Viewing profile — biren34

I say that the need to start your own thing is a bug not feature. It IS a hard life, with tons of risk, change, and uncertainty. My wife hates the instability of it all. I've misse…

Huh. Didn't realize I had those two words mixed up. Thanks!

If you haven't heard of it, you've just stated the weak anthropomorphic principle.

I don't understand why so many people who care about greenhouse gases (and so love renewable energy sources) refuse to acknowledge that producing the equipment that generates "rene…

I wholeheartedly agree with the spirit of your comment. I'd add, though, that the entire complex of metrics we use to define "productivity" were invented to quantify and guide the …

This doesn't have to be true, though it is for many. If you can find a version of your dreams that pays the rent and puts food on the table, you can still chase them. Your financia…

Okay at the risk of being offensive, all the comments before mine are made by overly intellectual fools. I'm not usually so insulting--but as a father of two, if my 3 year old and …

I see a lot of comments about firing and chaos, but the single most important point to me is "you manage processes and lead people". So many managers get this wrong that just fixin…

So...this is the kind of spider that bit Peter Parker, right?

I have no idea of what's in this bill or not, but the very concept of "cost" in this case seems misleading. What's the "cost" of not investing in our nation's infrastructure?

Back in high school (pre-internet), we'd sign up a particular friend every time we saw one of the information collection boxes for 24 hour fitness. He could never figure out why th…

I have no idea what's allowed in HN recruiting terms, but I'm working at a company that is very much worried about making sure we deliver value, and we have several positions open.…

I think one of the most profound intellectual insights I've had is that the myth of Prometheus was in a sense true, but described events so old--that we wouldn't event consider the…

I work with data a lot, and my main issue with hedonic adjustment is that anytime I've ever made any such adjustment to "improve" a metric that wasn't purely mechanical (like a mov…

I think this is just an obvious example of a much larger phenomenon. The trend over the past 40 years has been to put efficiency above all--but that means there is no excess capaci…

Fair enough.

So...you get to arbitrate my parents' experience of poverty? I'll let my mom know that she wasn't poor when my parents spent an entire year eating nothing but cabbage, and they wer…

The comment was that the points about money "are, frankly, insulting". I'd call yours a radical interpretation of the text.

I have no particular beef with you, so please don't take it that way--but "the absolute reality that is the importance of money to survival" is a subjective assessment that does no…

Many poor people have totally different experiences. My mother, for example, was only able to continue past 4th grade in India because one of her uncles supported her while making …

In most every discussion I've come across that touches on money advice, I've see a variant of this comment "This world view doesn't incorporate (my) reality of the poorest of the W…

First, ambitious people will find ways to figure out if they're succeeding. There are good ways and bad ways. Second, objective rank ordering does exist. You can deny it or dismiss…

This is super interesting to me. Several comments to this thread show that the poster is mixing up the will to power with a specific value system. The will to power--and the skills…

How I wish I could link to another comment. Here's my answer to that, with some of it repeated from a comment posted to another comment above: I 100% believe in "success" and the w…

I 100% believe in "success" and the will to power--and I want my kids to succeed, full stop. I make no excuses. It's part of my value system, and I don't hide from it. I'm a second…