jppope

To quote Christopher Nolan: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

...such as Renaissance Technologies which has only been beating indexes by double digits for 4 decades. Probably just a fluke.

the rallying cry 10 years ago was "learn to code" ironically.

In my experience this is not true. People of all ages would pop off for a pint after work or cut out a little early at many places I've worked. It was never hanging out for hours. It would be like an hour and you would usually just talk about the stuff at work that you're frustrated about. Not everyone would go, but high performers were usually well represented.

I think the demographics of HN would explain why this seems like hollywood fiction when it is/was very normal behavior.

It wasn't that long ago that Nodejs was the new kid on the block, and companies were worried it would go under.

This is a real bummer. Work never adopted Deno but I love their model, security posture, and the standard library. I've been less interested in typescript recently, but it has turned into the default for frontend.

On the plus side, cloudflare will get access to some fantastic talent, who can hopefully put their effort into building a better web.

I think the observation Ben is making, is that Apple no longer has a grasp on the future purchases in the market. He makes it explicit with this quote: "I can, for the first time, envision a future where I don’t buy Apple by default." It used to be a given that we would refresh every 3-4 years, thats probably no longer guaranteed.

Observationally, I would argue we've all been expecting this for this for a long time. Every year Apple has raised the price of allegiance and every year we've paid it, waiting for products like the framework laptop or certain linux distros to become mature. We're still not there yet, but how much longer until there is real competition in the personal computer market?

For me it was 2014... so pre-Covid? And you can have a suit "bought off the peg" and have those tailored. Its usually like $100

100% agree. Its a tragedy that most men only wear suits for special occasions. When a suit is your daily driver, you'll get it tailored and set up correctly... its basically like walking around in pajamas in how it feels, but you look way way better than casual clothes. Sadly I like sunshine so I moved away from places where wearing a suit was normal, to a place where people offer their condolences if you're in a suit (either a wedding or a funeral)

Good observation. Off the top of my head all the 37 signals stuff (which started as blogs) were great when they became books. Morgan Housel too.

This is my K2. Grapes of Wrath is my Everest. I've started it ~7 times and never made it past 120 pages. Good Luck!

I read 3/4 of "The Soul of a new Machine" and thought it was good, but I sort of fizzled out. What makes you recommend it so highly (trying to understand if I should go back)

"Exhalation" was very good. Not every story was great, but as a whole is was lovely

"Collapse" - A friend gave me the book in a bag he was going to donate. its been great. Theres obviously a huge undertone of preachy "humans struggle with sustainable resource utilization" but the views into failed societies are just fascinating. Really enjoying it, though I've slowed down and might not finish.

"7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy" - Recommended by @pc in an interview. I'm ~50 pages in and not really blown away. Its a nice accumulation of Alpha creating strategy... but I think its really missing some nuance. I do LOVE that they take an economist approach and actually provide the math/algorithms behind the concepts. Theres some good stuff in here but so far it feels like 30 pages stretched out to make a book.

"Monetizing Innovation" - dropped this book, do not recommend. I was expecting a really nice accumulation of how pricing should work with companies who are innovating... and it came no where near that hopeful concept. The case studies were weak, the hypothesis were weak, the writing was weak.

Espaliers and different pruning techniques can have you up and producing fruit in 3-5 years. Totally popping under 10.

Probably the most interesting concept in there was how the author admits that Alcohol was a "net-positive" in life. Which adds a whole different flavor to the article. The decision to stop drinking alcohol takes a different meaning when a person can be intellectually honest about the situation.

I'm personally interested in society's relationship with alcohol now. There has been a huge change over the last decade and I don't think anyone fully understands it. Alcohol consumption is down from what I understand, but so is ALL risk-seeking behavior - which can include things like pursuing romantic relationships and starting businesses. Meanwhile there is a massive downturn in psychological well being.

Does anyone have any unbiased studies on this phenomenon? Has there been a more thorough investigation on the matter?

true he drove the same old car for years, however he traveled via private jet for most of his milage. Which brings me to a fun story:

Buffett originally called corporate private jets an "indefensible" luxury. When he did eventually buy a jet he named it "The Indefensible", later changing the name to "The Indispensable."

The guy has a great sense of humor.

Say what you want about the product and leadership... they do throw a good conference.

I guess the good news here is that I can just buy an expensive car and become part of the higher social class.

5-10 year old used Bentleys are ~50-60K well within the realm of a normal middle class individual.

one of the coolest things I've ever seen

A theory I've proposed that I would love to get scientific evidence for... I would guess that WFH is effectively bimodal. WFH advocates would largely fall into a high performance bucket, and detractors either believe that average employees are low performers and need monitoring or are low performers. This is not social vs anti-social, its wanting to be productive with your time - whether thats the time you spend working, or with family etc.

  - WFH for high performers: fewer distractions because you can control your environment, less time wasted on commute, less time on non-work communication, etc. More flexibility, better control of your time and space. 

  - WFH for poor performers: No oversight so you choose to work less. You control your environment so you can add distractions - Meetings, TV, social media chores, family, leaving to go do stuff. 

  - Office for high performers: Constant series of distractions you can't control - social conversations, meetings, etc... keeping you from doing work. 

  - Office for low performers: Constant series of distractions you can't control letting you avoid work without repercussion. Meetings, Social time with coworkers, etc

I would love any scientific evidence for or against this theory. If anyone has any studies or natural experiments I would love to know about them

I like Postgres. It is a good general purpose database. I like other databases too. Other databases can do some things that Postgres can't do as well.

"Breaking News: Sam Altman has installed himself as dictator of Norway"

j/k. I love the outside of the box thinking here, but that doesn't seem like what the annuity was setup for. Of course thats up to Norway.

I remember reading that Dancing blows aware meds and exercise. So why isn't that treated like real medicine?

So let me get this straight... technical founders are providing limitless access to their IP, and this is supposed to be a positive indicator that they would be a good founder? Thats wild

There are many ways to create "sticky" products, even commodity products (e.g. coca cola, starbucks, etc). Network effects are just one.

Regarding Price to Earnings... I'm not sure everyone fully fleshed out the end game for the frontier companies. It appears the pitch is that this current phase is a stepping stone to Artificial General Intelligence or Super Intelligence. I can understand the perspective of investors though... If you can get half of the world on these products at some point you will find something you can sell them even if its not the core product (i.e. loss leader).

I wrote a related article here: https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/good-soldiers-find-wars/

There will always be new, hard problems to work on. AI will not, and can not eliminate that.

Agreed, but we should be honest, the internet today is far from healthy

Audiobooks are just a different medium. I don't think people should pretend that an audiobook is a book. You process the two in completely different ways. This doesn't imply one is better than the other either.

For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.