anupshinde

I see statistics sometimes edges near astrological conclusions. Because sometimes there are many assumptions being made to simplify those equations. Machine learning just amplifies that assumptive behavior unless you have all the possible test-train-data. Predictions from astrology are just probabilistic - lets say the heavenly object positions are metadata. But then people started treating the results as absolute. Now you know why people dislike astrology.

Its not okay to assign risk-score because humans tend to show bias given a quantifiable number. And thats just plain bad.

React is great. But the tooling around it tends to complicate things a lot. Just for example react-redux (not just redux).

When I first started with React, it felt awesome - just React still feels great. But I had just started then and then got introduced to redux (I had been using something similar custom built). That was good too, until I learnt react-redux. I get the concepts, I understand every bit of it and have used it correctly in many large apps - it is useful. But react-redux just feels awkward many times and I consistently feel something is wrong with it - but I don't know what. React-Redux just feels disconnected with the idea of independent web-components.

On a side note - If one is okay moving to Typescript, Angular2 is just amazing.

This is like machine introduced bias/racisim/castism... we need a new term for that.. and its based on statistically induced pseudo-sciences many times similar to astrology. This is the kind of AI everyone should be afraid of.

That is wrong. Flipkart made Amazon to come to India and take this market seriously. If there was no Flipkart, Amazon would not have bothered to come to India for a few more years (citing regulations and blah blah blah)

I've used both Flipkart and Amazon(India) sites.

1. For me, Flipkart's introduction was only due to the huge discounted prices. Also it was new, better and trusted experience compared to Ebay(India). And Amazon came late in the game. Mentally I associate Flipkart with huge Discounts (and Mi phones). And those discounts don't exist any more.

2. Amazon.in is just a great user experience. Flipkart.com still feels like a site with ads (but those aren't ads :). In its first few months - Amazon.in was terribly slow - but now thats never a problem. Now Amazon is easier to surf and look at and the rates are almost similar

3. Flipkart has a trust problem with many users and its just harder to fix that. On one account they had no-idea where the item was. After a lot of delay(about a week) - they sent me the same item twice and they didn't realize it. After a week I wrote back to them to collect the duplicate item and I got the response below:

"This is due to the fact that most our courier partners are tied up with us for deliveries alone and some of the locations are currently not serviceable by our pick-up partners.

Once the product is reaches us, I assure you that the courier charges you incur will be reimbursed to your Flipkart Wallet and you’ll receive an automated e-mail as soon as your wallet is credited. This has unlimited validity.

Kindly pack the product in the brand box if any with the MRP tag and send it to the below mentioned address with the return ID labeled on it. Also, please mention your address. "

Why would I hustle to courier them back? And "no pickup partners in that area" was a plain lie. I just try to avoid Flipkart after that incident and prefer buying from Amazon even if it is slightly costlier.

4. And when they went "Mobile-only"... I was like - I DO NOT WANT THAT APP (They reversed that BAD decision pretty soon)

CS education is not useless, but less used. And it is also used-less by the same people who teach it. There are exceptions - but that number is way too small than it should be.

If someone wants to learn coding or programming - screw the CS degree, there are better options. I know CS degree holders who can't code more than a few lines or can't debug a large program. And there are better programmers who don't have a CS degree. YouTube will teach better programming than a CS degree class.

Apart from programming, if one "also" wants to learn the mathematical aspect of CS and want to work on core-stuff, go for a CS degree. And those skills do not come easy from some tutorials - a academic rigor is probably the best way to earn it. But if you use the O-notation at some jobs - you could become an outcast in the team.

When I got into a top college for a CS degree, I had high hopes from it. For the first 1.5 years, I wanted to quit, quit and just quit. It was hopeless - they were teaching few subjects that I was way better at. But for some reason they would not allow me to just give exams and get promoted. I already knew programming, patterns, electronics and even dealt with basic robotics before I joined college. For one example - when they started teaching operating-systems, my expectation was that they will at least give a hands-on on writing a pretty basic OS. No - they were just doing theories. Ultimately, I ended up writing a pretty simple version of a custom OS without any mentoring (and used Google) - because the professors had never even written a boot-loader to start with. I also ended up helping weaker students get upto the mark. In one of the semester assignment evaluations, I was told by a senior professor " you copied programs from the internet - how come they are so well written". I lost trust in them.

I did learn some stuff in the later years and came to peace. While I knew programming, I did not have a strong math background - stuff like probabilities, numerical methods, theoretical computer science and bit of advanced algorithms were the things I learnt and explored further. The most important thing was getting introduced to AI which turned out to be a huge area of interest for me.

However, all of that bad experience has turned me sour towards academia in general and I do not recommend spending a lot of money and more-important-time learning "used-less" things - unless you are expecting more than programming in CS. And when it comes to CS, the learning never stops.

You should definitely quit the company. Don't waste a lot of time there.

2 years back I quit the company to start freelancing, and sometimes when I look back - I regret wasting those valuable years of my life.

It feels like my situation just 2 years back. I stayed in such a company for 7 long years because of various reasons - but also because it got very comfortable - I had the option to do bad-to-mediocre work and no-one would question it, because everybody thought it was "great work". Three years into the company I had once complained to a new manager that most of the team did "mediocre work" and did not even take minuscule risks. The result was - the new manager put me into a PIP, ironically in a quarter when I was performing very good. She came to apologize a week later. But formally never cleared my name off PIP, instead marked me as a employee she cured on the HR records. That was cruel.

India is a diverse country, and people in different cities behave differently. I've had my experiences. I have found bystanders in Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad to be helping. But bystanders in Pune get a brain-freeze, and in Delhi they just don't care

While I like Apple products, India is right to deny "dumping" of products that would be considered e-waste in the sourcing country.

I think this article tries to justify cloud from a financial perspective, where margins have shrunk obviously . But the volumes will keep increasing for quite some time. The value from cloud services is just increasing and The Cloud movie has just started.

I've had this problem forever. My take on this:

One - address the problem in short term. Second - its not a problem, but a signal to do something better. Its better not to stay absolutely at one end, but keep taking sides as the situation requires - works best for me.

TodoLists help a bit. But these don't work for too long. The problem with todolists is these keep growing and then our inherent nature to not-focus turns us against these grown todos

Certain medications help too (like the ones containing ginseng root). These really turn on focus. But leave those for 12 days and its starts the problem again. Plus they turn addictive because they work. And I have found these causing consistent high BP - not that it resulted in any health issues. Personally I stopped medications because my creativity suffers and I feel somebody else. May be discipline and creativity cannot work together

Exercise helps. But I know we get bored with same sets of exercises every day.

Routine helps. I mean routine outside of your work. Exercising, gardening or just going out to get the sun exactly at the same time every day.

There is something inherent within that doesn't want to fit in to whatever we are doing. Like somebody mentioned - this may be ADHD, however I have found my passion by not controlling the unfocused-ness. And the same energy that "unfocuses" us tends to make us obsessed and focused at our passion(s) (when we find it).

I don't know why NASA is tracking these levels in India, but this is a huge wakeup call for the region and will help prevent a potential crisis (including economic crisis for India). These regions constitute a majority of agricultural regions in India.

I think I have been a 10x programmer having being called that and I am like that because it suits my work style. Its hard for me to work slow. But its also not possible to be 10x all the time - I am mostly that way in the early phases of the project and the X multiplier gradually comes down to 1 or 2. For example - when it comes to defect fixing in somebody else's code, devops and monotonous stuff - I might be less than 1x.

However, I have noticed that whenever I am called 10X guy, something happens and I ultimately end up to being 1x or leaving the company. The following are kind of negative thoughts/symptoms that occurred

1. In most companies - it means doing 10 times work while getting paid just 5-20% higher instead of 10 times higher (here 10 is just an example multiplier).

2. It means I am a workaholic - and others enjoying the benefits of my work because of (1)

3. The above two can potentially result into toxicity build up within me and then within the team. It does happen occasionally and I have to work harder to avoid it.

4. You are not with your own kind (like species on a mental plane and not race/religion) and your growth is limited. I ended up leaving companies or teams when I was called out-performer consistently - not because I was an out performer, but because I was not learning much from the team. (On 4) - I tried to stay in one company like this, because it was hard for them to fire me for obvious reasons. Ultimately I got fed up after few years. I also unsuccessfully tried to get fired by deliberately underperforming, because the severance was too good - but they wouldn't derate me or fire me. Finally I resigned and left on good terms. Retrospectively thinking, I wasted those few precious years of my life

5. One gets used to elitism - and that is a very bad thing. It closes the persons mind. I remember how I disregarded an amazing solution from a junior team member because I was comfortable with my way of doing things. Unfortunately, I realized the mistake a bit too late.

6. If I am a rabbit I am constantly worried about the turtles - they will beat me with consistent performance over longer run because I will get bored of the race.

Also, I don't think having a 10x engineer in a team as a good thing. And if everybody is 10x, then nobody is - which can be good.

I think the habit of getting in touch with nature begins as kids - playing with mud, getting enough sun, swimming/playing in ponds/lakes/rivers. That improves our immunity to a good extent. However these are good only in natural settings and not so good in the nature-pockets in urban areas.

>> So was that a dig against jQuery?

No way I would disrespect jQuery in any way. I learnt a lot of JS by digging into jQuery code and from this book from its author "Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja" But I hate it when people who have done some simple basic programming and used jQuery think that they know JS

I am a JS dev (after a lot of experience in statically typed languages) and just amazed to see the comments in this thread. At one end its experts(or near-experts) and at other end is just ignorants who probably did some $(...).show() and call it javascript. No wonder why its hard to hire good javascript developers. People just don't appreciate how wonderful this language is.

LENR, if possible, will have a much bigger impact on global economy - may even transform the way economies works. Its not just clean energy, but think about the impacts of artificial transmutation.

Also if LENR is possible, it also means that some or all of the biological life possesses this capacity and it could be an undiscovered fundamental natural occurrence.

BUT - all of this sounds too good to be true :( Fundamental discoveries have pretty much slowed down and it is very natural to be skeptical about these.

I don't think this means an inversion

What comes first? - belief or achievement or self-confidence?

You won't achieve something if you don't believe in it. You just won't persevere and will give up or find workarounds.

But if you believe in it and keep failing consistently, your self-confidence will go down and so will your trust in self. It gets to that miserable "I'm no good" belief until one breaks out of that.

Once you achieve something, it will boost your self-confidence and trust in self will rise and your belief is validated. Then your belief will make you try more and achieve more. Sometimes it leads to overconfidence and bouts of overconfidence will break that trust within oneself - and we just need avoid getting into that downward spiral.

Many times "starters" define limits that are just self-imposed limits. People fall into the ugly 'I can't do that' loop without trying. And they have to be forcibly, inconveniently and painfully pushed out of that. This quote from Star Trek sounds so true "stallion has to be broken to reach it's potential"

I'm a pessimist but I don't believe that pessimism motivated achievements can make one happy unless it is a side-effect. Such achievements root from a negative inner rebellion behaviour. And if we aren't truly happy with those achievements, that makes us doubt and kill our own inner beliefs that led to those achievements. I'm not saying we should be a blind-optimist but stay close to reality.

This breeds mediocrity. It creates problems for both sides - USA where talent gets sidelined for less costly resources and it promotes mediocre-go-onsite culture back in countries like India - and talent gets discounted/demoralised back there too.

We don't need ClearTax for the usual 'less than 5 minutes' return filing. The Indian Govt's website is pretty simple and easy to use (except if you are using it on the last working days of return-filing). Not to say, the Govt's site team are working on improving it further by aggregating tax related data and reducing data entry even further.

The following is for a freelancer and entrepreneur-

The Govt's site is complex for entrepreneurs (self-employed people) or small companies. And so is ClearTax (because of the complex rules). For that ClearTax has a blog that is pretty helpful in understanding the system and places your trust on them. But when I dived into the details ClearTax makes things sound so simple and increases your procedures and you end up paying unnecessary tax. Luckily when I started I had evaluated ClearTax and also liked it - its when I get into the details (the fine print of tax-laws) that my trust eroded off ClearTax.

ClearTax is also costlier than consulting a local practising CA (1.5 - 2x). However finding a good CA (or CA firm) and getting comfortable with them is a challenge. And it is worth pursuing the challenge. Even if I had to start again, I would consult a local CA. Also a good CA can help you save money and/or taxes (in legal ways). Apart from that I have heard that ClearTax has operational problems (like they miss out on filing returns when they are overloaded) - This last part is just from references and ClearTax might have solved it.

Note that the tax-laws for businesses in India are way complex and it is hard to understand those. Add to that the changes that occur every few years and the multiple tax authorities. The country rightly deserves the "difficult to do biz" tag. Many CAs err (or are just unsure) and you end up paying more tax than what was actually required. I would place ClearTax in that category.

If you want to get ready fast - It is seriously much more easier to read the book (print or ebook) compared to this link. Saved me a lot of time.

This guy has got many facts wrong here. And why is he using HP/IBM examples to represent the industry - These co's have earned some disrespect quite some time back.

I believe the opposite is true. The US computer industry would have been dead out of cost and competition if it did not embrace offshoring. Instead what it is doing now is taking a bit of hit and staying in control. It has generated more leaders than just workers. I can only wonder what country would be the leader in the computer industry within a decade of the US banning offshoring or H1Bs.

>>> After all, the workers who qualify for H1-B's are a self-selecting group who are, by definition, identified as the most talented employees. There is no guarantee that their counterparts who stayed home are able to do the job properly

This is false. Many (at least 50% of H1B Indian workers) do not fall under this category.

To give you an example (in software): a company like Infosys would send you average or below average consultants who are good at communicating in English. And then Infosys would charge you higher than the premium developers located in the US, while paying the worker just about average (or even minimum pay by market standards). Over a longer period of time, there are quality issues, reworks, extensions and dependability created. Now, even if a client decided to leave Infosys and hire a premium developer - it is hard and costly. Who wants to take responsibility of a bad quality thing without being given time to improve quality.

The rest of the 50% who are talented, they get paid well, they contribute positively to the US economy and indirectly hurt the Indian economy.

I watched this amazing 3 hour long video/info on ADHD shared by nickysielicki in this thread below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo

After viewing this video, it seems like many people diagnosed for ADHD could be in the CDD/SCT like. This distinction was not made few years back. In fact ADHD sounds seriously scary after looking at this video.

I consider myself a amateur entrepreneur (and a bit successful) with ADHD.

Personally, I believe ADHD is a gift and a problem(s). And the problems need to be solved to receive the gift.. And I read these workarounds or solutions are basics of successful entrepreneurship.

Focus - Staying focused requires significantly more effort (even not doing anything is an effort). This is stressful. When I am working on X, my brain wants to switch to Y, and it goes on with multiple tasks. This used to drive me crazy in early days and had to find a solution early on. For me the solution was a bit change in work schedule, exercise and one ginseng based multivit a day.

Passion - I can work 100+ hour week consistently without burn out - only if I have do some creative work. For a repetitive or not-creative task - it gets boring soon and even 15 hrs a week is a struggle. This makes it very difficult to keep up with processes and discipline. This forces early delegation/automation of boring work and forces me to find out areas I like to work on. (Clearly this doesn't work as an employee).

Attention to detail is deficient naturally, we have to work around this with discipline and practice even in non-entrepreneurial jobs. After some time we get pretty good at it (because of practice).

ADHD folks are likely to have failed a lot in early life. And I believe they are better equipped to tackle failure as adults.

People with ADHD may have a very diverse experience, they know something about everything - probably because they cannot focus/disregard in a natural way. Gaining expertise is more than just hard work for us.

When one cannot remember a lot of things, it forces you to keep it simple. Being a bit forgetful was a bad thing, but now it feels like a good thing - I am a programmer, and I tend to forget my own code if I do not work on it for couple of weeks. However that limitation forces me to write modularised intuitive code. I would consistently forget syntaxes of a language I worked for 5 years - but I would forever remember the patterns/designs I followed. I think, the world to us is more about patterns and behaviours rather than facts and figures. And it is easier to learn with the glass half-full.

Ah. Thanks castell, geococcyxc, emsy. I didn't know what Retina display uses. I guess my experience is simply due to cheaper TN panels.

I have experienced that eyes strain much lesser while using a LCD display instead of an LED display. Experienced this pretty much consistently. LEDs start hurting my eyes after some time.

And I use a MBP with Retina display for long hours - and I have to say, it has never put stress on my eyes at all (unless I make the screen too bright). Also I do not work at super-high small font resolutions - that allows me to keep distance from the screen. The only thing that I find better than it is Kindle reader.

"Says police department brass tried to infect him, seeks criminal sanctions."

First, the lawyer most likely found the malware via an anti-virus software and did not detect a new malware specifically targeted to him. Second, the police probably used the drive at an unsafe machine.

Is it only me who finds this illogical nonsense? It sounds like if I get a "real world" infection like xyz flu - I have the right to seek criminal action against the person who got me that infection.

Yes. These are very important skills you have to make any open source project successful. I know a few developers (including me) who do not love to write functional specs or sometimes even updating a read me, but its necessary.

When I am designing a solution and processes, I need the freedom to do so. When it comes to writing code and tests, updating docs, etc - I absolutely want to be "managed" because self-induced-management is more effort. Even a person who just tracks the process and reminds us "you are not doing this right" is very useful from my perspective.

I am an "average" ML researcher and an enthusiast, have worked on quite a few small/large works myself. Every time I see the kind of engineering complexity involved in stuff like deep learning - I wonder, how evolution could ever lead to general intelligence like human-intelligence OR if learning is a logical process at all