geoffbrown2014

Don't have much to add, but enjoyed it, cool.

My son is very into tabletop warfare and he loves it! He's a big Punic War fan.

We had a chance to work through some of the lessons. Overall very solid foundation I would say. My son's critique was that it was a little confusing when it came to answer format and that he felt the lessons kind of jumped around. Other than that he found it 'OK'. He's 10 so that means you didn't mess up too bad. lol.

We did have a few issues.

1. The hint on the equation simplification section describes the format of the simplified equation as 6 x l. (actual number varies 2 x l x 3) But the only answer that is accepted is in the format is 6l, sans the 'x'.

2. I found the hints' font coloring very hard to read on my old eyes. Also, we did not find out the desired input methods until fairly far along. The SHIFT-8 etc was new to my son and kind of obscure given how soft the font was. Maybe a heads up of the conventions at the beginning?

3. In the word questions section, sometimes the amount being compared to determine the total amount of cages vs squirrels was the exact same. Actual examples -> 2 cages and 2 squirrels vs 2 cages and 2 squirrels. I assuming the desired question would have compared 2 cages and 3 squirrels vs 3 cages and 2 squirrels. (Although that doesn't make sense either.)

4. The spoken word button is a great idea, but the voice is almost incomprehensible to a 10 year old. I know you didn't create the voice, but if there is another easier to understand voice that would help.

5. My son was initially confused by going some distance in a negative amount as a representation for reverse.

6. My son is very competitive and he enjoyed the speed challenge, but there was no reward or signification of accomplishment at the end of the challenge. He wanted to know how well he did.

6. There are some minor grammar errors.

My impression was that the layout and design was on par with other online offerings that we use daily. I actually liked the lower distraction level. The site and UX were predictable, easy to use and did not add to the stress level of the student. I'll have him do some more over the next few days. Keep up the good work!

Hi Eric, I'm a homeschooling dad with a 5th and a 6th grader. I made an account and will have my children check it out in the morning and report back.

Rent seeking and corruption are two definitions that spring to mind.

I would take the first two, and replace 3 with Monk/Assassin.

Transitory /snark

Your idea is interesting. Non-generic advice would be that you did not spend enough time in your deck quantifying the financial opportunity, addressing the risks of writing legal contracts or as you put it 'setting the standard' and describing the business model. What is the current state of the application, demo, beta? Who is your competition? Basically you stated that you wouldn't have any, this is very unlikely. How are people solving this 'problem' now. If people aren't getting contracts for a photography session etc. now, then who would pay for this? I would like to see a target customer.

Also, you have not included much product validation or market fit research in your deck. My sense of your presentations appear to me like a very tech oriented idea more than a product at this point. Not unusual for early stage, but that image could be changed by including a productization road map in your deck.

TLDR: Focus more on communicating customer validation, monetary size of opportunity and your business model. Good luck!

Actively listen to the people in your personal and professional life as if you were a scientist. Think about what they are trying to say to you beneath the words. Do they want praise, recognition are they feeling stressed, happy? People will tell you these things almost unwittingly.

When its time to respond try to frame what you say in the context of their needs and what they have communicated. If you can't think of anything immediately rephrase and confirm what they said and you can think about the meaning of it later when you are post processing the interaction, again like a scientist. You aren't going to be good at it at first. Experiment. Even if the interaction turned out negative don't take it personal it's still another data point to help you learn how to do it better.

By doing this procedure you can learn about how your emotional system works and how human dynamics work and when its appropriate to talk about yourself in conversation. It takes time and it has a lumpy reward curve, but it is very satisfying.

What if your parents didn't sacrifice for you? What if you raised yourself? The pay it forward attitude is just so blind to the harsh realities that a large number of children face. It is very possible for a parent to hate and resent their child to such a degree that they take every opportunity to hurt, gaslight and humiliate. And that's IF they are not ignoring you because they are distracted by addiction. I love being apart of my children's lives now. I don't expect anything in return for taking care of them. I have to earn their loyalty everyday by being a great person just like I have to do for everyone else I meet. Its such a sense of entitlement that the children owe you. If you don't want to change diapers, don't have a goddamn kid!!!!!!

I agree with the idea its the mental health of the person cutting things off, me in this case. But, indeed, the lion's share of my mental health issues could be attributed to the toxic nature of my relationship with mother. I was very close to being able to maintain stable relationships outside of the familial one. It was a clue that I was probably ok. Once I cut her out and wasn't under assault, my other relationships improved dramatically. (Intimacy etc) I was able to finally separate from her, find my own natural level of dysfunction and begin to live my own life.

Did you build first then sell? Can you elaborate on minimal product in not more than 9 months?

I'm a fan of Popper, but I'm skeptical this person has spent a lot time parenting, especially with difficult children. There are emotionally fragile adults and it would be 'anti-rational' to assume that at least some of them didn't start out that way. I wish him good luck though.

Spent many summers up at Glen Lake as a kid sanding and polishing these stones. Lots of fun.

Imo, depression is one of the largest drains on human potential. What can be done? Basic research on mental health patterns so we can understand the input output system and the effects on gene expression.

Love it!! Very nice work.

What a terrific project! So many levels of challenges. How many different images of each piece was needed to before you could train the system?

I agree and would also send a thank you to the original author for all her hard work. I use SVG semi-regularly and appreciate the work involved.

In my lifetime I've seen linearity of the link between 'hard work' and capital formation drastically distorted. Lots of different causes, but the one that strikes me most is also the most recent. Zero interest rate policy. Historically it has taken discipline (hard work?) to build capital to take business risks. While there has always been an unequal distribution of capital and idiot heirs to spend it, currently however, there is a fairly large group of people who has first dibs on nearly free capital that they had little to do with generating. This decouples or reduces the link between capital formation and the type of people who have the work ethic traditionally required to perform this activity. This is a disconnect that I find a fairly radical departure, at least in scale, from the past. I think the effect of this is that the pool of people with the required work ethic, dedication, luck and capacity to out compete incumbents is smaller. I think people are correctly assessing that their chances have been reduced.

I would like an invite. geoff@foom.co

This 12 Steps to Navier-Stokes tutorial was posted here not too long ago can't find the original post, but here is the link to Prof. Lorena Barba's tutorial. It uses IPython to work through the equations.

https://github.com/barbagroup/CFDPython

My memory is that idea of a stakeholder did not exist in its current form for most of the 80's. The meaning of the word stakeholder has been recommissioned to include people who have no direct financial stake in a policy, development or business, but find themselves affected by the action anyway.

I think it was fairly common to give little thought to ramifications of policy, development or business plans beyond the immediate financial concerns or desired policy outcome. For instance the pipeline in North Dakota might have included a single public hearing with only a few people in attendance, perhaps the local land owners in the pipeline's path, and very likely little to no indigenous people's input. Very likely it would not have occurred to anyone to contact them and they otherwise would not be aware of it. My father was on a town council of a small town in the Midwest and lots of development went on with little or no input from the town. Sometimes they had hearings where no one would be in attendance, sometimes they didn't even have a hearing. Lots of wetlands and marshes were plowed under and filled without any deliberation.

Serious question, can you tell me how you use it in a way that you love it? Maybe I'm using it wrong, but I find it to be one more thing on the list of shit I gotta do today. I receive so little value in my day to day life that its barely worth it.

I think a better word than privilege would be network. Networks confer priviledge to their members. That's less personal than saying you're priveledged. Out groups would like to be included in prosperous networks. Who wouldn't? I don't believe networks are just about providing value. If they were, women and others would already be included. Networks are also very much about identity and loyalty and fitness signalling. My limited understanding of women's issues around this appear clustered around fairness. Essentially this amounts to a recess argument that the boys are having more fun and that's not fair. Obviously a gross oversimplification, but the vernacular of the argument will fall on deaf ears more likely than not. It's not that you are wrong you just aren't playing by the "rules".

Find the pain point for your contractors/customers. Is it getting accurate measurements, is it selection difficulties etc. and find a way to automate it.

Top 5 reasons I don't trust the government

1. Many of the regulatory systems which are supposed to protect the populace have been captured or have their effectiveness impaired by special interests, ie. the revolving door between the SEC and Wall Street, the FDA and Big Pharma, and DOE and Big Oil

2. Even when our institutions are not captured there is a perverse logic supporting institutional missions that lead to abuse of power. The Tuskegee experiment makes perfect sense you've got to have a control group in order to better understand the pathology so you can better protect the populace.

3. Poor execution or formation of government policies that would in any other profession be cause for malpractice or being disbarred or worse are routinely foisted upon the populace.

4. Corruption

5. Increasingly your rights and legal protections are seen by institutions as being granted by those institutions instead of being protected by those institutions. Your rights are correctly perceived by the institutions as hindrances to their institutional missions.

Better legal policies wouldn't even crack the top 5 reason for me to trust government. We are way beyond wonky tweaks to our legal system. All of the above essentially boils down to accountability. If policy makers and lawmakers could be held legally accountable for policy mistakes, possibly even financially responsible for the mayhem they cause I for one would feel a much closer allegiance to our government.

I don't think housing density is THE controlling factor in housing affordability. I would think location swamps density as an affordability input. And I think that home ownership as a means to social inclusion is an interesting idea, but to assert that reducing property size will lower prices and encourage whites to accept blacks into their communities seems fairly unproven territory. Prior to regular successful integration trials somewhere I think to take the connection as a forgone, its gone on long enough, conclusion is premature. The article did little to bolster the argument for either. I live near Chicago and to think if people in an expensive suburb like Hinsdale, (tear down only places on tiny lots can run 750k or more) would subdivide their property so that lower/middle income people could build and move in and presumably socially integrate seems problematic and not just from race. The difficulty of the city in serving the increased population and construction would likely dramatically effect affordability, quality of life and would likely be an urban planning disaster. The author is basically asking rich people to voluntarily reduce their quality of life so that lower income people can presumably get the halo effect of living amongst them. Two words spring to mind, white flight.

About 10 years ago while researching market trading ideas, I stumbled across a 1960's transcript of testimony to a congressional hearing by a long time NYSE market maker. While the tone of the entire testimony was mind blowing in its honesty about the actual market making processes, especially given the era, a single quote really changed the way I think. The quote from the trader was simple enough; the price is used as a worm. But coupled with the entirety of the testimony regarding stock and flow management it changed my world view especially the fractal nature of the price action and the fact that left unchecked I am basically biologically programmed to respond to price movement. I was literally walking around for weeks mumbling that the price is a worm. I have been unable to find the transcripts again. I compare these old time market makers to today's supposed liquidity providers and can't help but think, those old timers were heros compared to todays laser riding quant jockeys.

Love it, great job! How long did it take you to get it up and running?

This happens regularly in highly regulated markets as well. Regulation doesnt stop people from being stupid. The beauty of the Blockchain is that it is still intact despite the stupidity. It doesn't depend on fragility of captured regulatory bodies or the honesty of salesmen. Stupids gonna stupid.

Answer: Make sure your employees are of such low quality that their lack of experience and self-esteem ensures that they have few other choices.