That most folks in the tech community completely missed this is what makes them such easy prey to manipulative scumbags who just use them.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but if it helps even 1 person out there: don't allow yourself be made a means to an end and don't make other means to ends, if possible. I acknowledge in an imperfect world it's not always possible, but we should at least: 1. be aware of it and 2. do our best to mitigate it.
In 2020 for many in media and big tech, the end was to ensure Trump wouldn't win, and even the truth itself was distorted and made a means to that end. Indefensible.
Structure your week. Set weekly goals. Set things up so that you assign weekends free to relax/do fun stuff - so they feel like actual week ends. This enables you to focus on Mon-Thurs without feeling hopeless, as your body/mind know that good time is coming later in the week. It avoids the feeling of just being aimlessly lost in time.
It's important to ensure your mind/body feel there is light at the end of the tunnel, not just at the macro but micro (days, weeks) level too.
And if weekly goals are overwhelming, start small. The pomodoro technique is a great way to start small with time management and get some of those positive "end of the tunnel" endorphin rewards. Build from there.
Although you might have a point with regards to vocational training, there is basically no research coming out of places like lambda school and the recurse center (please correct me if I am wrong). Things will change only when researchers can find stable (and reliable) sources of funding outside the traditional sphere of institutions like universities.
I'm pretty critical of academia, but even without knowing what lambdaschool.com is I am pretty certain it can't, or should not compete with academia. Vocational training and academic training are very different things. (And both are useful in their own right.) Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools...
>Indeed, a lot of problems in academia come from universities trying to pretend they are vocational schools...
I think I've seen this sort of sentiment repeated countless times for a number of years, but I strongly suspect it's quite ahistorical and incorrect.
I'm sure there is some diversity in how public university systems developed in various places, but the state university (you know, not Harvard or something) I went to evolved from a teachers college. It was educating people for careers before it tried to follow a curriculum like liberal arts colleges.
Zooming out, wasn't there a period of time when there was a whole movement to repurpose higher education from educating a small elite in Latin, Greek, etc. to essentially vocational education? Didn't this go hand in hand with the upheaval of the industrial revolution, and the idea that the masses should be educated?
When people sneer at universities being places to educate people in useful skills, it bewilders me because it seems like they are just wiping away the last couple centuries in favor of a vague desire to return to an era that simply didn't educate the average person.
I just have had this sense of weirdness for years that never goes away, whenever people matter-of-factly complain about universities being focused on practical subjects as though it were a recent degeneration of higher education. It was always (for the hoi polloi) this way! It was meant to be this way, going back 160 years!
It arguably wasn't even a legitimate win, and questioning it was censored away by big tech, as well as censored during the election period (e.g. the Hunter Biden story).
Many of us on the centre-right are fed up and aren't even engaging anymore. I've unfollowed all my politics feeds. The left can eat themselves for the next 4 years.
Yeah, this is where I'm at too. Whenever I see any story from WaPo or NYT I refuse to click. The lies and blatant propaganda are just too much for me. My values have shifted quite a bit in the last year, with the rise of the crazy cancel culture, censorship, and race baiting.
Honestly I wish I had been born in China at this point. I would rather not be able to criticize the government than live in this stupid politically correct shithole.
Londoner here. I think we're closer to Silicon Valley than we are to Japan. I've been working on/around my startups for almost a year now, and despite having not having anything substantial to show yet, get a lot of interest in my work, as well as being pursued all the time to go back into lucrative software contracts.
Any system - especially a justice system - unable to take into account peoples' circumstances is not only wasteful, but dangerous. Neutrality does not transcend doing the right thing. Justice isn't a product that is packaged and sold, it is a service, rendered on a case-by-case basis. It is done that way so that the context can be understood sufficiently well in each case. In this case it either wasn't, or they simply didn't care, or were negligent. This is wrong and it needs to be fixed.
What is your agenda? It seems as if you think the system is fine, and cannot and should not improve. Why?
I don't have an agenda, and I don't think the system is fine. I do, however, think a lot of people are being grandiose in condemning Carmen Ortiz. I'm an engineer at heart, and we're a conservative breed, preoccupied with tradeoffs and immune to idealistic tropes. I don't think you can get what you want: a justice system that is compassionate and sensitive to the "good guys" and harsh with the "bad guys" and also considers every case meticulously on a case by case basis while also not costing a fortune to run.
It does cost a fortune to run. Considering every case meticulously on a case by case basis is exactly what they should be doing. That is not an idealistic expectation, it is a realistic one.
To have an effect, condemnation has to be of sufficient magnitude, such that the problem is acknowledged and recognized. It has to be necessarily grandiose in its nature. Given that you agree that the system is not fine, and can improve, where does your contention lie? How can you deny a problem from being recognized if you wish to solve it?
"Mr Prosecutor, yes I killed that guy. But in my defense, my wife was shouting at me earlier in the day and it made me upset. I had been fired from my job the day before, and didn't have a new job lined up yet. So I got angry at the grocery store over raising the price of milk, and killed the cashier. Please consider this and drop some of the charges."
"Ohhh your wife was shouting at you? I hear ya, buddy. I'll drop most of the charges and you won't have to go to jail for murder..."
I mean, come on. We can't take people's personal circumstances that are unrelated to the crime into account. No matter if you are rich or poor, married or single, working or unemployed, kids or no kids, you should get equal treatment under the law. I can't believe people are arguing that "possibly suicidal" people should have charges reduced. If that was true, everyone charged with a crime would claim to be suicidal...
The logical conclusion of what you're suggesting is a system where only outcomes are looked at and assessed, little about the person leading up to outcome is understood, and nothing is learned, because it's somehow unacceptable to understand individual circumstances. But surely you see that it's in our own collective interests to learn why things are the way they are, instead of just indiscriminately slapping parking tickets on everything that looks bad and hoping our problems will go away?
What's interesting now is that Apple, BlackBerry and Microsoft now offer integrated hardware/software platforms. It's become similar to the way the console market has been between Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft.
Makes one wonder what's going to happen with Android.
This isn't so much vendor vs vendor. It's higher than that - the war here is between integrated/closed and discrete/open systems on the client.
The virtue re:integrated/closed systems is that the companies very survival depends on these systems, so they have the best motives in providing value/service, and aren't being steered by outside influences. The virtue re:discrete/open systems is that they encourage learning and exploration, and offer transparency.
It's not so clear in which direction things will go over coming years. Both the integrated/closed (Windows, Consoles), and discrete/open (Web, Android) are models that have proven themselves to work.
Google's doing a lot of brave work pushing in the direction of discrete/open, and regardless of outcome, it's something commendable. My only worry there is regarding their hardware partnerships. The thing with the iPhone, Lumia, and BlackBerry products is they're beautifully designed, and these designs just keep getting more refined. It's like having a games console with a controller design - all users/games know it's there, and can rely on that design, even between hardware iterations whilst other elements are improved.
Microsoft did a lot of great work getting Windows to play well with not just consumers but hardware vendors too, and more or less delivered on the promise of putting a computer on every desk. Google's probable aim of putting a smartphone in person's pocket is even loftier(expense being the main hurdle for many of the world's 7-8 billion people), yet given their positioning and partnerships, they are perhaps best positioned to deliver on this promise.
So perhaps it won't play out like the console market at all.
The thing is, if smartphones get largely commoditized by Android like PCs were largely commoditized by Windows, and you can buy something perfectly decent for $300 (and you already can in something like the Nexus 4), are going to want to or need to pay more for what is perhaps only a marginally better designed product?
And of course then there's Amazon too. Interesting times ahead.
> What's interesting now is that Apple, BlackBerry and Microsoft now offer integrated hardware/software platforms. It's become similar to the way the console market has been between Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft.
You forgot Google. They have Motorola, and they are going to be highly integrated with Android, no matter what they say in public.
Also Samsung has gotten pretty integrated with Android, too. Sure they add the latest "Android features", but on their own time, and it's not the main priority for them. They'd rather ship with an older version but filled with their own apps, features and technologies. It's not that different from Amazon actually, except that they still have to adopt some standards set by Google to make sure they don't fragment to ecosystem too much, but they also get the benefit of access to the Play Store and the Android community (Amazon doesn't appeal to the Android community as much anymore).
It will be interesting to see what happens with the Motorola acquisition.
Right now, Samsung is Android to a large degree. They're the only Android phone vendor that's actually making money, and they're selling a ton of units compared to the other vendors.
I'm amazed RIM has lasted this long. From what I've read I'm pleasantly surprised. I know there is still a small minority that refuses to own a phone without a physical keyboard, and the few I know aren't very happy with the few Android phones they've tried with keyboards. They may be able to get enough of a niche there to hold on and survive a bit.
"Open" is dead on consumer platforms. In 4-5 years, a phone/tablet OS that doesn't ship tightly integrated with specific hardware will seem like a programming language does today that doesn't ship with "batteries included."
I don't see how you can substantiate the use of present tense there. Android is arguably the biggest consumer platform ever to hit mankind, and unless you are extremely aggressive about what you mean by open it's also the most open one as well.
> In 4-5 years, a phone/tablet OS that doesn't ship tightly integrated with specific hardware will seem like a programming language does today that doesn't ship with "batteries included."
You're making a prediction here which is not based on any historical evidence. This has gone both ways over time and usually it's closed that kickstarts a revolution, then open that wins during periods of growth and consolidation and then the cycle begins again. I don't see how anyone can predict how this is going to end.
>> "Open" is dead on consumer platforms.
> I don't see how you can substantiate the use of present tense there. Android is arguably the biggest consumer platform ever to hit mankind, and unless you are extremely aggressive about what you mean by open it's also the most open one as well.
How is Android the biggest consumer platform to hit mankind? iOS single handedly remade mobile and pushed the concept of the app store to all sorts of electronic devices. Windows had an insane impact on the computer industry. Android is certainly a big deal, but I think you're over selling it.
Android is technically more open, but does that matter to consumers? I wonder what percent of consumers actually install things from alternate app stores? If Apple was willing to let nearly any app in their app store, how many people would really be looking for an alternative?
Open platforms could easily be something like the issue of owner serviceable cars: while tinkers complain, to 95% of people it doesn't matter.
>> In 4-5 years, a phone/tablet OS that doesn't ship tightly integrated [...]
> You're making a prediction here which is not based on any historical evidence.
I agree. There's no question that's the current path, but in the next few years I could see tablets getting fast enough that compatibility layers (like WINE, HTML5, Adobe Air, etc) may make it possible to make the OS a replaceable commodity. Or we could stay in vendor silos. Hard to say.
> How is Android the biggest consumer platform to hit mankind?
If I was going to make that argument (I said it was "arguably" not absolutely) I'd point out that Google is activating 1.3 million devices / day with no sign of slowing. And those are just Google devices. That's 450m devices per year, nearly all of them "consumer" devices. In just 15 years that would account for the entire world population (and that's including children). Windows was certainly influential but a large portion of that was not as a "consumer" OS - the vast bulk of its influence and impact came from businesses. There might have been one Windows computer in a house but there will be 4+ Android phones, plus potentially tablets, TVs and other devices that run Android. So if you're talking size and numbers (ie. "biggest") I think Android has a pretty good claim on it. But I'm not disputing you can argue the other way. Just the fact that it's arguable at all though is pretty astounding.
