pjmorris

59 ms·

691.
by pjmorris 7y ago
It's not a black swan, pandemics are predictable. @nntaleb, the author of 'The Black Swan' has been explaining this. More crucially, the virus is affecting the real economy, and people's lives. Fixes for the financial ec
692.
by pjmorris 7y ago
The oldest 'Joel on Software' [0] posts are kind of a window into some of the best writing on software of that time. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/
693.
by pjmorris 7y ago
"Programmers At Work" by Susan Lammers was a great read in its time, and I keep referring to ideas from it. Might be worth a look. Peter Seibel's done a great job with continuing the idea, e.g. "Coders At Work", &qu
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by pjmorris 7y ago
> I've long joked I wish there was a storage company devoted to personal libraries, a "Rent-a-Library". I've long had a similar thought, though not as user-friendly as yours, just the book storage part, not the readin
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by pjmorris 7y ago
I keep having this crazy, irresponsible, dangerous... hopeful idea: virus cruises. Take one or more available cruise ships, equip it with ventilators, tests, supplie, ask for volunteer crew, passengers, and medical staff, and send everyone
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Long time, sometime, user of LT. Short on shelf space, I've moved to storing (~800) books in boxes. I label each box, and add it as a collection in LT. The books stay out of the way, but I can easily find one when I need it.
697.
by pjmorris 7y ago
I promise that I have never asked for a notification or a pop-up. They 'work' from the point of view of web sites and browser vendors, maybe more so than from the perspective of users.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Subtle.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
> If the prices of those things spike dramatically, Futures contracts have existed for a very long time for exactly this reason. [0] It's up to management to use them responsibly. For an example from the last crisis, Ford managed to
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by pjmorris 7y ago
If an individual is expected to have a 3-6 month 'emergency fund', would it be reasonable to expect the same of a corporation?
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Home Depot. Even ~15 years ago, they had an amazing amount of technology to support a single store, let alone the supply chain. I once worked in Point of Sale (POS) at Darden and several POS vendors and consulting companies. Even 25 years a
702.
by pjmorris 7y ago
I once worked with an F500 retailer who had Bentonville 'graduates' among their IT staff. Sharp people among other sharp people. It takes a lot to keep the lights on pretty much everywhere. Walk in to any big box store and look ar
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by pjmorris 7y ago
I'm more concerned about whether the store system gets my order right than whether I do. What if it, e.g., mistakes a can of soda for a 12-pack? Three hundred times on the order?
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Nice. I'd drummed up Dr Evil, "Mr. Powers, you'll notice that all the sharks (planes) have laser beams attached to their heads. I figure every creature deserves a warm meal."
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by pjmorris 7y ago
> Similarly, if a human found an issue and alert didn't trip, I'd count that as a bug/missing feature in the monitoring. The way that I took the GP's point was that humans can find things that haven't yet been au
706.
by pjmorris 7y ago
Humans are creative, and they apply that creativity to their present circumstances. I'm reminded of John Adams here: "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ough
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Hey, hey, my, my, VBA will never die. The real question is whether VB6 will ever die.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Dave Winer is fond of quoting John Gilmore, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." It feels to me like the current breach of privacy in exchange for 'free' services might now begin to be interpr
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by pjmorris 7y ago
US pharmaceutical company R&D spending is ~80B per year [0]. Healthcare spending is ~3.6T, making pharma R&D about 2% of overall healthcare spending. Based on the above back-of-the-napkin math, I'm inclined to think pharma R&am
710.
by pjmorris 7y ago
Somehow, the current US health system is the most expensive on the planet [0], for outcomes that aren't better (and in some cases worse) than the rest of the developed world. Have you considered the possibility of waste, fraud, and abu
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Sounds like packet switching.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
I really like this analogy. I'm reminded that Roger Needham used to say "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research." (citation: overheard from co-workers of his, also attributed to Einstein)
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Having the CEO make decisions that change Amazon's climate impact is a much larger lever than donating money. I'm not opposed to donations, or lifestyles, but what the largest economic entities do on a day to day basis is where th
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by pjmorris 7y ago
The Radio Shack 50-in-1 electronics kit was also my onramp to technology, and I too landed in programming rather than, e.g. electrical engineering. I recognize the loss you describe... and I'm really grateful, all the same, for the doo
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by pjmorris 7y ago
"Thinkers are rare; doers are rarer; and thinker-doers are rarest." - Fred Brooks, 'The Mythical Man Month'
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by pjmorris 7y ago
Chrome/OS X. I didn't agree to the cookies, and wouldn't do so until I was satisfied that the site was of interest and value. Give people a chance to test drive it before requiring consent.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
I searched for 'logic' and 'proof', and all I got was a request to consent to their use of cookies.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
I grew less distrustful of the book when I read in it that, in the author's view, the key ingredient to its advice was sincerity. Carnegie even makes the point that the advice is useful whether or not you are sincere, and calls out its
719.
by pjmorris 7y ago
Taxing consumption is regressive; Bill Gates can't eat that many more hamburgers than the average person.
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by pjmorris 7y ago
My wife looked at me like I had three heads the first time I said that I'd seen many films alone and that I enjoyed doing so. For her, movies are a social event, something enjoyed with friends. I'm not opposed to that and enjoy it

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