Posts Tagged With: Links

links for 2010-08-27

  • Ask giver to think in terms of time given up, not money. Asking giver to think about anything (5 babies, 100 pencils, etc) instead of "how much money" works
  • keep things simple, focus on quality and service. Crew members aren't told the margins on products, so placement decisions are made based not on profits but on what's best for the shopper.
  • 50 mechanics used in all sorts of games. Giving rewards, scheduling benefits, punishment if not kept up, etc. Interesting
  • Pursue what you love, work hard (less than 90 mins) in the morning, practice intensely, get expert feedback, take regular breaks, ritualize practice
  • If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.
  • Awkward I guess, but I've been squatting since I got home from India. Supposedly healthier, quicker, be wary of people that overstate benefits however
  • (tags: jobs)
  • During/after college I worked at a couple of startups that merely got absorbed into larger companies - but I learned a lot. In fact, after working both at startups and big companies I can say: You should always choose the startup because you will learn much more. lots of other good advice in the post
  • If you look at the founders that PG talks about the most, they are all tough as hell – and I’m pretty sure that’s why he likes them so much. I doubt he is particularly impressed by my and my co-founder’s raw intelligence, especially given how ridiculously smart the other YC founders are. I can hear him now: “I don’t know how smart they are, but god damn are those WePayers tough.” PG knows a lot about WePay. His favorite stories are those that demonstrate our toughness…like the time my co-founder and I adopted a dog together, dropped out of law school, and quit a high paying banking job, just to “burn the ships” before we founded WePay. I can probably recall two dozen stories about other founders that demonstrate how insanely tough they are — all stories frequently and proudly recited by PG.
    (tags: jobs)
  • The Washington Monthly and Education Sector, an independent think tank, looked at the 15 percent of colleges and universities with the worst graduation records—about 200 schools in all—and found that the graduation rate at these schools is 26 percent. (See the table at left for a listing of the fifty colleges and universities with the worst graduation rates.) America’s “college dropout factories,” in other words, are twice as bad at graduating their students as the worst high schools are at graduating theirs.
  • “The demands of imminent independence can worsen mental-health problems or create new ones for people who have managed up to that point to perform all the expected roles,” explains Henig. “[They] get lost when schooling ends and expected roles disappear.” In other words, when you go through life thinking “if I can make it through this, things will be better later,” you eventually forget what “better” means. the despair that accompanies the perpetual postponement of an enjoyable life has a way of making its presence known. It is seen, for example, in the regular e-mails I receive from college students suffering from deep procrastination — an advanced stage of burnout where, as with the Yellowbrick patient mentioned above, completing work becomes impossible — or the quiet desperation of the overworked law associate who strains to remember why, exactly, law school had once evinced such certainty."
  • 1. The sommerlier pours. You sip. You hesitate. Good move. Never say yes to a wine until you're sure it's sound. Try it a second time. A third, minutes later, if you still have doubts. Like sex on a first date, you'll regret it if you're not sure.
  • 1. Write a text message to a girl apologizing for the series of drunken text messages you sent her at 2 a.m. last night, which were just poorly composed requests for her to come over. 8. Write and practice reciting a monologue in which you explain to a girl that you aren't a scumbag like your friend(s), who slept with her and then didn't call her. Incorporate the phrase "I don't even know why I still hang out with those guys." 10. Write a cover letter to a bank manager that claims your B.A. in literature gives you advantages that people who have degrees in business, finance or economics simply don't have.
    (tags: humor)
  • martin seligman says in learned optimism that 25% of 3rd, 4th graders are depressed: unlike your typical joyful and carefree 4-year-old, Kiran didn’t have a lot of fun. “He wasn’t running around, bouncing about, battling to get to the top of the slide like other kids,” Raghu notes. Kiran’s mother, Elizabeth (her middle name), an engineer, recalls constant refrains of “Nothing is fun; I’m bored.” When Raghu and Elizabeth reminded a downbeat Kiran of their coming trip to Disney World, Kiran responded: “Mickey lies. Dreams don’t come true.”
  • (tags: jobs)
  • Online stalking has been scientifically proven to feel good. This past spring, researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism hooked 36 students up to sensors and monitored their faces and palms while they navigated Facebook. By measuring physiological responses associated with motivation and emotion, the researchers found that the students derived the most pleasure from activities described as “social searching”: “goal-oriented surveillance” (yikes!) that involved visiting another friend’s profile page, reading their Wall posts, perusing their photos, checking out the events they’d recently attended.
  • the differences are shocking
  • "People deserve a place to be wrong."
  • I have said this before, and it applies now: The Princeton offense is a good offense but it is not some magical system that will win games that other well-run offenses won't. Whether it is motion, flex, reverse action, the triangle offense, a set play offense or the Princeton offense, it matters how the offense is run, not the offense itself. There is nothing inferior about the Princeton offense. But there is nothing superior about it, either.
  • This is when they discovered something peculiar: the percent of professional athletes who came from cities of fewer than a half million people was far higher than expected. While approximately 52 percent of the United States population resides in metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 people, such cities only produce 13% of the players in the NHL, 29% of the players in the NBA, 15% of the players in MLB, and 13% of players in the PGA.*
  • Using more general words instead of specifics, referring less often to shareholder value, using more extreme superlatives, use the third person more often, don't say "um" as much, swear more

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links for 2010-08-26

  • goes through all the interview steps, too detailed to quote
  • terrible. Given that factual backdrop, you'd think that people would say, "You're right, we made a terrible, terrible error, we investigated the case incorrectly, and it led to this tragic result." But no. Even with the DNA evidence, even though the serial murder-rapist gave a full, detailed confession and provided all kinds of details that no one knew, but the real perpetrator could know, this detective just last week said, "I'm sorry, that's ridiculous, Jeffrey Deskovic is guilty. The only false confession in this whole matter is the false confession given by the serial rape-murderer."
  • To me, the meaning was clear: when people search, they aren't just looking for nouns or information; they are looking for action. They want to book a flight, reserve a table, buy a product, cure a hangover, take a class, fix a leak, resolve an argument, or occasionally find a person, for which Facebook is very handy. They mostly want to find something in order to do something.
  • Social norms etc - if you expect that everyone else is cheating/stealing you do too
  • The park officials in Massachusetts aren't really trying to minimise the risk that you might drown. They're trying to minimise the risk that you might sue. The problem here, as Mr Howard says, isn't simply over-regulation as such. It's a culture of litigiousness and a refusal to accept personal responsibility. When some of the public behave like children, we all get a nanny state.
  • The implicit recommendation seems to be that when you’re choosing a tomato, you should care about all the energy costs. Well, yes. You should. You should care about all those costs. And here are some other things you should care about: How many grapes were sacrificed by growing that California tomato in a place where there might have been a vineyard? How many morning commutes are increased, and by how much, because that New York greenhouse displaces a conveniently located housing development? What useful tasks could those California workers perform if they weren’t busy growing tomatoes? What about the New York workers? What alternative uses were there for the fertilizers and the farming equipment — or better yet, the resources that went into producing those fertilizers and farming equipment — in each location?
  • STUFF I DON’T WANT TO DO, AND WON’T: -ORGANIZE ALL MY DIGITAL PHOTOS -STAY ON TOP OF ALL MY EMAILS -DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER A DAY -DO IRON MAN OR CLIMB EVEREST STUFF I WILL NO LONGER TOLERATE: -ALLOW TOXIC PEOPLE IN MY AIR SPACE -NONSENSE STUFF WE HUMANS SHOULD NO LONGER ALLOW: -CNN BLARING IN AIRPORTS/PUBLIC SPACES (SO MANY BETTER OPTIONS!) -NON-STOP CONNECTIVITY– EATING INTO THE SACRED SPACE WHERE INVALUABLE REFLECTING AND THINKING OCCURS. -LETTING ANYONE UNDER AGE 18 DRIVE -RIDICULOUSLY COLD AIR CONDITIONING IN JUST ABOUT EVERY PUBLIC SPACE (MAJOR WASTE OF ENERGY, AS WELL AS UNCOMFORTABLY FREEZING) -5-YEAR PARTY SCHOOLS
  • photos of social networking names, poverty, pretty
  • One explanation is that nerds want to show off their non-social skills, and so require social games so that there are others who can observe their impressive performance. But nerds seem to prefer more social interaction in their games than having a mere audience requires. Another explanation is that while nerds like to socialize, they are terrified of making social mistakes. This explains why they tend to avoid eye-contact – it is too easy to make the wrong eye contacts. Games let nerds interact socially, yet avoid mistakes via well-defined rules, and a social norm that all legal moves are “fair game.” Role-playing has less well-defined rules, but the norm there is that social mistakes are to be blamed on characters, not players.
  • anne holland posts results of A/B tests on this blog. interesting finding: "We think it’s interesting that Version A won even though its ‘Download Now’ button was way below the fold. Perhaps the authoritative quote made a big impact. Kudos to YNAB for testing their product tour page. This shows you really should be testing every page that can get you more conversions."
  • Amazing, inspiring
  • writer goes to amsterdam to see what retail pot looks like. When Jason asks me before my first shift, "So, you did your homework? You know your way around the menu?" I say, "Oh, sure." But what really happened during my tasting session was that I got very worried that someone in the coffee shop might try to talk to me, so I sprinted back to my hotel and stood in front of the elevator for thirty terrified seconds, praying that I wouldn't have to cope with the desk clerk bidding me good evening. At last I made it to the third floor and was so relieved to reach the sanctuary of my room that I spent twenty minutes moonwalking the carpet and singing Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" before collapsing on the bed, where I lay awake until dawn, quaking with the conviction that every decision I've made since birth has been corrupt, selfish, and wrong.
  • large numbers of planes sitting empty in western deserts
  • incapable of being imitated or copied; surpassing imitation; matchless. Like this word
  • great introduction to a counterintuitive idea, that you should want to live as long as possible. I am appreciating this format more and more "All right," Harry said coldly. "I'll answer your original question, then. You asked why Dark Wizards are afraid of death. Pretend, Headmaster, that you really believed in souls. Pretend that anyone could verify the existence of souls at any time, pretend that nobody cried at funerals because they knew their loved ones were still alive. Now can you imagine destroying a soul? Ripping it to shreds so that nothing remains to go on its next great adventure? Can you imagine what a terrible thing that would be, the worst crime that had ever been committed in the history of the universe, which you would do anything to prevent from happening even once? Because that's what Death really is - the annihilation of a soul!"

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links for 2010-08-20

  • one-third of couples met in places where no other couples met. E.g., if you're an African explorer, you're more likely to meet your spouse while exploring Africa, and less likely to find your spouse in a Chicago singles bar. School and work are the next-most common meeting locations (15-20%). Parties and bars are good for short-term (less than one month) sexual relationships (17-25%) and not bad for marriages (8-10%). Churches are good for meeting marriage partners (11%), and poor for meeting short-term sex partners (1%). Personal ads and singles cruises are poor places to meet anyone. also liked this: If you want to meet "bad boys"/business men try going to strip clubs during the lunch hour. If you live in the Minneapolis area try Deja Vu for their $2 lunch buffet (tuesdays, Washington Avenue and 3rd).
  • I STRONGLY suspect that there is a enormous gulf between finding out things on your own and being directed to them by a peer. When you find something on your own (existential risk, cryonics, whatever), you get to bask in your own fortuitousness, and congratulate yourself on being smart enough to understand it's value. You get a boost in (perceived) status, because not only do you know more than you did before, you know things other people don't know. But when someone else has to direct you to it, it's much less positive. When you tell someone about existential risk or cryonics or whatever, the subtext is "look, you're weren't able to figure this out by yourself, let me help you". No matter how nicely you phrase it, there's going to be resistance because it comes with a drop in status - which they can avoid by not accepting whatever you're selling. It actually might be WORSE with smart people who believe that they have most things "figured out".

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links for 2010-08-19

  • A couple of interesting counterintuitive ideas: He mentioned that the more money people spend on videos, the worse those videos seem to get. Also, he thinks it makes more sense to have students watch lectures at home and do homework at school as opposed to vice versa.
  • Of course, the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. They just don’t possess the relentlessness that makes it possible. I haven’t known that many hyper-wealthy people in my life, but at Goldman I used to sit 12 hours a day next to people whose annual incomes were greater than the capitalizations of many startups, and they possessed a rapacious greed breathtaking in scale. If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d hanker for $50MM. Half a billion? They’d want to catch up to the Bill Gates of the world, and make several billion. Successful startup founders I’ve met seem no less ferocious.

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links for 2010-08-17

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links for 2010-08-16

  • 12 words per line: "The ideal line length for text layout is based on the physiology of the human eye… At normal reading distance the arc of the visual field is only a few inches – about the width of a well-designed column of text, or about 12 words per line. Research shows that reading slows and retention rates fall as line length begins to exceed the ideal width, because the reader then needs to use the muscles of the eye and neck to track from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. If the eye must traverse great distances on the page, the reader is easily lost and must hunt for the beginning of the next line. Quantitative studies show that moderate line lengths significantly increase the legibility of text."
  • Depends on the government: "When we look at systematic historical evidence, instead of individual cases, we find that authoritarianism buys little in terms of economic growth. For every authoritarian country that has managed to grow rapidly, there are several that have floundered. For every Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, there are many like Mobutu Sese Seko of the Congo."
  • the best answer to the question, "why shouldn't I want to work at google" I've seen so far
    (tags: jobs)
  • "[Schmidt] predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites."

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links for 2010-08-15

  • reference, to send to people who ask. 3. Learn some art-history. You don't have to learn very much, but the more your learn, the more you'll have a grounding in what has been seen/done/discussed/etc. Most importantly, you will be able to be eloquent about form/aesthetics that you like. It is hard to talk about visual things, so in this way, it is imperative to have a good set of words when talking about form. A few great books: Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New, Reyner Banham's Theory & Design in the First Machine Age, Rosalind Krauss' Passages in Modern Sculpture.
  • good writing from paul carr - the more we learn about people the less interesting they seem
  • Flip the ball into the air then volley it. You can get under the ball, way more dip.
  • good series. I wish they'd focused more on the data. Use of short videos is interesting, they're engaging but anything longer than 30 seconds and you lose the audience. Backs up everything DFW said about the vast gap between the pros and amateurs. Consistency is way underrated
  • Interesting how you can succeed if you're willing to be bored in training: "The Premier League side who probably best maintained their shape last season was Fulham, their progress to the final of the Europa League finally gaining Roy Hodgson proper recognition in England. The key to their achievement was long, hard, not particularly interesting work on the training field, working on positional play, and the key to whether Hodgson can enjoy similar success at Liverpool – which is probably the most interesting tactical issue at any Premier League club — is whether he can persuade a higher grade of player similarly to submit to what pretty much every Fulham player admitted was a punishingly boring training regime."
  • The important stuff in the common design pattern has been tested to death - everyone who matters is using clicktracking, a/b/x testing and deep user analytics. The reason they all look the same is the same reason that all infomercials or porn sites use the same basic structure - that's what testing indicates will convert best. Some people know this empirically, some are just blindly aping the fashion, but there is wads of data backing it. Lots of whitespace improves readability, as does the use of a sans serif font. Deviate from either and a lot of people will hit the back button because they can't easily read your text. A clear call to action massively improves conversion. The rectangular button in a dominant colour will increase signups by 10-20%.
  • I think the typical view of politics from inside a partisan mindset is to see politics as a battle of the good guys versus the bad guys. Maybe the good guys are on the left, maybe the good guys are on the right, but it’s this Manichean struggle and the way to get progress is for the good side to win and impose their will. Mill sees through that and sees that, in fact, politics is a dialectical process. At any given time truth is partly on one side and partly on the other. It’s more a battle of half-truths and incomplete truths than of good versus bad. The excesses of each side ultimately create opportunities for the other to come in and correct those excesses. Liberalism, in Mill’s view and in mine, provides the basic motive force of political change and progress. It will go astray, it will have excesses, it will make terrible mistakes – and a conservatism that is focused on preserving good things that exist now will be a necessary counterweight to that liberalism.
  • moe tkacik story about two daughters of a billionaire that get hooked by a cult. large parts profile the cult leader, who started in multi-level marketing and worked his way up. I am fascinated by guys like this, who build power and status and money from nothing, just their own words. Surely if God created humans He would not have let them fall prey to people like this as easily as they do
  • "I have this very abstract idea in my head," he confides. "I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience." That kind of comedy is fine, he says, but for him it's in the past. Shandling is striving to exist—and thus to be funny—completely in the moment. "The direction I'm going in is eventually you won't know if it's a joke or not," he explains, describing his new act, which he has been quietly testing in clubs where his name never appears on the marquee. "What I want to happen is that I talk for an hour and the audience doesn't realize it is funny until they're driving home."
  • on running barefoot, eating vegetables only, not getting injuries Tarahumara men have a taste for corn snacks and beer, for instance. They're hard workers, but come downtime, they party like a rap star's roadies. According to one of the few outsiders to witness a tesguinada -- a full-on Tarahumara rave -- women were ripping the tops off each other in a bare-breasted wrestling match, while their husbands watched in glassy-eyed, drunken paralysis. Tarahumara men love sports, booze, and gambling so much, they'll stay up all night to watch a game, down enough beer in a year to spend every third day buzzed or recovering, and support their teams by literally betting the shirts on their backs. Sound familiar? But here's where American and Tarahumara men part company: Many of us will be killed by heart disease, stroke, and gastrointestinal cancers. Almost none of them will.
  • the one asking for your email address only - to show to people who want to collect tons of data from customers, which reduces their sign up rate 50% or more

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