pjmorris

50 ms·

1. 631.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   Thanks for this. I've begun a collection of quotes on not reading, to balance out my much larger collection of books. A couple quotes: "Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to mak
2. 632.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   You take your chances, or you walk. We were comfortable enough, and intrigued enough, that we took our chances. It was a gamble that paid off.
3. 633.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   One of my favorite meals, ever, was like this, at 'House of Nanking' in SF. The host asked if the six of us had ever eaten there before, and when we said 'No', he said he'd take care of everything. Half a dozen dish
4. 634.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   I know you mean Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but it got me wondering about Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) satellite networks.
5. 635.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   > The problem these tools solve are more related to infrastructure rather than one's ability to code. So... SaaS?
6. 636.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   I loved that part of it too. I just always took there to be a cautionary tale about the consequences of that power.
7. 637.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   Yep. As others point out, the evil came later. But I spent enough time in Middle Earth to know not to trust anything named Palantir as soon as I heard about them. If they knew enough to lift the name, but not enough to understand what it si
8. 638.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   I once worked for a ~10 person consulting firm. We had a contract to do some IT work for a large firm's HR department. We'd joke that the HR department needed its own HR department, to work out the politics among them. And, we&#x2
9. 639.▲
   by pjmorris 6y ago

   Technology is made out of nature. Sooner or later, thermodynamics will have its way.
10. 640.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    Well... the anthologies are selected from a much deeper pool of magazines, so it's possible the percentage is higher.
11. 641.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    On the other hand, money is one of the most plentiful, elements of the economy. "There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We use
12. 642.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    Not the GP, but it's a book, 'Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In' by Roger Fisher , William L. Ury, et al. I read it ~30 years ago, the only thing I remember is that you always want to understand your &qu
13. 643.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    There were a series of showings of 2001 last year, on IMAX screens. I can't even describe the delight I felt in taking my son to see it there (muffled a little by his not liking it, but that's life.)
14. 644.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    My dad took me to see '2001: A Space Odyssey' when I was about 10. He didn't understand it, I only thought I did, or I didn't care. It was beautiful, magical, it boosted my interest in space and in computers, and got me
15. 645.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    My first work laptop was a Toshiba. We went through so much together that I nicknamed it R2D2.
16. 646.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    There are many more important things about Knuth and his work, but one of my favorite stories about him is that he showed up at Randall Munroe's Google tech talk [0], and, during Q&A, asked Munroe "Have you thought about anima
17. 647.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    Classically [0], land taxes aren't on the value of the house, but of the land underneath. But, let's say that both the house and the land underneath get taxed, as is currently done. As a middle class homeowner, my total property t
18. 648.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    I've heard this claim before, but have never seen it supported. Anecdotally, across decades of experience, it's typically not the poorest people I know who own much land, if any at all. Where they do, they own only a little, rathe
19. 649.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    Johanna Rothman, in 'Manage It', suggests these dimensions to what we usually think of as the 'triangle': features, quality, schedule, cost, team size, team members, and resources (infra, sw, etc...)
20. 650.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    I do suspect it's more the cheap part than it is the artist part, so it may well be correlation rather than causation. That said, given the same low rent in two locations, wouldn't the savvy coffee roaster pick the one with the ar
21. 651.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    It's not the 'everybody works there' that does it, it's the 'cheap enough that artists can live there' that does it. My mom split her time between art, her true love, and working as a secretary, or a maid, or a
22. 652.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    The article's author mentions Alexanders 'Timeless Way of Building', the first book in the series of which 'A Pattern Language' is a part. I agree, it's a wonderful book.
23. 653.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    > To do it well, online courses have to be approached completely differently. You have to switch your way of thinking, switch how you apply learning (esp adult) methodologies, switch your time planning and also change your expectations.
24. 654.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    For me, one of the most valuable things about 'Becoming a Technical Leader' are the exercises/questions at the end of each chapter. For example, from the end of Chapter 1, 'What is Leadership, Anyway?': "Make a
25. 655.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    My two favorites for this are 'Becoming a Technical Leader', Gerald Weinberg, and 'Making Things Happen', Scott Berkun.
26. 656.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time. As an early career developer poring over Usenet in the late 80's, I thought IBIS would be The Answer to working out requirements in a large team.
27. 657.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    Lisps capture something fundamental about computation more cleanly than other languages. In Alan Kay's words, "Yes, that was the big revelation to me when I was in graduate school—when I finally understood that the half page of co
28. 658.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    True. But it's even more difficult to participate if you don't go. Even my fractionally-aware stumble through the resources available at the universities I went to opened up doors that I didn't even know existed.
29. 659.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    I was expecting 'shocker.'
30. 660.▲
    by pjmorris 6y ago

    "Don't bring me a problem without bringing me a solution." I blinked once. "Why would I bring you a problem I could solve?" - @johannarothman in "Practical Ways to Manage Yourself"