kyro

Do you plan on carrying over the Birkenstocks?

Worldwide demand for their pigs.

I am not surprised one bit.

Not directly related to the article, but more to the issue at large: One thing many people fail to realize is that humans can be terribly, terribly corrupt. There are those among us who, without a drop of guilt or compassion, would take the life of another. Given the means, we are capable of carrying out some heinous acts. Many believe that there is some moral or ethical boundary that these spy agencies will not cross. That given all the information that's been leaked, all the lies that've been exposed, there is still an area of corrupt behavior that is off-limits.

I have no doubt in my mind that there are those within these agencies that have abused their access to information for political, financial, and personal benefit, eg insider trading, selling damaging information to political candidates, suppressing journalists, etc. I'm not sure if it'll ever be brought to the public light, but I'm certain it's happened and is happening. The stuff that we read about is peanuts.

Hey man, where you are now is where I've been a million times before. I've spent almost a decade trying to properly learn programming, jumping from tutorial to book to language to online course. I'm trying it again, but this time with a different attitude because of a very important life lesson I've learned recently: Every thing, every single thing worth attaining will always require a degree of pain that you can't do anything about but push through. I'd see all these hackers launching startups, side projects, really neat tools, and I'd always think about how much fun they must be having. I never saw the hours and hours of frustration these guys had to endure in the past to develop their skill sets and now to get their products out the door. So I'd go through tutorials and have fun because they were easy and weren't pushing me hard enough. The second I'd hit a wall, and stopped enjoying myself, I'd quit. I had wrongly assumed that the learning process was just always supposed to be fun. That's not the case. So maybe try readjusting your expectations and try again.

What a weird, unnecessarily long and comprehensive response to a well-intentioned and relatively neutral advisory comment.

I experienced a similar change in mindset regarding the valley and the tech scene, catalyzed by recent trips out to SF that left me with a very uneasy feeling.

The uneasiness, I think, came from realizing that the community I wanted to be a part of for so long consisted largely of the same young, inexperienced recent college grads with self-appointed expertise in a variety of abstract fields (marketing, social behavior), who peddle the same formulaic and shallow insights on business and life, all with the belief that they are changing the world for the better. And look, there's nothing wrong with being inexperienced and wanting to do big things, but what irritates me is the semblance of expertise, arrogance, and contribution startup people put on without putting in their time to attain a deep understanding of any one area, especially since I come from a medical background where you know the people you work with are intelligent, have run the gauntlet, and prove themselves on a daily basis.

Or maybe that's how you hack wealth and I'm growing old and grumpy.

Really well done. What's now painfully obvious to me that I hadn't realized before seeing your design is how much easier cognitively it is to place the destinations horizontally. Makes a ton of sense and you rarely see that.

I notice this quite a bit amongst my libertarian acquaintances. They tend to believe in a world built on complete freedom to exercise self-interest provided their self-interests are to be held up no matter the cost or damage to others and society. Once they get burned or outwitted by others serving their own interests, they cry injustice in the world as if it never existed before.

When you understand that the majority of people out there are followers, cannot be bothered to risk making anything on their own, are in constant search of leaders to tell them what to say and believe, and take the lowest-effort path to approval and attention (eg sensationalist simple-minded criticism), and that there are others out there who are aware of this and exploit it (eg bloggers), and that all this is the norm and has been, you'll be better prepared to deal with, or better, ignore the haters.

People are lazy and selfish and will do whatever it takes to satisfy both behaviors.

Medicine and business are two very different areas with aspects of each that may even seem polar opposite. As a physician, you are taught and trained to approach problems in a very calculating and methodical manner, to avoid risk as much as possible for fear of hurting the patient. Advancing a career in medicine is more academic than anything. You study, take tests, pass them, move up into the next hierarchical structure, repeat. There is always a clearly defined path. You'll find many doctors eventually view other aspects of their lives in a similar way, avoiding risky investments or endeavors that do not provide a clear, concrete, measurable return. Business can often times require you act more on blind faith, to build relationships with others to advance your career often without any hard, demonstrable evidence proving you know what you claim. Marketing, sales, etc, are nowhere nearly as concrete as medicine. You can't measure conversions as well as you can white blood cell count. Two different mindsets and outlooks on life.

Funnily enough, I watched Dr. Strangelove for the first time last night and was saddened by the assumed accuracy of its portrayal of political and governmental theater.

Great article.

What I have come to appreciate more and more about physicians is their on-the-fly algorithmic decision-making ability whereby the doctor must account for factors that go well beyond pathophysiology and extend into statistics, social/cultural conventions, benefits/costs analyses, financial situations (insurance coverage, or lack thereof), and more. To gather, categorize, rank, simplify and prioritize data is an incredibly valuable skillset no matter your profession, particularly for an entrepreneur whose roles can vary greatly hour-to-hour.

Agreed. Maybe I'm not part of that culture or fully understand it, but as I get older into my late-20s, this type of stuff puts me off more and more.

You're not a weirdo. Left-handed people are smarter anyway.

(South paw here who uses his phone with his right hand.)

Can someone in the know shed some light on how a CEO of a corporation this big gets selected, from searching for and vetting candidates to the competition involved amongst nominees vying for the position? I imagine it's less about an admissions-type board reviewing applicants' credentials and accomplishments and more about years and years of strategic positioning, favors, and relationship building with people that matter. Or a bit of both.

That's literally the entire point of this type of visual marketing: to help you envision a fantasy world that's attainable with a particular product.

Apple, BMW, Chanel, etc, all do it.

I hate alcohol. It's putrid to me. I've tried drinking everything from some of the better brewed beers to sweeter wines, and I just can't stand the taste. So when I go to a social event that heavily involves drinking, I opt for a water or a soda. Not once has anyone treated me differently, or have I felt that my interactions with others were at all hindered by my lack of alcohol intake.

I think this is more a personal issue, both with the person not drinking, and the people who are. I imagine a lot of these conferences tend to attract a younger demographic than what I'm used to seeing in my field (medicine) where people have reached an age where they just don't care if you're drinking or not, and so perhaps there's a component of immaturity here.

I'm excited to give this a spin, and that's saying a lot considering I haven't touched FB in a few years now. It's nice to see them innovating with new ideas and products, instead of iterating on their existing main platform.

What's interesting is that their mobile strategy involves grabbing as much of your screen real estate as possible, with the FB app, FB Messenger, Instagram, and now Paper. I guess that was obvious when they tried the whole Facebook phone thing.

For someone not familiar with iOS development, how does this work?

> I left San Francisco with no savings, a wife and two kids, for a job in Ann Arbor. 4 years later I founded the company I'm at now (which we sold last year.)

Have you ever written about this period of your life? Having a family and the time/energy/freedom to play the startup game seem so mutually exclusive to me, although I do admit that's mostly my gut speaking out of fear of aging and settling down. I'd really love to hear more about how you managed it all.

Sounds like Google made for one romantic moment.

The most reputable source I could find that touches on pertussis vaccinations and disease spread is http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/uc..., particularly this part: This research suggests that although individuals immunized with an acellular pertussis vaccine may be protected from disease, they may still become infected with the bacteria without always getting sick and are able to spread infection to others, including young infants who are susceptible to pertussis disease.

The study, conducted on animals, does not, however, suggest that the vaccine increases rate of disease spread, rather that vaccinated individuals can serve as unaffected and unsuspecting nodes of transmission. This can happen with the acellular type of vaccine, not the whole-cell.

Mind linking to a few you find particularly insightful? I'm sure many of us would be more than appreciative.

Wonderful! Good on you for taking action.

So make it happen (seriously).

This sounds pretty fascinating. Do you have any links/resources that dives more in depth into this approach?

But can't you look at this event in the same light? To women, blacks, etc, entering a given field in which you are underrepresented, you are no different than a first time founder with concerns, reservations, a desire to connect with people similar to you who've achieved success and to learn about the obstacles you may face. The set of factors that may work against a woman getting into tech may differ from that that works against other groups doing the same. There's no harm in addressing these sets of concerns specifically. It seems like a more efficient way.

Thanks for editing your profile. Anyway, you've put more thought and words in this one reply than you have in most of your recent ones in response to racial/gender/socioeconomic disparity. You've mocked the OP for crying (which was a "hilariously inaccurate personal attack" that's a joke now, apparently), and you've responded to my and others' comments with simple-minded quips.

I'd have kept your age a secret.

Historical events can cause effects that span multiple generations, effects that can manifest in ways not immediately traceable to the inciting incident. Black kids don't drop out of high school and cite slavery as the reason.

Who are you?

I've read your comments. You claim to know the real reasons why women aren't going into tech, you reply to comments about gender/racial disparity with such simple-minded arrogance and assurance, yet your profile says you're a college student studying EE and physics. You're nothing more than the typical puffed-up ignorant college asshole who thinks he has the world figured out.

Wait till all the pubes have grown in and get a few years in the real world under your belt before thinking about making such idiotic statements because as of now you have absolutely nothing of value to contribute. For a college kid in the throes of acquiring knowledge and perspective, you're pretty god damn ignorant and stubborn and just dickish on the whole.

And if you're not the typical 18-22yo college kid, but rather someone a bit older, then this is all the sadder really.