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Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#271

Post by chosenbreed37 »

ianai wrote: post #268
vonseel wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes Dude is also one of the best engineers you know when he can just get some “heads down” time to himself, but when forced to be in an environment with many easy distractions, he acts like a kid on the playground. Or something.

I’ve been Dude in the past. Yesterday I was probably in danger of becoming Dude but for my general introversion and maturity. I walked around listening to James Brown instead. I think flexibility and a culture demonstrating proper time management and production would help. It’s important to socialize but without detracting from others. Yesterday, I just couldn’t sit or stay at my desk - I needed some air. In hindsigh…

Absolutely. You could argue that a water cooler/coffee machine conversation is unlikely to be distracting as compared to interrupting people at their desk. If people are by the water cooler, kitchen, canteen, etc chances are they wanted to get away from their desks and would be open to engaging with others (even if bery briefly)

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#272

Post by dajohnson89 »

juskrey wrote: post #220
kevinventullo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, the conference call linked lower in the thread has increased my skepticism for remote work. Another commenter pointed out how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room.

I love such comments. The guy has a multimillion dollar private business which is at the same time his hobby and a dream, and does it in the way he likes. And someone comes and says his meetings can be more efficient..

wolfram admits in the article that his company can and should be bigger. fwiw.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#273

Post by biot »

chrisseaton wrote: post #124
avinium wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, it's awesome that these are live-streamed and publicised. Second, I didn't hear anything unreasonable in that meeting. SW has a reputation for ego, but honestly this particular extract just sounds like frustration with buggy/messy documentation. I mean, the fact that the CEO is personally going through documentation is telling in itself.

I don't know why you're bending over backwards to excuse it. It's toxic. He's being nasty. He could say everything he does without the snapping, blowing up at questions, dramatic sighs, 'oh boy's. It's all so incredibly passively aggressive. And that's actually the worst bit! It's hard to call him out when he's not explicitly calling them 'idiots' or something. It's like it's some kind of plausible deniability of bei…

Rather than admit that the red, undocumented third parameter was a mistake they seemed to make all sorts of rationalizations for why it’s wrong (“It’s new”, “I thought it was fixed”, etc.) rather than just saying “You’re right, that’s a bug. We’re fixing it.” Why were the employees waffling around the fact that it actually is a problem? Calling them out on their justifications and excuses isn’t being toxic or nasty, it’s called being a professional who takes pride in the work they put out to the public.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#274

Post by VectorLock »

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.

He says in the article he went from never traveling to traveling all the time. I wonder if he has a Learjet as well.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#275

Post by dmos62 »

hirundo wrote: post #72
booleandilemma wrote: post #26

What’s HN’s opinion of Stephen Wolfram? Is he legit? Is the tome A New Kind of Science worth reading?

I thought A New Kind of Science was wonderful. It's a deep dive into cellular automata by a very creative, systematic and productive mind. He doesn't succeed in remaking physics with these models, but he does succeed in demonstrating that the natural world is full of vast computational potential that emerges everywhere from simple interactions. It's a vision of an awesomely fecund ordinary reality.

I loved the book as well. I found it exceptionally well written, researched. The content was eye-opening and the author was . This is the first I notice that there's so much discontent with it. I'm not sure where it's coming from.

Edit: actually, I'm understating things. I found not only his central ideas very noteworthy, but how he managed to portray the historical development of mainstream science as largely random (as opposed to the, now silly, idea I may have had that today's science is somehow "optimal") was great and a positive influence on my outlooks, I'd say.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#276

Post by galfarragem »

This tidbit is delicious:

Perhaps all that data I’ve collected on myself will one day let one basically just built a “bot of me”.

In the end all we want is freedom. I suspect that productivity optimization is our unconscious search of a (social) way of getting free.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#277

Post by fnordsensei »

jessriedel wrote: post #269
ianai wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. It will always be easy to look at something from the outside and point out all the ways it should or can’t work or could work better. The systems and people involved are usually much more complicated. The world also owes itself more compassion. “Thousand foot” criticism lacks compassion.

You're describing a policy of not making frank assessment of the efficacy of business practices.

That’s a bit far. From my perspective, the point is that looking at inefficiencies in isolation is as bad as looking at benefits in isolation.

Making a frank assessment about the efficiency of meetings is probably of limited value in and of itself in abstractly assessing the overall equation of trade-offs in running a distributed vs collocated business. Even more so when concretely assessing this particular company.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#278

Post by lotsofpulp »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #158
js2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initially they are just named with the date they are scanned. Once a quarter or so I'll organize the ones I care about and the rest stay in an "unorganized" folder. I use DEVONthink Pro Office which embeds Abbyy for OCR, along with a Fuji SnapScan.

I use JS1’s exact process, software and hardware. That is just too eerie. I however only shred once I have a full banker’s box, which I take to a commercial shredder for a big toss for $100, once or twice a year.

Staples will shred for a $1 a pound, and a banker’s box is at most 30lbs.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#279

Post by tome »

chrisseaton wrote: post #124
avinium wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, it's awesome that these are live-streamed and publicised. Second, I didn't hear anything unreasonable in that meeting. SW has a reputation for ego, but honestly this particular extract just sounds like frustration with buggy/messy documentation. I mean, the fact that the CEO is personally going through documentation is telling in itself.

I don't know why you're bending over backwards to excuse it. It's toxic. He's being nasty. He could say everything he does without the snapping, blowing up at questions, dramatic sighs, 'oh boy's. It's all so incredibly passively aggressive. And that's actually the worst bit! It's hard to call him out when he's not explicitly calling them 'idiots' or something. It's like it's some kind of plausible deniability of bei…

Can you link to a bit you consider toxic and nasty? I went in expecting to hear him sound like he was reading out a Linus Torvalds email but I couldn't find anything like that.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#280

Post by lkuty »

jhall1468 wrote: post #17
BucketSort wrote: post #13

Say what you want about Wolfram, he's a brilliant guy. Brilliant people often have strange quirks and egos, but that's just a part of being them. Also, this account has only posted links about Wolfram. Is it him or an assistant?

Linus Torvalds is quirky and has an ego. Steven Wolfram is one of the most arrogant people I've ever read. It comes through in virtually every aspect of his writing. It's understood that people who are exceptional smart aren't always socially pleasant, but Wolfram is trying to raise that bar by quite a bit.

http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2009/04/monumental_egos.... "I suggest we call the unit of ego the Wolfram"
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