wolframhempel

13일 전discuss

This seems healthy to me. A market where returns are less dependent on seven mega-cap names is probably more stable, not less. If earnings growth broadens out and capital starts flowing back toward quality and free cash flow outside the obvious AI winners, that should reduce concentration risk and make the whole market less fragile.

wolframhempel

2개월 전discuss

Maybe that's what I don't get. Ferraris in my mind need to be great at two things: Going 300kph around a racetrack and going 3kph in front of Harrods. If I want a comfy way to get my family around, I'd get a Mercedes.

wolframhempel

2개월 전discuss

I've seen a lot of explanations, including one by Marques Brownlee, stating that electric cars need large batteries in the floor, meaning they necessarily have to be taller and more SUV-like—and that, hence, a low, two-seater electric sports car is very hard to pull off with a decent range. But then, the Rimac Nevera is low and fast with 490 km of range—and that was released five years ago. I'm not sure why Ferrari couldn't have built something like that.

wolframhempel

3개월 전discuss

I don't think it has any expectation of being an astrophysics simulation. I mean, if the "spaceship" misses, it falls towards the "floor"...

wolframhempel

4개월 전discuss

To be fair, I remember being about ten years old and berating my friend who just told me that he had something called "Rebel Assault" on a CD how this was completely impossible as CDs could only store music and how he was a complete idiot for believing otherwise... :-)

wolframhempel

4개월 전discuss

There's value in being early - in the right thing.

- If you'd invested in Bitcoin in 2016, you'd have made a 200x return

- If you'd specialized in neural networks before the transformer paper, you'd be one of the most sought-after specialists right now

- If you'd started making mobile games when the iPhone was released, you could have built the first Candy Crush

Of course, you could just as well have

- become an ActionScript specialist as it was clearly the future of interactive web design

- specialized in Blackberry app development as one of the first mobile computing platforms

- made major investments in NFTs (any time, really...)

Bottom line - if you want to have a chance at outsized returns, but are also willing to accept the risks of dead ends, be early. If you want a smooth, mid-level return, wait it out...

wolframhempel

4개월 전discuss

As a former soldier and as someone who married into a family from the now russian occupied parts of Ukraine i feel that this is a great mindset, but also somewhat of a luxury believe. I agree that ideally we'd stand up to aggression and weapon production and that all other citizens around the world would do the same, and we'd live in peaceful equilibrium. But they don't- and so our best bet is to be so strong that no one wants to attack us. For that, we can't leave the cutting edge of military technology to others. This mindset used to be anathema to the tech community, but then briefly changed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine as people briefly understood that there are in fact aggressive actors in the world and war might come to us. But it seems we went back on that.

wolframhempel

4개월 전discuss

True, but I'm talking about the autonomous AI weapon question

wolframhempel

4개월 전discuss

[flagged]

wolframhempel

5개월 전discuss

I'd put it the other way around: Bad Grammar is a courtesy. I run a startup that's small, but busy. I get a high frequency stream of inbound questions, notifications and asks to make decisions by my team and customers. If I don't respond or decide quickly I become a bottleneck. Likewise, if I wait, things pile up. So, rather than keep everyone waiting for me, I make a point of pulling my phone out as soon as I get a message and provide an answer straight away as much as possible. These answers are brief and to the point. And they are laden with shitty grammar. But they are almost instant and that feels better than a well formulated essay two hours later.

Having said that, I started using Gmail's "polish" feature to turn "yes" into "That sounds great, let's go ahead with it" or some such corporatism. Not sure if that's much better...

wolframhempel

5개월 전discuss

If you have a large screen, make sure you limit your window's size - otherwise the framerate will drop quickly.

wolframhempel

6개월 전discuss

I used to work in investment banking in the city of London and later in Canary Wharf. I loved working in the city as it was a beautiful old place, people were very social and having 2-3 hour boozy lunches with someone who you might do business with one day wasn't a rarity (mind you, I moved out before covid, I understand things have changed quite a bit).

Then I switched jobs and ended up in Canary Wharf. For those who don't know it, Canary Wharf is a newly built finance district in the London Docklands. If you've been to Singapore, Dubai, La Defense in Paris or Songdo in Korea, you know the kind of place. Everything is clean, new, modern. Everything has 90 degree angles. Everything has cameras, security guards and cleaning stuff. What it doesn't have is any resemblance of a real city, any organicity or soul.

I hated it. Every morning I saw the streams of suite dressed worker drones pouring from the tube directly into their office towers (Canary Wharf has a huge underground shopping mall/railway station that allows you to go from the subway directly into your office without ever seeing the sun).

I was unhappy. So I did similar things to the OP. I got up earlier and walked there. (I lived in Mile End). It was a nice walk along the canal for a while and then a not so nice walk through smog and traffic, but I didn't mind. I took my lunch outside on the remaining docks. And finally, I got up so early that I arrived an hour before work began.

I spent this hour in a Cafe. Alone. Having breakfast. I loved this hour. I sat there, as the only one not rushing in, getting their "strong capo", beeping their card against the reader and rushing out. I observed the grey and black dressed stream of people. I day dreamed.

It helped - for a while. It was a band aid before I left London all together and moved to Berlin. But most of all, it is a uniquely calm and joyful experience. It decelerates you. The boheme in Paris or Prague has long figured this out. Sit in a cafe. Enjoy a coffee or a glass of wine. Look at people. Daydream. Reflect, be enough - there's a lot to it.

wolframhempel

6개월 전discuss

It was a privatization in name only. The German state held 100% of its shares since the beginning. As such, it might have no longer been subject to the state specific demands of hiring etc. - but instead found itself in an uneasy tension as the only supplier of services to an entity that was something between a customer and a shareholder.

Which brings up an interesting question: How do you structure something with a large piece of infrastructure like a rail network in a way that could benefit from the market forces of competition and innovation?

wolframhempel

9개월 전discuss

I'm wondering if this overlooks areas where we experience much higher levels of deviation today. Take music, for example. When I grew up, I was basically limited to whatever was playing on the radio or MTV—there was only so much airtime for a small set of popular songs. The mainstream was much more mainstream. Today, I can listen to obscure Swedish power metal bands with fewer than 5,000 monthly listeners on Spotify without any difficulty.

The same goes for fashion. I have a picture of my mom and her friends where everyone looks like a miniature version of Madonna. Today, fashion seems far more individualistic.

Streaming has given us a vast spectrum of media to consume, and we now form tiny niche communities rather than all watching Jurassic Park together. There are still exceptions like Game of Thrones, The Avengers, or Squid Game, but they are less common.

One of my friends is into obscure K-pop culture that has virtually zero representation in our domestic media. Another is deeply interested in the military history of ancient Greece—good luck finding material on that when there were only two TV channels.

Maybe deviance hasn't disappeared—maybe it's just shifted elsewhere…?

wolframhempel

2년 전discuss

Fair enough - let's take Stardew Valley as an example then.

wolframhempel

2년 전discuss

I feel, the current generation of AAA Games are a great example for why you should make something you enjoy rather than something designed to make money. Look at Baldurs Gate 3 vs Skull and Bones. Make something you love and are passionate about. Get good at it. Use the Internet to show it to others that are passionate about the same thing - and there's a decent likelihood of success.

wolframhempel

4년 전discuss

I see a lot of wishes for this to be over soon - and I feel the same. But realistically, I'm afraid that due to the severity of Russia's attack and the West's response, there's simply no perspective for a peaceful future with Putin in it. Whether Ukraine falls or prevails, there won't be peace as long as Putin is in charge.

This brings up the question of what to do about it - and, apart from an uprising by the Russian people leading to a regime change - there are few solutions that feel particularly pleasant.

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