Goal: Money
So I moved to Austin for an adventure with three or four half-plans for making money which all fell through, plus unexpected expenses hit me hard. A few months ago I read the writing on the wall and set about finding a Real Job. Interviewed at a local startup; they didn't want me. Went to some programmer meet-ups, gave a couple talks, stuck around afterwards to ask who was hiring. Found a great company that way, so starting this month I'm living in L.A., working for a funded startup in a skyscraper.
My buddy and I continue to grow our e-commerce ...
I left my family, my job, and my girlfriend to move across the country, to Austin, to explore the world, to work for myself, and to become a Complete Social Creature, aka a Normal Person, aka an Adult.
Progress. Being so far from home has freed me to act like who I want to be, rather than who people expect me to be. This is coming at the same time that social interactions are making much more sense than they did when I was younger. I understand what I have to offer and what others have to offer me, and how to frame our interactions like that. Dating is easi...
I'm coming around on the stronger version of the Efficient Market Hypothesis that says, "you can't buy and sell equities in a way that beats the market in the long run. Just invest in an index fund, pay low fees, and don't try to pick stocks." I'm not sure I believe this any more, for a few reasons.
One is that I lived with a guy who traded professionally and we had a series of conversations where he explained about stocks to me, specifically why information-efficient prices don't automatically imply an unbeatable market.
Another is that the outsid...
$3,000.00
My goals are money, power, and romance. Some good news on all three, finally!
Money. I'm bankrolling my buddy in a high stakes poker game. He's highly skilled but rather risk-averse, so we negotiated the following deal: I provide his buy-ins, he gives me 40% of his winnings and keeps the rest. It's been a great year so far, netting me about a year's worth of living expenses for basically zero time investment. As an unexpected side effect, by talking over hands and general strategic concepts with him, I've absorbed some of his poker skills, which I've tested...
Some great resources on poker AI: University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group. Papp 1998 in particular goes into detail about what makes it difficult, briefly: multiple opponents, imperfect knowledge, risk management, agent modeling, deception, and dealing with unreliable information. To these I would add the distinction between optimal and maximal play:
In chess AI, it never really matters what you expect your opponent to do like it does in poker. In chess, you just always try to move the board into the most favorable possible state. A win is a win...
Agreed about reading random source code files. I popped open the first .py file I found on the django project and got this:
which I would say is a little esoteric for even the most precocious non-programmers.
But I also agree that investigating one's programming aptitude is a great low-investment high-reward endeavor. It does seem to be the case that many people just "get it". This thread offers some great suggestions on how to check: Checking for the Programming Gear.
I was on the subway the other day and Sovereign Bank had bought up all the ad spots advertising in big print "MONEY MARKET ACCOUNT. 0.6% APY. $100,000 MINIMUM." The interest rate offered on a smaller deposit is presumably less than that, and yet the bank thought this deal would be appealing enough to advertise. This makes a year of "emergency fund" holdings in a money market account approximately worth the change in the couch. I don't see how that's enough of a difference from a checking account to worry about.
New England guy here. I was surprised when I read OrphanWilde's comment yesterday; I went out last night and observed. These are the rules most of us follow:
Always negotiate on salary, i.e. ask for more than their initial offer. Patrick McKenzie explains why.
Have you ever tried writing software? Like they say: "a programmer is a machine that turns coffee into money," or something like that.
I'll give it a shot.
In poker you want to put more money in the pot with strong hands, and less money with weaker ones. However, your hand is secret information, and raising too much "polarizes your range," giving your opponents the opportunity to outplay you. Finally, hands aren't guaranteed -- good hands can lose, and bad hands can win. So you need to bet big, but not too big, with your good hands.
So my buddy and I sit down at the table, and I get dealt a few strong hands in a row, but I raise too big with them -- I'm overconfident -- so I win a...
I don't know anything about programming Macs, but here are some thoughts for anyone who wants to try this:
Dating. Progress from June, February, December, October.
A year into my experiment, I'm glad to finally report some success: I asked a girl out and she said yes and we had a very nice time together ending in my first real sexual intimacy. I tried to see her again, and she was enthusiastic about the prospect for a week or so, but things cooled after that. I think she moved on.
For a long time before this I had to seriously consider some scary hypotheses about myself, many along the lines of "you are so X that you'll never Y." I've updated all of tho...
The article you linked talks a little bit about modeling admissions officers. One nonobvious thing to consider:
There's a very good chance that the only person who will ever read your college essay is 25 years old.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/05/how_to_write_a_college_applica.html
Some unsolicited advice: private universities are way overpriced right now, and 17- & 18-year-olds are regularly encouraged to take on massive nondischargable debt in a way that many consider exploitive. Stanford's tuition broke $40K this year...have a plan, is all.
What you're saying rings true, and a lot of people agree with you, but is it actually right? Is it testable? I can think of plenty of counterexamples, by people who look like they know they're doing. But I can't think of anyone whom I just want to grab and yell at: "you'd be so effective if you'd just shut up about the signaling already!"
Don't sell your reflexes short. Our brains were executing complicated plans for millions of generations before acquiring explicit reasoning, i.e. language. Lately I've been leaning towards the Elephant and Rider model of decision-making, or drawing from this pithy tweet by Stephen Kaas. In your case, I think, your elephant wants to surf the web, and it has a lot more brainpower than your goal-setting rider who wants to finish the paper.
In a practical sense, I think this means you want to put yourself in situations where success is the default, expected res...
Here we are. We buy and sell Magic cards.
Attn Magic: the Gathering players
If you want to buy something, send me a PM and I'll send you a coupon code for a LW discount.
If you have MTG cards you want to sell, I want to talk to you. Our buy prices are competitive and we will buy most everything. Drop me a line with what you've got and I'll get back to you quick with an itemized spreadsheet breakdown.