jw_

Maybe seek fulfillment outside of work? Family, charity/service work, etc.

Yes, I can see how differentiating a clone from the things it clones will be a tough row to hoe.

There is nothing innovative about this at all - it's almost a parody of useless SV startups.

I clicked on the link wondering how an app is supposed to help with sobriety. "Does it count days clean? Does it hook you up with somebody to talk to if you're having a compulsion to use?" Nope! It's yet another damn photosharing social network. Awesome. Now I can finally share my photos with people online. Thanks Sobrr.

I like how an app named Sobrr promotes itself with people drunkenly messing around half-naked, people at a concert, people at a bar. All the things I personally associate with my own sobriety!

This guy seems intensely clueless.

"If somebody is willing to pay for it, is it really unethical?"

There we go - if there's a paying market for something, it's totally ethical. Off I go to found assasins.io - murder for hire disrupted.

He said a lot more than that, from the article.

You are still free to say whatever you want, and people are free to call you an asshole and distance themselves from you.

Having worked there, I'd say that is an excellent plan.

Poopin'.

Is this an attempt at humour or did you really miss the entire point of the article?

I'd say the question helps you separate out candidates who have run into this sort of BS question before and have a pat answer already prepared.

"Gee whiz, I'd say my biggest flaw is that I'm TOO passionate about technology!"

Wow, saying that he "lacks tact" is a bit of an understatement.

One fun benefit of having such a "tough" (low probability of hire, not necessarily difficult-question tough) hiring process is that smart people constantly get weeded out, which makes filling spots extremely tough, which means that your team is constantly understaffed. This of course means your existing staff are overworked and turnover is high, meaning you now get to try to fill even more spots.

I found there was a culture of constant overtime and firefighting. I also found they made a point of letting people know they were replaceable when they came onboard.

It's a big company though - my experience at other large corporations was that this sort of thing varies wildly from team to team.

The only other "culture" at Amazon was the constant cult-like references to a set of principles - people would actually talk about "bias for action", "frugality" and whatever in their normal daily conversations. It was kind of strange.

Happy to be working elsewhere now.

It seems like you could keep financial penalties for traffic violations and avoid the corruption that seems to go with them by simply forwarding the revenue on elsewhere - infrastructure, health care, what-have-you. I suppose there may be jurisdictional issues there that I'm not familiar with though.

Separate subject though I suppose.

Good. The incentives involved with private prisons are so obviously counter to the public good that it beggars belief that anyone would support them. Private prisons do not bear any costs of recidivism - they profit from it.

No, they're actually going the whole "buy a fleet jets and distribution centers" multi-decabillion-dollar route.

org-mode + emacs.

They are doing precisely this.

Posting a link to Free Republic and attacking somebody for being ignorant in the same comment is an interesting contradiction.

Is there an argument here?

I would like the trend towards ever-concentrated power and wealth to be reversed.

I would like people to be able to expect their interactions online to be private instead of operating under the assumption that intelligence agencies are scooping up all of their private information.

On a much more selfish and trivial note, I would also like an plugin-electric 4x4 so I can drive around the woods AND drive a futuristic Tesla-ey thing. Damn you Jeep, cancelling the electric Wrangler. :(

Governments set rules which directly affect markets - housing in particular is subject to tons of planning and manipulation by government. They absolutely can change supply.

Want to bring on more high-density housing? Change zoning rules so it is easier to get permits.

Housing regulations tend to be extremely local and I'm not a SF resident, but it is stunningly naive to claim that "housing supply" cannot be influenced by government. I realize Americans love to hate them, but city planning is one thing that governments are actually really helpful to have manage.

I also find myself thinking that my writing is not original enough to bother sharing, or my music, or my programming side projects. If nothing else your post has got me thinking about the need to just get over "lack of originality" as an excuse for not doing something. Originality doesn't just show up, torn from the thigh of Zeus - we need to start putting stuff out there now to get where we want.

For what it's worth, I think the personal tone of this piece makes it interesting. The theme might be "time is limited" but it would be selling it short to simply reduce it down to that.

I think the point is that there is nothing "creative" about deciding to go bum around SE Asia for a few months. Actually doing so will certainly take some planning, and maybe relaxing and reading might give you ideas for stuff to do later, but there is nothing creative in the act or in the planning and there is nothing to suggest that it will result will be anything creative either. I know scads of young 20-somethings who did exactly this and then came back home to do pretty much nothing.

What about the productivity costs of sleeplessness? It might be that you're actually hurting both your health and your product by shaving off a few hours of sleep.

I don't think it's possible to avoid being annoyed or upset, but it's possible to remind yourself that hanging onto that mood is counterproductive and to move on to thinking about something else.

"Don't let yourself be annoyed by minor things for very long" might be a more realistic take.

"I quit my job, and I'm excited about a Failing Startup"

* Car manufacturers: "hey saying your car is no longer supported and locking out 3rd party batteries is a great way to drive new sales."

* All car manufacturers decide to do so

* Consumer: I would like to buy a non-DRM'ed car!

* Manufacturer: If you don't like DRM cars, don't buy one with DRM! BTW, they all have DRM!

* Consumer: :(

Hopefully the packaging is slightly different than what is pictured. :)

OK, that babble-generator is amazing. My wife is watching TV nearby and I can hear a bit of it but it's not nearly as annoying with the generated random babble drowning it out.

I often resort to this too, since I often find actual music distracting ("whoops, just spent 30 minutes listening to the music instead of programming...").

The sources I generally use are rain.simplynoise.com and a "nature sounds" playlist on Songza. The latter sometimes requires you to skip "Songs of the Whaaale" tracks you might hear in a crappy crystal-stuffed gift shop, but it's generally fine.