rifung

I am a huge fan of the checking/budgeting features of Wealthfront. Does anyone know of a good competitor in case I'll have to jump ship?

For those who don't use it, it allows you to create categories and automatically deposit money into those categories at some interval. Then you can easily transfer between those categories.

I use this so that I can put some money away for expected expenses like taxes and a new car and also to budget for fun so I known what I can actually afford.

We are getting to the point where lectures should be mandated to be recorded and put into the public domain

Does that really make sense? I thought MIT was a private institution. The research is often publicly funded but I don't believe that's the case for the tuition.

What exactly is the UNIX philosophy?

I believe it is the idea of writing small tools focused on doing one thing well with reusability in mind as opposed to writing larger complicated tools that do multiple things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

I believe you're in agreement.

The original comment said

It's not until you reach a level where everyone around you has a mastery of the fundamentals, that the meta comes into play.

and you said

At any given MMR bracket, everyone around you has a similar mastery of the fundamentals so the meta is relevant.

which refutes the original comment.

However, put someone with the fundamentals of a 6k+ MMR player into a 3 or even 4k match and they'll demolish everyone else even with a disadvantage relative to the metagame.

I don't think anyone disagrees with this; I think the issue I (and the person you're responding to) have is the idea that you should ignore understanding the meta until you're 6k MMR as you say.

Both are important and you should develop both at the same time if you want to improve.

This other Googler likely already has a competing offer— that’s how he got promoted last year.

Source? I'm very skeptical this is true. I am not a huge fan of Google's promotion process but it isn't that bad.

Aside from Uber drivers, SV types, and wannabe road warrior squinters, nobody uses maps for their daily activities. People know where they're going and they go there without consulting technology. That's why we have traffic jams.

I might know where I'm going but I don't always know how to get there so I use Google Maps all the time. I don't use it for my daily commute but if I'm going to a friend's or something I'll usually use it.

When I sit in my friends cars we also use it all the time. Often we're going to a restaurant or some other location that we don't often go to.

For exploration my friends pretty much just use Yelp or Google Search. I sometimes but rarely use Google Maps for this because I find that the reviews are usually much lower quality and Google Maps is too slow (I have an old Pixel 2)

Lives at stake don't change anything here. The question is whether self-driving cars, even with the errors, are safer for people than regular drivers on average. If so, then absolutely yes everyone should bet their lives and their families'.

Maybe logically that makes sense but from an ethical perspective I argue it's much more complicated than that (e.g. the trolley problem)

In the current system if a human is at fault, they take the blame for the accident. If we decide to move to self driving cars that we know are far from perfect but statistically better than humans, who do we blame when an accident inevitably happens? Do we blame the manufacturer even though their system is operating within the limits they've advertised?

Or do we just say well, it's better than it used to be and it's no one's fault? When the systems become significantly better than humans, I can see this perhaps being a reasonable argument, but if it's just slightly better, I'm not sure people will be convinced.

The thing is, I see no way to have full self driving without AGI.

Why? AGI seems like a significantly harder problem than self driving cars (itself a hard problem admittedly).

What I personally think will happen is we'll meet somewhere in the middle: we can redesign roads/cars to make solving the problem of self driving easier.

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

In theory, breaking up monopolies increases competition which allows better companies/products to spring up that would otherwise be crushed by anti competitive practices. If you agree with that theory, then the act of breaking up monopolies actually makes the US more competitive.

AppAmaGooBookSoft ignores Netflix, which is important for salary calibration since they are cash-only. And FAANG ignores MS.

Why does it matter if it's cash only? The stock is equivalent to cash unless you care that much about the fluctuation.

At Google we have Autosale so any time I get a stock grant it's automatically sold and deposited into my bank account as cash.

At Microsoft I think they go even further and give you an amount of stock based on the cash value at the time you receive it so you don't even have to worry about price fluctuations. (At least that is my understanding)

I believe the reason FAANG ignores MS is that MS salaries are lower, but that is only based on my personal experience.

don't even know given the cost of living in the Bay Area if $300K is even really "high" anymore.

If you max out 401k and IRA this is $275k, which is $168K take home or $14k a month.

Left over: $7400

That sounds like a lot to me? I think the vast majority of the US would absolutely be ecstatic if they could save 7400 a month on top of maxing their 401k.

Just maxing my 401k (with employer match) I'll already have enough for my own retirement. Most people aren't able to do even that though =/

If you think $120-180k is cheap you are speaking from a place of immense privilege.

Does that not apply to most investments? The stock market, aftre all, only works as an investment because everyone is in on an elaborate confidence game.

I don't think this is true?

As far as I can tell, there is no reason for housing prices to increase on their own. I suppose you can make the argument for increased population growth but we haven't reached the point where this is a problem, at least in the US.

On the other hand, businesses exist for the sole purpose of making money. Literally everyone in the company is (supposed to be) working towards the goal of increasing profits.

I work at Google (not Search though sorry), opinions are my own.

When you have the actual manufacturer being buried in the results, we have a major problem.

How do you know though? What if the majority users actually do what you describe in hopes of buying something and thus the shopping results are more relevant for them?

I imagine either there is a bug or this is the case, because I'm sure the links people actually click feed back into the algorithms and the results are modified accordingly.

This being said, it seems like the fact that your results aren't personalized enough to your liking is a shortcoming, assuming you were signed in.

Are games not already legitimized? I feel like with the rise of casual mobile games, almost everyone plays them now.

Really, the only downside I see with them is that they can displace exercise and face-to-face communication -- I know games can be social, but you really just need time talking to other people with no distractions. But if you balance your life appropriately, why not?

My issue with video games is that playing them too much, especially when young, increases your dopamine tolerance too much. Many of them are designed to be addicting.

I have mostly stopped playing video games and feel mental well being has significantly improved.

Of course, that's not to say I think they should be banned or anything but in my humble opinion you are ignoring the significant downsides of playing video games. That being said, I have many fond memories and friendships created through video games too! Like most things there's good and bad.

And he is the most impressive CEO in this generation, perhaps in history, so long hours must work for some people.

Even if we assume the first statement is true, which is a big if, it still doesn't necessarily support the idea that working long hours is good. After all, you can't tell whether he was successful because of, or despite the long hours.

I don't think revenue matters as much as profits?

I assume the thinking is that if the ROI is not high enough, then you might as well just invest that money into the more profitable portions of your business.

I work at Google, opinions are my own.

I still lay claim that google is not hiring the talent that they think they are or claim to be.

Obviously I am biased. I don't think I'm particularly great or anything, but I find my colleagues to be by far the most capable I've ever worked with, and I did previously work at AWS, where engineers were also very smart.

With such huge budgets and failed product after failed product one has to wonder what is the genesis of their failings.

Personally I think it's an issue with management structure rather than individuals. Frankly I don't think smart people matter all that much.. for the most part you only need sufficiently smart people to do their job, and good culture/management will make the team shine. I'd argue that engineers are individually significantly less important than product managers and managers.

That being said, I think the issue is that Google is just too engineering focused. This makes it a wonderful place to work, but I don't think it leads to great products most of the time. It's fine for products like search and ads, where you can literally measure if you are making improvements, but not so good for most products.

Engineers are more or less allowed to pick what they want to work on. Again, I enjoy this flexibility, but I think it also leads to a lack of focus, especially when product managers probably have a much better understanding of what customers want or need.

Of course, Google is a massive company so I don't know how reflective my own experience is of the larger picture! This is just my personal feeling.

So what can I do as a manager to make it more “okay” to spend time at work learning?

Maybe instead of having them read something, make them give a presentation on it to the rest of the team?

Then they have deadlines and produce content. Sounds just like work to me.

I’m amazed to hear this from programmers. You can learn this for free, anywhere, at any time.

Some people are more passionate about their jobs than others no matter the discipline.

I love my job but it's still just something I do to fund my actual dreams/passion. Why would I spend more time on it than I need to when I already feel like I don't have enough time for my own interests?

But if you're paid salary then how do you dictate what time is your time and what time is the company's? Especially when people sometimes work from home, check emails after they leave work, etc?

Ultimately the job was customer support some mild technical skills / ability to learn / take good notes / ask good questions / the ability to formulate a theory, test it, and so on.

They couldn't find any of the fancy CS degree folks

Fascinating.. I wonder if their creating a high barrier of entry actually backfired and caused them to hire less competent people?

My hypothesis: people with CS degrees are fairly high in demand, and on average are qualified to get much "better" jobs than customer support. This being the case, if you require a CS degree, you end up with predominantly the people who were unable to get a better job elsewhere, who are less capable whether it be due to motivation, intelligence, or something else.

Note this completely assumes that software engineering jobs have better compensation/benefits than customer support and I acknowledge I don't know your previous employer's specific case. I also don't want to knock any customer support people, so I hope you will excuse my liberal use of the word "better": I only mean better in terms of compensation and I understand there are more important things than money.

I would imagine that in any of those situations some doctors, authors, and musicians alike would be devastated.

You don't even have to compare yourself to AI for this mentality though. There are people who choose not to compete in things because they don't believe they'll ever be as good as other humans.

I assume must composers don't go into music thinking they are going to be as great as Beethoven.

I believe there are many studies that show that if you only do something because you think you're good at it, you're likely to drop off. I imagine it's also why you're supposed to praise children for being hard working and not for being smart or talented.

Also, this makes me wonder: does every project have at least one security engineer until it gets shut down?

Usually a specific project doesn't have dedicated security engineers but instead the engineers have to get approval from security engineers for their relevant designs.

This is probably different for teams dedicated to security like those that write fuzzers and the such.

Minimalism is something only the truly rich can actually afford to do

I disagree. I was forced to be minimalist because I had to live in a tiny space since I didn't have money to rent a bigger one.

You also need money to be able to accumulate things in the first place, like people who have 10 pairs of shoes or a huge wardrobe. I only buy clothes if I actually don't have enough and it causes me to do laundry too often.

Is there a difference between playing in Chromecast vs playing in Chrome browser? And why do you need a controller at all if you're just playing desktop games?

Playing on Chromecast is for playing on TV. Chrome is for playing on PC.

You need a controller presumably because you need a way to provide input if you're playing on TV. On PC you can use keyboard and mouse but Chromecast doesn't have a way to connect to keyboard and mouse as far as I know

I'm not sure what generation you're a part of but I appreciate ads when they actually tell me something I didn't know about that I do want to buy. For example I've been shopping for beds and dont mind ads for brands I hadn't heard of. Some of them I would have bought had they been in my budget but this to me isn't so much a problem with ada in general as it is about as targeting.

At the end of the day, advertisers and viewers can't possibly care what video it's showing on as long as they're getting the right target audience.

This isn't true?

Advertisers certainly do care. They don't want their ad dollars to be spent paying publishers for content that's controversial because it makes them look bad. It also has the potential to damage their brand.

This actually happened and is what led YouTube to lose a significant amount of ad revenue which in turn created the situation we have now.

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

However, there's absolutely no question that I'm the sole contributor to all my code. Most of my repos have only one contributor (Yours Troolie). A couple have been forked off.

A bad actor could easily just have someone else write the code or copy it though.

Alternatively we could just make it a protected class like we do with age/sex/race.

That has its own issues but at least it'd be consistent.