This seems to be happening in public parks also. I visit two cities literally half way across the country from one another, and have visited them for decades. All of the public restrooms in the public city parks (which are quite popular with locals and tourists) are gone. First they closed them, then they tore down the buildings. Locals thought "oh, must be putting in new ones", but no, they were torn down and never replaced.
Around where I live, they first shut down during covid with the excuse of preventing transmission. Of course they just never opened up again. Ditto water fountains.
"I keep coming back to this topic for two reasons. First, I think these components are usually explained poorly, making them a major stumbling block for folks trying to learn the craft. Second, op-amps have gotten really good, inexpensive, and small, so I think they should be used more."
No offense, but these are words typically spoken by someone who has never taken any electrical engineering courses or read any of Walter Jungs books, after having some electronics background.
"gotten really good"? Really, like in the 1970s?? (the 741, still widely used today was released in 1968). I recall in the 1980s in the electronics that were once completely discrete, they were _everywhere_ and still are today.
I've done a few EE courses across two countries on the path to masters. The opamps were used at most for small signal processing in those. No more creative uses like frequency/capacitance multipliers. Comparing notes with friends in other unis, it wasn't that different there. You'd have to go into degrees much more focused on electonics to go to that level.
Eh there are also decades worth of audio electronics designs which use the 741 and the decision of which actual part to use is often an aesthetic one. (i.e., assuming all other parameters are compatible then just use your ears). There are always new (hobbyist) designs being drafted around specific parts that are otherwise obsolete simply due to the musical character of certain parts
Totally agree, I went to fiber years ago, and the decrease in latency makes it _feel_ so much faster than 10G copper, it is not funny. Besides, if you put in the "good stuff" them moving to 40G and beyond is not a problem later on. Like others said, just add a copper line for POE devices, but for systems... its fiber all the way.
I wasn't aware there was a substantial latency difference between fiber and copper. Some googling suggests copper might be .4-.8c and fiber might be a more reliable .6c? But even if there was a huge difference in speed of light through the medium, inside a home aren't the distances so short that it wouldn't matter?
That can't be right. The old network must've had a problem somewhere. I'm running 10G copper throughout the house and my latency is ~1ms from the office upstairs to the server in the basement (across three switches). Using moonlight to game for example and it is flawless.
The real problem is his example, "you start off with 2 million dollars and 95% growth rate".
Fine, show me the average person who can come up with 2 million dollars. I sure as hell can not. I even went to banks and founders with my ideas, cash flow sheets and customer list looking for a loan.
No, I am convinced, the rich already have 2 million dollars, and make themselves a billionaire. The system is rigged against "normal" people.
He was talking about an equity stake in a start-up. Although on paper it is worth $2M, it is (probably) not liquid (i.e, the shares can't be traded easily, maybe at all.) The vast majority of founders don't literally spend $2M from their checking account to purchase their position in a start-up - they get some ownership as part of taking the start-up risk.
Is there some standard he/people use to come up with the initial company paper-stock worth? A 2m company I would imagine needs to have some tangible traction already.
Of course - at founding, if $20M goes into the company at $1 per share, and the CEO gets a 10% equity stake (usually subject to restrictions), then the CEO has $2M on paper (or will have after possible vesting.) Real money in this case came from the original investors that flowed into the company in exchange for ownership, but the CEO can't really do anything with his shares yet. At this point the original investors are taking a huge risk with their money - chances are, they just lost $20M dollars, and probably even more, as it can often take a long time of putting good money after bad.
Once a company starts operating, but before revenue (and hopefully eventual profitability), the valuation is trickier. The share price _should_ be the number of shares divided by the sum of all future profit (minus current debt.) Which is hilarious of course, because no one actually knows the denominator.
That original $2M equity stake can grow to billions if the company ends up making something that a lot of people want or need, so the sum of all future profit is large. Or, much more likely, it will be worth nothing, or a modest amount.
Graham's essay kind of avoids the point of whether ownership of a vastly appreciating asset is "fair", if a bunch of other people help that asset to appreciate.
But these are still numbers plucked from the air (or as you put it, from the 'future'). I want *tangible, material bases* to start from if any.
Another far more sensible model I've found is slicing pie. Each founder's input % of the pie pre-'bake' is their % of the rewards. And what makes up for one's slice of the pie? The dollar-value you would've earned if you worked somewhere else, times the period of baking. These can be tweaked accordingly to the type of investment put in. IMO, it seems far more grounded compared to say a flat 10%.
To quote good old Chester Karass (https://www.amazon.com/Business-Life-Dont-Deserve-Negotiate/...): you get what you negotiate. In an ideal world, people are compensated according to their contributions (and when hired, expected contributions.) This isn't a once-and-done thing, though - compensation (in the form of company ownership) gets adjusted all the time. The flat 10% is just a starting point (a typical CEO level of ownership in a start up, although this number varies quite a lot, due to aforementioned negotiation.) If a CEO screws up badly enough, they might get fired even before their stock vests.
Sure I'd acknowledge the risks taken. Arguably though, there should be some degree of a known benchmark just so people don't get overly taken advantage of.
If your life analogy is a closed system competition you’re going to be disappointed.
Most people with millions do not become billionaires. So yes, there is an exclusive pool of players who can play the game. But within that pool there is incredibly different outcomes.
A better analogy is being born as a child of D1 basketball athletes and then making 100 million in the NBA. Being born into a family with no interest in athletics makes it almost impossible to be a professional athlete. Life isn’t fair. It’s still impressive to become one.
> Yeah I’m not sure “people gather knowledge and guidance from their families and culture” is on the table, or desirable.
Are you missing something like "getting rid of", as in getting rid of that is a way to make things more equal? Because you are aware there are more than one way to make things more equal, right? For knowledge, a well-funded public education system (i.e., not the US apparently) goes a long way, and most people consider that a public good.
Most people concerned about inequality, I would wager, would be more focused on things like nepotism and access, for example I don't have a mum that could get me a meeting with the CEO of IBM to pitch ideas to.
A robust social safety net would probably be helpful if enabling non-already-rich people to take entrepreneurial risk is considered desirable, among other benefits.
The knowledge we are talking about is particular. You can’t learn how to navigate a professional basketball career AND how to do tech startups. There isn’t enough time even if that information was publicly accessible and teachable.
> I don't have a mum that could get me a meeting with the CEO of IBM to pitch ideas to.
Once again. How can you possibly correct for this? This is basically saying some parents work in tech and some don’t.
> enabling non-already-rich people to take entrepreneurial risk
I think what it does is let people play video games and watch porn. I don’t think the majority of the population is untapped entrepreneurial potential.
Inequality and difference is a natural part of life. The distribution of ability in almost every activity is massive. So why would or should outcomes be the same?
> I think what it does is let people play video games and watch porn. I don’t think the majority of the population is untapped entrepreneurial potential.
I don't think rich people are inherently more entrepreneurial so I don't see why they are the only people who should be allowed to have the opportunity to play video games, watch porn, and maybe occasionally start a company with any degree of security.
> You can’t learn how to navigate a professional basketball career AND how to do tech startups. There isn’t enough time even if that information was publicly accessible and teachable.
I never suggested that a public education system means no specialisation. In fact, most public tertiary education systems do separate people into specialised streams based on interest and skill.
> Inequality and difference is a natural part of life.
Again with the naturalistic fallacy.
> So why would or should outcomes be the same?
Why should the opportunities available be different?
> Once again. How can you possibly correct for this? This is basically saying some parents work in tech and some don’t.
Right, there is no possible way of ensuring things like hiring and contract negotiations are conducted at arm's length and in a fair and transparent manner, so we may as well not even try. I give up.
One in 500 of them makes themselves a billionaire, the rest have thrown two million dollars down the toilet. It's just a fair bet, there's nothing "rigged" about it.
Just because only 1 in 500 makes it to a billion, does not mean the other 499 are failures. Plenty of startup founders turn a few million into much more.
If someone has an idea that 'only' makes them 20 million, I would call that a great success; even if it takes dozens of years to get there.
yes but again, who has $2M to bet, even at 1/500 odds? You have to be a billionaire to make 500 bets hoping one hits, then you’re back to just being a billionaire again.
Dropped in to say this. The Marzoccos are good, but dang the Kees van der Westen are downright amazing... I know a lot of cafe owners who threw the Marzocco out and purchased a Kees and the espresso shot quality went through the roof.
On the flip side, a really good bag, and these have lasted so long I can not recall when I purchased them, are really expensive [https://www.tombihn.com/].
What is really irritating is that sometimes we see the same thing within a single brand (we have a garbage entry-level item and a top tier item which is good).
Tom Bihn sold recently, and doesn't do everything in the US any more. Also I don't know that they were ever "expensive" so much as priced to reflect the economic reality of being made in America and (from what I've read), treating their employees well.
Not sure if they were the first, or whatever, but this really seems like a breakthrough technology / methodology. How many cardboard boxes do we use a day? The mind boggles.
This seems more like a replacement for Styrofoam rather than cardboard boxes, though it could certainly be used in places we already use cardboard inserts. But probably still need a cardboard box on the outside. Thankfully we can grow those too!!
> This seems more like a replacement for Styrofoam rather than cardboard boxes
It seems rigid though, more akin to cardboard than soft styrofoam. I don't see anything about how dampening it is, but from the pictures I also assumed it was more like cardboard than styrofoam. Maybe the color is deceiving me though.
Under "Features" it explicitly calls out polystyrene as what it is meant to replace, and under "Performance" they claim to provide for clients "that demand the same technical performance as the polystyrene we replace"
I don't think this is better for the environment than cardboard (if anything it is probably worse as a direct replacement for cardboard because cardboard already has a robust recycling supplychain). Rather, it is a replacement for plastic foam.
Nice, thanks for the link. Somehow, this weekend I’ve gone into the rabbit hole of mycelium packaging, a completely new and interesting topic for me. Need to check this out before my fascination wears off.
