kalverra

Agreed it's crazy, but it's a good political move. Everyone agrees we should ban it, but no one wants the blame because you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it. So if you're the one who isn't in charge of the hard-but-good decision (or in Trump's case, if you don't particularly give much of a shit about it anyway) it's easy to just pick the most politically advantageous side.

Chainlink has solved this. Worth taking a look if you're still interested in this sort of thing.

Vitalik's audience is primarily people who are deep into blockchains and Ethereum. Plenty of good content is out there for freshman level info, he's more for your senior year.

Unless it's some shitcoin with 0 trading volume, no chance. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and plenty of other currencies handle that volume daily with no issue.

I was expecting something like advice to avoid distraction, but found the author just as distracted as I constantly am. Not only by his own admission, but the piece itself just weaves in and out of his main point, taking as many detours as the characters in the novel he describes do.

His ultimate point seems to be that distraction should be viewed more as play rather than an impediment to work. I can agree with this conceptually, but wish I could get my inner monologue and capitalism to as well.

Pretty much. Essays are a great medium for this style, I think of them like a curated conversation almost. You've organized your thoughts in a way that you could present them to a friend in polite conversation; you're trying to convey a point without the need to be pretentious or serious in order for it to be respected. Publications like the New Yorker and the Atlantic are a good place to find lots of high quality ones. Many authors also publish their essay collections as books, my favorite being "Consider the Lobster" by DFW.

As a WVU grad who grew up there: ya, pretty much. Outside of some select towns and cities, WV is poor as shit, and it's only getting worse. Lots of abandoned towns, homelessness, and very few jobs. Even when coal mining was big, it wasn't exactly a thriving area. The movie October Sky is a great rendition of what it was like in the 50s, the coal company owned everything, and was the only source for anyone's income. Now imagine that 70 years later with all the coal companies gone, and tons of painkillers.

Its a very sad state, anyone I knew with half a brain who grew up there wanted nothing but to leave. Even those in good situations were all looking to move far away after college.

This is sad to see as a WVU CS grad. WVU is pretty much the only place to go outside of Marshall and some teeny tiny schools if you're in WV.

I suspect a lot of this has to do with bad management by Gee and admin bloat, but the state is poor as shit. Most talented students go to WVU on scholarship, and get the fuck out of the state ASAP. It can't be easy to keep a state school funded when nearly every graduate of that school's #1 goal is to bail out of the state.

My freshman year at WVU was the year Gee took over as president. That was definitely his thing to ingratiate himself to the students. The whole frost couple weeks he would go up and down frat row, and through all the big house parties and shake hands, pose for pictures, etc. He quickly got this vibe as the "cool dad" with his cute bow ties. This won the student body over easily, so we were confused when our professors were really bummed about it. Apparently word gets around on your management style and spending habits.

The dude ripped through money he didn't have, hired a ton of bloat, and is now cutting staff in nearly all the programs I held dear.

PG has some real bangers, unfortunately this is not one of them. Feels like he's just sucking himself (and a couple YC peeps) off the whole time without providing a whole lot of insight.

Not specifically computers, but if you want a very deep dive into the creation of the internet (including some bits about the earliest computers) The Dream Machine is a great, and extensive look at the history of the internet through the lens of J.C.R. Licklider's life. It was rather mind blowing to me in various ways, one of the big ones being that it seems a lot of early computer pioneers weren't only mathematicians and physicists, but also psychologists.