matco11

“Cloning” here seems the wrong (click-batey) choice of words.

They have horticulturally propagated redwood trees - that’s a relatively simple technique, commonly used by your average gardener.

What’s special here is that they found which conditions maximize the yield of the redwoods propagation and they are planting colonies of the new trees in areas around the world that offer particularly good/promising climatic conditions.

As these are very large trees, establishing large colonies can have a relatively meaningful impact in carbon capture.

> According to the FCO, Facebook had 32 million monthly active users in Germany at the end of last year, amounting to a market share of more than 80 percent.

I am not sure I understand: that’s Facebook penetration Facebook accounts/adult digital population), not their market share - which would be Facebook accounts/(sum of accounts of all social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, ...Spotify)

> The regulator argues this dominance gives it jurisdiction to oversee the company’s data collection practices.

...and why only the data collection practices? Why would the other parts of the T&C of Facebook be not subject to it? Why should consumers not be forced to accept just the data collection practices of the T&C? Shouldn’t the German antitrust then, logically, prevent Facebook from enforcing their entire T&C? So, large companies now cannot have T&C enforced even when they do not cause economic damage to the market? Is there an economic gain for a person to join Facebook? My friend does not have a Facebook account, I don't think she is poorer because of it. ...because if there is no economic harm, I don’t see why the antitrust office would have jurisdiction. Maybe the gain/harm is not economic, maybe the gain from a Facebook account is not economic, it’s “social”. Well isn’t then the “social” gain greater when Facebook offers a unified experience (across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsUp)? How does the antitrust office action make any sense? What am I missing?

Finally! Do airports next. ;-)

You can apply the same reasoning, perhaps in an even simpler way, to the “low unemployment” part of the statement. “unemployment” is a stat defined at general population level, reaching well beyond the engineering space. Low unemployment means it is probably harder to hire someone out there, but it does not contain any information about how is now harder/easier to hire engineers, let alone tech engineers.

This detailed history of the HP-35 is a must read: http://codex99.com/design/the-hp35.html

That assumes you "only" have to deal with the static mass of $5.8 trillion debt. It gets even more complicated when you have to deal with the factors that have been building that debt in the first place. Wouldn't addressing the causes of the debt build-up have an even harsher impact on the economy?

Based on the info you provided, there isn’t really an economic difference between the two offers. As a result, if I were you, I would try to decide based on other parameters: how do you like the product, the people you would be reporting to, opportunities for personal growth, etc. All else being equal, I would go for the smaller company, as intrinsically it’s likely to offer more opportunity, or continue interviewing with more companies to get more offers.

Such a pointless story. Saying that startups can only succeed in SV, London or Berlin is myopic. There are plenty of startup successes (around the US and around Europe) proving this wrong.

Every location has its advantages and its disadvantages - you play the best cards you get, and the only sure way not to win is to not play at all.

Well ancient and pristinely preserved do not really usually go together... but Villa Papyri, near Pompeii, almost gets you there. The villa's name derives from the discovery of its library, the only surviving library from the Graeco-Roman world that exists in its entirety. It contains over 1,800 papyrus scrolls. The scrolls are coarbonized and rolled up, but each scroll gets very slowly unrolled, read, studied and preserved in the National Library in Naples. With the use of new technologies the analysis of the scrolls is becoming faster and allowing the recover more and more of the works. It’s possible to go visit both the ruins of the villa and the scrolls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri

So they should make new lids from paper (not plastic), like they did for the straws

A business that operate in, say, Germany, reports to the German authority. A business that operates in 10 EU countries, can declare which one is the major country for them, and they have to deal only with the authority in that one country.

I suppose, what you do depends on the kids’age. During the day, you don’t really - have to - give them anything else other than water... I squeeze orange juice myself a few times/month. If I buy ready-made juice it’s always without added sugar, and I dilute it with water 1:1 when I pour it in their cups.

Mary Meeker became popular in 1995. She was the lead internet equity research analyst at Morgan Stanley and covered the IPO of Netscape. She was one of the top equity research analysts in 1998-2000 covering EBay, Amazon, Drugstore.com amongst others

You should listen to the commencement speech he made in 2005 at Stanford https://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA

Title of the link is inaccurate. The post refers to the Arabic numerals, not the decimal system - and after all the Roman numerals (which was widely commonal) also follow the decimal system. It should be “the path that Arabic numerals [or Hindu-Arabic numerals] took from India to medieval Europe.”

Smart move by the CEO of the company that makes Bratz dolls and Little Tikes. He is right when he says that without Toy”R”Us the toy industry is going to have two terrible years: grown-ups might prefer to shop for toys online, but (small) children need physical stores to pick their toys (and tell their parents what they like)

As far as I know there are 4 causes of eye fatigue from CRTs: 1) constantly looking at the same distance. This is the same with LCD and xLED displays, or even paper books; 2) refresh rate 3) intensity of the light emitted (on its own and compared to surrounding environment) 4) particles fired at your face by the magnetic field generated by the CRT

As far as I know, cause 4) has the most impact, dust particles were literally fired at your eyes, and for this reason 20 years ago it was relatively easy to see people with grounded filters mounted to their CRTs (you used to attach the ground wire to the ground contact of the RS232 or parallel port of the PC)

+ same here

Also, I’ll miss the newsletter

Vitamin D and Alzheimer’s https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4153851/

I so strongly agree: the weakening of the iCloud 2FA is the key issue

...And suddenly, Tesla’s battery technology progress implied by the semi’s announcement looks conservative

> What's really happening is that people are afraid to think in the presence of the boss

Is it too much to ask they do the thinking before meeting him? It seems clear to me that the process that Bezos has institutionalized for meetings at Amazon aims to achieve exactly that.

A person that is senior enough to report or present to Bezos is probably involved in taking huge, high-pressure decisions. If one can handle those, one can handle a meeting with Bezos, and vice-versa.

Yep. 100%. ...and it does not apply only to startups but also to large corporations

Getting commissions does not necessarily mean getting paid more. Often people paid on commissions have smaller base salaries.

Payments with commissions are a managerial tool to incentivize a certain behavior, the same way there are other structures to help organizations behave in a certain way.

For example, you can incentivize people based on an easily measurable metric fully under their control (e.g. $ sales, customer support tickets solved, factory throughput, etc.), or choose to align everyone's behavior (e.g. Profits of xyz division of the company - hardly under a particular person's control).

That's the same principle behind giving CEO and other senior executives incentives based on stock options: you want them to create value and get share price up, while leaving them maximum freedom on how to get there.

Each approach has its pros and cons in terms of how easy it is to explain to employees, track the metrics, create a collaborative environment (or not), incentivize intra-company communications (or not), and the impact it has on workforce productivity (also, it depends on how you measure productivity...)

In designing an incentive plan, one has to decide which one of these factors one wants to prioritize.

Because of the salesperson role, and because of the type of mindset/profile these people predominantly have, it is easy/common to have their pay structure heavily based on commissions.

Looking at things from the other side: if you ask a salesperson about compensation structures, possibly she would be wondering why engineers' or designers' pay is not linked to sales, so (instead of working on interesting and beautiful stuff) they would prioritize shipping features that help her sell... (as an example of not so beautiful designs that sell more think about the design of certain low cost airlines websites) ...Then again, possibly, the salesperson only knows what would help her sell more easily TODAY, and not what she is going to need in a year's time... you need an engineer not directly incentivized on current sales to think about that!

Great points. Also the sooner you adopt this discipline, the better it is.

...It's never too early. While, the longer you wait to do it, the harder it is to get everyone to adopt them

Another example of tall Roman buildings still standing today is Roman aqueducts.

Examples: http://0.tqn.com/d/ancienthistory/1/S/U/I/Rome_5.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z_W3YC_mG0Y/Tb55AUhJ0dI/AAAAAAAAAE...

First, know that everybody has to go through this, and that time helps.

Reading "Option B" by Sheryl Sandberg can help you putting many things in perspective. I recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1524732680/ref=mp_s_a_1_1

I wonder how people would feel if somebody made a huge painting with some modern brightly colorful composition and a cutout rectangle in it and the Louvre Museum put the Mona Lisa in the cutout rectangle to symbolize the abandon of old canons for the new.

...First the Mona Lisa's beauty would be diluted then its meaning - the art in it - would be destroyed (not irreparably, you could always take the Mona Lisa out again and put it where it deserves to be - on its own, in the context it deserves).

I love the fearless girl. But the Charging Bull shows the energy of progress, of the economy, of ambition, of growth. Not something I would want anyone to stop.

The advance of the bull's charge means we are all better off, means our children will be better off than we are. It means progress.

...If anything the girl should be riding the bull, pointing her finger forward! Yes a little girl can ride and drive the progress, can lead the charge of progress!

...but she should not be there to stop it. They could have bought an old nazi tank and put her in front of it, and the Fearless Girl would have had exactly the same meaning.

Let the Fearless Girl tell her message. Let the Charging Bull tell its message

Bloomberg (the company) became the de facto standard in the financial industry decades before Mike Bloomberg became a politician.

Mike Bloomberg started the company because while working at Merrill Lynch (in the 80ies) he thought the computer terminals banks used at the time to see stock and bond prices where ridiculous. He got funded by Merrill Lynch and disrupted the industry, overtaking rivals like Reuters (which well into the 90ies was usually considered the most trustworthy source for stock data)

You needed their special hardware only until the late nineties (the "Bloomberg box" - consider that up until around 96 or 97, only few employees would have internet access on their desktop, even inside "bulge bracket" investment banks): nowadays, you can get Blooomberg terminal on their workstation or on your own hardware. Likewise, you can run in on a dedicated connection, or on your normal internet line.

The key element of Bloomberg terminal is reliability: it feeds data you can usually trust and price feeds you can almost certainly trust. When you are checking prices changing several times a second across exchanges in different part of the world that's no easy feat). That's crucial when millions of dollars are at stake.

Second is the ability to access 80% of the data and information you would ever want to check wihout leaving the terminal.

Third ingredient is ease of use.

Fourth is incredible customer service.

Fifth is innovation: they continuously innovate, improve old features, add new features, introduce access to new data/information.

Once you remove the cost of the underlying live price feeds (from stock exchanges), The Bloomberg terminal is not that expensive for what it does. Bear in mind its customers are people that spend their day optimizing their financial decisions: if there was something cheaper working as well, they would go for it. If there was something working even better, they would go for it, probably even at a higher price point (because that's how the economics in the banking and investing world work).

Fun read: https://www.fastcompany.com/3051883/behind-the-brand/the-blo...

To become more technical. Even when you don't have a technical role (especially if you are in a tech biology company) it is valuable to be able speak the same language

And I find the more you are in a leadership role, the more it becomes important.