For the vast majority of my life, I didn’t read any books. Reading for me is a painfully boring experience. I simply lack the ability to read and comprehend at a speed that keeps me engaged.
Then, I realized I assimilate information very differently based on the medium. For me, math is a very visual thing. Graphs and plots make mathematical concepts immediately understandable. For general learning, hearing someone talk about a topic is most effective for me. This is when I decided to give audiobooks a go. This has been transformational for me.
Any good audiobook app will allow for faster playback. I’ve trained myself to listen to books at 2x speed (or faster). This is easily 5x the speed I would comprehend the material if I physically read it. So it’s super effective for me. I listen to these books in my car during my commute. Audiobooks convert my commute from a time waster into probably the most valuable time I have in my day.
So why are books worth it? For me, books end up performing like the repetitive learning system of Anki (https://apps.ankiweb.net/). A good book is somewhat repetitive as it goes deep on a focus area. Spending 10+ hours over the period of a week or so consuming a topic and having time for my brain to stew on it is incredible. I can’t get this from pod casts or blog posts and other online content.
I only listen to non-fiction books, typically on topics around human psychology, business, and topics I hope to give me new insights.
Bottom line: books are worth it because they offer depth that I can’t get anywhere else. That depth is the value.
1.25x? Aim to get accustomed to 2x+. So much time savings. I have a friend who’s blind and super proficient on his laptop using screen readers. He runs all the speech at 3x+. It sounds like gibberish to me, but he’s crazy productive. He inspired me to learn how to understand and follow significantly sped up audio. Saves so much time.
He’s describing a recorded marketing video. It was deliberately produced and edited to contain that specific message. Comparing that to an off the cuff error during a live discussion is disingenuous.
The problem is the interface. Voice commands and their responses are linear, one dimensional. It’s difficult to represent complex interaction within that scope. Think of all the investment that has gone into telephone based automated customer support. The best interface conceived so far is the dreaded phone tree. That’s essentially the same interface smart speakers are exposing.
The opportunity is to figure out how to better utilize the voice based medium. No one has done it yet. When they do, it will also likely improve the experience around screen readers and accessibility.
It isn’t relevant to crypto. This is specifically about spam email mitigation. I don’t agree with their conclusion, which is “we can’t reduce spam to the level we’d like without imposing undue burden on legitimate senders so we shouldn’t do it at all”. The “all or nothing” doesn’t make sense. They never consider things like whitelists (legitimate senders need to do zero work), different levels of work required for different senders (eg a sender’s IP address isn’t recognized so dramatically increase the work requirements), etc.
If you like this topic and didn’t read all the way to the bottom, the author’s recommendation of “Prime Obsession” by John Derbyshire is spot on. It’s a fantastic book.
The problem isn't housing. The problem is transportation and infrastructure. People need to work for a living. They also don't want to spend a significant amount of time commuting to said work. California's transportation, road, and highway infrastructure is completely and utterly inadequate for the population in the SF and LA areas. This forces people into living situations that are far from ideal and creates a fight over housing.
Create multiple ways for people to commute from 30 miles away in 30 minutes and housing will be much less of a problem with people having many more options.
Proof: If people could instantly teleport between work and home no matter how far apart they are, do you really think they would still cram into SF Bay Area or LA housing? Hell no. Housing is the symptom of poor transportation infrastructure.
6. Network. Get personal referrals from people you know who work at the companies you are applying. These personal referrals have an order of magnitude better chance at getting you noticed. Use your time to reach out to people you know. Have coffee with them. Yes. Face to face. Let them know you're interested in working at their company. Ask them to submit a referral. Use linkedin to find people. Don't be afraid to ask a connection for an intro to another person you don't know who could help you. You'd be surprised how helpful people are willing to be.
I feel sad that so much brain power goes into market arbitrage. They produce nothing usable by anyone else. Imagine if these people built companies that made new advances and new products.
For the vast majority of my life, I didn’t read any books. Reading for me is a painfully boring experience. I simply lack the ability to read and comprehend at a speed that keeps me engaged.
Then, I realized I assimilate information very differently based on the medium. For me, math is a very visual thing. Graphs and plots make mathematical concepts immediately understandable. For general learning, hearing someone talk about a topic is most effective for me. This is when I decided to give audiobooks a go. This has been transformational for me.
Any good audiobook app will allow for faster playback. I’ve trained myself to listen to books at 2x speed (or faster). This is easily 5x the speed I would comprehend the material if I physically read it. So it’s super effective for me. I listen to these books in my car during my commute. Audiobooks convert my commute from a time waster into probably the most valuable time I have in my day.
So why are books worth it? For me, books end up performing like the repetitive learning system of Anki (https://apps.ankiweb.net/). A good book is somewhat repetitive as it goes deep on a focus area. Spending 10+ hours over the period of a week or so consuming a topic and having time for my brain to stew on it is incredible. I can’t get this from pod casts or blog posts and other online content.
I only listen to non-fiction books, typically on topics around human psychology, business, and topics I hope to give me new insights.
Bottom line: books are worth it because they offer depth that I can’t get anywhere else. That depth is the value.