A good starting point is to fix something that sucks in your current job. Like a missing feature of a platform you use. It’s no guarantee of success, but maybe a good place to begin.
I think you can still get alway with a better execution of existing products. The market is very big it seems. Just observe how many SaaS CRMs are making big money.
You don't know until you know. I've seen a lot of non-sense apps HN folks bash to death like "this is just a couple command lines to get it done", yet those apps' MRR (as I've monitored) keep raising slowly.
I grew up in Hollywood. The secret is to not try to do multiple outings across town in one day. You have to treat all the different neighborhoods as individual cities and just go somewhere for the day. Once rush hour hits, just expect to stay where you are and enjoy yourself until traffic lets off.
Not just because of the time. But because there is hardly anywhere to live that isn't filled with cars AND walkable.
It's nice that the city has become a lot more walkable - but it's not that enjoyable walking alongside what is basically a highway - I.E. Hollywood, Sunset, and Santa Monica Blvd.
It's such a shame that the city with some of the best weather in the country, and that would otherwise be great for biking, is the city with one of the strongest car cultures in the world.
I feel like the author covered this pretty well. If you have the luxury to organize your life around the terrible traffic (e.g. living and working in Venice) it's fantastic. If you need to get on a highway to get to work your experience will probably be much worse.
For starters there are two types of loans in the system, federal(92%) and private(8%).
Federal is less of a loan, but more a subsidy that you have to repay at later date if you can. There is no market mechanism involved, government sets the terms and rules. Overall if you have your shit together(push paperwork on time), it is nearly impossible to default on that type of a loan. So for all intense and purposes, those loans are just another hidden tax.
The benefits of this system is arguable, but for America where people hate to pay taxes and government needs to put people through college, this is not a bad option.
But... There are two massive problems in the system, private loans and the way colleges charge for education. First a lot of colleges are free to set fees any way they like, as a result in many cases federal loans are not enough and people are forced to take private loans. The problem with private loans, that they are completely market driven(higher, fees, higher costs, depends on your assets etc), but you can't get rid off them via bankruptcy which is absolutely nuts.
Overall the whole system regardless of country is very unfair and regressive in nature(poor people pay more then rich) and represents an example of broken social contract between government and its citizens. As student debt skyrockets, it also impacts the broader economy and forces people to go into debt to pay day to day expenses.
But maybe it is all by design. It is much easier to control people if they are in debt very early on in live vs debt free.
In order for modern society to keep working you need those people to get into mortgage debt, as that's (combined with children) the most effective way to keep people employed.
Even from the mustache-twirling evil perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to burden people with debt before they have even started to earn money to repay it.
Very on point. We have democracy on a government level and have 1 day in 2 years to select our representatives. For the rest of the time we have to please our boss, that we have not much say about and that has a lot of power about economic circumstances.
Yes, we can always find another boss, but mentally on day to day basis it is not that different to dictatorship.
Lambda School run into the realities of education economics.
As a society, we decided to subsidize high performers so they can actually focus on building/researching things and securitize everyone else.
The fact of the matter is educating high performers is cheaper short term( they teach themselves and process information better) and exponentially more valuable long term (they get good jobs, go into business or lead lucrative fields)
If we sort out people based on similar ratings as applied to bonds, Lambda school works with Cs. It doesn't mean that everyone is bad, it just means on average the level of people is bad. All A people are picked by good unis via scholarships. B people can't get a scholarship but have good enough grades to get into B schools and pay via a loan or via relatives.
Lambda School is focusing on everyone else, but hopefully, there is a lot of everyone else.
The model should have been on looking at Cs and separating good Cs from bad Cs. A good C is normally a student that didn't have opportunities or environment to become A, but have innate ability to do so, given the opportunity and resources.
If you don't really have the tools to distinguished good Cs from bad Cs, you can enroll as many people as possible and hopefully RNG your way to success. The problem with that strategy is that a lot of bad Cs will be unhappy with job outcomes, struggle with courses, generate bad press impacting recruitment, and more importantly be a massive drain on teaching resources.
I still think Lambda School is onto something but trying to do this via hypergrowth focused VC funding is a challenge.
On another topic, the hack I use in recruiting people who didn't have the opportunity to learn CS is to ask them to do CS50 in their own time. About 90% of people never come back, about 5% start but never finish or take too long to finish, and about 5% knock it out of the park. Those 5% generally were always worth my time advising and if we were lucky working with them. It doesn't mean they will become rockstar programmers, but it means they have learning ability and with enough time and resources will become a net positive to the company in a variety of engineering and engineering adjacent roles.
I think it might take the form of artist augmentation rather than replacement. Think of it like a new sort of power tool. And it's true there are a lot of steps for triple-A engines, but most gamedevs (like myself, once) simply don't have any art assets, and need them greatly; a tool similar to MSPaint for models might enable the next Notch to emerge more easily.
On the other side of it, from the triple-A point of view, automating even one of the steps you mention will be a huge time saver. Artists tend to worry about machines replacing them, but I think it will only unlock more, better art. You'll be able to do so much. So there is a big financial incentive to get this right; the first one to capture the market will be in a strong position.
> [...] most gamedevs (like myself, once) simply don't have any art assets, and need them greatly;
But isn't that exactly why market places like the Unity Asset Store, TurboSquid, and UE Marketplace exist?
The asset stores for Unity and UE in particular offer assets that are ready for use with these frameworks and can also be easily modified if need be.
I rather think the problem is the expectation to get high quality assets for free, which just isn't a realistic assumption, unless you're willing to team up with an artist who is willing to volunteer their time.
It's also funny you mentioned Notch, as Minecraft and its aesthetic are a direct result of lack of artistic talent, proving that you don't need great looking 3d models at all to create the best selling video game in history...
I agree, though that ML/AI tooling for asset generation would be a major improvement for the gaming (and film!) industry.
> Where do I sign up or who to vote for so every American citizen gets a legal representation like this.
The legal system is built by the rich, for the rich. If money wasn't so powerful in systems like this, people wouldn't pursue it with the vigor that they do.
When you hire the best lawyers money can buy or when your case is high-profile enough that the best lawyers money can buy will do it for free for exposure.
The sad reality is that not every American will ever get legal representation like this. Even well-off Americans won’t get a defense like this.
So the more you steal the better legal representation you can buy. The corollary is that your sentence and the seriousness of your crime are reversely correlated.
It's a win-win but both wins are for the same person.
Seems like that. Generally speaking a soft criminal will go down fast - either being caught because he didn't get rid of that witness or being whacked by some psychopath. But if you are ruthless and amass as much money and power as you can as fast as possible by any means necessary then you have a good chance of buying yourself out of any trouble you find yourself in. Also people will be more afraid of you and help you rewrite history - so you end up as some nobleman if you're lucky.
The amount of nonsense spewed about the legal system here on HN is sort of astonishing. A PD has absolutely no ethical or legal obligation to do anything of what a defendant says except in regards to the defendant testifying - you can advise your client not to testify, but they have a right to. Otherwise the PD, or any attorney for that matter, decides what evidence to use, what witnesses to call, and what the theory of the case is.
And yes, I am attorney. No, this is not legal advice.
Edit: apologies for the harsh intro tone. I had a long day of wrestling with disagreeable judges.
This is false. If the defendant feels they are being deprived of their right to adequate representation they can very easily file a grievance with the judge and get a new pd. In a case like this ignoring important evidence like psychological trauma would be grounds for the judge to replace the clients representation. So no, the public defender can't just ignore what their client wants with regard to how to defend their case.
Sure, but then we’re just talking in circles. The obligation to represent a client a certain way is dictated by the Rules of Professional Conduct (RPCs) promulgated by the state and federal bar associations. And what makes an attorney’s representation of a client adequate is additionally influenced by the area of law at issue and what makes a good or bad case theory/defense. Nowhere in any RPCs or in any case law is there a requirement that an attorney do what a client says, except in regards to letting a defendant testify if they want to.
Edit, to add: if it happens that what a defendant recommends comports with the RPCs and the best practices dictated by case law then an attorney would follow that recommendation... because it was required by an RPC or the best practice given the related case law, but definitely not because a defendant said it. If a defendant is giving an attorney pertinent legal advice then the attorney should probably look for a new job though.
No its not. You are moving the goalposts. Obviously people can hire whatever lawyer they can afford and potentially change lawyers if they have a valid grievance that a judge agrees is a reason to allow it. They can also opt to attempt to defend themselves. In either case, the judge would probably tell you that its an incredibly stupid decision that you should reconsider in a very kind attempt to prevent you from ruining your life.
There's a significant difference between "I can make my lawyer do whatever I want them to do because the law says they have to" and "I can get a new lawyer if my current lawyer doesn't agree with me."
If a public defender demonstrates a pattern of failing to provide adequate representation then they can be reprimanded by the court which carries both a legal and ethical consequence. So the point about the attorney not being legally or ethically required to represent the client as they wish is simply false.
This means they have to put an honest and significant effort into defending you to the best of their ability. They are responsible for the quality of their work, which is why they don't generally let the clients dictate the details of how they work or the overall strategy because the clients don't know what the fuck they are doing in virtually all cases where a lawyer isn't on trial.
You keep trying to change the situations you are talking about and then pretend that they are the same.
Isn’t this post popular because it’s not really seen here as a real defense? Or, if it’s real for her, it should be real for others. Meaning, it’s exceptional.. meaning, not likely to be a successful tactic by a PD.
It should be a real defense for mentally ill people that have conditions that make them somehow less culpable for their actions, regardless of wealth.
I wouldn't be surprised if Holmes is a sociopath, she perpetually has a classic crazy person bug-eyed look that you only get from being constantly on coke, being a fanatical religious nut, or from being severely mentally ill. Additionally, in public she purposefully talks 100% of the time in a laughably fake deep voice that she thinks makes her sound more masculine and powerful. There's a podcast where she accidentally broke character for a couple of seconds and sounded like a normal woman. The rest of the time she sounds like Kylo Ren. That's supposedly another thing that sociopaths do.
Its crazy that so many smart people fell for her con. She was obviously a creepy, random lunatic trying really hard to pull off a Steve Jobs act. As a layperson it seemed pretty obvious that the technology she claimed to have invented was probably impossible. Shame on anyone that's actually in the medical industry that bought into it.
And then there's her criminal actions, the lying, and the complete lack of remorse.
Unfortunately for her pretty much no civilized society thinks that sociopaths shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. So unless she convinces people she has an unrelated mental illness (which is what the article makes it sound like she's trying to do), its not going to be a good defense.
Generally I think the defendant wouldn't be aware of this, or even realize that they are being deprived of their right to adequate representation. Not to mention, how will they know the replacement will be better?
Of course. But how successful is that argument going to be when the public defender is juggling a dozen cases or more at once, meets with the defendant a handful of times before trial (if you’re lucky you can talk to a paralegal), and doesn’t have the resources of either time or money to dedicate to your case?
Putting forward the defense is one thing. Crafting a compelling argument, writing an amazing brief that cites past case law and/or is persuasive enough to argue how something fits the required statues, and obtaining the best expert witnesses to bolster the argument is something else entirely.
