bishnu

The illustrative example to me is the construction of railroads at the beginning of the Industrial revolution. Unquestionably useful, unquestionably important there were nevertheless at least 3 speculative financial bubbles centered on railway construction.

What about blackberries made them unsuitable for social media apps?

How would this even work? Get it out of the app stores, fine. But presumably the URL would still be accessible? Likewise sideloading it onto Android devices?

This analogy doesn't hold for "WWIII" though, right? By this analogy, I would call the current crisis "Cold War II".

I gained a lot of clarity when I differentiated "programming" from "shipping code". I still enjoy the former, but the latter is becoming harder and harder to do at large corporations.

I burned out hard towards the end of last year as an engineer. Fortunately, this preceded 4 months of paternity leave during which I was really able to think hard about what I wanted out of my career. I came back to a different position at the same company, as a PM on a new team. I'm enjoying the role for now, but I'm not sure if I'll convert permanently. If I do go back to being a SWE, it will be at a smaller company/on a smaller team where shipping code takes less overhead.

Generally my advice to anyone feeling burned out these days is to take a long break if they can, and use that mental space to strategize your next move. I appreciate that not everyone is in a position to do this, though.

I believe this is the premise of an upcoming Netflix movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film)

100%. The answer wouldn't be "join our marketing team", it would be "you aren't a culture fit".

Has anyone read Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia journal? Was thinking of checking it out: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578627310?pf_rd_r=HMREHVA...

The rubber band trick [1] really helped me. Took my unlocks-per-day from ~100 to ~20. I took it off after about 2 weeks and it's more or less stayed that way.

1: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/mo...

I mean, a few guys stayed in orbit on subsequent lunar missions, but you're right, Collins was the first.

The NYT did a deep dive in an Indian city using this methodology: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/24/world/asia/india-coronavi...

The figures are orders of magnitudes greater than what's reported.

I feel like the covid pandemic has definitively answered the question "What's better, government policy and collective action, or a small well-capitalized group implementing a technological solution?"

Efforts like this are the only way we make a dent in climate change.

https://stripe.com/climate lists some interesting tech companies working in this area (scroll to the bottom)

I don't think it is. Most popular, groundbreaking technology isn't the first version of itself. Eg, I think of this profile of Tony West: https://www.wired.com/2000/12/soul/

Tony West is the protagonist of The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, the account of Data General creating a new microcomputer in the 80s. The first season of H&CF borrows heavily from it. He was ahead of the curve on a lot of things - laser printers, computers, laptops, thin clients...but never had the ability to bring it all to market in a meaningful way.

The tech industry is full of people like this - people that can build the future but not sell it. I didn't find it unrealistic.

If you enjoy this series I really recommend reading The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. It's 40 years old but still the best book I have ever read about what motivates engineers (not entrepeneurs - there are tons of books about that - but rank-and-file engineers).

Actually, the first season of H&CF cribs a lot from the book (from the overall plot to a few very specific anecdotes).

I find no fault with the social network bans, and I don't even mind the Google Play Store ban (given the ability to sideload apps, including alternate app stores, on Android), but totally banning an app from an OS like this does give me pause.

So, $7.2M per life lost.

Task managers must also have traffic spikes early in the new year...

If you've devoted yourself to a novel anarchist monetary project, I would imagine you might see your job as political regardless of which aspect you worked on.

I think what he's saying is that no-one would be willing to take over as CEO unless they had two years of runway ahead of them.

FAANG companies will have smaller teams working on various new/experimental products. Without a large userbase you'll be able to iterate faster. You can try to get transfered to one of those teams; I found it quite rewarding.

Here's an interview with one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGiL2PgC17A

It seems like a lot of elderly men in the late 1800s/early 1900s married younger women to essentially be caregivers.

Craig Newmark is a billionaire, granted not on the same level as Warren Buffett, but having your "not rich at all" threshold between those two seems not that useful.

If you learn some new tech and then don't use it you'll just forget it. Learn reactively.

It's not just Boeing, airlines that relied on the Max are losing money too (Southwest in particular is suffering harshly).

There's a 5+ year backlog for new A320s, so switching suppliers simply isn't an option.

In fairness, most headlines are chosen by editors and not article writers.

All these commenters with heartwarming anecdotes about older programmers need to familiarize themselves with the concept of survivorship bias.

'Tourist jam avoidance', as you put it, is built into these products. Just go to places they don't mention.

Musk didn't seem to mind when the media cycle fawned over him endlessly.

Hype comes with scrutiny. Nobody put a gun to Musk's head and told him to appear on talk shows, to cameo in Hollywood blockbusters, etc. If he wasn't prepared to make that tradeoff he shouldn't have done it.