, the fan seems to be one of the common bits to break.) - it's also not powerful enough for comfortable full-time use, imo, but it stands up well to the mac book in that regard, and it has a keyboard that is almost good enough to use all day. (I mean, I'm not switching it out for my kinesis for serious work, but as far as laptop keyboards go, it's pretty good)

So, if such things lead to more productive next-generation workers, it's possible that much like education, it's a net win, even if you don't have children yourself.

As someone who plans on retiring (without children of my own) - yes, I consider saving money for my own retirement to be pretty important, but I also see having people around that I can buy stuff from in my retirement as pretty important, too. I'd really like to have the benefits of an advanced economy, so I think it's worth kicking in a bit to see to it that the next generation is cared for and educated.

(Of course, I have no idea how important having mom and dad around the first few weeks is vs. having access to good schools or something else entirely. Not my field. But I am saying that it is in my interest to contribute towards having an advanced, educated workforce that is... working during the years while I'm retired.)

>The poor and uneducated are far more conservative than other groups

so... this is a meame that seems really weird to me. I've heard a lot of people opine on why the poor do, in fact, vote against public benefits and for huge tax cuts for the rich.

But the data doesn't back it up. Pretty consistently, poorer people tend to vote democrat, and wealthier people tend to vote republican. This was true in the last election, too. And this is exactly what you'd expect, considering.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps...

so I am studying for the FE (I need a lot of math before taking it is realistic) mostly 'cause it gives me this broad feel for things Engineers all know. (I will take the 'other disciplines' - mostly because I want this to be as broad as possible; being broad but shallow makes it a lot easier for me, too, but for me, it being broad is an advantage in other ways, too.)

I personally find tests to be way easier than school, and the schools with reputations that are worth something are... pretty difficult for people like me (who weren't on the college track in high school) to get into. (and there is something of an inverse correlation between the prestige of a school and how flexible they are about scheduling around work; especially for undergrad)

From what I've seen of the test, it does provide some foundational ideas of what engineering is about. Like, it goes a lot into figuring out when things will break - something I haven't really seen a lot of in software engineering.

What I'm saying here is that I dunno that an optimal SWE PE would test you very much on the specifics of Java or SQL or what have you. I mean, from my experience with the FE, at least, they give you a book that has most of the formulae you need... and you are allowed to use a copy of that book during the test, you just need to be able to look it up and apply it. Seems like they would do the same with Java or SQL.

(I mean, to be clear, to apply the formulae, you still need to have more math than I do. I imagine the same would be true of sql or java, only I'm pretty good with SQL, having 20 years of propping up garbage written by engineers who weren't.)

From what I've seen of the software engineers, Most of the time, the software guys throw something together, toss it over the fence and move on. Clearly, they didn't do any analysis to figure out how much load the weak point in the system can handle, or even what the weak-point was. It's incumbent upon me (the SysAdmin; usually the least educated person in the room) to feed load to it at a reasonable speed and to back off and figure out what happened when the thing falls over.

I mean, I think the real question people are bringing up here is "what if we treated software engineering, or at least some subset of software engineering more like real engineering?" - like clearly sometimes you can slap together something over the weekend and it's fine, but... if you are building a car or an airplane or a tall building or something, you probably want to put in the time to make sure it's done right, and for that, you need rules that everyone knows; the PE system, I think, establishes rules everyone knows, while I think software engineering mostly works on the concept of "it worked for me"

I dunno, man. I own a bunch of stock in BA right now. I bet that the idea of spending twice as much on software engineers and hiring licensed folk to write their software is looking pretty good to Bowing execs right about now, even from a plain profit and loss perspective.

(of course, a lot of professional engineers were involved in building that plane... but it's pretty unlikely that there were any PE software engineers involved, just 'cause there aren't many. Would that have helped? maybe, maybe not. to the detail that I've studied (not.. really all that much) it sounds like they made some really basic mistakes, like relying on a sensor that wasn't redundant, and those mistakes should have been caught by the other engineers. I don't know that it was entirely a software engineering problem. )

As software mistakes get more and more costly, it starts making more and more sense for execs to hire people who are properly licensed to supervise the project. (I mean, assuming such people exist, and for software engineering, right now, you could say such people don't exist.)

>If there's one thing wrong with our profession is a lack of ethics and accreditation - we're essentially letting random people build critical infrastructure and utilities.

https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...

There was a license for a professional software engineer; they're discontinuing it, apparently due to lack of demand.

If folks wanted to get a "software people taking the FE" study group together, I'd join up.

Maybe. (and I thought festool was the new hotness? I thought that at least rigid and ryobi had been devaluing their brand by selling cheap junk under their brand? But I'm solidly in the 'prosumer' and not 'real contractor' end of the market, so not an expert or even close observer, really.)

But I think the point OP was making is that contractors have a licensing and training program, and if you hire someone to put a roof on your house, they either have to go through that process or work under someone who went through that process. I mean, choosing the right tool is a small part of that, but someone in the chain of command is gonna have words with you if you bring your Xcelite screwdriver and try to use it on the roofing job.

That's not true almost anywhere in software, and that probably makes a big difference.

(I mean, not being educated myself, i personally have mixed feelings about licensure. But it's a good discussion to have, and I think that there should be something like the PE for software engineers (and there was, in texas, but it will be discontinued this year. )

I don't think you got downvoted for the jokey insults we're trading. (I also think it's pretty funny that I will go out of my way to avoid watching a video. What kind of person do you think I am?)

I think you got downvoted because it's ridiculous to suggest that current safety features make cars safe compared to most other common methods of transportation, especially for pedestrians and bicyclists.

I'm not going to watch a video. what sort of person do you think I am?

I do have a reasonable knowledge of modern car safety features, and yes, high end (well, high trim level; these features are optional at additional cost on many cars I would call low end.) cars bought in the last few years have automatic braking systems that function reasonably well at low speeds, and that's a great thing that has probably saved many lives.

Certainly, if I buy a car again I will be sure to pay extra for these features

But these features don't make driving safe. These cars are not even close to being self-driving, and these features don't absolve the driver of vigilance.

Now, this doesn't apply to me ('cause I have a good job and can afford a recent car and can pay extra for the requisite options) but most cars still don't have those features. The vast majority of cars that are on the road today, and even many cars on the new-car lot don't have any sort of automatic-braking system.

The fear I feel when driving is not fear for my own safety, but fear that my actions (or momentary inattention) might lead to the death of another.

I think driving without that consciousness that you could kill someone else is extremely dangerous.

I'm personally uncomfortable driving even really nice cars, 'cause you have to pay careful attention to not kill someone. I mean, driving can be fun or exciting - but it's not comfortable or relaxing, I would argue, at least not driving in places where there are other people.

On public transit, on the other hand, I can relax and read and pretty safely ignore the world. Worst case someone grabs my kindle or my phone and runs. I can afford a new phone. (which hasn't happened to me; I'm just saying, that's the biggest risk I see on public transit from relaxing my vigilance. In a car, well, a lot of people have killed other humans because they let their attention wander or decided to change the radio station at an unlucky moment.)

I mean, I'm not saying that your view of comfort is invalid... I'm just saying it's not universal.

so the non-libertarian answer to privatization of the commons is the pigovian tax. It's got most of the advantages (it uses the power of the market to maximize results per unit effort) and avoids some of the disadvantages inherent to privatizing things like air.

Take, for example, the problem of limiting CO2 output. This is a global problem; there is no way to realistically privatize it. but, at least the people under the same treaty could tax the common forms of CO2 output.

Charging per ton of CO2 output, many economists believe, is better than simply regulating how much CO2 a person can output because by giving it a dollar per tonne value, you are encouraging the market to eliminate CO2 output where it's cheapest and easiest to do so, while allowing the market to continue to output CO2 where it would be really expensive to avoid.

'cap and trade' is a variation on this that is similar but different; instead of setting the economic price of a tonne of carbon, for example, you set an absolute limit for how much carbon can be released, and then lets the market decide what to use that for.

>For example, the main thing that makes affordable housing unprofitable is that artificial scarcity created by zoning rules puts the creation cost above the price threshold for what's considered affordable housing. So you have to fix that, but once you do, any ordinary bank will fund those now-profitable construction projects.

So, I agree with this, of course, but there's still an argument for subsidizing the 'affordable' projects first. - this argument is that even in the above case (where, I agree, eventually cheap (compared to cost of construction) projects will be constructed,) more expensive housing (larger, more luxurious) will be constructed first because it's more profitable, and building companies and homeowners will do all they can to keep less expensive units out of the market as long as they can (I mean, builders will switch once they can't sell any more luxury units, but homeowners won't, and more homeowners means more anti-building pressure.)

I think there's an argument to be made, in this case where the housing market has been so distorted for so long, for moving utilitarian, smaller-unit high-density construction projects to the front of the line. Luxury housing needs a lot less subsidies, but if you don't put something in to prevent your housing subsidies from going to luxury housing, your housing subsidies will go to luxury housing.

(removing restrictions on density isn't a subsidy, you say? tell that to the people who's houses will be worth less if we build enough of the small condos to satisfy small condo demand. If we do build enough housing, the average Californian will lose a lot of money due to the decrease in real-estate prices. Sure, it's not a a government subsidy, but changing the rules so that one group gains and another loses is going to be opposed by the losers.)

I dunno. every time I step out into other industries, I'm shocked at how little even skilled people are paid. I dunno much about animation, but I'm pretty sure you could setup, say, a small publishing house and support it for a few years on a million bucks. I'm certain you could start up a restaurant on that kind of scratch, and if you were the business type, you could turn that into a chain. I mean, sure, you'd need more for promotion/advertising, but that's just as true of the tech industry.

I mean, sure, a business starting with a million bucks is unlikely to become a multi-billion dollar business, but... I think it's a reasonable amount to start a reasonable business... and I think that's how McDonalds, at least, got it's start.

>(That’s true at every income level, anyway, not having a mansion in the Hamptons is “objectively” worse than having one.)

I'm assuming, from context, that the figure of merit for this discussion is having money in the future. Obviously, in the context of getting a reality tv show, a mansion in the Hamptons is "objectively" better than having a bunch of cash and a modest place to live, but we're talking about having money in the future here. Buying and living in a mansion is... usually not a great way to go about furthering that goal; I'd argue that living in a mansion, in the context of the goals we're talking about here, is objectively worse than living somewhere modest and putting the rest of the money you would have spent on the mansion in a low-cost index fund or something.

>Eating chicken today and saving so you can eat chicken in the future may be a better idea that eating prime rib and starving if you lose your income.

That's kinda my point? I mean, that if you can downgrade from beef to chicken (something that doesn't interfere with your current ability to earn money and does not incur future costs... something that will in fact lower future costs, as chicken is healthier than beef, and if you are poor, you are paying a lot more of your healthcare out of pocket than I am) sure, that's great. If your figure of merit is money in the future, eating chicken could be said to be objectively superior to eating beef.

When you aren't buying the absolute cheapest good available, you can usually find substitutes that are cheaper and impose fewer future costs, and sure, seeking those things out is great, and important to think about all up and down the income spectrum.

But there is nearly always a point at the bottom of the spectrum where there are no cheaper options that are actually cheaper long term - that don't impinge on your current ability to make money or impose big future costs.

If you don't have any place to cook, that dollar menu burger looks pretty good. If you can't get a regular loan and need a car for work, paying way too much for a low quality car at a 'buy here pay here' lot looks pretty good. Of course, both those things will cost you down the line, but what are you gonna do? you've gotta make it through today or there won't be a tomorrow to worry about at all.