PhilWright

Joined 16 years ago

Karma
1,351
Submissions
349
Member since
Mar 4
Software developer based in Melbourne, Australia.
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Recent submissions

Comment · 6 years ago
Later in the article it points out that an undercover person would arrive on a passport under a name but then check into a hotel under a different name. In that case it would trigger the alert that the passport name never arrived at a hotel. It also says that the practice had to change so that an undercover person used only a single persona for a country instead of having multiple personas and switching between them.
Comment · 7 years ago
Sell the developer on the chance to use the latest technology.

Sell the developer on the chance for career growth as the company grows.

Sell the developer on the fast paced environment without all the meetings and bureaucracy of larger companies.

Sell the developer on the chance to work broadly across many projects and not be stuck doing the same specialism all the time.

Sell the developer on being a big fish in a small pond and not just another numbered resource.

Your selling the culture and environment.

Comment · 7 years ago
Is this an American thing? Thinking that you can take a companies money and then have the right to tell the company what they are allowed to do. If you are unhappy with the way Google operates then you can move jobs to somewhere else. Somewhere that is compatible with your personal beliefs. If you joined a defence contractor it would be odd if you thought you could tell the company not to work on military projects. If you accept the high pay of Google and all the other benefits, then you work on the projects Google management decide on. Otherwise, bugger off and work somewhere else. Simples.
Comment · 7 years ago
I think you are making the mistake of assuming that there is always something more fundamental to discover. It could be that we have now discovered all the pieces of the puzzle, all the building blocks are now known about. Maybe the LHC has not discovered anything new, apart from confirming the Higgs, because there is nothing more to be found.

Maybe the issue that is that we cannot work out the theory, the equations that correctly describe it all properly. Maybe dark energy and dark matter and not actually 'other stuff' but just an indication that there are errors in our theories. Fix the theory and the 'other stuff' disappears. Quantum physics and General Relativity need to be combined at some point and doing so may resolve everything! Or it could simply be that human intelligence is not capable of finding the solution. In the same way a dog is never going to understand calculus, maybe you need an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000 to solve physics.

Comment · 7 years ago
There is nothing new in the article.

It also does not mention that the latest calculations on the flatness of the Universe make it flat with a 0.4% error bar. That means it is either flat, and so infinite, or very close to flat. In the close to flat scenario it would not be infinite but still very very very stupidly large.

Comment · 7 years ago
Is this a serious question?

What is the alternative, focus on not providing value to your customers? Yeah, I would go with the initial idea and given them something of value.

Comment · 7 years ago
Hollywood always goes through cycles. Remember when most films were simple/generic Westerns with John Wayne on screen every other month. Remember after WW2 when there was a glut of war films. Some actors made there career out of playing German bad guys. Or the prevalence of disaster movies in the late 70's. Today it is Superheroes. In another 10 years? Who knows...
Comment · 7 years ago
"Gen IV nuclear energy is clean, efficient and plentiful - why the fear?"

Despite all the promises, in practice they are super expensive and take forever to build. The UK is currently building a new reactor at Hinkley Point. The total cost keeps going up with the latest estimate at £22bn. The UK government has to provide a guaranteed minimum price for the electricity it generates to ensure investors put money into the project. So every UK household will be paying more for power for 35 years because of just this one reactor. Not to mention the project started in 2008 and is expected to actually generate power in 2025. And this ignores the cost of decommissioning the reactor at the end of its life.

Every generation of reactor is going to be so much cheaper! And yet they never are. Not in the UK anyway.

Comment · 7 years ago
$20 trillion is the yearly output of the US economy. A fair comparison would therefore be the revenue of WeWork for a year, which was $1.82 billion for 2018.

That makes WeWork about 1/11000th of the economy and so about 0.0091% of the economy.

Comment · 7 years ago
WARNING: This article has nothing to do with UFO's.
Comment · 7 years ago
Please ignore, this is one of many questions asked by the poster on quora.com in order to promote his book.
Comment · 7 years ago
There is no difference between a machine gun and a robot.

A person designs a machine gun but does not pull the actual trigger. There is an army officer that orders the weapon be deployed and the rules of engagement for when it can be used.

A person designs a killer robot but does not activate it. There is an army officer that orders the weapon be deployed and the rules of engagement for when it can be used.

There is always a person that is responsible for the use of a munition. Maybe that person is higher up the chain with a killer robot than a machine gun. If you want to launch a nuclear bomb then it goes all the way to the top of the chain. But there is always a person that is responsible for the death caused by the munition.

Comment · 7 years ago
Sit down with your business partner and tell them what you are feeling. Indicate you are burnt out/bored with the current situation and scale of revenue. You need significant change to occur in the future to remain engaged in the work. Give them time to think about this, they might come up with a plan for making a big change that you can both then can implement. If not, then at least they had some heads up that you were ready to move on and will not feel they were blindsided with your leaving.

An MBA will not suddenly give you more ideas on strategy. It will help fill in gaps in your knowledge about other areas of business. But they rarely actually teach you how to come up with a better/superior strategy.

Comment · 7 years ago
Think yourself lucky. Being ugly has an even bigger impact on your dating opportunities.

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