Invest in the future:

• Robotics
• Blockchain
• Clean Energy
• Electric Vehicle
• Meat Alternative
• Cancer Research
• Machine Learning
• Space Exploration
• Artificial Intelligence
• Internet of Things (IoT)

What else would you add?

Observing the public conversation around FB, and the private ones happening among techies and ex-FBers, I think the mutual misunderstanding is worse than when I set out two years (and 500 pages) ago to (in a small way) bridge that gulf.

We're basically fucked.

The tech world has gotten so huge, self-reinforcing, and insulated from reality they can no longer even vaguely look at themselves (and their actions) as others do. They just live on a different planet than most people.

Conversely, the average tech consumer doesn't understand the technology that has slowly taken over their lives, and their designated emissaries to figure it out--politicians, pundits, regulators, journalists--understand it barely better than they do, and have their own agendas.

To say more than generalities for a moment, here's what I think is likely the core problem.

Techies take weird, improbable visions, and make them realities: some BS pitch deck to a VC, mixed with money and people, really does turn into some novel thing.

Most people work inside a legacy industry that's evolved that way over time (usually for good reasons), and they think about the future via some analogy with their present (which is a function of a long-ago past). The interruption that tech will introduce is often hard to grasp.

A thread on HN about bad code in legacy projects both makes me think how little we've learned as a discipline over the years and, honestly, how little credit we give ourselves for some pretty major

Fun going down this list and thinking: "Hmm, plausible at a well-run modern software shop", "Hmm, possible, but requires implausible tradeoffs", "Literally disallowed by languages", and "If you were to attempt doing that our test suite wouldn't let you merge."

I think we as an industry celebrate (not quite the right word) failure too much and don't celebrate success nearly enough. There is no DailyWTF for competent execution, word of which generally stays pretty local to the source while incompetence passes into legend.

Alrighty let me try to thread the needle on being the change I want to see in the world while not giving away anything that will get me in trouble:

Ruby has wonderful developer ergonomics. Typed languages are easier for machines to guarantee the correctness of. We built a type checker for Ruby (and I believe it is slated for OSS release sometime).

c.f.

KANIPAKAM VINAYAKA, CHITOOR (AP)
#bharatmandir

Kani means wetland and Pakam means flow of water into wetland.
Kanipakam Vinayaka is swayambhu (self-manifested). The murti is in a well which is always full of water.

Once, there were three brothers. Each one had a handicap- Dumb, Deaf and Blind. They had a small piece of land for livelihood. For their field, they drew water from a well. One day, they found that the well had dried up so one of them started digging in the well.

His tool hit something and blood oozed out. They found a swayambhu murti of Ganesha here.
Villagers started offering coconut water which overflew into a channel. Hence the name Kanipakam.

The murti is still growing in size. At present, we see the knees and the abdomen only. The Kavacham (Armour) offered to Vinayaka 50 years ago doesn’t fit today.
Vinayaka is believed to be the upholder of truth. So people come here and swear before him to prove their innocence.

1/ Productivity tip: when I keep procrastinating on something I often trick myself by saying, "ok just work on it for the next 20 minutes" or some short period of time, "and then you can chill/relax guilt free" and give myself some treat (sugar, netflix, etc)

2/ Usually at the 20 minute mark (sometimes I set a timer) I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that I don't want want to stop and end up working on it for the next hour or two. But getting started seems to be the hardest part.

3/ Key to this: you have to actually be ok with stopping after 20 minutes and being guilt free if that's how you feel. So it's not a trick, i have the option every time, I just often don't want to use it once i'm in the zone.

PAKISTAN-INDIA WATER ISSUES – HOW INDIA STOPPED WATER IN PAKISTAN's CANALS IN 1948

Thread

After partition in 1947, the water system was also bifurcated between Pakistan n India.

India cheated Pakistan when on April 1, 1948, India suddenly n without warning stopped...
1/n

...the supply of waters flowing into Pakistan's Central Bari Doab and Dipalpur Canals.

The boundary award on the partition of the sub-continent had left the headworks of these canals in Indian territory, and in accepting it India had implied her willingness to leave...

2/n

...the historic distribution of common waters undisturbed.

India's action was therefore in flagrant disregard not only of international law n morality, but of her solemn commitments with Pakistan and a gross violation of this country's historical rights over common waters.

3/n

Faced with a threat of utter desolation of millions of acres of fertile land, Pakistan had perforce to sign a document with India in which she agreed to "India's progressively diminishing water supplies to these canals and to the West Punjab government's tapping...

4/n

...alternative resources".

A specific reservation was made in the document with regard to India's claim that she had full property rights over waters flowing into her territory, and could therefore use them as she liked.

The issue was, however, to be examined...

5/n