I'm trying to make it a guide to the language, and programming in general, for true beginners. The very first post of actual coding (after installing, command line basics, and compiling/running with cargo) is a walk through of the first PE problem.
I know how you feel about most beginners guides not actually being suited for beginners. Since I'm a beginner, I'm hoping I'll be able to write one.
Feel free to check it out, and constructive criticism is encouraged!
You mentioned actuarial - as an actuary interested in quant work, I'm surprised they are so well-represented on your team. Do you find lots of them in the industry? I'm taking the Quantitative Finance specialty actuarial exams and figured it'd be a long shot to break in, but maybe there's hope.
Really enjoyed this article - seemed to give a pretty objective look at what happened then and parallels to now.
What I liked most though was the author's honest assessment of what happens if Uber and others win. Most people seem to imagine this utopia of competition between the ride share companies, but given that Uber is already engaging in immortal practices to eliminate competition and hiring people to schmooze regulators, I doubt that's the direction we're headed. If they get their way, we'll be complaining about them in 20 years when they are established, another company comes along, and Uber tries to regulate them away.
I don't understand why Average Joe thinks he can beat investment firms long term with staff dedicated to tracking each and every tradeable asset. Who do you think you're trading with?
If you want to gamble on a company or a market shift then fine, but for the most part that's just what it is - gambling.
I have more faith in freedom than faith in a group of humans with the same greedy intentions as any other human, but with regulatory power over everyone else in the market.
You were effective at using big words and quoting an economist, but not at providing any counterargument to the essay.
> "My advice is to attempt startups in the center of a confluence of macrotrends"
That's basically like saying "buy the winning lottery ticket" in my opinion. There are lots of eyes watching for macrotrends, and lots of people trying to capitalize on that. Identifying the trend is part of success, sure, but that's the easy part - the hard part is separating yourself somehow. Luck isn't the whole reason for that separation, but it's a significant part of it.
I do agree that many founders don't recognize their luck. To their credit though, I think they often emphasize the "work hard, be smart" part instead of saying "I knew I was better than all my competitors because..."
> After another three generations or so, chips will probably reach 5nm, and at that point there will be only 10 atoms from the beginning to the end of each transistor gate, he said. Beyond that, further advances may be impossible. "You can't build a transistor with one atom," Samueli said.
I don't get it - did people assume that chips could get infinitely small?
Seems pretty obvious that Moore's Law would fail at some point.
Disclaimer: I didn't know about this law before today so I'm probably ignorant of something.
I'm going to assume the revenue numbers you mentioned are US numbers.
The entire population isn't trying to be musicians - you're only competing with other musicians for that money. This website[1] offers various estimates for the number of active musicians, but the numbers are quite scattered due to the subjective and numerous definitions of "musician" (orchestra player doesn't need royalties, rock band member does, music teacher doesn't, etc.).
I'm going to use the number of albums produced to determine the number of active musical acts who would get paid by Spotify, which according to the source was 76,875 in 2011, and one album per active musical act seems reasonable. Assuming that is a US number for conservatism (not a global number) then we get 76,875 active musical acts competing for your $2.5B. Since most musicians won't assume that they will become superstars, using the 80/20 rule we'll chop off the top 20% of active musical acts and the top 80% of the revenue (which imo is probably most artists that anyone knows) to get 61,500 musical acts competing for $500M. Now lets assume 3 musicians collecting royalties per musical act (seems reasonable, lots of 4-5 member bands, lots of solo artists, conservative) for a total of 184,500 musicians competing for that $500M. $500M supports 11,111 people under your $45,000/year income assumption, meaning 6% of the bottom 80% of active musicians would get a livable income from Spotify alone. As other posters have pointed out, musicians have many other sources of income such as other streaming services, touring, record sales, merch, etc.
So yes, since you have a 6% chance of earning a livable income from a singular source of music streaming while being in the bottom 80% of active musicians royalty-wise, I'd say it's definitely worth it to keep doing what you love. This also ignores the many non-royalty-based careers for musicians, such as teachers and session artists.
This site finds similar artists to the one you search for. It has no reason to expect you'll like The Offspring when you entered Symphony X.
It's like telling a friend you like Band X, and they say "Oh man, if you like Band X, you'll probably like Similar Band Y! or Similar Band Z!" It would be odd if you said you liked Jay-Z and someone recommended The Clash because they're so different, even though it's not uncommon to like both.
Very interesting! Hacker School seems like something I'd like to do once I get my coding chops above absolute beginner level, it's nice to read a personal account of someone's experience. Hopefully I'll be applying sooner than later!
I agree that that would be more honest, if it's possible - maybe this company could add something like that to their product line. I just think that, although it isn't technically correct, non-tech parents would probably consider this "building a computer", and if their goal is to open their children's minds to computers this will probably do a great job.
This is a product for children and people who find computers intimidating. It's meant as a fun introduction to computers and programming.
Your comment is like complaining that a LEGO helicopter isn't a real helicopter, and that kids who build them are simply learning how to follow instructions.
You should change the title - the content is interesting enough that you don't need the mystery, and many people who would otherwise be interested probably won't click.
I'm currently trying to learn Rust, and since it's so new everything is geared towards people with experience. So I started Rust For Beginners:
http://www.rustforbeginners.com
I'm trying to make it a guide to the language, and programming in general, for true beginners. The very first post of actual coding (after installing, command line basics, and compiling/running with cargo) is a walk through of the first PE problem.
I know how you feel about most beginners guides not actually being suited for beginners. Since I'm a beginner, I'm hoping I'll be able to write one.
Feel free to check it out, and constructive criticism is encouraged!