the_watcher

6 ms·

1.
by the_watcher 3y ago
Matt Lakeman's "Notes on $PLACE" have become my favorite random email update to get. They're all excellent. If anyone knows more about him (does he write anywhere else?), would love to learn more about his background and
2.
by the_watcher 3y ago
I have literally walked in to the one in Redwood City and ordered from someone sitting at a folding desk.
3.
by the_watcher 3y ago
I like WFH for a lot of reasons, but the "I'm more productive" part of my claim is entirely related to the torture chamber that is the open floor plan office. If I had a private office, I'd no longer be able to honestly
4.
by the_watcher 3y ago
If there are no substitutes, a high price is extremely justified.
5.
by the_watcher 3y ago
The markup is because I can go to apple.com, pick the RAM and storage I want, and not really have to figure out anything about flavors or distros, knowing that it comes with the best chip on the market. This is leaving out that it just work
6.
by the_watcher 3y ago
It would very obviously be useful for work if you can actually get high res, effectively unlimited monitor space. Maybe not for everyone, but people already spend $3500+ on monitor setups somewhat regularly (and employers definitely do this
7.
by the_watcher 3y ago
Maybe, but that's basically asking him to develop the opposite of the personality type that makes him abnormally good at forecasting.
8.
by the_watcher 3y ago
FiveThirtyEight had about a 1/3 chance of Trump winning, far higher than anyone else was modeling. And he was one of the few pundits openly talking about how it wasn't some insane longshot. I have no idea where this meme came from
9.
by the_watcher 4y ago
It's pretty obvious when you look at who is quoted in these articles that someone is paying for at least one PR push related to this. PG wrote about how this works in one of his older essays, in fact: http://www.paulgraham.c
10.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Does he mention this somewhere? Last time I spoke to him, he was working on Stripe Press, his interest in fraud and spam prevention long predates his work at Stripe.
11.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Going from 0 to 1 internet providers is likely to have an extremely high conversion rate assuming affordable pricing and quality. While it's anecdotal, I have personal experience with this. My family is from rural eastern WA and spends
12.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Including the installation fee and $30/mo subsidy (I am assuming this means the price he receives is $30 higher than the one customers pay), my quick math shows it would take a bit over 71 months (almost 6 years) to hit $2.6M in total
13.
by the_watcher 4y ago
The Diff is easily one of the best value’s I get despite being >$200/year. I’m not sure how I’d rank it relative to Stratechery, I personally enjoy The Diff more but Stratechery is more relevant to my work and is also excellent. Byr
14.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Patio11 is one of the most responsive public internet users out there. On twitter, he’s not the absolute most responsive, but he has a standing invitation for anyone to contact him about nearly anything on his website, and he takes it very
15.
by the_watcher 4y ago
I agree that salary is not what dictates my level of satisfaction with my work. However, plenty of people make the (perfectly reasonable) tradeoff of work satisfaction in exchange for money. I'm not dogmatic about this - I am aware tha
16.
by the_watcher 4y ago
The author lives in Austin. He used to live in Manhattan.
17.
by the_watcher 4y ago
This is why AirPods are popular. While this drives audiophiles and geeks who obsess over performance of their technology (not knocking them, I’m one of them for many devices) up the wall, the reality is most people are not audiophiles and c
18.
by the_watcher 4y ago
> moving ad spend to TV, flyers, anything but online because the ROI is so poor So… deciding to move to channels where ROI is unknowable?
19.
by the_watcher 4y ago
I was just thinking about the last paragraph. I honestly didn’t know they were illegal in CA, since I had so many friends that owned them growing up (inland southern CA). They bought food at the pet store, brought them in for show and tell,
20.
by the_watcher 4y ago
At my FAANG job, we happily hired CogSci PhD’s, and I also worked with multiple political science PhDs who’d left or turned down postdocs. I’m unsure about any of the Econ PhDs that I worked with, but I strongly suspect you’re right as it d
21.
by the_watcher 4y ago
It seemed like this was about someone transitioning to industry data science, not CS. From the people I have worked with that came to DS by way of academia, the post sounds extremely accurate. It may be that you can get a faculty job in CS
22.
by the_watcher 4y ago
I agree - I have regretted every time that I agreed to a take home assignment, including when it’s been successful. The reason this worked was the HM simply sent me the assignment and asked me to take a look (and clarified that there’d be n
23.
by the_watcher 4y ago
This car looks small enough that it doesn’t have a backseat, so it’s just the passenger seat available.
24.
by the_watcher 4y ago
In the US, you might end up having to send a whole bunch of 1099s, which I am sure would be a pain.
25.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Two companies have offered me Amazon gift cards, one of them told me that it’s far easier for tax purposes (my understanding is that this is why user research often offers them, rather than cash). I assume they could give prepaid debit card
26.
by the_watcher 4y ago
I just wrapped up a take home project. When I was told about it, I told the HM that I withdraw from processes that include a take home. They told me that they understood, but that this one really did only take an hour or two, and that they’
27.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Thanks for sharing the second part! I’ve worked places as a DS where we were ramping up A/B tests, and it’s honestly one of the worst experiences a DS can have - everybody is asking why you need such large samples, then when you get nu
28.
by the_watcher 4y ago
I’m definitely going to buy the new edition and excitedly re-read it, but it would have been deeply enjoyable if the second edition _only_ updated itself to dark mode. Could have been one of the rare actually funny April Fools Day announcem
29.
by the_watcher 4y ago
Randall Munroe references this in an answer to a What If? question (my very quick Google of it doesn't find it on the site, so it might be book only).
30.
by the_watcher 4y ago
This crossed my mind as well.

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