wayne

I've worked at large tech companies where very capable software engineers struggled to install or upgrade their OS, let alone be familiar with the intricacies of Linux. I was surprised at first too, but I do think there's a large class of engineers who think about code who don't think at all about the other stuff, and engineering is broad enough that that's totally fine.

Not to mention all the non-engineers, even in tech roles like PM, design, etc.

They went pretty over the top with the lights to look artsy and the overall reviews have been mixed, but it's really nice to see experimentation in smartphone hardware like the notification-triggered ambient indicator lights. Most phones look pretty much the same these days.

I learned from the book "How to Hide an Empire" that an initial motivation for US imperialism in the Caribbean was to harvest bird droppings for fertilizer, even to the point of conflicts with Britain and Venezuela: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/31/5951731/bird-shit-imperialism

There was a 1856 law that encouraged US citizens to claim land for the country if there was bird poo on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act

This law is how the US originally got possession of Midway, which became very well-known during WWII (I always wondered how the US got it originally): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll

Too bad there’s no 11” Apple laptop anymore.

I watch the Berkshire annual meetings, and after watching Warren and Charlie eating peanut brittle for 6 hours, I couldn't help but buy/try some, and then you're hooked.

I coincidentally watched this video yesterday for the first time because it showed up in a YouTube recommendation. It got me thinking about how old videos like this go viral on YouTube. Maybe a lot of people started commenting on it, which boosts its ranking and visibility in recommendations, and it snowballs from there?

Had a really fun trailer/video when it launched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE

Or you have a Mac from 6+ years ago that doesn't support it. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212551

Apple doesn't support old hardware as long as Microsoft/Linux.

Even as someone who formerly worked at Microsoft, it was never easy to really understand the full Microsoft enterprise product suite without spending years of my life becoming an IT expert. I always thought this Small Business Suite product was ingenious... it included everything and integrated them in a simple way that you could get them all going. And the pricing was relatively inexpensive, just enough to hook you and jack you on pricing if by chance you ended up growing.

I had the same joy after installing it from a stack of floppy disks in the late '90s. It took so long but it was so satisfying when it worked!

Even a few months ago, I was recommending the same to friends. But late in 2021, Vanguard unexpectedly hit all their Target Date funds with large tax bills: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=366566

The speculation online is that it's because they lowered the minimum for their institution class funds, many large employer retirement funds sold their holdings of the non-institution funds, leaving everyone left with large capital gains and hence large tax bills unless you held it in a 401k/IRA.

I find Wealthfront to be overkill, but this is precisely the kind of thing they'd save you from.

Despite its impact on the company, I always found the lawsuit interesting because as a Nintendo child of the 90s, I knew Donkey Kong very well and my only encounter with King Kong is the Universal Studio Tour ride.

Most of what I learned about early Nintendo of America is from this book, which I still have sitting on my shelf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over_(Sheff_book)

"According to the lawsuit, the defendant studios, including Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Blue Sky, schemed to avoid high wages for artists by discussing and agreeing to compensation ranges for employees – that is, pay for employees would not go above certain, agreed-upon levels, so that the studios could limit their payroll expenses." https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/federal-judge-dismisses-a...

Very similar to what Jobs did with other tech companies to drive down wages for engineers.

Scandal where United ran money-losing flights to an airport near the Port Authority of NY/NJ's chairman's weekend home to curry favor, resulting in the resignation of United's CEO: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/business/united-ceo-port-...

Here's an example of United running way more flights than needed because LGA and DCA are slot-controlled and relatively close to each other so running a flight between the two keeps the slots in-use: https://viewfromthewing.com/united-airlines-will-run-32-new-...

I still see several Manhattan and non-Manhattan stores on their store list, but it does look like they're not in the Bay Area anymore, which is a bummer: https://www.muji.us/pages/store-information

I remember the Biosphere 2 project from the early 90s which was everywhere in the news but didn't work out.

"Biosphere 2 was only used twice for its original intended purposes as a closed-system experiment: once from 1991 to 1993, and the second time from March to September 1994. Both attempts, though heavily publicized, ran into problems including low amounts of food and oxygen, die-offs of many animals and plants included in the experiment (though this was anticipated since the project used a strategy of deliberately 'species-packing' anticipating losses as the biomes developed), group dynamic tensions among the resident crew, outside politics and a power struggle over management and direction of the project."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

They're even in Silicon Valley. Not every company can raise money. And even if they do, being able to raise money doesn't necessarily mean having the competence to run a software company well.

I was incredibly confused this year by Russia being "ROC" and Taiwan being "Chinese Taipei", given I'd always mentally associated "ROC" with Republic of China aka Taiwan.

Looks perfect, thanks for the recommendation! It reminds me a lot of NearlyFreeSpeech, only for email instead of web hosting.

I was tempted but had an AWS runaway 5-figure bill at work once - I think someone forgot to shut down an EC2 instance - which has scared me from using them for personal projects. I heard they're usually understanding in those situations and have features to limit your bill, but that feels like overkill for personal email.

How was the paid STMP service you were using? Been trying to find one and most seem to be used for email marketing/spam, so it's hard to know what would work reliably for small scale personal email.

Related,

- I think 20-somethings gain more from in-person interactions given they have less experience so are regularly bumping into people with more experience. For the more experienced these interactions feel more like a tax/interruption, but for the person just starting out, they're often missed learning opportunities that add up over time.

- In-office amenities like free dinner are more valued by early-career folks who are less likely to have a family they need to go home to. Even the free drinks/snacks.

Getting a 500 error, sad. I wonder if this HN link overloaded it.

My views similarly changed on email. It would have been inconceivable for me to pay for email 10 years ago. Now I'm happy to pay for a service that does the basics well, is primarily considering my interests, and will have competent customer service if something goes wrong.

With its own commercial! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE

I wonder how engineering integration works for an acquisition this size (Wikipedia: ~1694 employees). Google interviews test for very specific things so it's unlikely every engineer in Fitbit would have passed. Fitbit's big enough that I doubt you'd re-interview every engineer and doing that would scare engineers away, but Fitbit's not big enough where you'd let Fitbit continue to do their own thing for a long period of time. Would you just convert every engineer into the Google leveling system best you can and see how it shakes out over time in performance review? Do these things get talked about during acquisition talks?

I similarly have an iPhone app I built and have been enjoyably using on my iPhone for years and slowly iterating on. I'd happy give it away for free and pay the associated increase in web service costs just so others can enjoy it. But the thought of paying $100/year (and having to deal with App Store review) is a bit much for a hobby app...

I'm surprised Apple put this barrier up since it certainly would have scared me away from iOS development as a poorer/newer developer. I guess Apple's happy with amateurs building but doesn't want to deal with their apps in the store. Maybe a compromise would be letting people self-distribute free apps without paying the $100?

It does seem messed up that we see a bad behavior, create a law to ban that behavior, and the law's biggest beneficiary is the company doing the bad behavior.

I went through the same journey and never built on Google Map APIs ever again. The unreliability hurt more than the money. There's something pure about using a capitalistic API (e.g. AWS, Stripe, Twilio) where you know they're making a good buck off your usage, whereas with Google it felt like a side business that they'd change on a whim.

I feel similarly about brokerage accounts that are upfront about charging a transaction fee or checking accounts that have a clear minimum or fee. When it's "free", I'm always scared that I'll end up paying another way and what I'm relying on will get washed away.