RyanZAG

But those aren't "already wealthy capitalists". They're "newly wealthy capitalists". End of the day it's the same thing - a few wealthy capitalists - but it's still more wealth in developing countries than before.

I'd argue that there is zero historical precedent for wealth not to be concentrated though. It's just the nature of wealth - wealth creates wealth, debt creates debt. And that's more of a universal truth than a capitalistic one, and more accurately described as 'value creates value', 'obligation creates obligation'.

I'd say it's nice for developed countries to help out like that - but we all know the real winners are the businessmen behind your politicians bankrolling this stuff.

At least, that's my interpretation of the article's logic mixed with what appears mainstream to me. There's a lot of room for subjectivity, but it's difficult to argue that Java/Android isn't an extremely mainstream direction.

It's actually a pretty good point and is a decent way to always remain relevant. You can't be left behind if you're always on top of the latest thought trends.

EDIT: A missing piece the author points out too: don't be an early adopter of a thought trend (Point 1: Forget the hype). Only jump in when it becomes mainstream. If you adopt something before it becomes mainstream, there's a chance it can fail. If you wait until it is mainstream, but get in just as it becomes mainstream, you get the benefit of being an early adopter and the benefit of never being on the unpopular viewpoint.

Even if you plan on being an entrepreneur, your first media coverage is either going to say 'the Harvard graduate' or 'the self taught .. '. So it's an indicator even then. For Apple and Microsoft, 'college dropout' featured in nearly every early article. It became something of a compliment after a bit though and helped them stand out somehow. Nothing is ever simple, but just being accepted is probably enough even if you don't finish.

We have 3 choices:

1) Provide opportunity for street children to survive, and then ban exploitation of those children.

2) Ban exploitation of children, and ignore them as they die.

3) Leave it alone.

I'm saying we must choose 1 or 3. We must not pick 2. It is criminal. However, in developing countries in Africa, we have picked 2! Picking 2 is the "worst" we can do out of all possible options. It's sickening, and far too many people are still advocating for it.

Authorities in Africa and Asia no longer turn a blind eye because of grant money linked to abolishing child labour. People like you have forced that on them. And the children are now suffering far worse than before. You've made yourself feel better at the expense of those you wanted to help.

I agreed with your point of view years ago. I think everyone did. But the experiment failed. Pretty sad really. Yet another good anecdote on the infamous "don't fix what you don't understand".

So sure - fixing their situation would be the best! Please come help! We desperately need more real help here.

But barring people jumping on planes to come and help, which from experience doesn't seem to happen terribly often, it's better for these children to be able to survive.

My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal. If you do it the other way around, you're just hurting people. You're just condemning children who had no other choice to survive to having no means of survival. Sorry to say it, but it's reality.

EDIT: To put it in a more clear example: a village is eating disgusting looking seaweed that tastes horrible because there is no other food nearby. You think nobody should have to eat this seaweed, so you make eating this seaweed illegal so that they can't eat it and offend you. End result? They starve because you didn't provide them with better food before making seaweed illegal.

If this is how he actually does treat employees in a serious fashion then I take back everything nice I said about him. You can create a high performance culture while not being inhuman. I still stand by harsh tactics being important in business, but harsh tactics end where someone's health and well-being begin.

Come on, you're free to hate him, but putting DirectX together - which is the foundation for so much - is just holding a grudge against someone who says things you don't like.

In fact, all of the big name American companies all started out with terrible practices until they earned enough money and enough ire to hide those practices away from the public eye. And judging by my downvotes, far too many people really believe the world is a much nicer place than it is, and where you can really compete without getting a bit dirty yourself.

> Was he genuinely advocating squeezing what you can out of people until they burn out and then tossing them aside?

I don't see this in the presentation at all. Do you mean where he says to churn through employees until you find the ones which fit? Seems like what all companies do, they just don't word it like that. Why else do we have trial periods? He's saying that you get in some employees, give them too much work, get rid of the ones that don't cope and reward the ones that do. Sounds like standard practice in every company I've ever been at.

1/ I'm from a 3rd world country. Street children here would give everything they can to get into the work force. They're not allowed to work anymore because companies get too much flak for hiring them. Instead they starve on the street and resort to crime. It's easy to say 'no work for children!' from your comfy home.

2/ Looking after an employee's wife and trying to find Asperger graduates to employ is not illegal. The environmental test cheating is only having a negative effect because it is illegal, dishonest and fraud. None of the things mentioned by Alex are any of those. He's very up front about it - he's giving presentations on it while his employees are present.

3/ Not necessarily evil. A company could pay $100 to dump some waste in their own country with full regulations, or pay a poor country $10 to dump the waste there. If that $10 means better schooling for children there, then I'd say accepting a bit of waste that can be cleaned up later seems satisfactory. It's actually worked out quite well in some countries.

Basically - you're applying 'justice' that makes you feel better, and not justice that really solves anything. Making people like Alex stop bringing together teams that create things we use every day isn't helping us.

If you're running a business and Alex's tactics give you even a 10% edge - take them.

Why do you think anything with a government stamp is automatically 10x the price? It's not because of people wanting smaller government. Smaller government is about localizing procurement down to the smallest workable level.

Making a huge tender to build these environmentally safe houses for everyone would mean only the biggest and most expensive companies could compete in the 10 year long bidding process. Making a tender for 10 houses for the local poor in your village would be free in comparison, and those 10 houses would be ready before the poor die of old age.

It's just in the last few hundred years where we've actually moved people out of poverty that we've come to the idea that people shouldn't be in poverty. Before that, it was just assumed that everyone besides the rulers were in poverty. And if you read stories from the time, there's never any idea that it could change or that peasants could all be royalty.

Stories from pre-1500 that involve wealth are all generally about an extremely lucky peasant being married up to royalty, and that was pretty much the only way to move up from poverty. Well, that or war.

I split understanding and summarizing personally, because understanding is more about being able to replicate the methods used, while summarizing is about condensing the lesson into a key point that could aid understanding. I personally find that the summarizing technique does not aid understanding any more than simply following along with the logic and concentrating fully on why it's happening.

Obviously some people may require that extra summarized step to allow them to recall the lesson, but I've been able to do without it by concentrating on the flow and linking it to other knowledge that I've already internalized. That way you don't need those key points jotted down for later - you just need to reason about where you're trying to go and use the understanding to plot a course. Then look up the steps where you know you're unclear on the details in a textbook or web search.

So our whole economy is built around this concept of making one thing others want, and then getting them to give you things you need in exchange. What happens with automation where a single person can use automation to make everything he needs without having to barter his work for the work of others? The entire system - the entire economy - becomes unnecessary.

Is it possible that's where we're rapidly heading and maybe there isn't even a problem - just a movement to end 'economy' that we've relied on for a few thousand years?

After throwing away the idea of taking notes and concentrating on understanding exactly what was being said 100% of time, everything got easier and if I remember right, my marks even improved. And the best part: less stress.

I very much recommend never taking notes. If you concentrate and understand exactly what is going on, you don't need notes. You can look up whatever little facts you may need later in the textbook or online. If you understand the concepts, there really are no notes that need to be taken.

People do the same thing with real money and go to jail.

Minimum wage is stupid - if you need people to get a higher income than the value they can output, you need to supply that additional income through social grants. Forcing them out of work by allowing robots to undercut them is idiotic when they are willing to work.

In reality, there are 100+ seeders and if you had a constant supply of streamers who spend half their time seeding (assuming they download the whole movie by the 50% mark), then you have a very very healthy swarm.

No. It can reduce the cognitive load if applied in the correct place. It can just as easily increase the cognitive load if applied in the wrong place. Immutability should be used with care, not used always.

This seems a bit odd to me, having lived in South Africa at that time. There's almost no way a guy at home would have had that kind of access in Apartheid South Africa to the internet back then. There was access, but it was through big companies or academia and on a very controlled level.

Here's a quick rundown of internet access in South Africa during that time period from Wikipedia. From experience, it is accurate.

> The first South African IP address was granted to Rhodes University in 1988.[1] On 12 November 1991, the first IP connection was made between Rhodes' computing centre and the home of Randy Bush in Portland, Oregon.[2] By November 1991, South African universities were connected through UNINET to the Internet. Commercial Internet access for businesses and private use began in June 1992[3] with the registration of the first .co.za subdomain.

You might bring up stuff like BBS, but that was not around in South Africa until after 1990 also. You could technically have imported hardware and connected to a BBS in USA, but the costs involved and control of the only Telecoms operator allowed in Apartheid South Africa (Telkom) would have been unaffordable. Especially for Krugersdorp. I doubt you'd get some kind of USA led local police raid for pornography in Apartheid South Africa either. The whole thing would need some serious evidence.