People like Zuck, Altman, Musk, and I'll throw Trump in there as well, are high-level hackers. But instead of computers or technological systems, they are hackers of our social code. So much of our society revolves around codes and standards that are only enforced by ostracization from the collective group.
If you take a moment to observe you'll see just how many of these implicit social norms surround us and basically keep the world running. For example, it's kinda bizarre that we can order food in a restaurant, sit and enjoy it over an hour (or two), and only then actually pay for it. You don't even have to provide proof beforehand that you are capable of paying! What's to stop everyone from slipping out after enjoying a meal? Turns out not much really besides the embarrassment of getting caught, or the sense of shame in outright stealing.
Zuck, Altman, Musk, Trump, etc are high-level dine-and-ditchers. They feel no such shame that keeps us regular people in line. There's a reason the word sociopath is often thrown around with these people, as that is a defining characteristic, the lack of empathy or shame.
The thing that separates them from your run-of-the-mill sociopath, in my opinion, is they are aware of this and actively exploit it to their personal gain, at the highest levels. Basically using the leverage that makes tech amazing to multiply their own benefits from such social "hacking" to the highest degree. They've pushed the violation of social norms well past the extremes that I imagine even they could've predicted, with practically no backlash! I mean just look at how Musk initially just flirted with the line and now has pushed well past it, going further and further each time.
I have no conclusion besides agreeing with the article, that the least we can do is not provide them with the respectability they crave. They can keep the money if it was legally (if not immorally) obtained, but let them keep each other warm in their NZ bunkers; I've got no room for them around my fire.
I would also recommend The Arctic Grail as a good companion read. It covers the history of the British quests for the North Pole and the Northwest Passage, with the Franklin expedition being a significant part of that overall story. It also really drives home the point of how much the British love a good heroic failure!
I generally have a negative opinion of Martin, but did we read the same discussion? Martin was very gracious in letting many points slide (points where he was correct!), and was generously willing to end the conversation at a sort-of draw when it was clear that Muratori was not really prepared to discuss things at a detailed level (It was obvious to me from the start that Muratori thought "dynamic polymorphism" just meant deep hierarchies of inheritance, a la early C++, Martin realized this later and I think that was the first inkling that he was wasting his time).
Muratori was even wasting his time arguing against programmer time _in general_ is less valuable than machine time? And doesn't understand that LLVM is an extremely specialized piece of software, from which general software engineering practices should not be extracted?
When learning any complex skill, the key is figuring out what the fundamentals are, and practicing those, in isolation and small combinations (along with throwing everything all together, of course).
For painting, the fundamentals are usually listed as something like values, shapes, edges, and color.
Some might make a more exhaustive list, for example breaking shapes apart into more “drawing” skills like perspective, construction, anatomy, etc. this is useful because it’s even more isolated things to practice beyond just making pleasing shapes. (I think some use just “shapes” as the fundamental because the breakdowns imply you are painting some sort of realism, which doesn’t have to be the case. Abstract art, or even non realism representational, still uses shapes)
It can be hard to tease some of these apart, but what the parent is talking about, and what TFA is doing, is practicing values and shapes (though the article also has color, this isn’t necessary). all edges are hard edges, so that is removed from the equation, and you can just practice creating something that “reads” (ie, looks like the thing you intended).
If you wanted to practice values in isolation, you could freeze the shapes, and just adjust the value of each shape to explore what effects it gives and if it still reads.
I agree that learning things, like painting, is made more complicated that it needs to be. Check out Marco Bucci on YouTube. He’s a great teacher (his free videos are fantastic, but I have all his courses as well).
If you watch an experienced artist they don’t generally take these individual steps, as experience lets them combine the fundamentals, but you better bet they put in hundreds of hours practicing them.
You’re probably being too generous in your EDIT EDIT. They are bad. They don’t really make sense except in the very moment, and I think that’s why I can’t remember a single part of even the ones I’ve seen several times (I usually have a movie memorized by third viewing).
It’s like that experiment with chess masters. They show them a board mid-game then ask them to re-create it (which they can do easily), but then they do the same with a random configuration of pieces, which they fail. It’s because there’s no logic to it for their brain to “chunk”. I think it’s the same reason why a movie that you didn’t think was “bad” is completely forgettable. Your brain is built for remembering narratives, but it can sniff out when it doesn’t make sense. Has nothing to do with genre. You can probably remember the main beats of a Pixar film you’ve seen once, even though it was talking toys or whatever.
The 1996 movie Jack with Robin Williams had a joke playing off this. I don’t remember the joke exactly, but one of the boys asks Jack if he’s ever had an erection, and he says something like “No, but I was hoping to get one for my birthday.”
Not to mention the hefty consulting fees he’s been getting for years from places like Google. IMO those probably dwarf his faculty salary and money from books.
I strongly agree with this, with one caveat: there are a few modules that are GPL and not LGPL. Definitely check the module licenses to make sure you're not going to need anything that is GPL. Most likely you won't.
On an unrelated note, as someone who mainly builds desktop tools and has used Qt for many many years, but would like to get away from C++ for UI logic, I can't see any reasonable alternative, but would love for some suggestions.
Qt just makes so many things easy, and basically every use-case is well-explored. Most other options seem to just focus on making easy things easy. As soon as you want to render something in 3D, make a node editor, call into or share data with C++ libraries, implement a reasonable undo/redo system, re-skin the UI to not look like a children's app, etc, other options fall flat.
Like many C++ devs I hacked around in cmake for years, but not really understanding what I was doing or how to structure cmake projects. This was made worse as newer ways of doing things came into being.
If this sounds like you, do yourself a favor and go through these slides (or watch the talk they came from):
It really clarified things for me, but also avoids going too much into detail. You will definitely need more info as you go along, but you can look those things up in the docs. This presentation does a good job at showing the core essentials that you can build your knowledge on later.
While nobody is surprised, still feels like the beginning of the end of an era. I guess the only question is how long Nadal will hang on. My wife and I joke that Djokovic will still be crushing 20 year olds for years to come, but time catches all of us eventually.
It feels like it's worth mentioning that almost all pro tennis players declare residency in places like Monte Carlo to avoid taxes. This makes sense since they are on the road 90% of the year anyway so why pay super high taxes back home? Federer, however, retained his residency in Switzerland, paying very high taxes on his $130mm (!!) in winnings (not to mention all the other income from sponsorships, etc). In a world where wealthy people hyper-optimize to avoid paying their fair share, playing the "it's all perfectly legal!" card, it is comforting to occasionally see someone who says, hey, I have plenty, maybe I'll pay it forward a bit so the next generation can have the same opportunities I had.
In my memory it was Batman Begins (2005) that had if bad and started the trend, but you’re right about the first Bourne movie (2002) being somewhere near the start (as far as tent pole movies go).
At any rate it’s a super lazy crutch for bad choreography. Contrasted with something like the Indiana jones airplane fight scene with its wide shots of the action is like night and day.
Pépin heaps praise on Howard Johnson (the person), and has no kind words for his son, whom he blames for the restaurant’s decline. Mainly lack of adaptability as fast food hit the country, but then also drastically cutting quality in ingredients.
Pépin claims that he would take home frozen restaurant food (as it was shipped to the restaurants), reheat it, and serve it to his NYC “foodie” friends, including renowned French chefs, without them being able to tell. I actually believe this since most of the pre-prepared food were stocks and sauce bases which freeze just fine, and also take the most time to prepare.
Private jet travel being a particularly big one. Many companies claim their CEOs (even ones you’ve never heard of) need to travel private for security reasons.
Animals as Leaders wakes up my brain like nothing else. I think my brain is vaguely aware that what I am listening to is some sort of complex puzzle, but I don't have the knowledge of music theory to crack it, so instead it's just primed for whatever coding / math tasks I'm working on that I can solve.
I think we are saying the same thing, but I am just elaborating on what "signal detection" means. The usual approaches at worst just don't work, and at best don't scale very well.
I am saying that (I believe) RenTech has taken a very holistic approach to signal detection and maintenance, rather than the very academic approach that used to be the norm. And even if a signal is found, they have to be weaved into the trading system gradually, and eventually removed when they no longer work. This is a very challenging problem and they are very good at it.
I think this posts misses the most important piece, the real secret sauce, which is how do you sift through massive streams of data and separate the signals from the noise? And how do you do so continuously so that as soon as an edge evaporates you don't keep trading it?
I think the key insight they made here is much less sophisticated than many think. The usual guess is that all these math geniuses have some magic statistical models that tell them the answer, but I don't think that's it. There are known, good ways to detect these things, and most (if not all) hedge funds are aware of them.
I think the magic is in the systems engineering they have done. It is a system which is able to evaluate the quality of a signal as it would be traded. Traditionally, quants come up with models that they then backtest to "prove" before doing live trading. A lot of models that look great on paper, or on historic data, fall flat in real-world trading. Hedge funds spend significant time and resources on quality back-testing data and systems, and I think Renaissance has been able to take this to a whole new level.
This is all mainly a guess on my part, but based on the book The Man Who Solved the Market, which alludes to this system without going into details (obviously). It is much less exciting than some super sophisticated ML models or what-not that people imagine is the source of their success.
This post focuses on the leverage, which is great for goosing the returns, but isn't the whole story. Put another way, if you could magically be gifted some part of Ren, which you rather have their special leverage arrangements, or the signal vs. noise oracle?
I get what you're saying, and I would agree that the power of _most_ politicians is minimal compared to the absolute richest people in the world (so not just mere single-digit billionaires, unless their wealth is built on owning a platform, like Oprah).
However, read the book Charlie Wilson's War. Wilson had no money to speak of, but the book reveals the incredible power that he wielded, largely by sidling up to selective groups (like the Israeli lobby) and getting key committee appointments. And Wilson wasn't even a U.S. Senator! (Generally speaking Representatives have far less power than Senators)
Maybe even more so then now, it was very common for studios to step in and "fix" a movie. I.e., re-edit it. So any footage that existed was fair game to end up in the final movie.
Wilder would famously film the absolute minimum amount, so in his words, "there is only one way it can fit together." Or another line of his, "the only thing that should be left on the cutting room floor are tears and chewing gum."
If you take a moment to observe you'll see just how many of these implicit social norms surround us and basically keep the world running. For example, it's kinda bizarre that we can order food in a restaurant, sit and enjoy it over an hour (or two), and only then actually pay for it. You don't even have to provide proof beforehand that you are capable of paying! What's to stop everyone from slipping out after enjoying a meal? Turns out not much really besides the embarrassment of getting caught, or the sense of shame in outright stealing.
Zuck, Altman, Musk, Trump, etc are high-level dine-and-ditchers. They feel no such shame that keeps us regular people in line. There's a reason the word sociopath is often thrown around with these people, as that is a defining characteristic, the lack of empathy or shame.
The thing that separates them from your run-of-the-mill sociopath, in my opinion, is they are aware of this and actively exploit it to their personal gain, at the highest levels. Basically using the leverage that makes tech amazing to multiply their own benefits from such social "hacking" to the highest degree. They've pushed the violation of social norms well past the extremes that I imagine even they could've predicted, with practically no backlash! I mean just look at how Musk initially just flirted with the line and now has pushed well past it, going further and further each time.
I have no conclusion besides agreeing with the article, that the least we can do is not provide them with the respectability they crave. They can keep the money if it was legally (if not immorally) obtained, but let them keep each other warm in their NZ bunkers; I've got no room for them around my fire.