> He prefers to invest when it is actually possible to possess information or insights that have not been widely distributed to other potential buyers via public disclosure.
This is exactly the opposite of what he claims in his essays. One quote:
> The other way we differ from some arbitrage operations is that we participate only in transactions that have been publicly announced. We do not trade on rumors or try to guess takeover candidates. We just read the newspapers, think about a few of the big propositions, and go by our own sense of probabilities.
There are several others in "The Essays of Warren Buffett" where he also describes how he just uses public information.
Don't quit. Validate your idea first, then implement it.
Read "Nail It Then Scale It" and "The E-Myth Revisited". You'll save time and money. You might also study business strategy (free courses on Coursera) so you can evaluate your idea from business fundamentals first. The more you can invalidate it (no market, massive incumbents, no demand, too costly, etc.), the less time and money you'll waste building something nobody wants, and the better placed you'll be to spot a truly great opportunity.
As a developer it's natural to focus on your strengths. You need to validate ideas before doing that.
> Isn't this exactly the point of using a naked `self` instead of the reference `&self`?
Yes it is, but you only see it's a naked self if you look into the method. From the outside there's nothing in the name to indicate that it doesn't take a reference. So potentially it means that for every method call you need to check that it takes a reference to `self` instead of ownership. This would be especially annoying with third-party libraries.
Nice example. I was learning Rust over Christmas so I see how it works. But one issue I have is that from the outside it's not obvious that your `close()` method will take ownership of `self`. I'd probably prefer it if there was some (compiler-enforced) convention that made it obvious to clients that `close()` would consume `self`.
As it stands, Rust code can break the principle of least surprise, since what happens in a method can affect the associated instance variable (in this case `open_socket`). A user could easily write several lines of code and only discover that `open_socket` has been moved into a method at compile-time.
I found myself having very small coding-compile iterations when writing in Rust to catch issues like this (but that was also undoubtedly due to the fact I was learning).
Am I the only one who finds it pretty unprofessional to release the exploits when the fixed version hasn't been released yet (and anyway was only scheduled to have been released 48 hours beforehand)?
I'm all for disclosure, but seriously - if RH want Ansible to be used in enterprise they can't expect patches at this rate. The researchers releasing the exact exploits so quickly is just irresponsible IMO.
I think there's a reason lots of famous billionaires keep working. I've been hearing from my parents how boring retirement is, and from my own experiences of extended vacations I've come to the conclusion we evolved to work.
"Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankl graphically illustrates the importance of having a sense of purpose, which I think a lot of people lack when they retire to live the dream of doing nothing.
I think the key is to be able to choose not to have to work for some asshole boss, or do work you don't generally enjoy.
I've become very disillusioned by the dream of insane wealth and the ability to retire early. Instead, I want to work on something I feel will make a difference and that interests me for the foreseeable future.
> I would take it further, and recommend dropping all expectations, but I suppose at that point we arrive at zen or taoism.
Yeah that's the natural extension of it, but I'm not quite at that stage yet :-) I think with Zen, Taoism, etc. it's far better to reach the same insights and realisations - have more "A-ha!" moments - than try to push yourself into things before you want to do them and understand why. Most of those traditions are just roadmaps to the territory (definitely useful, but maps all the same), but I digress.
This approach opens you up to far more opportunities. Say you have a spare weekend and you aren't sure what to do with it, but feel like going out. You could use the opportunity to try something you wouldn't normally do: go to an event on something you know nothing about, or even on a subject you don't really like. When you're there, find people who are really into the subject and try to understand from them why they like it. Maybe you'll see what they see, maybe you won't. But this curious mindset will pay dividends if you need to be creative, or develop rapport with people, or just want to see what's out there.
I'd had some things going on and wanted a holiday. So I went on my own. I went out to bars on my own, which I wouldn't have done before because I'd have thought I'd have a had a rubbish night. But I ended up meeting a few people, then a few more and had an amazing night. I realised that it was down to me to make the effort to have a good night, so I started speaking to the people around me.
There are so many opportunities every day just waiting to be taken. I used to close myself off from them because I wanted to somehow cherry-pick in advance only those that would make me happy, or lead to 'good' outcomes. When you remove that constraint, you become open to much more of life.
> In the United States, we are obsessed with happiness. But as people get older, research shows, they cultivate happiness by avoiding unpleasant situations.
Someone asked a few days ago what the best habit was that HNers developed last year and what the health benefits were. I realised I shouldn't do things because I thought they'd make me happy, and it has changed everything. Put another way, I don't only do things I think I'm going to enjoy any more.
It's an incredibly powerful mindset to not have an expectation of happiness or enjoyment as an outcome of an action. I used not to do a lot of things because I couldn't see the point or because I thought I wouldn't like them. Now I do those things anyway, more just to see what they're like rather than because I expect to enjoy them. I do things to see what actually happens instead of limiting myself to my own preconceptions.
Most of the time, I'm right, and I don't enjoy those things, but that's OK. They're still showing me different aspects of life and allowing me to exercise arguably our most innate gift, the ability to experience. There have been a few surprises though. I've taken up sports I'd previously discounted, and now I've stuck with them long enough I can see the appeal. I'm learning a musical instrument and get much less frustrated because I see the learning process as just training my brain, a function of time and effort. There's no point in being frustrated.
Now I just view experiences as things to be experienced, without requiring anything more of them. This means there's less pressure on me and on them to give me anything. My attitude to them and awareness of them is more important than deriving happiness and enjoyment.
Now I've written that it reads like zen, but when I practiced zen it was because I wanted to be happy from it. The thing with learning is it's not enough to have the knowledge. You need the insight to really internalise something. It's that "A-ha!" moment. I guess I arrived at the same conclusion as the Zennists from a different direction. Only doing things you think will make you happy is just a way too limiting mindset.
It really has been a complete revolution in my approach to life. I can't recommend it enough. And it looks like this attitude will keep my brain healthy too.
I've been using this plugin but it doesn't seem to do auto-import. Does it definitely support that? Apart from that, as you say, type detection isn't always particularly useful. Apart from those two features, it's pretty much there, definitely usable.
I've literally just started learning Rust after following it for a few years. I wanted a language that was type-safe and produced binaries to simplify deployment. I chose Rust over Go because I wanted a functional language with generics. Go's repetitiveness regarding error handling just put me off.
I've tried learning C/C++ at several times but I just don't have the inclination to have to bother about null-terminating strings, etc in 2016. I don't mind spending a little more time getting something to compile if it prevents silly mistakes.
Having said all that, it's obviously too early for me to say whether I like Rust. I'm picking it up pretty quickly since I know FP thanks to Scala, but I'll see how much time I spend fighting the borrow checker.
> it being fined up to one percent of its annual turnover
Now they're fines we should be proud of. Not like the pathetic smack-on-the-wrist fines they've dished out to banks and Google that they can earn back in milliseconds.
Or pollution. The city is a cesspit. I can't wait to get out.