jppope

To quote Christopher Nolan: “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

...such as Renaissance Technologies which has only been beating indexes by double digits for 4 decades. Probably just a fluke.

the rallying cry 10 years ago was "learn to code" ironically.

In my experience this is not true. People of all ages would pop off for a pint after work or cut out a little early at many places I've worked. It was never hanging out for hours. It would be like an hour and you would usually just talk about the stuff at work that you're frustrated about. Not everyone would go, but high performers were usually well represented.

I think the demographics of HN would explain why this seems like hollywood fiction when it is/was very normal behavior.

It wasn't that long ago that Nodejs was the new kid on the block, and companies were worried it would go under.

This is a real bummer. Work never adopted Deno but I love their model, security posture, and the standard library. I've been less interested in typescript recently, but it has turned into the default for frontend.

On the plus side, cloudflare will get access to some fantastic talent, who can hopefully put their effort into building a better web.

I think the observation Ben is making, is that Apple no longer has a grasp on the future purchases in the market. He makes it explicit with this quote: "I can, for the first time, envision a future where I don’t buy Apple by default." It used to be a given that we would refresh every 3-4 years, thats probably no longer guaranteed.

Observationally, I would argue we've all been expecting this for this for a long time. Every year Apple has raised the price of allegiance and every year we've paid it, waiting for products like the framework laptop or certain linux distros to become mature. We're still not there yet, but how much longer until there is real competition in the personal computer market?

For me it was 2014... so pre-Covid? And you can have a suit "bought off the peg" and have those tailored. Its usually like $100

100% agree. Its a tragedy that most men only wear suits for special occasions. When a suit is your daily driver, you'll get it tailored and set up correctly... its basically like walking around in pajamas in how it feels, but you look way way better than casual clothes. Sadly I like sunshine so I moved away from places where wearing a suit was normal, to a place where people offer their condolences if you're in a suit (either a wedding or a funeral)

Good observation. Off the top of my head all the 37 signals stuff (which started as blogs) were great when they became books. Morgan Housel too.

This is my K2. Grapes of Wrath is my Everest. I've started it ~7 times and never made it past 120 pages. Good Luck!

I read 3/4 of "The Soul of a new Machine" and thought it was good, but I sort of fizzled out. What makes you recommend it so highly (trying to understand if I should go back)

"Exhalation" was very good. Not every story was great, but as a whole is was lovely

"Collapse" - A friend gave me the book in a bag he was going to donate. its been great. Theres obviously a huge undertone of preachy "humans struggle with sustainable resource utilization" but the views into failed societies are just fascinating. Really enjoying it, though I've slowed down and might not finish.

"7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy" - Recommended by @pc in an interview. I'm ~50 pages in and not really blown away. Its a nice accumulation of Alpha creating strategy... but I think its really missing some nuance. I do LOVE that they take an economist approach and actually provide the math/algorithms behind the concepts. Theres some good stuff in here but so far it feels like 30 pages stretched out to make a book.

"Monetizing Innovation" - dropped this book, do not recommend. I was expecting a really nice accumulation of how pricing should work with companies who are innovating... and it came no where near that hopeful concept. The case studies were weak, the hypothesis were weak, the writing was weak.

Espaliers and different pruning techniques can have you up and producing fruit in 3-5 years. Totally popping under 10.