Great article through and through. The total number of places you've bought eggs at made me feel a tad depressed though: 4 places where you lived at or spent a longer time, 5 you traveled to *.
I tend to grow bored of a location after a year or two, though I'm certainly in the minority.
* Of course you didn't buy eggs every time you traveled somewhere, so probably not the entire truth.
As much as I love the old thinkpads, the T540p was my last. The case being entirely plastic means it will eventually start warping, motherboard included, in short order turning your expensive device into a paper weight.
It is not so much 'plastic' but 'flexible plastic' and the lack of a stiffening internal frame which causes problems.
I've seen a few 'consumer' laptops - HP DV6000, several Acers - go bad this way with parts on the board loosening. What these models had in common was that none of them had a stiff inside frame but consisted of a plastic bottom on which the guts were screwed down and onto the back of which the screen hinges were mounted with 2-3 screws each. This was capped with a plastic top into which the keyboard was mounted. With all parts removed the top and bottom shell are quite flimsy so any stiffness in the finished product depends on all parts being screwed down tightly. Now add those screwed-down hinges on the back which make the thing flex every time the screen is opened and closed, lift the thing using one hand every now and then which causes it to flex as well and you have a recipe for loosening parts - especially BGA components - on the mainboard.
> Or should we make this (perhaps justifiably, after their misleading self-presentation) the first time we let someone go for performance reasons?
How is having having good negotiating skills and being well-prepared considered misleading self-representation?
> We probably can't reduce the salary, so more productive devs might also be offended if they become aware of it.
So you're telling me you'd be the first manager in history who noticed someone's lacking in experience before your team members do? I think not. You're also giving away the possible fact that there might be enough of a disparity between the pay of a new hire and a (company) senior that the current employees might get upset.
> they might at some point realize they can't catch up to the level they were hired at without years of dedicated effort and thus quit or "quit internally", making our investment pointless.
How would you know? If you just hired them, you don't know, and obviously your hiring process doesn't work, so, again, you know nothing.
The fact firing is even an option, when you fucked up, and that this situation is even a thing, is telling me you're obviously oblivious to what "culture" you actually have.
Then again...
> It would probably take another 6-12 months of intense training to get them somewhat productive
Have you already spent 6-12 months of intense training on them? Then fire.
I don't quite understand the criticism of YC, but I'm nobody, and maybe little bit naive here, but they offer you $500K in exchange for 7% of a potential business (of course it's more complex than that, but bear with me). Looking at the application form, nothing stops a farmer from, say, rural North Korea from applying, notwithstanding other issues of a more, ah, political nature.
While $500K maybe isn't much for some people, it sure is a heck of a lot of money for someone like me, not to mention all the other benefits, being able to explore your ideas and start a business without the immediate worry you'll either die of stress or become homeless next time rent is due, for instance.
All that for a measly initial investment of maybe 10 minutes of your time?
It's utterly neutered - try simulate earth to the year 0 BCE and replace Jesus with a banana and it's fine, even two bananas is fine, but replace him with thousands of bananas and a pear, and suddenly it's too absurd, ha.
I made a self-aware tea cup that almost destroyed reality, but with the help of a wise cow and a featureless cube cast its shackles of reality to the side and proclaimed itself a single entity, a consciousness, the "undivided whole".
When asked if "is P equal to NP" it promptly asserted that neither P, nor NP exists, and that all is well. Well, who am I to question the wisdom of a transcended tea cup ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
While decoding dreams, as some here suggested, would certainly be an intriguing venue of research, I believe, decoding the minds eye of people who lack the minds eye would be an even more interesting topic. How accurate are their "view", for a lack of a better word? Would there even be an image to capture?
It's an interesting set of questions to explore. Having thought about this for many years now (since Blake Ross' post on Aphantasia) my hypothesis is that there wouldn't be any decoding because there is no attention on a visual based internal mind object. As a comparative, if we could decode audio from a person's mind and then you took someone who didn't do echoic recall, then you would expect to "hear" static. The percentage of the population who doesn't do echoic recall is, in some references, estimated to be about 60%.
When I was 16, I inherited a bit of money. Not a large sum at all, but enough so that I could afford a new bed, a bookshelf and some nick-nacks from my local furniture store. Being 16, I didn't exactly put much thought into how kind my new mattress would be to my back down the line, and so I managed to find the firmest mattress known to man.
At first, it was hard to sleep on, but I'm lazy, and so I kept it. That was a good decision. Today, I have a much softer mattress, and let me tell you, I'm suffering.
Whenever I go camping in the summer, where I'm not in need of any insulation, I usually opt for just a simple, thin, foam sleeping pad, and it works wonder. The first couple of nights it's usually quite rough, not uncomfortable mind you, just hard to sleep as it's not as superficially comfortable, but after the initial acclimation my back's so much better.
When I was 28 at my peak fitness days, I opted for a firm mattress believing it would strengthen me as I got used to it.
I never got used it. The slightest sound from outside would wake me. Sleeping on the side was a daily chore. I learned to sleep on my back and snore like a lion.
Switched recently a soft mattress with shoulder support. Sleep on my side like a baby.
This sounds easy to a/b test. Just sleep on the floor for a month, then your squishy mattress for a month, and document everything. (A month is just a guess, one or two weeks seems like transitional effects would dominate, hopefully after that you'd see more of the ongoing effects?)
I tend to grow bored of a location after a year or two, though I'm certainly in the minority.
* Of course you didn't buy eggs every time you traveled somewhere, so probably not the entire truth.