I hope it's not too outdated, but if it is I'd be really interested in a newer article that's written like this. I really appreciated the simple breakdown of the supply chain. As a total outsider, I've always really wanted to understand why TSMC and ASML (for instance) seemed to be so important politically.
As another person who left a FAANG company because I found the work meaningless, I can assure you that what you were feeling is real and you probably made the right choice. My life is significantly more enjoyable now that I’ve joined a smaller company where the job actually motivates me.
For what it’s worth, almost everyone I talked to before leaving had the same take as what you described—that I should do the safe thing and just keep working there because the pay was high and it was relatively easy. I thought I was going crazy, because it seemed so obvious to me that I needed to move on.
I love this phrasing, as I think it sums up the difference between dogs and other animals with regards to human communication. It's possible to communicate with other animals if you put in the effort, but dogs on the other hand are often willing to put in the effort to communicate with you!
That's a good point. They've definitely been bred for their ability to communicate with us. I know it's a bit tangential, but I do like the fact we have a kind of sister species in that way. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if our ancestors had instead domesticated another animal to that extent (besides the cat, I suppose). In an alternate universe, maybe we'd have smallish bears as trusted companions :-)
It is pretty amazing the extent of understanding you can achieve with an animal. After a year or so raising my pup, it feels like we have both picked up certain signals to communicate. He paws at me and then sits by the front door when he needs to go to the bathroom, for instance (although sometimes he cleverly abuses this because he just wants to go outside and play with me during worktime, but I can't fault him for that). I'm sure this is mundane for most people who are dog owners, but being my first dog I couldn't help but be impressed at the level of communication the little guy seems to be capable of.
I can't imagine they're the only animals capable of that. It certainly feels like we're friends with a mutual understanding.
I think you're right, but it's hard to argue that flying is both an amazing human achievement and is also just the worst.
Edit: Wow, re-listening to the bit, my memory definitely failed me. Basically a rant on how we should be grateful that airline companies are even able to get a plane in the air. I think we can do better, personally.
Baffled (horrified?) me at first, but the timestamps make it pretty clear sarcasm. The only time hello should be used in a slack channel is in the context of "hey, this still a good time for a call?"
I don't know much about the relationship between solo founders and YC, but I enjoyed these responses when I asked:
Does YC love solo founders
AI Paul Graham: YC loves solo founders, but it's not a good idea to tell the YC partners that.
AI Paul Graham: It's true that YC loves solo founders, but it's not true that we do it because we believe that's the best thing for our portfolio companies.
I bought a sleep number bed, and now after like 2 years, suddenly one of the bedsides has decided to completely deflate around 5am every night, waking me up and forcing me to open up my phone and tell it to reinflate. I haven't contacted the company yet (out of laziness I guess), but I mean... it's a bed. A thing I lay on. Definitely turned me off to smart products, at least ones that worked perfectly fine as dumb devices.
Yeah, it seems to be pretty heavily trained on Python. It's honestly still (and should be used as) a glorified autocomplete, which is pretty useful from time to time.
For python it seems to generate a more reasonable result at least:
# Swap the sixth bit and seventeenth bit of a 32-bit signed integer.
def swap_bits(x):
# Get the bit at position 6 and 17.
bit6 = x & (1 << 6)
bit17 = x & (1 << 17)
# Swap the bits.
x = x ^ (bit6 << 17)
x = x ^ (bit17 << 6)
return x
In solidarity with sibling comments, I also want to say that IPython has been pretty much my default shell for about a decade now. Auto completion, magic functions (paste, edit, pylab come to mind), auto reload, nice colors out of the box... it’s become a beloved piece of software to me over the years. Back in college, being introduced to IPython almost made it seem like Matlab wasn’t doing enough! I’m gushing a bit, but honestly IPython has solved many a problem for me, and I want to say thanks.
Sorry, I should have clarified, that’s not at all what I meant. I’m thinking about if it’s bound by current theory, not current tech. Obviously we can’t do this today, or probably in my lifetime.
Say you were immortal and witnessed a supernova from a million light-years away. Eventually, after another million years have passed, you meet another immortal who happened to be right next to the supernova when it happened. When talking to this other immortal, would you refer to the event as happening two million years ago (when you witnessed it), or three million years ago (when the other immortal witnessed it)?
Probably unlikely, yeah. It would have to be the result of several lucky and serendipitous events, I'm sure. The idea of seeing into the past seems so other-worldly though, it's hard not to dream :-)
Why not? If it can be seen from just a few miles outside the atmosphere, and the light continues to travel without obstruction through the vacuum of space, couldn't it be seen from millions of light years away as well?
It's cool to think that first contact between two space-faring civilizations could potentially involve a mutual exchange of detailed historical imagery that neither civilization could have captured on their own.
This is admittedly a bit over my head, but does that mean it is technically possible that an image of earth could be captured from the distance needed to see Pangaea?
Thinking about this has sparked a bunch of questions I hadn't thought of before. For instance, does information encoded with light degrade over long distances in a vacuum? If not, it does seem like a mega-lens could potentially capture such an image right?
Always blows my mind that because light travels through space, you can literally see into the past. Imagine, way way down the line, eventually meeting a civilization from a far away planet, and they could potentially show you actual photographs of Pangaea.
Yep. The fear is real. I used to be close to someone who had regular panic attacks, and now after my own experience I feel awful about not taking them more seriously.
I went to the emergency room after working from home for ~6 months when the pandemic hit. I was having severe chest pain, shaking uncontrollably, and feeling very uneasy. I thought something was really wrong, and ended up going to the emergency room, where they told me it was a panic attack, and everything was okay physically.
Like you, it was also the first time I had experienced a panic attack and learned what it felt like.
I don't have a great answer for that, as it's still something I occasionally struggle with. I try to pick work where I can closely collaborate with another person. It sounds silly and maybe a bit childish, but just knowing someone else will be happy/proud when I finish a task helps a lot.