yannis7

oh how much I dislike this latest trend in tech-hip employee headshots where they blast insane amounts of light on one's face - that, in combination with the fake smile on all those pics, gives such an eerie effect..

met the co-founder Howie at a dinner in San Fran back in 2012 - I think the app was called Grid back then? Very passionate and driven, I remember him leaving the event early to work on the app.

I also remember my typical cynicism (held to myself of course) when he described the idea (what's this, Excel for ipads??!).. But now with a $1.1B valuation, wow - so well done to him and his team!

arrogant and pompous uses of terms "mediocre, soul-sucking, etc etc", while the fundamental ideas of the article range from trivial to minimal-value

Twitter is built short-burst/high-speed communication - the kind that works great for machines but not for humans. The result is that it has turned the world into one massive Medieval village; flash-spreading of rumours, hysteria, bigotry in-between maniacally virtue-signalling and choir preaching.

lol - though I completely disagree with the premise of social media is the new smoking.

I would also assume by the time millenials are grampas nobody is gonna be looking at screens but through some AR glasses/lenses

I've personally deleted NYT from "My Life Forever" - couldn't be better off

read "rally Americans against Russians[Democrats]/China[Republicans]"

I find the earlier/Socratic dialogues, from Symposium to Apology, much easier to read, more fluid and dynamic - that probably has to do with the character of Socrates himself.

Works such as the Republic are a bit too heavyweight / scholarly for me..

I'm surprised how many people mention reduction of sugar intake as a component of productivity boosting.

Though I am currently on a low-carb diet for weight control, the times I remember me being the most productive were when I was eating tons of simple carbs and junk food.

In fact the most productive people I've met, if you look at their desks they are full of muffin, candy and energy drink leftovers. They must consume tons of sugar per day, and they output work like a damn machine.

with all due respect my friend, and honestly I don't mean to insult you, but what you're describing "drugs are everywhere / everyone does them / everyone works best with them / it's all prevalent and normal" is a bit of a drug addict's mentality.

I have friends who are potheads and they swear that everyone smokes weed and everyone who's ever done something meaningful in their life is because of marijuana.

Not everyone does drugs, and not everyone works best with them, it's not normal, it's not enhancement.

Back in my academia years, I was really frustrated with that group of researchers, "cult of power law" I called them - mainly centered around Santa Fe Institute.

In all their talks, the pattern was always the same: 1) take a dataset from some random system, and strip it from all its domain context ("interdisciplinary" research) 2) brag about being a "physicist" thus applying a "physicist's" approach to new areas of research 3) plot data on log-log scale - kind of looks like a power law 4) make a toy model and use it to "simulate the system" 5) plot simulation vs real data on log-log scale -- kinda look the same 6) promise that your trivial little model will reveal whole new horizons for that field you know nothing about - because others are stupid and you're a "physicist" 7) write a grant proposal

no "provincial" backstabbing in LA/NYC - God no.

I find that the biggest intellectual mistake of pessimists is that they take an actuarial view of reality: "99% of startups fail, thus we are doomed from the get-go and our <current problems> are evidence of that".

This might be correct if you take a 3rd-person perspective view, but ignores human agency and the ability to steer situations - sometimes via sheer willpower.

See Paul Graham's essay on Intellect vs. Determination.

Just indicates how many bored hipsters have enough free time to engage in post-ironic trolling

just another attempt by the witch-hunting media trash to portray tech people as the "new bankers".

it is amazing how similar those "respectable" metropolitan left-wing newspapers are to their populist-right counterparts:

for the latter "immigrants are gonna take your jobs and globalists are evil" and the former "robots are gonna take your jobs and techies are evil".

On your point, might be worth mentioning that Facebook is starting to lose its focus with acquisitions such as Oculus Rift - which Zuck considers a major strategic move

I guess my point was that the "moral" aspect of academia (="pushing the limits of knowledge") has faded away over the last few decades.

Currently departments are pressing researchers towards output rather than long-term quality work - at least that was the key aspect of my post-doctoral experience.

it will definitely be fun, both being a student + working on your own project.

From my experience, for some reason PhD advisors tend to work well/really like mature students. No hard data on this, just an empirical observation across 3-4 labs I've worked in before I left academia.

With regards to career prospects (outside academia ofc), you definitely gain respect but anything more than that largely depends on your area of research. Which one is it, if I may ask?

Academia nowadays is a high-tech bureaucracy; you are forced to churn out documents (papers) that need to cite other documents, and you're evaluated based on your position in the inter-document citation network.

Then you have to write other documents (grant proposals) to grab money to write more documents (papers) by gaming the inner mechanics of some comittee.

If partner-track investment bankers are overworked, depressed sociopaths with Lamborghinis, then tenure-track postdocs are investment bankers with crappy bicycles.

Needless to say, I left academia 3 years ago and never looked back.

nothing screams "disconnected coastal elite" more than a young hip billionaire who thinks that his 50-state "poverty safari" trip resonates with voters

EVE is even more fun to listen to... I often have the soundtrack playing while working

one additional reason not to feed that clickbait machine

I would frame this on my wall - spot on

...or London.

Far less distractions too.

Back in the day if you were playing D&D you were worshipping the devil - now if you play video games you hate various societal groups.

So interesting how puritanism evolves