How to Lose Time and Money

It's hard to spend a fortune without noticing. Someone with ordinary tastes would find it hard to blow through more than a few tens of thousands of dollars without thinking "wow, I'm spending a lot of money." Whereas if you start trading derivatives, you can lose a million dollars (as much as you want, really) in the blink of an eye.

In most people's minds, spending money on luxuries sets off alarms that making investments doesn't. Luxuries seem self-indulgent. And unless you got the money by inheriting it or winning a lottery, you've already been thoroughly trained that self-indulgence leads to trouble. Investing bypasses those alarms. You're not spending the money; you're just moving it from one asset to another. Which is why people trying to sell you expensive things say "it's an investment."

The solution is to develop new alarms. This can be a tricky business, because while the alarms that prevent you from overspending are so basic that they may even be in our DNA, the ones that prevent you from making bad investments have to be learned, and are sometimes fairly counterintuitive.

A few days ago I realized something surprising: the situation with time is much the same as with money. The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent. Alarms start to go off fairly quickly. If I woke up one morning and sat down on the sofa and watched TV all day, I'd feel like something was terribly wrong. Just thinking about it makes me wince. I'd start to feel uncomfortable after sitting on a sofa watching TV for 2 hours, let alone a whole day.

via paulgraham.com

Great essay by Paul Graham; In my mind this is the biggest pitfall of the 40 hour work week. I believe I'd be far more productive if I was given objectives and deadlines, but wasn't required to be at my desk 40 hours a week.

Posted via email from johnweldon4 - posterous

Fighting Oil with Nature | NYU-Poly

What if cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t a matter of choosing between harsh chemical dispersants, labor-intensive skimming and potentially dangerous burns? Dr. Richard Gross, professor of chemical and biological science and Herman F. Mark chair at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), claims nature has already provided the ideal weapons in the fight against the millions of gallons of oil still spilling into the Gulf.

via poly.edu

It seems to me that now is the time to get funding to turn this research into a production ready solution.

It appears that it's too late to effectively apply this to the Gulf Spill, but I'm sure it will still be a good place to do the research and proof of concept work.

Where can we start. Is there a fund that people can contribute to? A place to drive links with answers, action opportunities, and organization.

Posted via email from johnweldon4 - posterous

Plan - Sleep - Do; FTW

People who sleep after processing and storing a memory carry out their intentions much better than people who try to execute their plan before getting to sleep, say psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis.

The researchers have shown that sleep enhances our ability to remember to do something in the future, a skill known as prospective memory.

Moreover, researchers studying the relationship between memory and sleep say that our ability to carry out our intentions is not so much a function of how firmly that intention has been embedded in our memories. Rather, the trigger that helps carry out our intentions is usually a place, situation, or circumstance—some context encountered the next day—that sparks the recall of an intended action.

via futurity.org

This is interesting and useful research. It sounds like common sense.

My reaction is to try and plan my days work the night before, and to specifically plan 'triggers' to maximize the effect.

Posted via email from johnweldon4 - posterous

Ignoring stress detours steps to recovery

The researchers found that how addicts cope with stress—either by working through a problem or avoiding it—is a strong predictor of whether they will experience cravings when faced with stress and negative mood.

“Whether you avoid problems or analyze problems not only makes a big difference in your life but also has a powerful impact on someone who has worked hard to stay away from alcohol and other drugs,” explains Cleveland.

“When faced with stress, addicts who have more adaptive coping skills appear to have a better chance of staying in recovery.”

via futurity.org

Posted via email from johnweldon4 - posterous

Untitled

Excellent hour long video where Don Norman talks about the business of software, and user experience.

 

 

Posted via email from johnweldon4 - posterous

The Low Road - Marge Piercy

Thanks to Fred Wilson; this poem is amazing.

I only included part of the poem here, the full poem is a must read.

 

What can they do  to you? Whatever they want.  ...  Alone, you can fight, you can refuse, you can  take what revenge you can  but they roll over you.  But two people fighting  back to back can cut through  a mob, a snake-dancing file  can break a cordon, an army  can meet an army.  Two people can keep each other  sane, can give support, conviction,  love, massage, hope, sex.  Three people are a delegation,  a committee, a wedge. With four  you can play bridge and start  an organisation.   ...  It goes on one at a time,  it starts when you care  to act, it starts when you do  it again after they said no,  it starts when you say We  and know who you mean, and each  day you mean one more.

--Marge Piercy
Copyright 2006, Middlemarsh, Inc.

via margepiercy.com

 

Posted via web from johnweldon4 - posterous

Web Application Exploits and Defenses

The codelab is organized by types of vulnerabilities. In each section, you'll find a brief description of a vulnerability and a task to find an instance of that vulnerability in Jarlsberg. Your job is to play the role of a malicious hacker and find and exploit the security bugs. In this codelab, you'll use both black-box hacking and white-box hacking. In black box hacking, you try to find security bugs by experimenting with the application and manipulating input fields and URL parameters, trying to cause application errors, and looking at the HTTP requests and responses to guess server behavior. You do not have access to the source code, although understanding how to view source and being able to view http headers (as you can in Chrome or LiveHTTPHeaders for Firefox) is valuable. Using a web proxy like Burp or WebScarab may be helpful in creating or modifying requests. In white-box hacking, you have access to the source code and can use automated or manual analysis to identify bugs. You can treat Jarlsberg as if it's open source: you can read through the source code to try to find bugs. Jarlsberg is written in Python, so some familiarity with Python can be helpful. However, the security vulnerabilities covered are not Python-specific and you can do most of the lab without even looking at the code. You can run a local instance of Jarlsberg to assist in your hacking: for example, you can create an administrator account on your local instance to learn how administrative features work and then apply that knowledge to the instance you want to hack. Security researchers use both hacking techniques, often in combination, in real life.

via jarlsberg.appspot.com

An excellent resource for learning about coding defensively. Nice work Google :)

Posted via web from johnweldon4 - posterous