I've been wondering about the connection between the "curling effect" and the exponential curve of e for a while. Do you have any links where I can learn more in depth?
With complex numbers in polar form the tangent is easy. In the unitary circle, if you derive e^(i*t) you get i*e^(i*t), which maps the cos(t) real component to i*cos(t) imaginary, and the i*sin(t) imaginary component to -sin(t) real. This is effectively a 90 degree rotation, so if you integrate the tangent infinitesimally over its path parameterized by t you will recover the circle.
Here is some introductory material to what I referenced above and some generalizations into more dimensions (which, as Hamilton discovered when stumbling into quaternions trying to augment complex numbers, is not as straightforward as you would think):
I know you’re downvoted for saying something that’s basically unethical, but I’m interested: how do you propose to buy a home using this strategy? All cash? In my area, I’d need around $200,000 cash. I know there’s trailer parks and etc. but they may not work for everyone.
Loans originating in the US for education are generally not discharged in bankruptcy. Not paying them is a good way to get your wages garnished or worse. I have no idea what recourse there might be from a loan through Singapore.
That being said, discharging debt in bankruptcy will haunt your credit for 7 years, or so I've heard. Being forced to not finance anything for 7 years is a decent way to save money if you've got a good paying job, I suppose, as you don't fall into the trap of only looking at the monthly payment without thinking of the total cost.
I don't think it is unethical. If people get overwhelmed by student debt because their degree doesn't actually result in job opportunities that allow them to pay that debt back then they have no obligation to pay the debt back. It was the lender's decision to invest their money into such an obviously money losing strategy and yet they did so despite the high risk. The word "undischargeable" made the lender blind but the reality is that the lender was just plain irresponsible with his money and no government guarantee can change that.
> If people get overwhelmed by student debt because their degree doesn't actually result in job opportunities that allow them to pay that debt back then they have no obligation to pay the debt back.
The debt is the obligation to pay back. As far as I know, education loans don't include the clauses you mentioned.
> It was the lender's decision to invest their money into such an obviously money losing strategy and yet they did so despite the high risk.
That's true, but that doesn't absolve the person who took the loan from the responsibility to pay it, and doesn't make not paying it any less unethical.
Ethics and causality are not the same. If you don't lock the door of your apartment, that can dramatically increase the probability of being robbed, and your actions would be the cause of this robbery. But it wouldn't by any yota affect the ethical side of it. (I'm not saying that not paying back the loans is the same as robbery, I'm just explaining the logic using a more obvious example).
It's a bit of both isn't it? They gave you so much credit because they assessed you as the type of person who wouldn't do that. If they were 100% sure that you would be spending recklessly, you'd probably have a limit of a few hundred at most. Part of their job is making that assessment correctly.
You're conflating "fault" with "responsibility". The second you signed up for the line of credit, the manager who evaluated your application became responsible for what happens afterwards. If you squandered it, it might be your fault, but the manager is the one who'll be getting grief for giving it to you in the first place.
So we are going to absolve all 18 year olds of decision making because of 'the system'?
As an 18 year old I was keenly aware of debt. My college experience was going to a local school while working 20-30 hours/week and living at home. All because we didn't have much money, and I wanted to take as few loans as possible.
So maybe this persons parents and primary school failed them, but I don't buy it was the system.
In the US we ban marketing tobacco and alcohol to minors, if that is largely okay with everyone, we should consider extending it to ban marketing -anything- to minors.
When I hear someone say 'the system,' I wish they would be more specific.
I think a small group of corporations being in direct control of the mass dissemination of corporation serving behavioral role models and information is a problem that needs to be addressed in order ensure the quality of freedom in the marketplace.
Taking the oceanic volumes of weapons grade, artificial psychological pressure off the kids seems like a great place to start.
When listings for unskilled or low skilled jobs state things like "must have a degree and be able to life 50 lbs" then I think you can conclude there is a problem with the system.
Blaming the parents or primary school is useless because this person had no control over who their parents were or what school they went to.
I'm glad you had some self awareness at 18 but that isn't the norm as we can see from the rising student debt.
I just can't get behind the idea that 18 year olds are nothing but drooling idiots who can't understand anything they are doing and student loans are something that "just happens" to people.
I knew full well what I was doing when I took out my student loans. I knew how much I was borrowing. I knew it would have to be paid back. I knew loans would have to cover both tuition and living expenses because I had no savings and I knew my parents weren't going to help very much. I also knew I could reduce my loan burden by starting at community college and/or going to state school. I still went to private school for my entire degree.
While it was scary to jump into my adult life with debt, and it was a bit of a leap of faith, the risk was obviously worth it, both at the time and definitely in hindsight. Once I graduated I put my head down and aggressively paid off my student loans, kept living like a college kid until they were paid off.
The cease and desist included, in addition to some screens they said we copied from their design, part of the scripts which I wasn't aware they copyrighted.
We didn't copy anything, the text from the meditation we took it from Shunryu Suzuki's book.
None of this means they can’t honorably charge $500 for crap coins instead of giving away that work for free.
They can make a fair business out of it where they add a few optional addons and value adds.
Just because we think they are crap and arrogantly feel confident that no non-technical get-rich-minded joe smoe will derive any value (or perhaps "deserves" to) from it doesn’t mean that he/she won’t in fact benefit from it. One man’s trash...
And besides, there are lots of purposes for small independent coins/currencies: reward your kids for doing dishes as someone else pointed out, arcades, company rewards, etc. We may very well end up in a world with infinite currencies that interoperate with each other, thereby giving individual control back of our closest surroundings.
As far as YN’s principles, it’s PR rhetoric. It’s far from representative of the ultimate truth of the intentions and actions of all those involved. In practice, it exploits goodwill to make money for a few. I'm also not all that sure that's a bad thing either.
The devil is always in the details, and as programmers, we must look at them.
Obviously I’m someone who thinks it would be more beneficial if profiting wasn’t demonized. It leads to more disengenuity, which is worse.
There’s nothing wrong with putting your own survival first and desiring to make so much money you never have to worry about it again. The hamster cage is a waste of our lifetimes and very hard to permanently get out of. And if we are so capable to escape, we will surely be able to give back a whole lot. ..you know, like on how airplanes you put on your oxygen mask first before your child’s.
But yes, there’s a flip side: people get obsessed with making money, doing deals, creating things that new jacks would create anyway. It becomes an unhealthy addiction, and the giving back never really happens. I don't think a lot of people see this for what it is as it takes over their lives. Apps and technology become far overvalued.
I think demonizing making money will continue to create the rift that obscures the balanced middle path here. I also think a lot of people who promote how they aren't money-obsessed are obsessed with something else: how good and noble they APPEAR (which I'm not sure is as "real" as BEING good and noble). Likely, it was just too hard for them to get out of the hamster cage (reads: they're lazy), and gave up. Now they work medium energy days for some employer that drives the ship. I know this much: I refuse to spend the majority of my life hustling for survival, or even worse: being someone else's tool waiting for the clock to strike 5pm each day.
The path to me is clear: grind your ass off, get yours, then give back; be conscious and don’t get addicted to anything in your life. The world doesn't need our saving (it's going to continue spinning as an infinitesimal part of a far larger universe); question your intentions, focus on yourself, as they say.
So open source built and invested in to eventually attain money is a bad thing in your opinion? What would that mean exactly? Only large companies that release a few bits as open source is palatable in your opinion? Smaller companies or individuals with a passion and vision for evolving our tools can't structure a strategy to eventually make money from it so they can keep doing it?
At the end of the day, I think it's the perfect model. Especially, when those building the open source, keep what was free before FREE, and simply go even FARTHER to build auxiliary stuff that costs.
This logic just bugs me every time. It's not akin to "selling out" as if you're making art/music, and then you dumb it down for the masses. It's finding the only way to make it work where you can directly and exclusively focus on much-needed tooling, rather than typical non-developer products like Uber or Facebook. And sometimes you don't care about building non-developer products--you just want to build developer tools (because you've gotten obsessed with it and you see what would benefit your fellow developers), and you need to find a way to make a living off of it, or pay the people you've brought on board to attain this long-term vision.
In short, it's a win win for everyone.
And by the way, the fact that you even had to say "[you] knew it was coming" is ridiculous. They at like month 1 of their work on this open source stuff had a paid analytics service. Their paid out service has been out for a very long time. It was as transparent as can be what their strategy is. The amount of work their large team of developers have done could be accomplished no other way.
Ultimately your perspective here, I'm sorry--and this is my perspective--does a lot of harm to the community. If everyone had this perspective in earnest (and I'm not even sure you do), it simply would mean less tools we desperately need. It would be fantastic if we could find more cashgrabs for developers to focus on tooling--there's just so much to be done.
I agree. I also think Twitter's in a rough place for one reason: 140 characters doesn't make sense anymore. But dropping it would be even scarier for them, as that's been their defining thing for so long.
When did 140 chars make sense? In the beginning of the social internet 10 years ago. For people new to sharing, it relieved pressure around saying something. For psychological reasons the false restriction made sharing on the internet frictionless. When the expectation is intentionally low, you don't have to worry if you're sharing enough or too little. And perhaps more subconsciously, such a low limit just kind of speaks to you, saying: "just say anything, and spit out."
But now, people are very accustomed to sharing. They don't need these training wheels.
It seems to me, regular people don't use twitter. Only various professional niches. That's just a problem, and will result in Twitter leaking users from their staple niches gradually over time, and probably has been going on for a long time now.
So in short, Jack's job and the decision he has to make is a very hard one. They've been too scared to make the hardest of decisions, and very naturally as a result have only rolled out these minor attempts. It seems like a very logical sequence of events to me.
They gotta do something bold, or die.
I'm not saying removing the limit is the answer on its own. I think it's more of a symbol of a willingness and capability to get back in the game. Do that along with something totally fresh front-and-center within the feed, and they would have a good recipe for success. Make a big moment out of dropping the restriction, and see what happens. Hell, try it for 30 days, and see what happens as a grand experiment.
The 140 characters make sense — if you do textual analysis, the average sentence turns out to be around that number of characters.
The issue is that Twitter is seen as a medium of expression, but I don’t think it’s suppose to be a platform where people go in-depth with their thoughts; more for momentarily formed opinions, ideas, or announcements.
For publishment, people should be using something like Medium.
Every new medium of communication effects the substance of that communication. I doubt they can change the 140 character limit without changing the substance of conversation, but that may be the point.
