moonhorse

True. Recently one of the sales directors at my company threatens the CEO to make him a "co-founder" (which basically means granting him a lot of option), or he will quit. He is responsible for half of our revenue, and he has been empire-building in his org for a while, so that his team answers to him, not the company. If we cut him off, very likely he (and a few key leaders) would deflect to our main competitor with our sales pipeline, and do some real damage. Very brutal situation for the CEO. I can not imagine learning how to handle this in any water-downed advice.

Being fit helps project a certain image. And that is one reason I do it.

I exercise a lot. But I do it mostly for the intrinsic fun part.

I doubt it has a big impact on our health and longevity. Once a research says regular medium intensity exercise could potentially prolong our lives by 3 to 5 years. But that is it. If you exercise for 50 years, 3 times a week, and 1 hour per session plus 30 minutes preparation, that is actually 12150 hours in total and translates into about 2 years of productive life.

So its ROI from a longevity perspective is really not as high as some of us think.

I fully understand your hatred towards the Chinese government.

I want to point out what I believe is the root cause. It has nothing to do with communism. Chinese has a deep rooted culture of long range thinking (think "Sun Tzu"). It has always been willing to sacrifice piece for the whole, sacrifice short term for the long term. We read those historical stories as we grow up. It is very scary at times, especially when you end up at the wrong side of the table and you are being sacrificed. This moral code probably is very different from yours. From your perspective, what happens in Xinjiang is severe violation of human rights; from those top guys' perspective, this is sacrificing the freedom of a minority for the stability and prosperity of a whole people. I am not saying I approve this policy as I certainly do not want to be those interned. And you might argue that this "long range thinking" is really servicing communism party's self interest. But your response demonstrates that the chasm is deep. And the chasm is on a cultural level and wont bridge easily.

What this trade war scares me the most is also related with this chasm - it is just so hard to transcend cultures and reach slightest bit of mutual understanding. For a while west thinks China could turn, but now it is really starting to realize there is fundamental difference. It is very scary to me. Like most people on this forum, I do not want to see any escalation in any form of conflict. I just want a peaceful globe and we could continue do our thing that occasionally crosses border.

And speaking of this Hong Kong protest, many Hong Kong friends disapprove it. I read WSj every day and there is no mentioning of what a normal Hong Kong resident think of it. In the end, what do you expect a 18 year old high school protester to understand in regards to what "democracy" mean? At that age, we easily aggrandize our self-righteousness and self-importance and are easily influenced. It is a matter of age. I think fundamentally what is driving such grievance is that Hong Kong is no longer as important as before. And younger generation see no hope. But this is simply inevitable capitalistic evolution. Smart young Hong Kong natives are now looking for opportunities in Beijing. This is the future and we have to embrace it.

The reality is that mainlanders want prosperity and stability over democracy. Unless protesters could prove there is a better way to bring prosperity, the propaganda efforts would be futile. It is not 1980s any more.

VPN would not help. I learnt about what happened to Tiananmen Square, but I also learnt there is CIA agents behind a lot of these incidences. Real world is complicated. Politics is pragmatic.

I do hope different countries could put their trifles aside and focus on the big picture as a specie. But it will be a long way. Too much pride, too much at stake. Power struggle is too deep in our genes.

Chinese companies have been relying on instant messenger as the primary communication channel for a long time. So definitely it works.

there is already another Silicon Valley. And that is China. Alibaba is a Chinese company...

I’m not sure why we need to be sarcastic about a future in which “we upgrade ourselves into transhuman”. There is nothing special about “humanity”. Emotions are likely result of chemicals. We will transform ourselves and what those beings feel most likely will not resemble what we feel today. They will have their culture and art and they will not care about ours at all. It is inevitable if there is no disastrous event happening. We just need to accept that. We are one tiny step in evolution like dinosaur.

I too find that after a 10-hour day, I can not do anything productive. My best time is morning till early afternoon. I think ego depletion definitely has some anecdotal evidence. Most of us can only do quality focused work when our mind is clear after sleep.

If you look at the data gwern provided, some of the supposedly owls actually sleep till noon, and do work immediately after waking up. That is not an "owl" in my opinion ... I too can do work at night if I spend the day wandering around. An owl is someone who could pump good work after a taxing day.

Awesome!

Agreed!

Great pos! The more I learn about bitcoin, the more I feel like it still has a long way to go. There are a few hurdles that can not be easily solved now: 10min transaction time; deflationary (this pretty much means it would have a hard time to act a real "currency" based on nowadays economic thinking); the resources wasted in mining and the potential consolidation of mining; the programmable aspect is very limited today. What is your take of it?

Agreed. The risk for innovating is too high. When there are ideas up for grabs in the US, why not just take it and localize it. This is simply a rational decision.

Thanks too! I felt I spent too much time reading junk before and now I am really careful in selecting what to read. I have looked at your list briefly and it is great that someone has taken the efforts to pick the gold from huge pile of rubbish. :)

I am a fan of Scott, but the last paragraph on Sinofsky is laughable. Online business and software are different beasts. With all his advocation of the dogmatic triad model, Sinofsky would for sure slow down online service division and sink the business even more.

I remember I see people using some sort of old fashioned Basic like IDE with blue screen and yellow fonts to work on it. Do not know if it has improved.

Another theory is that low calorie diet leads to longevity. Too many theories. :)

This is very similar to the big company that I work for - we use "visibility" instead of "high profile" though. :) So I suppose when company grows larger, it is inevitable. You just need to adapt to that or leave if you can not stand it. Also, the team and manager you have has big impact on your experiences. I do not believe there is a perfect environment.

Most web developers can adapt to "HTML5" rather quickly. It looks more like .NET3.0 VS .NET2.0. Recruiters may not be able to fully understand the difference and would think that "HTML5" represents something completely new.

I do not find anything new in this article. A very hideous way of saying entrepreneurs need to chanllege the status quo.