I don't understand where people in the security industry find the motivation to learn about exploits. It seems to me that those exploits are something highly transient, and not of fundamental value.
There's often waves of related exploits being found, which I'd interpret as a sign that studying new exploits is useful to understand the category of bug/issue and find other examples. And even if you are not actively trying to find new exploits, that means that you'll possibly encounter similar ones soon.
Honestly, this is why I just read technical books cover to cover. It’s just about the best point to point resource out there. I think I remember seeing where Cornell offered a course structure where you’d do one course, all day, for 3 weeks and then move to the next. It was years ago, but I remember thinking I would have loved it.
This is generally called a Block Plan[1] and is a great system for some students. Looks like Cornell College offers it, you got my hopes up as I'm a Cornell University student and juggling five technical courses at a time has heavy context switching penalties. On the other hand, last year taking Linear Algebra and at the same time having to apply it in a signals processing class was a good combo. [1] http://www.exper…
Yeah, I used to take intersession courses back in my college days where I focused on one course for four weeks. That fit my mode of study way better than taking 4/5 technical courses at the same time. Doing a deep dive on one subject and then moving on was just way better for subject retention in my opinion.
I'm split on this personally. I don't like the type of noisy open plan office where you work next to the ping-pong table while someone rides a bike through the office or something like that, but on the other hand, I don't feel like being in total isolation helps to focus either. I actually like a little bit of background activity, I work better when I listen to music (mostly classical or anything without vocals) or a…
There have been studies going back as far as Peopleware and The Timeless Way of Building that suggest people are generally adversely affected when the noise is more than noise they personally generate (e.g. keyboard clicking), and not in their control (e.g. choosing to listen to music may be fine, but when you’re forced to listen to music because the alternative is a distracting conversation between teammates it has…
Christopher Alexander's work isn't based on empirical studies, though, is it? Never seen any. It's just his, uh, inspired opinion.
I get that they want to convey that. But prove it. There have been some studies into this, I am sure. Show some of the replications. (Specifically, do not show the initial studies.) Appeal to the times I've been focused for a time gets me to ignore all of the times I did the same and produced nothing . Not only produced nothing, but consumed nothing, as well. Both have happened. I do not keep a solid journal to say t…
> Appeal to the times I've been focused for a time gets me to ignore all of the times I did the same and produced nothing. Were you really focused then? Not having distractions but still staring blankly at a screen, is not the same as focusing. Worst case, even if you try 100 things and none of those works, you know that these 100 things are not the solutions to the problem -- something that you didn't before. And yo…
This is just the true Scotsman fallacy, though. I have been plenty focused before and not accomplished anything of note.
More, I've had plenty of brief diversions into a topic that produced more learning than some deliberate attempts I have made.
I get that they want to convey that. But prove it. There have been some studies into this, I am sure. Show some of the replications. (Specifically, do not show the initial studies.) Appeal to the times I've been focused for a time gets me to ignore all of the times I did the same and produced nothing . Not only produced nothing, but consumed nothing, as well. Both have happened. I do not keep a solid journal to say t…
Yeah, I get your point, and a lot of this is individual to the person... I personally know that when I am in the zone I perform better and remember the lessons learned for longer. I would certainly be interested in more/followup studies regarding this matter.
You "know" this. But how? Have you truly tabulated results showing it is the case? Not just collected confirming data, but tried to disprove it?
I'm worried this is nothing more than intellectuals showing pretty severe selection bias. Take the archetypes listed. There are non famous failures in each. Selecting the successes is a bit of a sleight. Worse, the logic of, "if it isn't working for you, you should try a different method. It is you that is incompatible, not the methods." I mean, I want to think that Poirot's "little grey cells" are a thing. And I kno…
> I'm worried this is nothing more than intellectuals showing pretty severe selection bias. What intellectuals? These plans can equally apply to a high-school educated person learning to cook or whatever. > Take the archetypes listed. There are non famous failures in each. Selecting the successes is a bit of a sleight. What archetypes? The post never mentions any archetypes or lists any chery-picked successes. Perhap…
The archetypes were the "monastic", "bimodal", etc. Called them strategies, but each is backed by a success.
But, if you have evidence that these are more successful than alternatives, I'm game. Where is the evidence? For that matter, what are the alternatives?
(Currently typing with my 4mo old. So... apologies for any typos.)
I really like his example at the end - step-by-step deep dive into a specific topic. 30 hours of learning, direct links to resources, come out the other end as informed and aware of the topic at hand. I usually find it difficult to wade through the mountains of possible (often outdated) resources on a topic I'm unfamiliar with - At one point I was thinking it'd be useful to crowdsource those kind of step-by-step guid…
I'm building this right now actually. Superclass [1] is a place to submit online learning resources by topic, then upvote/comment on the most helpful ones. The goal is eventually something just like you described, kind of a crowd-sourced curriculum builder. This version is rough and buggy, but would love everyone's thoughts/feedback (sam@directedworks.com) https://superclass.co/ Edit: sign up for occasional email upd…
I always just figured it's the "oil change" problem. The day after the oil change interval is up that you skipped, all the trucks are still running great and it feels like you just saved a bunch of money... It can be very difficult for a bean counter with a spreadsheet to connect the extra broken down trucks at the end of the year to the oil changes that were skipped in February. Every open office I've ever been in w…
I don’t buy the argument that bean counters are unable to account for vaguer aspects of productivity loss. For one, bigger corporations invest huge amounts of money into productivity research and take the topic very seriously. They aren’t unsophisticated or naive and corporations will really study the internal incentives they create for cost cutting, to make sure they aren’t mistakenly cutting costs that actually lea…
> Plus, it’s widely and popularly disputed that open plans are actually cheaper, e.g. even in pop articles like this:
It is now, but when did that start?
I vaguely recall when it was still actually controversial (perhaps due to lack of data), but that may have been as long as 10 years ago. I also recall when open plan wasn't even a thing and the discussion was merely cubicles vs. hard walls.
> My only remaining surprise is at how long this open plan bubble can persist before people realize these companies are not about any type of productivity.
If I may be flippant for a moment, I'm shocked.. shocked!.. That there is wastefulness going on this VC-fueled establishment.
I'm certainly less surprised, as I believe productivity (and its less sexy cousins efficiency and profit) have long been disregarded as being far less important than growth, ever since the dot-com boom, in the world of (many, if not most) VC-driven startups.
What startles me is just how much VC money is flowing directly up to Amazon via AWS (sometimes actually encouraged by the VCs themselves), as that smells more like inflation of a bubble than merely paying programmers to be distracted.
It makes an interesting reading but I have problems with a few things. I don't think that "to be good at something", through practice, it's conceptually the same that understanding something new. The article doesn't make a clear difference. About flow state: it seems that the reason flow state is difficult to achieve is (and I believe Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explain it in its book) because the task have to be in the…
because it's a given that without the effort of practice you will not come to understand the unknown thing to you as you will not seek to understand it, effort must be put first then the understanding comes after one two three many repetitions, this article is just explaining a more finite path of reaching that knowledge by turning off outside distractions and deep concentration, by concentration i mean centering the attention to the subject in question. If you are a fighting a battle with a katana, the first time you hold it would probably be just like any stick in your hand, then with practice you would come to understand many subtleties that improve on perfecting it, like that you hold it with two smallest fingers on hand, how to put your torso, how to set your eyes, and other things i don't remember from the Book of Rings by Mysashi Miyamoto. When it comes to intellect, mathematics or so, you still just keep at it and it comes. But as someone here explained that frustrating helped him to understand the formula he tried to understand, it helped him focus, because of him now I understand a quote by i think Al-ghazali "there is no gaining knowledge without discomfort" , and the article helped also, meaning mindless efortless comfortable repetitive tasks just keep you at the same level. So pretty much this article is like a teacher, and the guy who wrote it is also like a teacher and it helps, but you must not instinctively just argue the opposites but rather try to understand it. Now how do human beings come to understanding of new things, meaning how do we gain knowledge, of course you will not find this in this article as this is beyond our limits of intellect, but you may seek to try to understand, for instance how is it that humans recognize the letter A, and i don't mean the shape, i mean the contrast between the brightness, and the limit of the edges where the day and night meet, black and white in this case, and this edge goes around the letter and the shape of it and we understand it as a letter A. All I know that knowledge comes from Allah, One source, He teaches humans the language, the writing, now as for how that happens I don't think we're capable of knowing as we don't even know how is it we learn to recognize symbols, I mean the workings of the mind, sure we can take a brain scan and learn about neurons and as the article mentions repetitive tasks become almost imprinted and easy to do, like driving, but we don't get better at driving we just drive the rest of our lives the way we drive, most of the times, because we don't focus on learning to drive, we just focus on driving to work and smoking a cigarette or eating a burger. Now driving a car would be like learning a mathematical formula and knowing to implement it without actually understanding what it does, while you still can pass the test and not understand the workings of it, so yes surely practicing singing and sword fighting is different as practicing something intellectual which you have to understand, but even with many intellectual things we just have to learn how to implement it and not actually what it does, we know a high level process and not the processes below it. .... so like what article was talking about is that there is no natural talent, and word naturae meaning in-born, or by-birth, aka genetic, while there are those that are born with say eye sight and others are blind, but regardless, if you're born with a slightly better working brain you still have to put the effort, that deep concentration to understand the new thing and if that new thing is say part of a bigger thing, learning a new formula you become better at math, learning a new stance you get better at holding a sword.... so it is the same thing, to be good at something and to learn a new thing, because you had to learn it first to become good at it, and possibly udnerstand it also, only now we take it for granted as we are at this level, that's why the article doesn't differentiate that, learning two different things is still learning and learning to understand two totally different concepts, in the end it's one same process in our mind, learning a new thing regardless if one is playing soccer and the other physics. So being good at something is actually knowing understanding and learning more and new things about it, only linguistically your mind might play a trick and make you believe this is somehow different. Now if you want to pursuit and seek knowledge of how humans acquire knowledge, how do they learn, and how do we learn how to walk,and how is it possible for us to retain information, hacker news will not teach you these things you must seek this elswhere, key word being seek, just like in the article is 'work' or they call it deep work, both the key word is action. You know that sensation when learning something new and it finally just comes in your head and you now understand it, it's nice isn't it, well learning it might be more important that knowing how it actually happened, although it wouldn't be bad to know how, only today you might do a google search 'how humans recognize symbols' or something, and you will see that we know as much about the subject as we know about how monkeys do the same thing.