Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

blog.stephenwolfram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 415 posts

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#341

Post by ThePhysicist »

chubot wrote: post #138

Some pretty cool things: - He's a CEO who dogfoods his own software! Not only that, he seems to be one of its most prolific users. That's amazing. Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever. - He's a remote CEO, and supports remote working! It sounds like the com…

A former colleague went to the APS spring meeting in Boston in 2011 (I think) and went to visit the Mathematica booth there. To his surprise, he found Stephen Wolfram himself standing there and showing off some cool Mathematica features to a small crowd of physicists. My colleague was (and probably is) a total Mathematica fanboy and evangelist and seeing Wolfram himself talk to users there made a big impression to him. I also have to say kudos to that, not many CEOs of billion dollar companies take the time to mingle with their users let alone show them how to get the most out of their software.

That said Mathematica is a brilliant piece of software and I have never seen a more powerful system for computer algebra and symbolic computation. It is kind of slow but what you can do with it is absolutely amazing, so I think it will remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#342

Post by jurassicfoxy »

duado wrote: post #257

It is always great to see what an utterly incorrigible dweeb (and I use that term affectionately) does with power and money. I just fucking love that instead of a Learjet he has basically a large ecosystem of software built specifically for his personal needs.

I agree. This was one of the most motivating articles I've read in a while. This is a man who unabashedly goes 100 % all in to whatever he wants, fully admits it's nutty, and looks like he's having the time of his life.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#343

Post by VBprogrammer »

jedberg wrote: post #331
VBprogrammer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that had me wondering about is how on earth he deals with reflections on the screen. Any attempt I've ever made to work outside in the sun (usually when it's too nice to be indoors) has resulted in me frustrated and giving up when I can't see a bloody thing on the screen. Maybe I'll give it a go on the Macbook Pro I've just gotten at work.

Polarized sunglasses help me a lot. As long as they aren't polarized in the same direction as your screen, it should work pretty well.

Ha! That's a really good idea. I guess most sunglasses are vertically polarized to avoid reflections off of water / wet ground so as long as the screen is polarized differently that should work.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#344

Post by saosebastiao »

chubot wrote: post #138

Some pretty cool things: - He's a CEO who dogfoods his own software! Not only that, he seems to be one of its most prolific users. That's amazing. Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever. - He's a remote CEO, and supports remote working! It sounds like the com…

> Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever.

Is this for real? I've never felt like google's products have prioritized latency. Android latency has been atrocious from the very beginning. And gmail and google docs are easily some of the slowest webapps out there.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#345

Post by woolvalley »

saosebastiao wrote: post #344
chubot wrote: post #138

Some pretty cool things: - He's a CEO who dogfoods his own software! Not only that, he seems to be one of its most prolific users. That's amazing. Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever. - He's a remote CEO, and supports remote working! It sounds like the com…

> Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever. Is this for real? I've never felt like google's products have prioritized latency. Android latency has been atrocious from the very beginning. And gmail and google docs are easily some of the slowest webapps out there…

Their search team prioritizes latency for sure, and they have performance teams and things like the RAIL model.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#346

Post by tzs »

bravura wrote: post #326

"And—partly out of caution about having a radio transmitter next to my head all day—my headset is wired," What is the current medical consensus on how dangerous wireless headsets, bluetooth headsets, cell phones, etc are?

Of the known ways for electromagnetic radiation to harm cells (directly breaking chemical bonds when a molecule is hit by a photon, and heat damage from the energy absorbed), we are pretty sure that wireless headsets and cell phones are safe.

The frequencies they use don't involve photons that can break bonds, and they don't have enough energy for heat damage.

The open question is whether or not there are either unknown ways it can harm cells. An unknown direct harm method is probably unlikely. There have been enough studies that we would have spotted it.

An unknown indirect harm, though, is harder to rule out. An indirect harm would be something like it can't cause cancer, but if a cell goes cancerous for some other reason the electromagnetic radiation interferes with the body's mechanisms for detecting and fixing or killing the cancer cell.

Keep in mind that even if these things do increase risk, either by some unknown direct mechanism, or by an unknown indirect mechanism, we can say that the risk increase is low. You probably do dozens of other things a day with similar or more risk that you could avoid.

Bottom line: if you want to have a wireless device next to your head all day for convenience or out of work necessity, no one can really say you are being foolish or cavalier toward you health. But if you decide to minimize such device usage, no one can really say you are worried over nothing.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#347

Post by denart2203 »

But, the big question on everyone’s minds: “When is v12.0 coming out, and what all will be in it?” I could swear folks said [tentatively] it was supposed to come out mid-to-late last year, or maybe now early this year? Anything more definitive yet? I keep checking back for updates, but not sure I’ve ever seen a definitive release date mentioned yet? Well, whenever it finally drops, I’m sure it’ll be great and I’ll pick up and upgrade from v9.0 (been waiting a while for the money & impetus to upgrade to the latest version).

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#348

Post by noir_lord »

graeme wrote: post #142
noir_lord wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how people are so different. My desk has to have exactly, 1 keyboard, 1 mouse, 1 A4 5mm graph paper pad and that's it. I used to struggle to work on a slightly cluttered desk but these days it has to be basically empty. In terms of paperwork, it goes behind me on shelves sorted by "Important, will need soon, Important, will need later, Not important" everything else goes in the bin. Periodically I rip the pads…

How do you process the files in the three shelves?

I pile stuff up neatly left to right and periodically (usually last hour on friday when brain is done, go through it and either move or bin it).

The goal isn't to have everything meticulously organised (that becomes a task that takes more time than you save, it's yak shaving for me at least) but to be able to find it quickly (few minutes) if I need to and crucially out of my sight line, at my desk it's completely out of view.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#349

Post by shatnersbassoon »

Obligatory mention that he spent 10 years writing a 1000+ page book of nonsense called A New Kind of Science that was basically about how great he is and how everyone else is an idiot: http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/ It's not just about productivity, people...

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#350

Post by daniellerommel »

sidcool wrote: post #186
cma wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room. Definitely true, but you'd also have to watch the livestream of everyone prepping for and commuting to work for a fair comparison.

I tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's f…

There's a hybrid approach we use here at Wolfram where a lot of employees work remotely 99% of the time, but at least 2-3 times a year are in town for our conference, picnic, etc... We also have virtual 'meet-ups' where remote workers can interact with the corporate or regional offices for video games, activities, etc. It's not a perfect solution, but does help keep interactions and idea sharing greater than zero.
Post reply on HN