Hello Alan,

I'm curious if you've read much about Activity Theory. (in particular, Yrjö Engeström's Learning by Expanding.) I feel like it's compatible with much of what I've heard you discuss in lectures. Is it something you have an opinion on?

I've looked at it -- some good ideas there. Often formal systems have problems in scaling, etc.

Irrelevant how?

Is it irrelevant that the examples fail to back up the assertion because Peter Thiel is the one making it?

The 'big idea' expressed in this blurb is that it's 'easier to copy a model than to make something new.'

And the supporting arguments show off the opposite case just to associate the book with becoming the next industry defining billionaire.

Whoever wrote this blurb is either not thinking clearly, or is banking on readers to not think clearly.

There are much better example cases for that argument, but they aren't as flashy.

Because it's not like marbles. It's not a math thing.

It's more like a canary in the coal mine. If the canary dies, you should check on the air quality. If they went through the trouble of removing the brown m&ms you have a fairly strong indicator they actually read the document in the first place. And a strong indicator they have a good attention to detail.

Exactly, a concept also known as a "litmus test", if you pass the test you may still fail the actual, but if you fail the litmus test there's more or less no way you'll pass.

I'm all about data being presented with confidence bounds but if even 1 canary is dead I'm getting the hell out of there!

Wisdom is knowing which approach to take.

Intelligence is being able to apply the given approach.

edit: Unless the approach is 'hit the other one in the face', then all the intellectual posturing in the world won't do you much good.

Code is easy to read if you understand the domain.

Code is nearly impossible to read if you don't understand the domain.

My CS teacher has a similar saying: "Easy is what you know"

Yup. This is really all that needs to be said. We need tools that can help bridge this gap. Good code visualization could help here. I'm surprised there's such little activity in this area.

Yikes this article is painfully light on analysis.

Who has a connection this reliable over geography small enough that it doesn't make more sense to meet in person?

That's CCTV quality there.

Money is influence, the source of that money is influential.

What are the perils of the other sources of money in open source?

For quite a long time the best documentation and guide for using Rails was a book.

Quite a few of the top contributors to Rails have published books about it.

Documentation is very much a weak point for open source. Should we criticize those who contribute to open source and request money for the documentation?

If not, why spread FUD around the idea of asking for direct monetary support of the code itself?

josh owens.

your domain is literally "shingle" central

what? I don't even

To heck with that noise. Push the public and media to perceive that facts are important.

You make it seem so easy.

Let me ask you: How well did that work for Toyota?

Tesla's got two things going for it that Toyota didn't. It's an American company so it's not fighting against any xenophobic tendencies in the media or public. It's a singular incident, not a series of incidents. If more minor accidents similarly result in fires then they've got a problem, if they can show that most of the minor accidents (might be hard to get statistics on, but they can try and collect them going forward) result in nothing worse than needing repair work then they won't have an issue. It also helps that, in general, they're perceived as a very transparent company when it comes to safety.