dcsilver's comments

I've bought a handful of software and technology books from O'Reilly and had mixed experiences.

One of them - The Art of SEO, feels like a treasure trove of wisdom and experience. Another that I won't name, but is about a popular programming language, feels more or less like like a print copy of the online documentation that's available for free, with very little value-add.

Shop with care, and if you're going to write, write with purpose and real value.

The definition of a bigot is someone who is intolerant to differing views. That being the case, perhaps this accusation is better leveled at the people relentlessly driving right-wing opinion off of every major platform.

The line can assemble a unit in 30 seconds and will presumably have more than one on it at a time.

So true.

Far too many people today, many of whom I suspect have a recent inclination to harboring particular political views at all, are missing the entire point of politics - that it's a debate.

It's the great debate, the one that we set up entire electoral systems to have, and built entire buildings in which it would be held.

Today, a dangerous number of people are outright enraged by having their dogmatic political beliefs challenged, and they'll go to great lengths to ensure that you can't share yours.

It's a mess. Years ago, attempts at political conversation were more often than not met with indifference and you had to find like-minded people interested in having them. We used to bemoan that too few people were engaged in politics. Who knew that it would be this much of a mess once they were.

Agree. There's just nothing even remotely interesting or real being said on Reddit anymore. I'd honestly rather do anything else. I'd rather stare at a wall with my own thoughts than spend time on Reddit.

Here's an exercise - check out /r/unpopularopinion today. Full of perfectly boring normal opinions like "MTV should go back to showing music videos". All of the content just seems completely fake. There's not an unpopular opinion in sight.

Now go the Wayback Machine and take a look at that same sub from say, three to five years ago (which feels like a short time to me these days). Plenty of deeply unpopular, controversial, thought-provoking opinions. You don't have to like them, but they were real.

Please let's not let not washing your clothes become the trendy thing to do. Public transport can already smell bad enough. Just wash your clothes, keep smelling like flowers and pick something else to be different about.

I knew about the keyboards when I bought mine, but didn't opt for Apple Care because they're offering a 4 year warranty on the keyboards whether you bought Apple Care or not.

Ah, makes sense now. Eating out usually is more expensive than getting a takeaway delivered - maybe not a like for like on the main but it’s usually once you add a couple of alcoholic drinks. You’ll get charged for a glass of wine what you’d pay for the bottle at home.

I still deal with it, but being aware of how it works has made it a lot easier.

Eating at restaurants all the time might be something many Americans can afford to do, but it’s not normal for the rest of the world. I’m in the UK and tend to eat out about once a week as a treat. That’s on the “doing well” end of things.

I really feel I can make a helpful contribution on this topic. This article correctly asserts that procrastination is an avoidance mechanism for tasks that illicit an emotional response, but then tells you to figure out what that is by yourself. Good luck with that. So the problem is only partly identified to the reader. If this article at all interested or struck a chord with you then I strongly recommend an old-school procrastination book called The Now Habit by Niel Fiore to get a more complete explanation.

Like many commenters that chime in on these procrastination threads, I am a chronic procrastinator, and feel like it’s really held me back in life. I was completely convinced of having undiagnosed adult ADHD for several years (didn’t want to go onto stims, though) - until Fiore’s book threw a spanner in the works and identified some reasonably serious unresolved psychological issues from my childhood - the source of the emotional response identified in this article. In my case it’s to do with putting impossibly high expectations on myself, but there are other common examples explored in the book. I was absolutely not expecting that and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s obvious in retrospect, and now I’ve correctly identified the thought patterns that sit just below the surface of conscious cognition I can catch myself in the act. It’s helped enormously.

No, Elon parted ways with OpenAI some time ago due to differences in opinion over their direction. Looks like we’re starting to learn the details.

Absolutely this. Have encountered them before.