FredPret

21 ms·

391.
by FredPret 2y ago
There's a book with lots more of this sort of thing called The Information by James Gleick
392.
by FredPret 2y ago
Another very beneficial double-check is asserting account balances at certain dates. You give beancount the balances at the end of each month straight from your bank / broker statements, and it throws an error if your transactions don&
393.
by FredPret 2y ago
I automated the flow of transaction -> text message -> MacOS -> Beancount once, but it never added up. - some transactions go through without a text - some transactions generate two identical texts - for Forex transactions, the amo
394.
by FredPret 2y ago
I suspect Python isn't the limiting factor here - it's the file format. You can end up with huge interconnected text files that have to be fully parsed on every change. If you have 1e5 - 1e6 of lines of transactions, I think a SQL
395.
by FredPret 2y ago
Hardware that is not subsidized by spying on the consumer will be more expensive
396.
by FredPret 2y ago
Companies used to hire Pinkerton detectives to put down strikes and make employees use company stores. Behaviour has improved for various reasons. All we’re seeing now is that people’s technological surface area is expanding from zero to in
397.
by FredPret 2y ago
I've sold to quick payers and to slow payers. Once word gets out that a company is a slow payer, small providers will try to tighten up payment terms if they can, follow up aggressively where they can't, or stop doing business wit
398.
by FredPret 2y ago
As an investor, I don't. But your point was about rising hardware prices, and services subsidize the hardware if anything by the mechanism you mention.
399.
by FredPret 2y ago
There's been a ton of inflation. Apple makes an OK but not spectacular margin on hardware. These are for Q4 2024: Hardware: 98B revenue, 59.5B cost of sales, 38.5B gross profit, 40% gross margin Services: 26B revenue, 6.5B cost of sale
400.
by FredPret 2y ago
Book recommendation: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Skip the neuro-"science" chapters and do the drawing exercises only. It really works!
401.
by FredPret 2y ago
No good robot goes unpunished
402.
by FredPret 2y ago
Check out these numbers: GDP per capita for the US, EU, and some others: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2023... The US was & is ahead per capita but you can see the EU and Canada taking a b
403.
by FredPret 2y ago
If you're concerned by inflation in XP points earned doing post-apocalyptic errands for people, you've got bigger problems than a GDP decline.
404.
by FredPret 2y ago
I'd love to see a Phase One take some pics on the moon. - 5cm x 4cm sensor - 150 MP - $60k
405.
by FredPret 2y ago
Some of these numbers are nearly impossible to measure because: - tech gets better - products move upmarket as companies target richer customers - sometimes, products move downmarket and gets worse - products fall out of use and new ones
406.
by FredPret 2y ago
Reworked UI's (and also renamed products) are the bane of my tech existence. I think I'm going to learn Emacs, build up the musculature of my C-C and C-X pressing fingers, and live out my days in the terminal.
407.
by FredPret 2y ago
Amazing. The mental peace you've gained this way probably vastly outweighs the initial investment and missing out on the newest "features".
408.
by FredPret 2y ago
Initially it was building out the basic feature set. Now it seems every time they add a new swipe or icon it breaks my mental model of how my phone works without adding something that I needed. Apple is caught by their own success: the iPho
409.
by FredPret 2y ago
It's tough to be wired as an optimizer
410.
by FredPret 2y ago
I would pay a premium for a system that never gets any new features except for bug & security patches. In fact, that's more or less what iOS was for a long time, and I loved every second of it. Once you have a good feature set, you
411.
by FredPret 2y ago
It was a medium format camera; it's going to be good camera at any point. I think it had a 7x7cm film - that's a humongous, 49cm^2 sensor compared to a regular full-frame camera, which clocks in at 8.64cm^2. As far as I can tell,
412.
by FredPret 2y ago
Much better to work within the confines of the existing legal structure, which has been hammered out over millennia and takes into account myriad edge cases and overlapping rights and concerns. Word-of-mouth, the small claims court, and car
413.
by FredPret 2y ago
“Pretty easily” Sure, how hard can it be to police the payment terms on every one of the likely billions of invoices out there and drag non-payers to court. Such a system will totally not get abused with bogus invoices either.
414.
by FredPret 2y ago
At least it could probably run Doom
415.
by FredPret 2y ago
Obligatory plug for the excellent book Skunk Works by its former director, Ben Rich.
416.
by FredPret 2y ago
What are you talking about. KWYBLPOP makes the finest plastic knockoffs on the planet and has done so for the last five minutes straight.
417.
by FredPret 2y ago
If you like tweaking gizmos, find a factory that in some way puts a label on a glass bottle. The equipment may have gotten better but in my time, entire careers went into making those labels go on straight and not jam up the machine.
418.
by FredPret 2y ago
I’m an industrial engineer from the 3rd world who now works in software in the 1st world. The transition wasn’t easy and took many years. Make of that what you will.
419.
by FredPret 2y ago
> Learn nothing and you'll keep losing
420.
by FredPret 2y ago
Here's Matt Damon explaining the economics of the evolution from VHS -> DVD -> piracy. He doesn't directly address how much Netflix pays for rights, but presumably the answer is "not enough". https://www

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