Education – wastedmonkeys

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:42:19 +0000

An amazing list of 30 things to stop doing to yourself.
Read the article: 30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

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Unconditional Basic Income

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 05:32:01 +0000

The digitization of our economy will bring with it a new generation of radical economic ideologies, of which Bitcoin is arguably the first. For those with assets, technological savvy, and a sense of adventure, the state is the enemy and a cryptographic currency is the solution. But for those more focused on the decline of the middle classes, the collapse of the entry-level jobs market, and the rise of free culture, the state is an ally, and the solution might look something like an unconditional basic income. Before I explain why this concept is going to be creeping into the political debate across the developed world, let me spell out how a system like this would look…

Read the article: Unconditional Basic Income

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What do others think of me

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:43:00 +0000

Civilization, which is held together by a fragile web of tactful phrasing, polite omissions and white lies, would collapse in an apocalypse of bitter recriminations and weeping, breakups and fistfights, divorces and bankruptcies, scandals and resignations, blood feuds, litigation, wholesale slaughter in the streets and lingering ill will. […] Hearing other people’s uncensored opinions of you is an unpleasant reminder that you’re just another person in the world, and everyone else does not always view you in the forgiving light that you hope they do, making all allowances, always on your side. There’s something existentially alarming about finding out how little room we occupy, and how little allegiance we command, in other people’s heads.

Read the article: I Know What You Think of Me

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Consumerism and Investments

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 14:03:51 +0000

Realize that happiness comes from accomplishment and personal growth, rather than from luxury products. Seek out voluntary discomfort as a way to become stronger, rather than running from it. Develop a healthy sense of self-mockery, and acknowledge that you are a wimp in many ways right now (and only by acknowledging it can you improve). Practice optimism. And of course, ride a bike.

Read the article: Meet Mr. Money Mustache, the man who retired at 30

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Power of Simplicity

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 06:46:06 +0000

Blaise Pascal once famously ended a letter with an apology: I’m sorry that this was such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write you a short one. Computer science has pretty much the same problem. It’s a young field, and young fields are messy. They get weighed down with excess Jargon. There are multiple names for the same ideas and the ideas themselves are often snarled together. It’s a complicated science, because we haven’t had enough time to make a simple one.

Read the article: Pascal’s Apology

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Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do.

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 05:04:48 +0000

“Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do.”

Read the article: An Unexpected Ass Kicking

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Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 06:51:27 +0000

James and Janet Baker spent nearly two decades building Dragon, a voice technology company, into a successful, multimillion-dollar enterprise. It was, they say, their “third child.” So in late 1999, when offers to buy Dragon began rolling in, the couple made what seemed a smart decision: they turned to Goldman Sachs for advice. And why not? Goldman, after all, was the leading dealmaker on Wall Street. The Bakers wanted the best. This, of course, was before the scandals of the subprime mortgage era. It was before the bailouts, before Occupy Wall Street, before ordinary Americans began complaining about “banksters” and “muppets” and “the vampire squid.” In short, before Goldman Sachs became, for many, synonymous with Wall Street greed.

And yet, even today what happened next to the Bakers seems remarkable. With Goldman Sachs on the job, the corporate takeover of Dragon Systems in an all-stock deal went terribly wrong. Goldman collected millions of dollars in fees — and the Bakers lost everything when Lernout & Hauspie was revealed to be a spectacular fraud. L.& H. had been founded by Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, who had once been hailed as stars of the 1990s tech boom. Only later did the Bakers learn that Goldman Sachs itself had at one point considered investing in L.& H. but had walked away after some digging into the company.

Read the article: Goldman Sachs and a Sale Gone Horribly Awry

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Fall of Microsoft

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 06:55:58 +0000

Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

Read the article: Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant | Blogs | Vanity Fair

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Steve Jobs on Average vs Best Software Developers

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 05:08:29 +0000

“I observed something fairly early on at Apple, which I didn’t know how to explain then, but have thought a lot about it since. Most things in life have a dynamic range in which average to best is at most 2:1. For example if you go to New York City and get an average taxi cab driver versus the best taxi cab driver, you’ll probably get to your destination with the best taxi driver 30% faster. And an automobile; What’s the difference between the average car and the best? Maybe 20% ? The best CD player versus the average CD player? Maybe 20% ? So 2:1 is a big dynamic range for most things in life. Now, in software, and it used ot be the case in hardware, the difference between the average software developer and the best is 50:1; Maybe even 100:1….”

Read the article: Why You Need To Hire Great Developers

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Silicon Valley: How it works!

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:07:33 +0000

I believe that Silicon Valley is like Las Vegas, except they make you pass a number of tests before they let you gamble. This means that only a relatively select group gets to sit at the table. The purpose of this post is to analyze the folowing problem: Joe Founder comes to Silicon Valley with a laptop full of dreams, but no money. Joe wants to maximize his chances of making a few million dollars in five years. What should Joe do?

Read the article: Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

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