ellius

23 ms·

211.
by ellius 9y ago
Yep. Did school in Boston for several years, almost exactly the same as my life in Cincinnati and Columbus except more expensive. There are definitely pros and cons to any decision about where to live, but your life in most places is alway
212.
by ellius 9y ago
I don’t have strong feelings about Cringley. He admits in the book he basically wrote an industry gossip mag, so I took the whole thing with a grain of salt and just tried to enjoy it. That said, I think your other comments are correct but
213.
by ellius 9y ago
There’s a good line in “Accidental Empires” about how, in large companies, appearances and ability to work within the system are more important than actual ability with regard to advancement. In startups, there is no system , which is what
214.
by ellius 9y ago
I think this is half correct. Part of the reason they “don’t understand” it is because leaders in business and politics misuse the term to mean “back the fuck off and we’ll make things better.” It’s sort of a catchall diversionary term for
215.
by ellius 9y ago
I love the response quote, “Now, thanks to the internet, we know that is not true.”
216.
by ellius 9y ago
I wrote this in another thread, but I think the next move should be to create an Excel-compatible spreadsheet program with a few additional constraints inspired by programming. Make primary keys required, each column needs a type, etc. Thes
217.
by ellius 9y ago
Don’t try to reason with a man who is trying to use the scientific method (hypothesis and experiment) to disprove science. “You cannot reason a man out of a position he was not reasoned into.”
218.
by ellius 9y ago
I have no illusions that this is likely to happen, but if I ever hit it big, the first thing I will do is donate a good chunk of change to educational programs like MIT OpenCourseware. It is extremely generous to make this stuff freely avai
219.
by ellius 9y ago
The problem is that incorporation documents are frequently only a small part of the story. It does allow you to correlate ownership, but unless you can actually show some kind of money movement into and out of accounts, it is difficult to s
220.
by ellius 9y ago
Take some solace in the fact that if he doesn’t grow up a bit, he’s only going to hurt himself. The blue collar folks of the world will just grab a beer and talk about what an asshole he is, and he’ll never realize the opportunities he’s mi
221.
by ellius 9y ago
The worst part is that you probably couldn’t pick a worse franchise to adapt into a Game of Thrones-style show. LotR is all about a Manichean struggle between good and evil, and about dreaming and wanderlust and journies. GoT is about cold,
222.
by ellius 9y ago
I think it’s a question of whether they’re a tyrant for themselves. A lot of people that act like tyrants are clearly just in it for the power trip.
223.
by ellius 9y ago
That’s obviously exactly correct. The technical merits of various investments is exactly the sort of thing where I’m not looking for popular opinion.
224.
by ellius 9y ago
I agree with all of what you said, but I’ll just point out that I opened by saying that many people are definitely overreacting. Those are all reasonable points in general, though, and I don’t think they’re incongruous with what I’m saying.
225.
by ellius 9y ago
I didn’t say anything about “collusion.” I said that it’s a worthwhile avenue for a national security investigation, to figure out exactly what you just asked (is there any evidence these investments were misused) and why it was done secret
226.
by ellius 9y ago
That’s just whataboutism. If Russia found that the CIA had invested hundreds of millions of dollars into one of their energy companies, I’d fully expect them to investigate the national security risks. I never argued that it was somehow a u
227.
by ellius 9y ago
People are definitely overreacting, but other people are underreacting. The Russian state-run banks are effectively Putin’s tools. So the question really becomes why did the Russian government choose to secretly move hundreds of millions of
228.
by ellius 9y ago
You don’t understand that states covertly use money to exercise power? I’m confused why you’re harping on that word unless you genuinely don’t understand what he’s getting at.
229.
by ellius 9y ago
I have been thinking of a knowledge system with two linked guiding principles: 1. Every element is owned by a person. 2. Every element has a “decay rate” or automatic time to be trashed. I think this would make it a lot easier to track know
230.
by ellius 9y ago
The initial reporting I saw on this indicated they sold something like 5% of their total stock in the company, which seems like kind of a small amount to risk insider trading charges over.
231.
by ellius 9y ago
I think you’re dead on. When you don’t have a functioning shepherd of public discourse, the various outlets and commentators, and by extension the lies they tell, start to become indistinguishable. I actually understand why many people have
232.
by ellius 9y ago
Anecdotally, as a history undergrad and grad student, almost all collegiate history courses are like that if they’re any good at all. You do occasionally get low-level surveys that seem more like laundry lists of names and dates, but overwh
233.
by ellius 9y ago
Hahaha nicely done
234.
by ellius 9y ago
I’m self taught, and I would have killed to have had resources like that in early days. I always got glimpses of what I wanted to understand, but it seemed like a lot of technique and very little “why” much of the time.
235.
by ellius 9y ago
“Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease, when the mind is obsessed with it.” —Bruce Lee
236.
by ellius 9y ago
So I am not following this especially closely, but my understanding is that the vote represented a minority of the population and was done outside of legal channels. Your last question is really the most pertinent issue as far as what happe
237.
by ellius 9y ago
I think the next successful spreadsheet might be compatible with xlsx and support a handful of fundamental clean data / database concepts. Things like enforcing keys, tabular structure, NAs instead of blank fields, types. These are sim
238.
by ellius 9y ago
Yeah I actually read the whole thing, the title is a terrible reflection of the actual content, which is thoughtful and makes no grand implications about a “ruined generation.”
239.
by ellius 9y ago
I hate to nitpick about grammar in the context of such a grave topic, but the passive voice is not always bad, and you could make a plausible defense of its use here. The most common reason for using the passive voice is when the subject of
240.
by ellius 9y ago
I took it from "10 Minute Declutter," but it seems like the same idea. It's the only principle I used when cleaning up my own spaces and I'm amazed at the difference just a few months made. My whole state of mind is bett

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