acconrad

https://archive.ph/7ZbkA

I've been remote for years even before Covid. RTO vs remote comes down to how and where you work best.

When folks want to go remote I ask them "when you were in school, did you study better in the library or at home in your bedroom?"

If they said bedroom, I assume they can work from home. If they say library, I think RTO makes more sense.

As much as I love remote, the best answer, like all things, is that best is relative to each person. What works for you doesn't work for others.

Imho the best approach to measure productivity is to see where people do their best work and support that. And if you think something works for you but it isn't (i.e., low performance rating), well... time to head into the office or find a new job. You, the individual, also have to be willing to change if you're not performing your best because you _think_ remote will work for you but in reality you're not nearly as present or productive.

Mandates, as the name implies, sort of admits that the ideal isn't best for {someone} otherwise you wouldn't need a mandate; people would naturally come back into the office if they so chose because it was best for them.

30 million monthly active users when it was acquired...[they] had just six generalist developers [1]

So they got to 30mm users with 6 engineers...scaling linearly with 5mm customers/engineer. Incredible.

[1] https://review.firstround.com/how-instagram-co-founder-mike-...

Don't Think of an Elephant will completely change how you view politics and what anyone in politics says and how to interpret it.

Aristotle's Ethics helped me reconcile my desire to constantly strive to do more and what to make of it when it seems never-ending.

Plato's Republic goes deep into virtue in a way that somehow doesn't (and might need to) get explored more often today.

Excellent Sheep is the book that got me to read the above books in the first place.

https://www.adamconrad.dev

A lot of it is around engineering management best practices but there are some more philosophical and personal bits sprinkled here and there.

It has hit HN a few times but I’ll admit I have no analytics on it so I don’t really know how many readers I have beyond my newsletter subscribers.

Is there a phenomenon that describes why I feel a sense of unease when I see the other maps? Seeing the various projections and changes of those maps left me _very_ uncomfortable and I'm not sure why.

Sure a lot of stuff is high status crap (like the LV weekender bag that was torn apart here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EktumN7N5l8).

But your comparisons don't factor in total cost of ownership and usage, and in fact many quality brands you do pay up for quality and better cost of ownership.

I can wear crocs at home. I would look disrespectful wearing them to a funeral. I can wear Alden anywhere though I might be overdressed for many occassions.

Aldens can be resoled and repaired and can last decades, the cost-per-wear can be very low. And many models of Aldens can be sold for a pretty penny (as an example these https://www.ebay.com/itm/394665864763 still go for nearly $300 even after years of wear). So if you bought Aldens new for $500 and wore for a decade and sold for $300 your cost per wear would be lower than that of the crocs. You would also be doing better for the environment by reusing the clothing and requiring less total material for your feet over a lifetime.

This also applies to a very few select watchmakers (and in fact increase in value). A Rolex or Patek Philippe has essentially beat inflation and would be considered a smart investment that made you money even while you wear it. A G-Shock would not offer similar returns.

Actually a lot of quality clothing can be like this. I thrifted a Tom Ford shirt for $40, wore it for a decade to weddings and funerals, and then sold it for $150. Certain makers are heavily discounted on second hand but retain their value. Borrelli shirts are some of the best on the planet. Would I pay retail? No. But you can buy them, wear them, and sell them second hand and pay virtually 0 to wear them over time.

Furniture is one where I've yet to find cheaper furniture paying off. A lot of particleboard furniture is awful. And it's all over Wayfair. The stuff I've had passed down or that I've bought that's lasted decades are all from North Carolina furniture makers. Not all of that stuff is expensive or high status but it is well made.

Expensive things are not always bad. Oftentimes the price is not justified. But it's not exclusive.

If you want to skip the article and go directly to the conclusions of the research:

...given all the data available on red meat intake and risk of a subsequent outcome, we estimate that consuming unprocessed red meat across an average range of exposure levels increases the risk of subsequent colorectal cancer, breast cancer, IHD and type 2 diabetes at least slightly compared to eating no red meat (by at least 6%, 3%, 1% and 1%, respectively). Furthermore, the conservative interpretation of available data is consistent with no association between consuming unprocessed red meat and the risk of subsequent ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke

In other words, very mild risk of _unprocessed_ red meat consumption.

Here's the thing - the culprit isn't the meat itself, it's the saturated fat within the meat. Fatty meats have more saturated fat, and the dose-response of red meat (which is generally higher fat than other meats) means it takes very little to hit general recommendations for saturated fat consumption (less than 10% of total calories).

Also it's hard to decipher what "processing" really is. Ground meat is processed. Bacon is really processed. But you have to cut up meat from an animal to make it packageable - this is all processing. What is "bad" processing of meat? What is "good"? Is there such a thing? Does the moment you cure the meat (i.e. bacon) make it "bad"?

This is how the general public is left with more questions than answers when research like this comes out. But if you stick to the canonical advice of eat lots of plants and a little bit of animal products, you're probably going to be okay. Keep saturated fat and sodium in check. Keep your fiber high. Don't smoke and don't drink to excess. Manage stress. Exercise. All that stuff in aggregate is what matters far more than a grass fed ribeye for dinner tonight.

https://archive.ph/nmO6Z

This is a big deal because it’s only the second time in the publication’s history to do a cover-to-cover story on a topic (since one about code).

I’m not fully through it but I will say it starts a bit rough and suspect but he does a great job of clarifying points and providing accurate details on the basics of cryptography, blockchains, and the rise of digital currency.

https://archive.ph/arkxI

https://archive.ph/Pvu0g#selection-1401.0-1406.0

I got mono 2 months before college graduation. At the time I didn’t think “oh I won’t graduate” but in retrospect being out of school for 2 weeks without doing any work can really make things difficult, especially that close to the end of the semester.

Now I have recurring dreams about having one class that I haven’t studied for at all and there are 6-8 weeks left in the semester. Long enough that I could study at the expense of literally all of my waking time, but short enough that there is real anxiety I might fail this class and not be able to graduate.

At least now I know having these dreams now is evidence of waking anxiety that I have to manage.

1. I watch foreign films so that’s how I got started

2. Then I put on CC so I could watch things at 2-3x and still keep up

3. I’ve got young kids and I can’t watch shows at times with the volume up if everyone else is sleeping

4. I got it as a tip for kids shows too so children can see the words they are hearing. Helps them reinforce their vocabulary. So it’s always on if the kids are watching tv.

What’s not to like about CC?

What the people said here about climate being political are correct. I worked in climate for 3 years and climate companies suffer from the same problems as all startups: product market fit issues, infighting, executive mismanagement. It’s not like working at a climate company you’ll all of the sudden solve all of your problems.

Are there any new players in this space? Between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, it seems like any attempt at cloud computing infrastructure gets eaten up and you're forced into these price hikes from this triopoly

When the author says “use modern techniques like forecasting” in the section on estimation, what do they mean, specifically?

You can do that on Blind. I didn't (which is what I would do differently). All of my referrals came from my existing network.

Hi folks!

Author here - did not expect this post to blow up. Figured it might be helpful to provide some context on points of confusion:

1. Money > everything: an alternative way to look at this is that if you sort by offers, you notice there are a lot of neat companies in that list. I didn't just sort and then blindly apply. I sorted, and noticed that they all had something I was really interested in. I use Amazon weekly. My side projects use Stripe. I have side projects in fintech, and Brex is in fintech. Facebook is the home of React, which I've built most of my career on. In seeking high comp, my goal is to be able to self-fund the earliest stages of a startup, as right now I just don't have the idea that is compelling me to start something. I also want to help family, some of whom are in a financial rut. So it wasn't like I only looked at money. I started with money as the way to narrow down the list, and it turned out that list had a lot of interesting companies on it.

2. Making time for studying: as some folks pointed out, I have young children and with both of us parents working, I wanted to just make sure I wasn't encroaching on precious family time - and I think it's important to run things by your family if you think a routine might change. Turns out that extra study time infringed on none of it. I mostly studied on nights and weekends, during the baby's naps or after they went to bed. All I really wanted to say here was "if I can make time with a family, I believe you can find the time to study, too"

3. Do you really have to do this to land a good job? Heck no. My take on this was "leave nothing to chance." You'd be surprised how many startups are leveraging the FAANG interview process. It takes work to prepare for interviews at quality companies. I didn't want to spend the time interviewing with a company only to think "why didn't I prepare for this?" It's a waste of their time and mine if I don't come in fully prepared.

Lastly, someone pointed this out, but I just have changed my value system on work. I do care about what I do, but it is just a job. Family and life are so much more.

I think I have burnout from startups as an employee. I've worked on everything from sports to climate change, and it's been difficult to put so much heart and soul into something that statistically hasn't had much of a payout, in either literal dollars or impact on the world.

So in seeking my next role, I figured that if I have to work hard anyway, I might as well get myself closer to goals external to work, such as retirement, college funds for my kids, and helping my family out of debt. Or even, possibly, starting my own company.

And in the end, I have fantastic work/life balance. I spend less time working and more time with my family, all while making more. And I am very grateful that I have this time to focus more on family. While my initial list started with high-paying companies, by the time I had offers in, I very much wanted to ensure all of my needs were met, including time with my growing family.

https://www.adamconrad.dev - I used to write more on programming when I was a developer. Now I write mostly on engineering management and how to become an engineering manager.

This advice of being “so good they can’t ignore you” is better applied to the industry as a whole than a particular company. Since employees are dispensable and the average tenure is a short two years, it’s better to have indispensable skills for your industry so that you can easily find a new job at a higher salary or title.

That sucks but I wouldn't beat myself up over a diagnosis over something like that. It's largely genetic.

My dad is a Vietnam vet in his 70s who drinks, smokes, and has way too much coffee. And he's fought 2 tours in Vietnam, 3 bouts of cancer, and a whole other host of issues.

Some people can't be killed. Others get cancer in their 20s. You do the best that you can and try not to beat yourself up if you get an unlucky draw.

Honestly, I'm disappointed.

The Telegraph is known for being a conservative-leaning media outlet with a mixed track record for fact checking [1]. All of the links in this article just point back to the Telegraph, with no primary source links available from this article.

The OP created an account 2 hours before they posted this article.

I posted a long-form article from well-researched pro-science outlet (MIT Technology Review, which should be a slam dunk for a cohort like HN) yesterday to crickets [2]. I'm not bitter that my post didn't get upvoted, to be clear.

I'm bitter that we're upvoting spurious content instead of balanced, fact-checked research.

Have we lost our desire for factual research and content?

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/daily-telegraph/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30277185

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

The most salient point against a lab leak theory:

“RaTG13 couldn’t have naturally morphed into SARS-CoV-2,” he says. Neither could anybody have used RaTG13 as the backbone to engineer SARS-CoV-2, as some proponents of the lab leak theory have argued: the two viruses are different in 1,100 or so nucleotides spread across their whole genomes—a gap too large for any realistic effort. Making SARS-CoV-2 from RaTG13, says virologist Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, “would have required a feat of unprecedented genetic engineering.”

You had me until you said GMOs and inflammation.

GMOs are not allergenic[1].

Inflammation is a necessary function of the human body. There are no anti-inflammatory diets[2]. Short term inflammation has no bearing on health markers[3].

Just focus on a diet rich in whole foods, mostly plants that you can stick to over the long run.

[1] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/can-gmos-cause-gastrointest... [2] https://youtu.be/JKcfubZh-fc [3] https://youtu.be/CPB0jqo76Hg

If you’re worried about a $10b telescope, you going to lose your mind when you find out how much taxpayers overpaid on the F35 and the War in Afghanistan.

I’m flagging this as misinformation and surprised this is scoring so high on HN.

This author presumes every major VoC stemmed from a lab leak. From the wild strain to Delta to Omicron. This is sensationalist, unsubstantiated claims with weak supporting evidence.

Me and a buddy have a Slack Q&A bot called https://gettoknowapp.com - just something fun to play around with Elixir and pretty much runs on its own.

They were also unwilling to collaborate, and unwilling to accept how I approached solving the problem

Wow. Similar thing happened to me with Stripe. It was a system design interview. I had already seen a very similar problem and aced it with Amazon. This person just kept saying "we don't have time for this, we need to get through this whole system" - wouldn't even let me finish my thought. It was arbitrary whether they wanted me to dive into a section of the system more or if I was boring them (and they did not seem excited/engaged to present this interview) and taking too long explaining my decision.

Stripe was the only company I didn't pass (and I passed multiple FAANG interviews) and it was the only company who told me twice that the role I was applying for either was filled or "shifted priorities" and they would scramble to find me another role with another hiring manager. And I am certain it was because of this one system design interview that we just did not click on.