klunger

Promethean Power Systems also fits in this category. For some reason their url is coolectrica though: http://www.coolectrica.com/

I am an American who has lived in Norway for several years. I have to deal with this crap every year and, when the time comes to choose between passports, I am honestly not sure which choice I will make. I love US, as I spent my formative years there and those were some pretty good years, but am less a fan of US tax law.

Yep. I find the Norwegian taxation system to be considerably more manageable and equitable. You pay taxes that are not much higher than in the US and actually get things in return, like excellent health care, free tuition a social safety net, better infrastructure, and a much much higher standard of living across the board. Wellstone was right: We all do better when we all do better. It's genuinely great, but I digress...

The other awesome thing about Norwegian taxes is that the government does it for you. At the end of the year, they send you form with all of your taxes done and ask, "Is this right?" If it is, you click a button and are done. If not, then you might have to do a little work, but it is still so so so much less than managing the US taxes.

Nice work!

Suggestion: include a way to delete objects that have been added. It might also be nice to be able to flip or rotate them.

Also, you have reindeer horns but no big red nose?! Maybe add that too?

http://www.christmafy.com/designs/b9omjoPyqp

It's not just precious metals. Remember the aluminum price manipulation from these guys last year? http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/aa0rnb/john-oliver-s-arcan...

I just finished my master's thesis on hardware founders and entrepreneurs in cleantech (http://amiculous.com/thesis.pdf). She is following something called the "case study research method." It is an accepted research method in social sciences, when there are too many variables to do a more classical scientific study. For more information, see: http://www.amazon.com/Case-Study-Research-Methods-Applied/dp...

True, but, that is not the issue. While both men and women are indeed needed for baby-making, the burden of child care falls disproportionately on women in our society. So, male founders with young children can reasonably expect their child to be cared for by their partner while they dedicate all of their time to YC. But, the same cannot be said of potential female founders. It is not sexist to recognize this unfortunate state of affairs and suggest that child care support be considered an issue particularly important to women.

Thus, since YC expects their founders to spend most of their waking hours working on their start-up, they need to provide adequate child care support, if they want to have women with children among their founders (at least, those who are not already extremely rich and can afford the outrageous child care rates in SF).

If they wanted to back up this claim "...from the start I've made sure YC had an environment that is supportive of women," they would provide affordable childcare.

I would add Madison and Minneapolis to this list.

I am from Chicago, but went to school at Grinnell. We used to drive alternately to Des Moines or Iowa City on weekends for something different. I preferred Iowa City, but Des Moines was great too.

Anyway, my point is that the state of Iowa is this beautiful, underrated and amazing place. I have lived in a lot of places since graduating and have lived abroad for the past several years now. But, if I ever did go back State-side, I would probably try to find a job in either Iowa City or Des Moines. They are both lovely cities, for all of the reasons mentioned in this video.

It looks like Munira attended Stanford as an undergraduate, as she is an alumni of the Mayfield Fellows program [1]. However, it is not clear whether she graduated.

[1] http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/mfp/cgi-bin/mfpalumni/may_view...

This is an excellent example of two things:

1) How to not design a study. There is no control group!

2) How not to do scientific reporting. There was no critical thinking or fact checking involved in the writing of this piece. If there had been, the author would have noted that the lack of control group was a serious problem instead of pronouncing that yoga alters gene expression. They would have also noted that a similar study was recently published (and hyped) which noticed similar results between the practicing meditation and group therapy. [1]

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full

The "elephant in the room" of this article was wealth redistribution. Technological advancements should make it possible for people to work 15-20 hours a week. In theory. The problem is that those same technological advancements go hand in hand with increased concentrations of wealth. It is the regrettable observed tendency of people with considerably more wealth than the masses to be stingy with that wealth, feel they inherently deserve it and lack empathy.

So, if people in general are to benefit from technological advancements, there needs to be legislated wealth redistribution to overcome the inherent miserly-ness of the 1% whose wealth is largely a function of that technology.

I think the user created "echo chamber" is a real problem that is mentioned in passing here, but not really addressed.

Many times, friends have told me that they either hid or simply unfriended connections that posted political or ideological viewpoints which differed from their own. Although I try to keep my feed diverse, I admit to doing the same for the particularly extreme posters.

It suspect this is one of several factors in the increased partisan polarization and really should be studied further.

Norway has an excellent subsidized preschool program. It is called it kindergarten here, but is for children age 1-5. Children start public school at age 6 and most parents have paid leave for one parent or the other for a child aged 0-1.

The kindergarten prices are based on a sliding scale (with a maximum fee), so even a single mother with a relatively low paying job can afford it and rich people don't pay absurd amounts either. The result is that almost all parents work, it is frowned upon to be a "stay at home mom," and single mothers do not struggle so terribly, like in the US where there is very little childcare support.

The other result is that Norway is one of the few countries in Europe with a positive growth rate (not even counting immigration). One could argue that the other factors like paid maternity/paternity leave help, but the affordable child care seems much more important to most parents I know here.

The problem is that fonts are used to signify tone.

When I see Comic Sans, the tone I read the text in is "cartoon dog." Although this particular interpretation may be just me, I believe many people have similarly toned readings (it comes down to cultural interpretation of symbols...). So, it is jarring and inappropriate for many people to see Comic Sans, in certain contexts.

There are many equally legible fonts out there which do not signal "cartoon dog" or similar. So, yes, you can can present your research in the voice of a cartoon dog. But, it is pretty tone deaf.

While it might be possible to print PVC pipes that are waterproof at the same level of reliability as traditionally manufactured ones, this seems rather overly optimistic. Bringing in pre-made pipes will probably be required for quite some time, before the printing technology is reliable enough for that.

Not to sound harsh, but you seem to have an unrealistic expectation about how rewarding a given job should be. The _vast_ majority of working folk do it for the pay check, then clock out at the end of the day and proceed to the part of their lives where their heart resides. Think about all the folks who works in retail, or food services, or manufacturing, not to mention agricultural workers, dish washers, maids etc. The notion that your career should reflect your passion is classist nonsense peddled by career counselors in upper middle class high schools and psychologically seductive but ill-conceived internet memes. You have a job that probably pays higher than the median national salary and doesn't expose you harsh physical conditions or toxic chemicals on a regular basis. Have some perspective and be grateful for what you have.

That being said: If you want a job that it is personally fulfilling to you on a reliable basis, then you need to take some risks. I would recommend either 1) starting your own company (it is your baby so you will care) or 2) freelance consulting (so you can pick your work).

He just suggested a basic income for everybody.

I just wanted to point this out in case people missed it when skimming.

I would really like to see a similar study done with less well known brands, to see if it makes a difference in cases with non-household names.

Reminds me of this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wewanttokn...

The author could perhaps learn a bit about leveling from it, to make it more accessible to people trying to learn geometry (if that is the goal?)

The author had some valid points. i.e., Christensen cherry picked cases to support his theory. There are many cases which contradict the theory and she supplied some as convincing counter examples.

That being said, I don't really know what the point of the article was. She didn't offer an alternative, just kinda shrugged and said "you can't predict the future," which seems like a cop out. At least Christensen was trying to make sense of the world while she was basically just saying it is hopelessly chaotic so we should proceed with our lives and businesses with no plans because there is no way to predict anything. That seems horribly nihilistic. I mean, sure, Disruption Theory has some issues. But that doesn't mean you should do away with theory completely.

This phenomenon was identified in the academic literature on entrepreneurship some time ago. It is called "effectuation". This site has a decent explanation of why and how it occurs: http://effectuation.org/

Yes, that is a great point, I should have been more clear. I am tired of this narrative in the mainstream media. From a brief glance at the study, it looked like it took a more nuanced and scientific view.

I'm getting tired of this "nerds" vs "cool kids" narrative. It is a false dichotomy. Kids fall all over the map in terms of behavior and social groups as they grow up.

Case in point: I was a quiet "nerd" all the way through high school, but really found my element and became a social butterfly in college. Some other people have the opposite trajectory, or zig zag all over the place.

Kids are kids. All of them do stupid things at some point, and all of them have potential to grow and change their personalities to a large extent.

But, it seems to be popular in various circles these days to set up these labels of "cool" and "nerd" and it leads to pointless tribalism.

A version of this which focused on drink ingredients could be a (perhaps more easily manageable) implementation of this idea.

This was a great article. I just wanted to add the logical extension: the need to be flexible and a willingness to "pivot." The process of getting your product out there manually can give really focused user feedback that will help to refine the product in a smart way. Painful at first, yes, but ultimately very valuable.

You said basically what I was thinking. I just want to add the importance of _experience_ in differentiating the two.

With more experience, I think you can become a better software engineer/developer. With computer science, it seems to be more of an "either you get it or you don't" situation, rather like higher level math. This is why you will get some really great developers that were just willing to put in the sweat equity, but maybe have a hard time with the only tangentially relevant math requirements.

Right you are. There is so much cultural cross-over that I forget that sometimes.

I've had the same experience in Norway. Maybe it is a Northern European thing?

Edited: Scandinavian -> Norther Europe

Wow. I am not sure what all the downvotes are about. I am an American who is married to a Norwegian and have lived in Norway for a few years now. I never used the phrase when I lived in the US, but picked it up here.

"Ufda" is a phrase commonly used here to mean something along the lines of "that's too bad" or "how unfortunate," with undertones of sympathy (like when you would say "ouch"). The spelling is kind of besides the point, because it is generally a spoken phrase.

But if folks want to get really picky about authenticity, and apparently they do, "Ufda" is how my Norwegian friends spell it in text messages. Although, I am sure alternate spellings would be acceptable too.

I meant it here to say simply that it was too bad this guy got arrested, with undertones of sympathy and a bit of Scandinavian solidarity. Norway and Sweden are only jokingly rivals, but are actually very friendly.

Something obviously got lost in translation, probably due to the American-centric nature of this forum.