This is the type of thing that a public review/reputation system tends to flesh out. But, we have seen this fail over and over as the system gets gamed or abused. Any industry where consumers buy less frequently than once every few months, these systems are awful. Different people have different situations and it might take a long time before someone even realizes they’ve been ripped off.
This also applies to several other competitive industries with asymmetric information — auto repair, plumbing, and HVAC come to mind. Consumers have to place their trust in someone. It always pays to be an informed consumer. Sometimes, I guess you have to pick and choose your battles.
When the next recession happens, stocks will fall and bonds will rally, causing yields and interest burden to fall. The US recently had a historic opportunity to refinance and lock in long term debt at low rates, but that ship has sailed.
I use Google Photo because it’s easy. However, the rate of recording has outpaced my ability to stay organized. I appreciate the memory highlights and throwbacks, but I think we are missing out on leveraging technology in this space. The lack of openness, portability, and permanence is disheartening.
Digital photos have an incredible opportunity to attach context to memories — not just time and place, but feelings and emotions. But, so far, this has been severely lacking.
Imagine parents or grandparents being able to attach stories about a childhood event, or to annotate a travel journal. If such things are possible today, what are the chances they will be available and discoverable in twenty or fifty years?
Not many people consider the discoverability that a book of old photo prints offers over a digital library. To have a universal and timeless reach, there needs to be more openness and interoperability.
Is it’s not an either/or proposition. There is a dearth of informed populace. But many of the problems in a modern society are very complex and boring to the majority of people. There is a very small population of informed people. Getting things done requires swaying public opinion and “motivating your base”.
Real reporting (presenting or revealing facts), op-ed, comedy, satire are all part of a healthy media ecosystem.
But I think one reason for the political divide in the United States is not necessarily a disagreement on policy, but rather the very issues that motivate people on either end of the spectrum are different.
It would be great if the population was less impressionable and more informed. But that requires ongoing effort and flies against human nature.
Within the last generation, we have seen a large increase in wealth disparity. Technological progress and the multiplier effect that “internet scale“ enables seems to have amplified the effect.
Is the extent of judgement around who makes the most money a recent phenomenon? It seems more common these days for people to look down on others that make less than them. Maybe there are more visible status symbols now.
The older I get, the more I realize how little I need in day to day life. But I have profound gratitude for the opportunities I have been given.
I have deep respect for those that help to repair my plumbing, deliver my mail, and cook a breakfast sandwich at 6am.
Part of me suspects that politically the US is experiencing class struggles right now, particularly around how we treat each other. A little bit of seeing the human being in the people around us and treating them with empathy can go a long way IMHO.
From my experience, they have zero _interest_ in mentoring or training.
For C++, there are ways other than professionally to get experience. Despite the hate it gets here, there are examples of large, solid C++ codebases to peruse and learn from.
Taking the initiative to learn a language prior to a phone screen or interview goes a long way.
If a C++ job is what you’re after, it might be worth investing the time to use it on a non-toy project and narrowing your search focus.
It’s too bad that it hasn’t acquired the name of an author to describe this alternative functionality more concisely without being judgy (like Nagle’s algorithm). I looked around, and it seems that there isn’t any one designer/author that you could give credit to.
Don’t forget strong property rights, fairly impartial justice system wrt foreign representation, and a large body of corporate case law with predictable outcomes
I am looking for a personal contact manager that has integration with a personal calendar. I have talked about this with my wife who has moderate ADHD: it is harder for her to manage relationships, because she generally lacks a perception of time. Getting gentle reminders to follow up with a friend or acquaintance would be very helpful. But none of these are business relationships, so maybe looking for CRM software is barking up the wrong tree, even if open source and extensible. Is there anyone in a similar boat that has found a good solution?
It’s a very difficult problem to know what your children are capable of. Both extremes are likely to build resentment. Believing that your children are always capable of more, and not celebrating success can lead to a black hole of success chasing. Underestimating your children and overvaluing minor successes can lead to insecurity and lack of work ethic. Being a parent is hard.
One of the biggest struggles with high achievement comes from having to choose which activities to be an achiever. Sometimes you have to explicitly decide which activities to exclude. You have to learn how to be okay with not being the best at everything. You have to be tactical. Otherwise, you end up chasing your tail and get easily lost in details.
There was a quote from Winston Churchill that I saw once: “ No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.”
When it comes to sports, school — anything really — I try to tell my kids that all they can do is prepare and do their best. They might win and not deserve it. They might also lose. But if they came prepared, did their best, and handled themselves with class, then they deserved victory.
Civilization was the game that made me decide to stop playing video games. So many nights of “just one more turn”, then next thing you know, it’s 3am. So much fun and happy memories, though!
Did you achieve mastery of the subject matter without doing the homework? If so, kudos to you. If not, then perhaps doing the homework might have been of some value. Practicing leads to solving problems faster and with less mistakes.
Of course the length of the assignment matters, too. Hours of additional work would be a burden. So, I guess it depends on the situation. You would hope that the adults involved (parents and teachers) have the student’s best interest in mind and would work something out.
Do you think your teacher saw potential in you and was trying to get more from you?
My biggest frustration with the public school near me is that they don’t care whether a student thrives, only that they don’t fail.
Attempting to instill a work ethic as a teacher is admirable, but clearly didn’t work in your case. I could see how facing resistant students could grind the optimism and energy out of a teacher.
> If you throw a bunch of unenforceable clauses into an NDA/non-compete/whatever, that increases the likelihood of the whole thing being thrown out
I’m not sure that this is true. Any employment contract will have a partial invalidity/severability clause which will preserve the contract if individual clauses are unenforceable.
You want to give all your financial info to your brokerage?
What increasing latency will do is widen the markets. We’ll go back to the days of multiple cents or dollars between the bid and offer prices of stocks.
It will definitely increase the time horizon to make an investment profitable. But maybe that’s a societal good for some people…
In the modern era, adding a speed bump might just mean that all the trading moves overseas, to derivatives, or mutual funds. Money finds a way of flowing downhill
I had a Braun shaver for a very long time — long after the battery had died. It worked great while plugged into the wall, which was fine because I kept it in the bathroom next to an outlet. I switched to a new shaver after receiving one as a gift. I had no idea that modern shavers (maybe most electronics these days?) only run from the battery, rather than passing through from the wall. It’s a reminder of a time before forced obsolescence that I miss.
High rates don’t impact people without mortgages. There are lots of people who bought in ages ago and move their equity between homes.
At least according to the WSJ and others, there seems to be a decent chunk of investor-owned real estate. Someone probably has a study comparing real estate in countries that restrict ownership by investors to see how much this distorts prices.
High rates also incentivizes your customers to save now and buy later, slowing sales activity and growth. This increases pressure to control costs.
Trying to engineer a soft landing is hard. It’s like trying to perform a moon landing. There are so many variables: changing demographics, shifting energy production, global macroeconomic events. Time will tell in the end.
Is this at least partially the product of a culture of disposable goods? People would rather buy a new TV every few years than fix them. As wasteful as it seems, people seem to choose this option more and more with their purchase habits. Cars get more modular and less repairable every year. One day, if/when cheap replacements are no longer available, we might adapt. Or we might be sorry.