Published over a decade ago but Jeremy Scahill's book on Blackwater and the rise of Prince's mercenary-centric idea of warfare is worth a read.

This family and people like them are pure fucking evil. They give no fucks about the lives they destroy.

I read about Sega and Nintendo in the book The Console Wars. The book does a good job of telling how Sega of America (SoA) did the impossible job of taking the console fight to Nintendo, and through some genius marketing was able to take majority market share with the Genesis. However, according to the book, the Genesis never really took off in Japan like it did in the US because the Japanese executives did not want to follow SoA's sales strategies. The book really makes it seem like Sega of Japan (SoJ) really held a grudge against the American office and started to actively fight against their ideas. IMO, the biggest mistake Sega made was when the SoA President found a company making an incredible next gen processor that he wanted to use in the Saturn. For petty reasons, SoJ didn't want to use it. Feeling guilty for getting the processor company's hopes up, the SoA President had them call up a friend of his at Nintendo. That processor became the technology in the Nintendo 64. Had that processor actually been used in the Saturn, I bet Sega would still be around.

The horrible launch of the Saturn was just one of many missteps caused by the friction between SoA and SoJ. It seems to me that the inability for the two offices to work together was the real reason Sega failed at the console market.

TL:DR: IMO, Sega failed at consoles because Sega of Japan office didn't want to listen to any advice or work together with Sega of America.

I actually have already read the book that started this conversation. It is a very well written story.

Lewis does a nice job of explaining HFT in fairly simple terms. I am an accountant for banks so I already had a firm grasp, but my couldn't care less about business GF understood it too.

Front running is technically illegal. There is significant debate as to if HFTs can be classified in the eyes of the law as front running. Common sense would tell us it can, but we will see.

Hopefuly exchanges like IEX can become the norm. IEX puts in place methods to eliminate the effectiveness of HTF's front running.

A very real issue is that once you put in a buy order for shares, that information is technically the broker-dealer's information. They are legally required to get you the best price, but the broker-dealers often will go to "dark pools" which are private exchanges with limited information protection.

You cannot currently know what exchange your purchase actually went through.

The SEC has a ton of work to do on the topic.

I'd recommend two sources that cover the reception with relation to the competition: Jeff Ryan's "How Nintendo Conquered America" and Blake Harris's more recent "Console Wars."

One of the things that Ryan focused on is Mario 64's innovation (indeed, Nintendo's promotional materials focused on this too) -- it' was one of the first games where you could control the camera in all directions. Mario 64 was one of the few games available at the console's launch, and it showcased the new console hardware and possibilities that weren't available on the Playstation or Saturn. I can't speak to the greatness it immediately received, but a lot of the early reviews certainly focused on its innovative features and newness that otherwise wasn't available on other consoles or, for that matter, Mario Games (while Mario RPG was 3d, this allowed complete control over his moves and attacks)

Yeah read Accidental Empires and see really what Bill Gates did. Genius but not an inventor in IMHO. The BASIC interpreter start got the company started was a port not invented. DOS was bought not invented. Windows was copied. And so on...

I would also argue that Gates and Jobs are more alike than different. They were visionaries that could recognize technology see its market potential before most others. Neither invented they just improved and packaged technology better than the actual inventors

Reminds me of the book Flash Boys when stock brokers noticed that as soon as they clicked "buy" on some stocks, the prices instantly increased.

Just happens to coincide with the NRAs call to murder liberals. What could go wrong?

Since the 1970s, the USDA has strongly encouraged the increased consumption of cheese in an effort to reduce the amount of surplus milk and cheese the government is obligated to purchase. Part of this strategy involved lobbying private industry to increase the amount of cheese included in fast and processed foods. Consequently, average cheese consumption has increased to 33 pounds per person per year, a threefold increase since the 70s.

It's hard to say for sure if this is the main cause of the difference you noticed, but it seems that it is a sign of a larger food trend.

Source: Salt, Sugar, Fat

For people that made their wealth from scratch, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, and didn't rely as much on luck as they did on themselves, I think they are smart (I'm assuming they didn't outright "con" their way to that position too).

Besty was born into a rich family though. She is totally not qualified in her position right now.

Edit: Gates was born in a wealthy family, but not an "ultra" wealthy family and not near as rich as he is today. His main advantage from his family was that he was sent to a private school, Lakeside, that could afford computers, and that's where he got his start in computers. That private school was certainly an advantage in getting him started with computers. At times, he also had some luck (ie. IBM thought hardware was the future so they gave away the rights of the OS to Gates). Having said that, Gates turned his startup into the Microsoft we know today. If you read about how he turned his startup into the Microsoft of the 90's in this biography, you will see that he is a pretty intelligent and hardworking guy (although some may consider him to be an asshole at the same time).

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation-Expanded Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0914153277/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_9iXkDb81D4P54

I acknowledge the irony of posting an Amazon link.

More to your point, there's a pretty good book (that's relatively balanced) that I read many moons ago that's worth reading for anyone interested in WalMart's practices:

> The WalMart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy

> https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788

The book talks about the things you highlight here. It also looks at how it puts the screws to vendors (basically it opens great opportunities for them to reach much wider audiences, but makes them go to rock bottom pricing, which means they must sacrifice quality... many vendors will create WalMart specific versions of their products that are more cheaply manufactured so that they can meet WalMart's stringent low price demands).

It also looks at the good side of WalMart's practices. Like how they are so maniacal about lowering prices that they've reduced packaging down to the bare minimum, thereby generating less landfill trash, requiring less fuel to transport, etc.

Read the book "Blackwater" if you want an idea. Also pretty relevant because it discusses a lot of Erik Prince's political views as well as the DeVos family. Disgusting to see Betsy DeVos in a position of power ESPECIALLY concerning education.

This is a great book and you should read it if you get the chance.

NO tried to sue Glock in the 90s, blaming them for a surge in shootings in the city. Glock said that if they did they would bring up in court the one-for-one program and point at how most of the shootings were being done with Police trade-in .38s, and what did the NOPD think Glock was going to do with them? Sell for scrap value?

Sorry, this is bullshit tabloid stuff. Good to Great is a business strategy book, it tends to make "best business books of all time" lists. If he'd been reading "Inverting the Pyramid" or some shit like that, fine. But I'd expect the guy to continue to read stuff like this, like most executives do to keep themselves challenged and learning.

Amazon link to the book FWIW

If reading that book is embarrassing, you're probably lacking some perspective.

Not to mention the fact that a lot of junk food is specifically designed to override those signals to stop eating. Food companies do NOT have our best interests in mind and their only objective is to sell more product. Add in some insidious marketing schemes that target us from childhood and you've got a recipe for disaster.

~Listening to your body~ is a great idea in theory but in practice it easily falls apart in the face of overwhelming social pressure to overeat high-calorie foods. People may think they're making intuitive decisions when they give in to their cravings but so many of these cravings are engineered by outside forces. Sugar Salt Fat is blowing my freaking mind right now (haven't finished it yet), highly recommend! Children are literally more sensitive to certain tastes (like sugar, obvs) and if you can get them accustomed to higher levels of it young, well of course they're going to think they've just always had a raging sweet tooth and they'll keep needing more, more, more.

It is absolutely every individual's responsibility to take care of their health. Nobody else can do it for you. But I do also think we need to lay some blame on Big Food, and recognize that going against everything you've been taught/sold is really freaking hard. I can't remember where I read the saying but it was somewhere along the lines of "it's not a diet, it's a protest." That's the kind of messaging that I think could really get through to some FA types. I know because I used to be one of them. They want to be angry at something/someone...fuck, get angry at these food giants for hijacking your bodies and your minds!

See this depthhub post for a good starting point.

Basically, as a businessman, Bill Gates and Microsoft has a history of, at the very least, borderline "anti-competitive" behavior going back to the earliest days of the computer industry (pre-internet)

Edit: If you prefer video, you might be want to check out this brief video segment. This is from Richard X. Cringely's 90s PBS documentary series on the early history of the Internet, Nerds 2.0.1.

Cringely's earlier book Accidental Empires:How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date is also a decent introduction to the pre-Internet history of Silicon Valley. It was also made into a very good PBS documentary series.

That's not how it works. Wal-mart has huge negotiating leverage with manufacturers, forcing them to cut costs and cut corners when manufacturing their products, which they then sell to all retailers. I highly recommend reading The Wal-Mart Effect.

It was the Genesis which allowed that though. If you exclude the Japanese market, where Sega was downright abysmal in the 16-bit generation, the sales numbers of the Genesis vs the SNES were actually fairly competitive. And up until the mid 1990s, Sega even overtook Nintendo in terms of sales figures at certain points.

But one thing to take into consideration is that compared to either Sony or Microsoft of the PS3/360 era, Sega was at a massive disadvantage starting out. During the mid 1980s through early 1990s, it was Nintendo or nothing. Nobody owned a Master System or even Genesis when it was released. Nintendo was becoming synonymous with video games. At one point, according to the book Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation, Nintendo accounted for 10% of Walmart's profits. Think about that for a second. That a company had such power, that they could impose their will on Walmart of where to place their items, and how much to sell their items for.

For Sega to come back and be even nearly as competitive as they were was nothing short of amazing. And they solved it the exact way as you stated the PS3 & 360 of doing, of creating demographics. Nintendo, or even video games in general, were for kids. Sure, arcades in the 70s and early 80s had teenagers in them, but you played your video games, and you moved on with your life. Sega targeted those children becoming teenagers, who grew up with video games, but now kept with video games. I'm part of that generation. I don't know many people, even just half a decade older than me, who play video games, but I know tons of people younger than me who do. That's not to say none do, rather, it's just far more uncommon.

And when I was in high school, more people I knew owned Genesis's than SNES's. It's sort of like the PSX vs N64. In terms of sales figures, the N64 was a massive disappointment and could be considered a failure. If you look at reddit threads though, the N64 is talked about with great reverence though while the PSX has moved into obscurity. In my opinion, a huge part is because things like the Genesis and PSX targeted the older generations who already grew up with video games. It wasn't their first love, thus didn't create many lasting memories or leave a huge impression on people. So, we forget about the true impact it actually did have.

Well, the system was rigged years ago.

Flash Boys goes over how it's rigged and how some people created a fair system.

There's a bit where a company basically constructed a shortest path route (for low latency) from Chicago to New York for high frequency traders: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_Networks

Looks like the bottom of the thread is where any meaningful discussion is happening.

What a shit article; lumping clear scientific issues, controversial scientific issues, and morality issues in the same categories. First, how is Favoring the use of animals in research a "scientific" question? What's there to study about whether this is right or wrong? It's a question of morality, not a question of science.

Secondly, they how are evolution and GM foods the same? Evolution is pretty cut and dry with no other non-religious studies to offer a different origin story. There's no corporate interests driving evolution discussion (it's mostly political). GM food studies are typically funded with corporate interests, so getting a clear picture is difficult.

(Tangent here, sorry)
Do I think the scientist is full of it? No, they typically perform the study as directed. The person I don't trust is the one interpreting the results and translating them to layman terms. The food industry is terrible at this, they'll get a study to test something under a very specific set of circumstances, then claim the results are broad and across the board. Does this mean the scientist is wrong? No, they're just doing their job. The problem is with whoever is deciding to twist the results to fit their agenda. That's not thinking "scientists are full of it", that's understanding holes in the scientific process when funded by corporate interests. I recommend reading a great book called Salt, Sugar, Fat; How the Food Giants Hooked Us for some great examples of this.
(End Tangent).

Anyway, here's an example. Last year it was found that glyphosate was much more present in human breast milk than years prior (especially in the US). Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, and Monsanto assured us that it just passes through the system. Well, now that it's showing up more in samples of breast milk, are we supposed to believe that it's safe? What does this mean for GMOs?

I think most reasonable GM skeptics will agree that GM foods aren't inherently bad. Changing a plant so that it can grow in conditions where it normally wouldn't isn't necessarily a bad thing. If they could make a GM Haas Avocado that could grow in Florida (they don't grow here, I've tried pit after pit after pit :-(, only the FL avocados will grow) I'd probably jump right on it. What's bad is when you make it resistant to plant poison (herbicide) and basically drown your crops in said herbicide. Then you (the corporation) fund studies to tell me it's safe and I'm supposed to believe you'd publish a study that says your product isn't safe? Yeah, we've been down this road before with tobacco companies. How about HFCS (something Reddit generally doesn't really agree with scientists about)? Last "obesity rates" thread I saw had everyone blaming HFCS, yet a quick Google search indicates that science doesn't think that it's any worse for you than sugar.

Food science changes all the time. Years ago margarine was the bomb, now it's going to kill you with partially hydronated oils. Who remembers high fat diets being bad for you? Now that's apparently not the consensus.

So basically, this article is combining some really gray issues with morality issues. Additionally, saying scientists agree when there's a only a slight majority is a pretty disingenuous way to make your point. Furthermore, it's good to be a skeptic. If we just straight out believed science's current consensus (especially on issues where there's only a 65% consensus), are we any better than religious fundamentalists? Science SHOULD be doubted because that's how it makes itself better.

Between 14 and 25 I felt exactly this way. At 25 I started combating this state of mind after my motivation dropped dead for 5 months because of depression. It took me 3 years to improve and I'm still working at it. I'm not a natural leader or an extrovert, so I trained myself to become one. I'll try to describe as briefly as possible the methods I used.


Introspect and understand the forces that shaped your mind
Your personality is the accumulation of all of the events in your life. Start listing on paper all the major bad and good events from your whole life. Then start analyzing, find your own explanations on how these events affected your mind and personality. Try to go deep and search the root cause of each event and the habits that you developed afterwards. This took me months of self-examination and countless interpretations of the events. In time the best explanations will keep recurring. Don't forget to also examine your present actions and the reasons behind them. You will notice the same patterns that keep recurring. This will help you to pin point what are you fighting against and be constantly aware of them. Spend at least 2 hours a week on this task.


Study scientific literature that explains how the mind works
Take some time to improve your know-how about the inner workings of the mind and body. I am an avid documentary watcher. This is ok to get started but to really understand how the mind works you need more. I recall how many things clicked after reading Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It. Afterwards I had an exceptional great time binge watching this course from Stanford University: Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology, professor Robert Sapolsky. Fantastic lessons and also a lot more things clicked. Feel free to search your own materials to study.


--> Pro tip: Don't fool yourself by chasing astrology, faith BS, the secret, good energies and yada yada. Stay on the clear path. The scientific method has took the beating over the centuries and has constantly survived and thrived by exposing itself to investigation.


Develop a succinct list of the top factors that shaped you, use mnemonics
The purpose of repeatedly writing your thoughts is twofold: first you find out how you got the bad habits and what to do about them, secondly you laser etch in your memory the top most important steps you want to exercise daily in order to improve. My mnemonic is PE-WF which expands to: Personality - Experiences / Work - Fun. What that means? For me, it means that my personality creates/triggers the events that I experience and the experiences that I encounter in return shape my personality. Good experiences shape good habits and vice versa. I see these two as an uninterrupted cycle that feeds itself. There's a saying "Garbage in, garbage out". You get the point. Work-Fun cycle is also important because the feeling that I hadn't had enough fun, makes me work really bad. I'm unfocused, constantly day dreaming and procrastinating. And worse, when I'm supposed to have fun, such as at a party, I cannot enjoy myself because my mind is constantly annoying me with thoughts about the work that I haven't done on time, the money that I don't have, and so and so. Main take-away: be aware of these cycles, don't live on autopilot, take initiative and do something to improve these life cycles.


Start unlearning the bad habits, get going on good habits and thought patterns
By studying about biology, neurology, psychology, evolution, civilization history, economics I got a few jems stuck in my mind.

• Humans have evolved to be social creatures, and by developing language they got the edge in the evolution/survival game. All the elements from the habitat of the ancient human have shaped the modern humans in some distinct ways. By joining in tribes humans were able to share resources and also specialize on certain tasks. Those more willing to take risks, explore and learn new things we're naturally rewarded with resources and success and also became leaders. Good Leaders are a powerful asset for a tribe/community and can mean the difference between starvation and excellent life conditions.
  
• Evolution just cares about the survival of the genes and will do anything for this. In some scenarios it is advantageous to collaborate in harmony, but in other scenarios, predatory behavior and exploitation tend to be just fine. This means there is no actual intrinsic need for a perfect utopia. Survival is enough, and this by itself can bring tons of misery in the world.
  
• Humans need to feel important, it's hardwired in the DNA. You need it, period. Ancient humans, got plenty of food and reproduction opportunities by becoming important in the community. The question is how? What are your expectations. What is enough for you? You want a decent life, or you want to be a exceptional person and go in history? Find what suits you and remember to cater to this need. Pro tip: You don't need to be a jerk while you are at it. Read Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't. This can also turn ugly, people become narcissistic, self-interested and toxic in society. Narcissism breads narcissism.
  
• Long Term Potentiation. In lay man terms: the more you excite a neuron the more it is prone to receive the signal and also it reacts with more powerful signals and more often. In practice this means, the more you think of yourself as being pathetic the more you believe and act like this. Also the reverse is true: the more you think you are powerful, the more you act like that and this in turn reinforces the belief itself.
  There are many more gems to learn but I will leave this to you! These are the tools that help you inspect and debug your behavior. Do this as often as possible.
  
  
  <!>PITFALS<!>
  
  
• Giving up to early. Diets take time, studying takes time, body building takes time... well you see where I'm going with this. Take your time and don't give up early!
  
• Caring too much of the way you are perceived. This blocks your ability to distinguish yourself and become interesting. You inhibit any action because you fear the critics, and you become boring and invisible. Remember: fear of rejection is hardwired in DNA. Ancient man who were cast out of tribes suffered a lot even facing certain death. Modern society has tons of safety nets. If you fail with some friends, you are able at anytime to find new and better friends. Be strong, and accept rejection, this will make you more happy on the long run. Don’t trade compromises that leave you frustrated for social confort.
  
• Chasing fame. Fame is toxic venom. Just don't let it alter your brain. Chase what makes you happy. Fame is a trap. Fame is a dead end. Good life experiences, wonderful friends, healthy diet and exercise, these are the things you need. Not fame.
  
• Vices of all sorts: TV, Gaming, Betting, Drugs, etc. Nothing good comes out of addiction. Here's a nice and short video about the mechanics of Addiction. Addiction is all about compensating for lack of good social life.
  
• Don’t confuse love with power Be strong, self sufficient and love somebody just because you love them, not because you feel weak and you need comfort. Don’t chase somebody just for the feeling of empowerment and social status.
  
  
  TIPS & TRICKS
  
  
• Meditate/Introspect weekly You know the benefits. Just don't get lazy! The more you accept yourself the faster you will progress.
  
• Become good at your hobbies Excellence in hobbies can boost your self esteem a lot. Why not have fun and also improve your mindset at the same time?
  
• Running, diet and good sleep I cannot overstate the benefits of running and dieting. I recently started a serious training plan, and the benefits manifested almost instantly. Good physical shape builds self-esteem. You get complimented. You train your motivation. You get healthy, fast!
  
• Find social groups that gather around a certain activity For me is running. I don't feel awkward being there. I can make lots of friends fast. I can feel good sharing stories of things I like and I can praise other for their achievements.
  
• Learn to understand people and support them Knowing how your mind works means knowing how anybody's mind works. This enables you to be a supportive and a patient friend for others. This will improve your social life a lot. Read How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnagie
  
• Information gathering I find Reddit and outstanding source of information that allows me to stay up to date in the shortest time possible. No clickbait, no wasted time. Thank you Reddit! Also YouTube has some great channels. I recommend Stefan Molyneux as good source to get started on politics, geopolitics, social issues, philosophy, etc. Great commentary and explanations on his channel. Also other channels are available that cover topics from different angles.
  
  TLDR: Understand how your past experiences shaped your personality. Find what triggers your bad habits. Learn how the mind functions (the science behind biology, neurology, psychology, evolution) and use these as your tools to improve your mindset. Exercise daily your mindset and try to review your actions, find better ways to react and apply these findings in the present. Find wonderful people trough hobbies. Enjoy life!
  

>You are not ruining the economy by shopping there.

Well, yes, you are. Shopping at Wal-Mart is the same as defecting in the Prisoner's Dilemma problem, except with a gazillion players instead of two. By shopping there, you get some small gain for yourself at the expense of a net larger loss to the world at large (including you). It is pretty classic game theory.

Free markets in general are known to fail at that kind of choice: people tend to pick the path that yields personal short-term gain over collective benefit, even if the choice yields long-term ruin. In the case of environmental destruction, the costs are external to the system as a whole, and there are whole branches of economics discussing how to tweak the market to account for external costs of actions.

In the case of economic plundering (like Walmart engages in) the costs are internal to the eeconomy but are deferred and homogenized so that the cost to each individual isn't directly visible at the time of purchase -- one might call them "artificially externalized" costs.

Edit: I seem to be attracting a fair number of downvotes. I'll charitably assume they're not knee-jerk responses. Here are some some nice references: The Bully of Bentonville; Fishman's nice book on the Wal-Mart Effect; a nice documentary DVD; and Davis's fun pop-level introduction to game theory.

I'm not only pretty impressed with its specs and features on paper (will have to wait to see how it actually performs) but I'm honestly fine with the price: you're paying for the engineering, guys, very very little of what you pay for a gun goes into the cost of the materials for it so no, it doesn't really matter that it uses much less material than a G17 as regards the price, no that shouldn't really make a difference.

I mean do you really think that even a decent portion of what you pay for a G17, for example, goes towards the polymer and metal used to make it? Come on. I think I recall reading somewhere (believe it was that book on Glock by Paul Barrett) that the cost of materials to make a Glock 17 was around $70. When you buy a G17 you're getting about 70 bucks worth of plastic and steel, that's it...and about $500 worth of superb engineering to make sure it goes bang every time including and especially when it's your ass on the line, so quit bitching...

The only problem is that I've got a Kahr PM9 that has been just absolutely fantastic so I'm really going to have to work hard to find an excuse to buy this thing, though I probably will eventually.

IBM built the punch card machines Nazi's used to organize and track concentration camp inmates, according to Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust"

>On September 16, 2007, employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (now Academi), a private military company, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad, while escorting a U.S. embassy convoy.[1][2][3] The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and the United States.[4] In 2014, four Blackwater employees were tried[5] and convicted in U.S. federal court; one of murder, and the other three of manslaughter and firearms charges.[6]

>Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul stated that the killings were unprovoked.[7][8] The next day, Blackwater Worldwide's license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked.[9] The U.S. State Department has said that "innocent life was lost",[10] and according to the Washington Post, a military report appeared to corroborate "the Iraqi government's contention that Blackwater was at fault".[11] The Iraqi government vowed to punish Blackwater.[12] The incident sparked at least five investigations, including one from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[13] The FBI investigation found that, of the 17 Iraqis killed by the guards, at least 14 were shot without cause.[14]

>In December 2008, the U.S. charged five Blackwater guards with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempted manslaughter and a weapons violation but on December 31, 2009, a U.S. district judge dismissed all charges on the grounds that the case against the Blackwater guards had been improperly built on testimony given in exchange for immunity.[15] Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki harshly criticized the dismissal.[16] In April 2011, a U.S. federal appeals court reinstated the manslaughter charges against Paul A. Slough, Evan S. Liberty, Dustin L. Heard and Donald W. Ball after closed-door testimony. The court said “We find that the district court’s findings depend on an erroneous view of the law,”[17] A fifth guard had his charges dismissed, and a sixth guard (Jeremy Ridgeway) pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and attempted manslaughter.[3] On January 6, 2012, Blackwater settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of six of the victims for an undisclosed sum.[18] On October 22, 2014, a Federal District Court jury convicted Nick Slatten of first-degree murder, and three other guards (Slough, Liberty and Heard) guilty of all three counts of voluntary manslaughter and using a machine gun to commit a violent crime.[6][19] On April 13, 2015, Slatten was sentenced to life in prison, while the other three guards were sentenced to 30 years in prison.[20]

>On August 4, 2017, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed Slatten's murder conviction and ordered the other defendants to be re-sentenced.[21] A new trial was also recommended for Slatten, on the grounds that it was unjustifiable to try him with his co-defendants, and that he should have been tried separately.[21]

The above is just from Wikipedia, but for more in-depth info about this heinous fucking scum Eric Prince, check out Jeremy Scahill’s reporting and his book...

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Quantitative Finance major here.

High Frequency Trading is insane. Everyone fights to shave off nanoseconds by putting their servers in the room as exchanges, orders are instantaneously cancelled in order to confuse other traders, companies have blasted through mountains in order to get perfectly straight fiber optic cables between point A and B. Order types complicated and predatory towards other traders. Goldman Sachs called the FBI on their own employee because he was suspected of stealing HFT code. On top of it all - the exchanges love HFT. More orders = more money. The exchange you trade on might pay you, or you might pay them but before your trade even gets there - a hedge fund or proprietary trading group might be paying to look at the order before anyone else.

If you're interested in the story, I highly recommend reading Flash Boys, When Genius Failed, and The Quants.

If you're interested in stopping whatever you're doing to learn how to develop machine learning algorithms and work on the street, PM me.

It's pretty similar. Take a look at Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. It talks about how foods are engineered to be as addictive as possible. With things like the "bliss point", where when you keep adding sugar, it tastes better, until certain point, and after that it declines. So the optimal amount of sugar is where the bliss point is.

It's anything but a stupid question, and the answer's terrifying.

[They hired IBM to run censuses to find everybody they could with Jewish blood.] (https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Edwin-Black/dp/0914153277)

Internet search will find quite a few sources verifying. There's a general consensus, it seems, that this is legit.


In his book The Dark Net, author Jamie Bartlett recounts how it went down:

>In 1972, long before eBay or Amazon, students from Stanford University in California and MIT in Massachusetts conducted the first ever online transaction. Using the Arpanet account at their artificial intelligence lab, the Stanford students sold their counterparts a tiny amount of marijuana.

The bongwater-flavored e-commerce origin story isn’t a secret—John Markoff also wrote about it in his 2005 book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. But it’s been stuck good in my maw (I am now a 92-year-old prospector) since I read The Dark Net while Ross Ulbricht’s life sentence for his crimes operating the Silk Road came in.


https://gizmodo.com/ask-the-dark-net-author-about-the-internets-underworld-1708463753

Actually, in some rural areas that is what happens when Walmart moves in. It goes beyond the local economy in that manufacturers are pressured to also follow suit or perish.

Is called the Walmart effect. Here is a good read: https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292

Yup. I always make it a point to research history wherever I lived and during my time in Oakland / Emeryville, I discovered the Panthers were a resource for charity and the pre-coursers of what became the "Guardian Angels" with neighborhood watches, anti-gang activities, a whole host of positive out-reach.

The fact that it was operating in a very politically charged time, combined with political infighting made for a mess that collapsed in on itself very quickly.

The Bay Area was a colossal hodge-podge of "movements". Some of them admirable like the Panther's initially, as well as the Homebrew Computer Club which met both in Berkeley and Stanford and led to the various People's computer resource groups in the Valley, Acid experimentation which grew out of San Francisco and was toyed with by members of SRI - pre-coursers to PARC which led to GUI computing ala the "demo which changed the world" in 1968.

I recommend "what the doormouse said" for a really well written history of counter-culture and it's collision with defense research and the start of modern computing. Most people only go as far back as PARC, but SRI really is where things got started - and it was a pretty wild group. (Even wilder than the Stanford AI group which routinely had to chase down cart robots that decided the streets of Menlo Park were as valid as the lab hallways. Hint : the stripes down the middle of the road seemed the same to the pathfinding robots).

Then you have disasters like Jim Jones ...

"Gaston Glock enjoyed showing off the Glock 18, a fully automatic version of the pistol. Depressing the trigger of the Glock 18 unleashes a stream of bullets in the fashion of a machine gun. It can hold a capacious thirty-three-round magazine that sticks out of the gun’s grip and empties in a matter of seconds. Unless the user is familiar with the Glock 18, its enormous recoil results in the barrel jumping upward. Many an embarrassed police officer inadvertently peppered the ceiling of the company shooting range with rounds. Unavailable on the civilian market, the Glock 18 is designed for police SWAT squads and military special-ops units. Rolling it out for visitors to Smyrna remains a Glock marketing practice."

From Glock: The Rise of America's Gun

> Glock isn't known to work quickly.

Yes, but they can work pretty fast when they have to. Consider what happened when Smith & Wesson introduced .40 S&W ammunition, as retold by Paul M. Barrett in Glock: The Rise of America's Gun:

> With bureaucratic sluggishness, the FBI had been deliberating for several years over which pistol and ammunition would replace the six-shot Smith & Wesson. The agency at first decided to leapfrog existing gun models and ammo to equip its forces with a hard-hitting ten-millimeter pistol. “The Ten” would be a real “man-stopper,” FBI ballistics experts believed. Word of this inclination, which seeped out from Washington in 1988 and 1989, stimulated gun and ammunition makers to go large. Glock had readied the ten-millimeter Glock 20 for introduction at the SHOT Show, under the assumption that the FBI’s choice would influence tastes in wider law enforcement and commercial circles. By then, however, the FBI had discovered that conventional ten-millimeter ammunition—fired from a pistol about the same size as the traditional Colt .45 model that the military was phasing out—produced too much recoil for many agents to shoot accurately. The agency was beginning to recruit female personnel, and the women had even more trouble with the ten-millimeter. As an alternative, S&W collaborated with Winchester to design a new, shorter cartridge of the same bore diameter, which could be fired from a slightly altered version of the nine-millimeter pistol. To distinguish the new product, and give the FBI its own distinctive load, the manufacturers called the ammunition the “.40 S&W.” (Forty-caliber rounds are the same diameter as ten-millimeter rounds.)

> Glock, with its ten-millimeter, seemed to have missed a subtle twist in handgun tastes. Obviously, Smith & Wesson would come out with a pistol to match the .40 S&W ammunition. With the FBI’s imprimatur, that combination would become the hot new handgun—or that, at least, was what everyone in the industry assumed.

> Gaston Glock traveled from Vienna to Las Vegas to attend the SHOT Show that year. American wholesalers and retailers, to whom Karl Walter, the company’s top executive in the United States, introduced Glock, treated the Austrian engineer with respect bordering on awe. He was the hero of the plastic pistol controversy, the champion of greater police firepower.

> For all his stature at the SHOT Show company booth, however, Gaston Glock wasn’t yet known on sight by most executives and marketing men in the American gun industry. He could stroll the exhibition floor without being noticed. Walter had told him about the .40 S&W round. Glock decided to take a look for himself. He walked over to the Smith & Wesson display area, scooped up samples of the .40 ammo, and put them in his pocket. Later he took measurements and made an important discovery. “Mr. Glock realized,” said Walter, “that with only very minor changes to the Glock 17, we could introduce a pistol to fire .40-caliber rounds, and we could steal this opportunity from Smith & Wesson.”

> Before S&W could get its distribution wheels turning and put a .40 model on gun store shelves, Glock began shipping its own version: the .40-caliber Glock 22. By mid-1990, the new Glock pistol, which, to the layman’s eye, appeared virtually identical to the original Glock 17, was headed toward being a big hit in its own right.

> “Oh, my God, what an embarrassment,” recalled Smith & Wesson’s Sherry Collins. “We’re beaten to market on the gun for our own ammo, the round we’ve made especially for the FBI. And some Austrian gets there first!” Swirling a midday cocktail, Collins added: “The technical industry term for that kind of experience is ‘getting your ass kicked.’ ”

This really is a wonderful book, and anyone who owns, carries or enjoys talking about Glocks should have it.

For those of ya'll who aren't familiar with Tim Wu and are interested in learning more about his stance (especially w.r.t. net neutrality), I highly recommend his book, The Master Switch.

There's a book out called Salt Sugar Fat which you should read, if you're interested in this stuff. It's really really horrifying.

>use subliminal messages and chemicals

Partially true... but those "subliminal messages" are really just advertising to kids so they beg their parents and the "chemicals" are salt, sugar, and fat. It's not much of an excuse though.

I only say this because I'm working my way through a book on the subject written by a food journalist. I think a lot of people will extrapolate their own meaning out of this saying "I can't do it because I'm addicted" or w/e. All I've gotten out of it so far is how hard-wired our biology is to loving that shit, not that anyone is "addicted".

It's actually been motivating me because if I crave something while staring at a vending machine I can rationalize that I don't really want it, my body just wants it because it's what I've been conditioned to like after years of not really caring. I'm no hamplanet at 6' and 183 (down 7 from 190 this month) but I've had more than my share of shit food.

Two more good reads:

Founders at Work

Masters of Doom

Oh, god damn. And the same bullshit headline about the weight loss "industry." Doesn't she know that food is also an industry? Like, a kajillion dollar industry?

If you'd like to get your mind blown and feel sad at the same time, read the book "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black. It outlines the way IBM ran its company to gain obscene profits by providing automatic counting machines used to process census data to provide the Reich with the info needed to efficiently round up the Jews for the camps.

Then they are doing a pretty terrible job.

While this is sort of correct it isn't completely right. Compared to others of that time he wasn't actually that rich at all. Rockefeller and Carnegie for example, had extreme amounts of money that dwarfed Morgans fortune. What Morgan had was power. He is said to be the most powerful banker that has ever lived. He had many rich friends that had much influence in finance. He was able to convince them to help stop the panic.

Just to show my point a bit further, Morgan was estimated to have about the equivalent of around $50 billion in today's money. Carnegie and Rockefeller both had around the $300-350 ish billion mark. That's not to say he wasn't rich, I just wanted to point out the fact that he alone couldn't solve the panic. It was his influence and power that helped him. I thought I would just expand a bit more on your comment.

If anyone thinks this kind of stuff is interesting Lords of Finance is a great read on the most powerful bankers in the world around this time period. It's a bit long and can get a little drawn out in some parts, but overall its very fascinating and I would recommend it to anyone interested in this sort of stuff.

> A useful asset would seem to be someone the company couldn't afford to turn away. An unpaid intern is use a valuable resource to exploit. How do you reconcile these ideas?

Both the company and the employee should be useful assets to each other. (Or, if you're more cynical about it, both the company and employee will be mutually exploiting each other.)

One of the top-selling business books - Good to Great says that the best leaders "Confront the brutal facts, but never give up hope." It's talking about CEOs, but you can apply it to new grads just entering the job market. Brutal facts for a new grad:

• You have less experience and fewer tangible skills than anybody else on the job market.
  
• You lack a track record or any public information about your past accomplishments. It's hard to convince a hiring manager to trust you when you have no data.
  
• You lack connections and a network of people that have worked with you before.
  
• You often lack a conceptual framework for what professional success in the working world looks like or what employers are looking for.
  
  Balancing that, you do have some assets:
  
  
• First and foremost, you have time. When you're a new grad, your whole working life is ahead of you. Many companies hire new grads specifically because they hope that they will get a long, fruitful career out of them.
  
• You're often willing to work very hard and try new things.
  
• You have few commitments as a young 20-something, meaning that you have freedom to take bold career moves like relocating, or the ability to work extra hours to complete a project.
  
• If you completed a 4-year degree, you have demonstrated the ability to show persistence and follow through on something challenge.
  
• You hopefully have decent social skills and experience hanging out with other people.
  
• You often have better technology skills than older people, and are more in touch with recent cultural developments than them.
  
  If you want to approach your career strategically, you should leverage the assets you have to convince other people to give you the assets you need. You do this by giving them what they want and asking for things in return. So pretty much all of the advice that the OP gave is about highlighting the assets you have:
  
  
• When you request a face-to-face meeting with a hiring manager, you have a chance to demonstrate social skills and ability to work with people.
  
• When you do this politely but repeatedly, you show persistence.
  
• When you go for the hiring manager instead of HR, you show that you are thinking of what others need and not what you need.
  
• When you talk face-to-face and offer to shadow the team, you demonstrate time and flexibility.
  
  In return, you should be looking to acquire the assets that you don't have, so that you are not so disadvantaged in your next job hunt. For example:
  
  
• By entering the workforce, you learn tangible skills that you can apply to a future employer.
  
• You get the brand name of your previous employer, which makes future ones more inclined to trust you.
  
• You can build a network of people that are personally acquainted with your skills, all of whom have their own networks of personal contacts.
  
  The OP suggested going blue-chip, which is the traditional advice. I personally didn't - I worked for a couple startups, founded my own, and then ended up at Google, relying much more heavily on skill development than the brand name. It doesn't actually matter - your actual career path will depend heavily on the opportunities that are available to you. (I wasn't looking to end up at Google, for example, but they said "yes" and I figured it was an opportunity worth taking.) The important thing is that you very honestly take stock of what you lack as an employee and then take the steps to acquire that, using all the resources you have available to you.

Probably a bit aggressive but there is no doubt that Allied negotiators wanted to exact revenge on Germany and her allies, and ended up causing WW2 (the reparations and penalties extracted from Germany created the conditions for Hitler's rise). More in this excellent and well-respected book: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800

I think this is true, but the causality may be backwards. If you're a brilliant scientist with the ability to obtain venture financing and make a killing off your ideas, why would you trade that for a salaried position with very little upside?

I recently enjoyed The Idea Factory, a (popular) history of Bell Labs.

One of the striking contrasts with today's start-up culture is that it was taken for granted that Bell Labs employees would sign over rights to any work done at the Labs. This was the custom for other large corporate R&D departments as well. At the time, it might have been a good trade for the researcher - Bell Labs was a more lucrative post than a university, and there wasn't anyone willing to front you the equivalent of a few million to build an industrial research lab. Today, it's practically trivial for an inventor to raise a few million dollars for development.

Nintendo did intentionally create shortages, though. The book Console Wars describes it
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700
IIRC it was because the video game bubble of the early 80s was caused by an oversupply and they didn't want that to happen again

It will be special, guys.

Treasure these moments. Like me and Michael Trout at DEVCON2.

Embrace the crazy. Blockchain will be as boring and uncontroversial as databases in a few years.

https://twitter.com/BobSummerwill/status/983618539545243649

Like the stories told in Digital Gold. I am dying to see an equivalent "drama" book for Ethereum:

https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

The rise of the cell phone is what has led to potato quality calls - calls are all essentially data on cellular, and since everyone shares the airwaves, there is a large incentive to compress this data and make it as small as possible, leading to the poor quality calls.

The Atlantic had an article awhile back speculating this is one reason for the great decline in phone calls. This article also explains the problem of call quality.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/why-people-hate-making-phone-calls/401114/

Jon Gertner's book "The Idea Factory" documents AT&T's Bell Labs and the amazing technologies they developed during the 20th century. Fabulous book.

https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797

Thought I could hold off reading this as its relevance would diminish over time.

>I tried using really disgusting pictures as my background to make me lose my appetite or pictures of hot girls to remind me how gross and unattractive I'm going to feel after eating

One of the main things that's helped me with my weight loss is shifting my mental approach to food to be less extreme. You shouldn't feel gross or unattractive after eating, you're going to be eating for the rest of your life. You shouldn't shame yourself for craving something salty, sugary, or fatty - a major industry is built around designing and marketing food to create just that sense of craving!

What I do is make deals with myself: if I still want that food tomorrow, I can have it as long as I log it. No shame, no moralizing. I can have it tomorrow if I want. While I sometimes do still want that food tomorrow, and I eat and log it, most of the time I no longer do. Knowing that I am in control and can have that craving whenever I want removes a lot of the intensity and power of the craving, and helps me handle it more productively.

Wikipedia has a decent little article about the bliss point. The food industry has entire divisions devoted to determining the bliss point for every item they put on the shelf. Check out Salt, Sugar, Fat if you want more information.

Leaving aside aside the issue of TRP dating advice vs. 'mainstream' dating advice, what you have written here is not advice.

> Before you go about attracting women, you need to be worth having one attracted to you. Don't be an ass, basically.

This is a great example of non-advice. You don't define any of the key terms you use- attract, worth, ass. It's so vague its meaningless.

> They aren't numbers on a hotness scale. They aren't prizes. They aren't vaginas with a guard-body attached. They are individual people.

Again, while many would agree with you here, this is still just a set of truisms. Even if you phrased it to be advice, "you'll have more success with women if you treat them like people, not objects," it is still basically worthless because of your lack of investigation into what these terms mean. What does it mean to treat someone like a person? If I don't know how to do that, what are some ways I can move forward?

> The important thing to remember about approaching women is that many of them are approached a lot, and not necessarily by nice guys. Many women will reject any kind of approach from a strange man, and there's nothing you can do about it. If you are approaching in a setting where that is not expected (walking down the street), the intrusion is probably unwelcome. You know canvassers who call out to you and try to get you to sign stuff, and you feel awkward about it and avoid their eyes and keep on walking? It's like that.

This section is no doubt a valid statement of your experience, and possibly many other women's as well. Still, no advice to be found. You just say that many women are uncomfortable with being cold approached out of nowhere. Advice would be building on that to advise a specific course of actions. For example, "help women feel more comfortable by doing x, y, or z. Or "So avoid cold approaches and try to meeting women by expanding your social circle."

> Also, to many women, it comes off as offensive. After all, you are literally approaching a random stranger. She knows that a guy approaching her in this context knows nothing about her except that he's attracted to her.
Sex is also a bigger risk to the average woman than the average man. They fear potential rape and violence. There's also the risk of pregnancy. Odds of her enjoying the experience are lower as well.

More of the same here. Just more discussion of what some women's reality may be with no actionable items.

> Why are you trying to have sex? Is it because that's what you want...or are you embarrassed by being a virgin at your age? Is your self-esteem dependent on it? Make sure you aren't trying to solve a completely different problem.

Introspection is very important to self-improvement no argument here. You fail to provide any specifics though. Simply stating the need for introspective thought in regard to people's sex lives is not advice.

> Self-assurance is sexy, and it makes for better relationships. Figure out what an idealized version of you looks like, and aim for it. Get happy.

Seriously? This is what you think of as advice? Imagine going to a therapist and asking for help, and all they give you is 'get happy'. If you ever go over to /r/depression you will find tons of posts complaining about people treating emotional dysfunctional this way. "Why aren't you just happy? Why don't you just get over it? Just find your true self and become that. Become self-confident".

> Google for details, as there's plenty of stuff out there that's better than what I can give you.

When it comes to a point where you might have to give some specifics, you just tell people to google it. I've got news for you. Everyone already knows to do that. You have just passed the advice burden off to a set of algorithms and search engine marketers.

> Be positive, confident, authentic, funny, and friendly. Don't push. Focus on creating an enjoyable interaction instead of trying to pass some kind of test. Also, flirt.

If I am not already positive, how to I adopt this attitude? Same question for every attribute. What is authenticity? What is flirting? How do I flirt effectively? I could go on. There is nothing here that has not been said a thousand times before, or that anyone could make any use of if they are struggling.

> Use dat Google to find lots of info on fashion, exercise, etc. Don't try to be something you're not; instead, find a sexy style that works for you and go for that. Try to make yourself feel sexy.

More passing off advice here. What is a sexy style? Will the kinds of women I am into be into this style or that style? How do I go about feeling sexy if I don't already?

> I like Doctor Nerdlove. Use him.

Imagine if I posted an article to /r/investing or something claiming to have advice about how to get rich. And then just told people to "think big," "companies are more than their credit rating," "many times it will be hard to get into hot private equity deals, but remember, fund managers are people too," "idk google".

Or if my bulimic cousin came to me and asked about how to improve her self-image, and I said "get happy," "be self-assured," "be positive," "start feeling sexy," "idk google it".

I am not sure if you inability to truly advise on this issue is a lack of experience, an by-product of your view on gender relations, lack of strategic insight, or something else. But whatever it is please try to understand that what you have written does not constitute advice.

I highly recommend reading some books on business strategy just to get a sense of what real strategic and tactical advice is. Good Strategy Bad Strategy and Good to Great are decent places to start.


> I like Doctor Nerdlove. Use him.

About the only advice you have given here is to go to people other than you for advice. Which is frankly good advice.

The way I see it; it sounds like you have a staff member abusing your lax policies and shouldn't work for you.

Jim Collins says "Your people are not the most important asset to your company, the right people are" and I couldn't agree more.

Ask yourself, if he quit today would you be relieved?

Would you hire this staff member again if given the opportunity?

> but at the end of the day, you're still a drug dealer

>No matter how much good you do, you're still a drug dealer at the end of the day.

I'm not a drug dealer anymore than a gay person is a "faggot". Belittling me with labels manufactured by the oppressors (e.g. "drug dealer") is not conducive to any peaceful recognition of cannabis as medicine.

There are families in Himachal Pradesh, India, who support themselves by their mutual reciprocity and symbiosis with cannabis. There are families in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, who support themselves with their mutual reciprocity and symbiosis with coca leaves. The same can be said about cultures in East Africa (Ethiopia, Tanzania) and their relationship with coffee (which contains a "drug"). Or the tea-growing regions of China, and the generations who tend the poppy fields in SE and Central Asia.

Consider this example. Serotonin and L-dopa (the precursor to dopamine) exists in mucuna pruriens. Our brain constituents are mirrored in nature. Because we exchange with one another these keys which unlock the mind, we are not drug dealers. This is an antiquated category to pigeon-hole the choices that people make.

>Until we have decriminalization, legalization with some for of regulation, drug dealers will always have targets on their backs.

These are global idea structures evolving by proxy of political language. There is much more at stake than money and drugs. Check out "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World". For insight into the role that psychedelics have played in shaping these technologies, tune into "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry".

He also wrote The Master Switch which is often recommended to solidify net-neutrality support.

The book does allow the reader to perceive some half-century long patterns across telephony, radio, film, and TV. Examples include optimistic, tech-savvy founders being replaced by stodgy profit-maximizing MBA types, fertile, entrepreneurial environments decaying into rigid monopolies/duopolies, creative, rebellious media gradually transitioning into state-and-advertiser-sanctioned stale garbage, and disruption by new forms of media as old media quality decays.

That said, I found the subject matter a bit too high-level, and central refrain (this process is already happening to the internet) a bit overbearing. If you have the time, I'd recommend smaller-scope books on the individual media technologies instead.

I'm always amused about how the studios rail against pirates, given their history. The only reason they exist came about as a result of them thumbing their nose at the patents held by Thomas Edison and fled the East for California and began producing the type of movies that the establishment wouldn't permit. Check out The Master Switch by Tim Wu.

The big budgets required to make block busters these days carry so much risk, studios are afraid to try anything that is not already proven - which is why there was only one original movie amongst the top 10 box office hits in 2014. - the other nine where remakes, reboots or sequels.

The thing to be worried about is the consolidation of content creators and carriers: more of a problem in the US than here, thanks to the NBN, but why we see tighter controls on piracy in this country and will be impacted in any event because most of the content comes from the US.

I claim we had Peak Internet in 2014. Everyday, as government gets more and more involved, the internet is going to get a little more shittier every day (to wit: GST for online purchases, website blocking, internet filtering, three strike rules, etc.)

"Glock" Glock: The Rise of America's Gun https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307719952/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ZYwAybGMZJPX1

Against The God: the remarkable story of Risk- Outlines the history of probability theory and risk assessment through the centuries

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Gods-Remarkable-Story-Risk/dp/0471295639/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105434&sr=1-1&keywords=against+the+gods

When Genius Failed - A narrative of the spectacular fall of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund which had on its board both Myron Scholes AND Robert Merton (you will recall them from MFE)
https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105453&sr=1-1&keywords=when+genius+failed

Black Swan/ Antifragility- A former quant discusses the nature of risk in these controversial and philosophical books. Some parts of this book are actually called out and shamed in McDonald's Derivative Markets, one or the both of them are worth reading

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility/dp/081297381X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105478&sr=1-1&keywords=black+swan



Godel, Escher, Bach- Very dense look into recursive patterns in mathematics and the arts. While not actuarial, it's obviously very mathematical, a must read.

https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/dp/0465026567/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105497&sr=1-1&keywords=geb

Endurance- This was recommended to me by a pure mathematics professor. Again, not actuarial, but more about the nature of perseverance though problem solving(sound familiar). It's about Shakleton's famous voyage to the south pole.

https://www.amazon.com/Endurance-Shackletons-Incredible-Alfred-Lansing/dp/0465062881/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475105520&sr=1-1&keywords=endurance+shackleton%27s+incredible+voyage

Two books may change that outlook:

Growing great people: http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Great-Employees-Extraordinary-Performers/dp/1591841909

Good to great: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406870853&sr=1-1&keywords=good+to+great

These books will show you that really successful companies never treat their employees as cogs or slaves. The really great companies treat mgmt as a coaching responsibility and most people at these kinds of companies love their employers.

As a manager, your primary responsibilities are retention and recruiting, removing obstacles, and assisting people with their careers. All of that starts with listening.

The history of Silicon Valley was especially well documented in What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. The Silicon Valley computer industry has always been saturated with drugs.

this is probably because the complexity of the instruments means it would be extraordinarily difficult to decompose into individual mortgages, which means it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. This is in addition to the near-certainty that banks like Citi and Merril have absolutely no interest at all in becoming large-scale landlords.

If this all seems absurd (why would you buy something whose collateral has no real value to you?) it's because it is. The level of hubris and greed behind most of these financial instruments is absolutely stunning.

If you want to get really angry about this, read When Genius Failed about the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Fund & Long-Term Capital Management, its manager. In a couple of places you can see the author basically connecting the dots on the mortgage-backed security problem, but just like no one really called out the derivative implosion that caused the LTCM collapse, despite the writing being on the wall even before it happened, no one was really calling the MBS before it happened either, even if it was obvious to them. (Of course this is not true as a blanket statement, but in general, you're not going to read anything about the danger of MBS's in the mainstream press newer than a couple of years, despite the ability of a journalist, the author of When Genius Failed, to call it out as early as 2001(I can't get a clear idea if '01 was the reprint date or the original publication).)

You might want to read this first.

There's a good book by Michael Lewis, called Flash Boys that talks about how the whole system is set up.

Dizzy,

Lets take a look back to 1930's Europe. As the Nazi's grew in power during those years prior to the outbreak of war, they went around Europe and one of first things they did was to go into all the churches, temples and other places of worship and look at the church records. Why did they do that you ask? At that time, it was tradition for births and deaths to be recorded by the church, not the local government. The Germans copied names and addresses, religious affiliations and created detailed genealogy maps on the population in the areas they were researching. They literally made a genealogy map for all of Europe as best they could.

Why did they need that? As their armies advanced into other countries and secured the area, there was another army right behind them, the SS had accurate detailed lists of all the Jews living in that particular area. They new exactly how many Jews there were, their names, ages, where they lived, their kids names and ages and who they were related to.

How was this possible? You can thank IBM for that. The army of data gatherers that preceded the regular army sent all this data back to Germany and it was all typed on to IBM punch cards. The IBM computers were able to tabulate and sort out lists of people to round up with cold, calculated ruthless efficiency.

When you enter the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the very first thing you see when you enter is an IBM punch card sorting machine. IBM was in bed up to their eyeballs with the Nazi's and even when President Roosevelt banned American companies from doing business with the Nazi's, IBM continued to supply them with punch cards, technicians, new machines and spare parts for those machines.

You can read about it in extremely well documented detail in "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation" by Edwin Black. I read this book when it 1st came out in hard cover, I was horrified at what IBM had done.

http://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277

Look at what the Germans were able to accomplish using 1930's computer technology way back then. Imagine what a government today could do with facial recognition software and those traffic and security cameras that are everywhere, cell phone tracking, automated phone taps, credit card tracking, the list goes on. There would be nowhere to hide.

Take a lesson from history here, when a government, ANY government starts to compile lists of citizens, for what ever reason, you should at a minimum, be wary and inquire as to their motives. They are not always truthful and forthcoming with a reason why they must have this data and if they are tight lipped as to why they require this data, that should raise alarm bells. If the government compiled a list of car ownership by color, what use would that be to anyone? On it's face, it serves no useful purpose unless you were an automotive paint producer.

Take into account what is common knowledge today regarding our own government, PATRIOT act, widespread telephone tapping and call monitoring for keywords, cellphone tracking, wholesale Internet interception by the NSA, the ever increasing militaristic behavior of our police departments, CALEA, the treatment of peaceful demonstrators, the shooting of unarmed citizens, arrested for photographing or recording police in public, TSA and their Vipr squads, the amazing deafness our elected officials have towards their constituents all the while they are so attuned to monied interests. What I've listed hear only scratches the surface.

Now, if the government started compiling accurate lists of gun owners, that information would be really, really handy should there ever be civil unrest or uprising or if Martial law ever goes into effect, they would know exactly who's door to kick down with a militarized SWAT team, there to confiscate your guns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tta1qhQZWSE

You watch that video REAL closely, OK?

Think back to the 30's and substitute gun owner for Jew and it's amazing how things align up perfectly.

That obviously is a worst case scenario but it's not improbable. Do I consider myself a paranoid whack-a-noodle? Nope, not when you take into account the track record of our government's actions since 9/11 and the well documented abuses and erosion of our constitutional rights.

Well now, since we are sharing books, let me add mine to the pile!

This is an extremely interesting look at the food industry and the amount of thought that goes into making food (usually junk food) as addicting as possible.

Jessica Livingston's book, Founders At Work is great simply because it covers a ton of different area's and different perspectives. If anything, the reader should come away with the realization that 1. luck plays a big part and 2. there's no one way to be successful.

Founders at work

I recommend Flash Boys to anyone that wants a bit more of a description of HFT. It's a pretty quick, insightful read.

Highly recommend the biography on Bill Gates called Hard Drive. It was really fascinating reading about his upbringing and experience in school that led to his fascination with software.

Did you? His father was a big shot lawyer, his mother was on the board of many companies and had many connections. His mother's family is well connected in the Seattle area. This is well stated throughout some of his biographies (notably HardDrive and you should probably read up on Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell to get an idea on a big part of how Gates rose to success.

Jeremy Scahill is a brilliant journalist and his book on Blackwater was a great read. Would recommend it here.

Yeah, I read the entire article and seen that interview, along with multiple books on the topic, which go into far more depth than a couple of agenda driven articles/reporters.

And yes, I've read Scahill's Blackwater and Dirty Wars.

http://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary-ebook/dp/B0097CYTYA

http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-The-World-Battlefield-ebook/dp/B00B3M3TS4/ref=pd_sim_351_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51dkyNcRAWL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_OU01_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=1H586DVK9BET6N9HYRN7

Seen the documentary too, it doesn't cover everything...

I've also read Prince's book Civilian Warriors.

http://www.amazon.com/Civilian-Warriors-Inside-Blackwater-Unsung-ebook/dp/B00E5UJAG6/ref=pd_sim_351_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=517qP%2BPVBeL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_OU01_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=1H586DVK9BET6N9HYRN7

He's surprisingly open about the companies short comings.

I've also read the The Bremer Detail: Protecting the Most Threatened Man in the World

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bremer-Detail-Protecting-Threatened-ebook/dp/B00LUA02OI/ref=pd_sim_351_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=51xoGU9WypL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_OU01_AC_UL160_SR104%2C160_&refRID=05HMC7F4FAZ3NG51NHDJ

I've also read what the military community says, those who actually served alongside Blackwater in the field, including articles and dialogue with the authors at SOFREP, and an interview with Eric Prince himself with the guys at SOFREP on their podcast, which is worth a listen.

https://sofrep.com/31444/founder-of-blackwater-erik-prince-civilian-warriors/

https://sofrep.com/sofrep-radio/episode-80-exclusive-erik-prince-former-seal-founder-blackwater/

https://sofrep.com/14189/the-next-mercenary-gold-rush-sub-saharan-africa-erik-prince/

You can read the 3 part series on the Rise of Private Military Security Companies here:

https://sofrep.com/44960/the-rise-of-private-military-security-companies/

https://sofrep.com/44961/rise-private-military-security-companies-pt-2/

https://sofrep.com/44963/rise-private-military-security-companies-pt-3/

I've also read Big Boy Rules by Steve Fainaru which is good starter book if are looking for more information. It's pretty even handed about the good and the bad regarding PMC's in Iraq.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Boy-Rules-Americas-Mercenaries-ebook/dp/B001M5JV98/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1458860678&sr=1-1&keywords=big+boy+rules

Like everything, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I'm not defending everything the BW has done, and there are more reputable companies like Triple Canopy, but this idea that ALL Blackwater employees are blood thirsty lions devouring sheep everywhere they go is just laughable.

Unbelievably, Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder, implying that the killing was both willful and premeditated. In order to believe this, one must believe that this was somehow all planned by Slatten, which is ridiculous.

Look, I’m not going to pretend that I know all of the details about this case, because I wasn’t there. But to throw these guys in the middle of a combat zone, and then expect perfection, is absurd. Because that’s what this is: Our government is asking them to be perfect, which is impossible in war.

So the U.S. State Department abandoned their contractors to be prosecuted. What about their supervisors at the state department? What about the Regional Security Officers? What about the people responsible for putting them in that situation to begin with? Where are the consequences for them? As usual, the shit sandwich rolls downhill and the guys at the bottom are the only ones who get to take a big bite.

Ironically, the same people, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton included, who were so critical of Blackwater, continued to push contracts to the company under a different name. This proves how much we’ve come to rely on the private and flexible services offered by modern-day PMCs and how effective they were at keeping US HVT's safe (including ambassadors, CIA agents, heads of state, etc).

One mistake in Baghdad in 2007 meant that you, your client, and everyone else in the car was dead. Say what you will about Blackwater: Under their watch, they never lost an American diplomat, which is more than we can say for the rest of the State Department.

Edit: You'll notice nothing ever came from this 2009 report by Scahill, or the Times or the Post. 7 years later and nothing. All were grasping at some very thin straws. Furthermore, the CIA has designated authorized teams that do this type of work, that receive complete top cover, including the Ground Branch teams in the Special Activities Division and the guys at JSOC. They have no need for Blackwater to do this kind of work. Or they can "rent" Delta or ST6, so the entire idea that they needed Blackwater to run kill missions is kind of ridiculous.

Seconded. He spent his early years as a journalist for Democracy Now, and they've also done a great job reporting on Blackwater.

Jeremy Scahill also put out a book about Blackwater. Terrifying is putting it mildly.

>On September 16, 2007, machine gun fire erupted in Baghdad's Nisour Square, leaving seventeen Iraqi civilians dead, among them women and children. The shooting spree, labeled “Baghdad's Bloody Sunday,” was neither the work of Iraqi insurgents nor U.S. soldiers. The shooters were private forces working for the secretive mercenary company, Blackwater Worldwide.

>This is the explosive story of a company that rose a decade ago from Moyock, North Carolina, to become one of the most powerful players in the “War on Terror.” In his gripping bestseller, award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill takes us from the bloodied streets of Iraq to hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to the chambers of power in Washington, to expose Blackwater as the frightening new face of the U.S. war machine.

TPS predates Six Sigma and Lean Production. Lean actually came out of TPS. As they show in the video, Lean can be applied to pretty much any process. Toyota uses it for manufacturing, here they apply it in a food bank, and it is also widely used in software development.

Notice how they apply Value Stream Mapping. They start by looking at what is happening, and listing all the steps that add value, and those that do not. Putting food in a box adds value, running around to get the stuff does not add value and is waste. By eliminating waste they can reduce the takt time from 3 minutes to 11 seconds.

Another important aspect of TPS is respect for people. In its entire history, Toyota has never laid off any (salaried) workers during hard times. Instead it uses the free time to invest in kaizen.

In this case, respect for people means giving back to the American people, because the USA helped rebuild Japan after WW2.


If you want to learn more about TPS, go read Toyota Production System: Beyond Large Scale Production, written by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System.

I can also recommend The Toyota Way and The Toyota Way To Lean Leadership. These are a bit more recent and an excellent insight in the Toyota way of working.

The Toyota Way. It's like an Industrial Engineers Bible nowadays.

• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H.W. Brands
  
  
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by Alan Brinkley
  
  
• The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume I, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  
• The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935 The Age of Roosevelt, Volume II, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  
• The Politics of Upheaval: 1935-1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
  
  And to understand the Great Depression better (which is important):
  
  
• Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed

The Glock company has done a great job with their culture, image, and marketing. It might have something to do with the fact that many PDs use the Glock as their service weapon, so the officers buy Glocks as their off-duty weapon and word-of-mouth takes it from there. New gun buyers see that so many people have Glocks, so they assume it's a reliable/good gun to buy. I think there's an entire book written about Glock culture. - Edit: The book http://www.amazon.com/Glock-The-Rise-Americas-Gun/dp/0307719952

GL on your qualifying! Don't get "Glock thumb."

Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper (May 2015)
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X/

You're doing great for someone in only a month!

Hardware wallet, not trusting exchanges, not panic selling. All good stuff :). If you're up for it, I highly recommend learning about the technology and ecosystem as much as you can.

A good place to start is Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. Bonus points if you find a site that will accept payment for it in Bitcoin.

I helped him a bit when he first came to Tokyo back in early 2014. He started working on "Digital Gold" back then. I really liked the book. Now is the time for him to work on his new book! https://www.amazon.co.jp/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

I have a few, not all specifically about marketing but related to business, growth, customer experience, etc.

• The Lean Startup
  
• Don't Make Me Think
  
• Good to Great

The Toyota Way is great engineering management book and a good introduction to Lean Thinking.

Check out a book called "What The Doormouse Said". It's about the development of computers, but it talks a lot about the drug culture & the drugs our computer scientists were taking.

First I ever heard of him was from a book called "what the dormouse said"

Interesting man, interesting life, great contributor to computing.
http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769

Much of this has been detailed in the book titled Glock - The Rise of America's Gun. It was a decent read and interesting look into Gaston's personal life. I had expected the book to highlight Gaston as a stand up man. My view of his firearms is far different than his character.

http://www.amazon.com/Glock-The-Rise-Americas-Gun/dp/0307719952

It is very interesting having read the book to see Helga Glock's lawsuit updated in the news.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein

Really interesting read about LTCM's blowup in 1998, especially in hindsight as much of the issues they faced relate to the 2008 financial crisis (dependence on complex derivatives, high leverage, and overconfidence).

The Quants: How a New of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson

Ties in well with the book above because it is about guys doing a lot of the same stuff and many of them getting burned doing it.

Monkey Business: Swinging through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe and Peter Troob

This book is one of the main reasons I was turned off from pursuing a career in investment banking. It's a fascinating glimpse into the industry though.

Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein

This book has nothing to do with business, but it is one of the craziest true stories I have ever read, and I feel that I need to recommend it to others.

Actually, you should check out Flashboys by Michael Lewis. The algos are not picking winning stocks, they're buying stocks at one price, then turning around and immediately selling them at a higher price. Middle men, as it were.

The book this is excerpted from looks good. Another excellent, and better known book on the topic is Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, which is a #1 New York Times bestseller.

The book in the Salon article may be just as good as the bestselling one, but published a few months later. At any rate, Salt, Sugar, Fat is the one that defines the discussion on the topic.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292

A great book on the history and origins (model trains?! Yup!) of the microcomputer revolution is Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely. I highly recommend it.

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation-Expanded Edition

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277

Hi /r/techsin101,

I have a few resources that don't match exactly what you're looking for, but were interesting non-the-less.

• Founders at work, a book by one of the core people at Y-Combinator: http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1430210788
  
• Bootstrapping stories: https://37signals.com/bootstrapped
  
• A bit dry, but fascinating if you have the mind for it, a review of the SBIR Program (a government program that gives grants between 150k and 750k to small businesses) http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11929.html
  
• browse medium, there's thousands of stories there

Some would say I read too much, but I really enjoyed:

founders at work: Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. (This is one of my favorite books ever!)

the art of the start:Kawasaki provides readers with GIST-Great Ideas for Starting Things-including his field-tested insider's techniques for bootstrapping, branding, networking, recruiting, pitching, rainmaking, and, most important in this fickle consumer climate, building buzz.

the innovator's dilemma: Focusing on “disruptive technology,” Christensen shows why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, The Innovator’s Dilemma presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.



And in terms of getting your life together to the point where you are responsible enough to lead others, I would highly suggest Getting Things Done by David Allen

If any of you want to read about this more, pick up Michael Lewis' Flash Boys. It explains Aleynikov in the context of high frequency trading, which is a really, really fucked up practice.

Probably a lot of readers of /r/water have read Cadillac Desert.

I own a copy of, and have made two false starts reading, The King Of California as recommend by the anonymous author of the blog On The Public Record.

I highly recommend A Great Aridness, a worthy heir to Cadillac Desert.

Also on my to-read list is Rising Tide. I would like to find a book that does for the Great Lakes what Marc Reisner did for water in the American West with his book Cadillac Desert.

A few things I've read this year that have little to do with water:

• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
  
• The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
  
• The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2
  
• The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
  
• Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government
  
  EDIT: Oh, and Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt

Paying for order flow is a perverse incentive, read http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393244660

Spread is less important than the fully-loaded price, taking into consideration all fees, not just trading fees but deposit/withdrawal fees as well.

Coinbase is doing it right.

I'm not saying this to be argumentative - but that is a very difficult comparison to make. Obesity is certainly not a positive thing - these people are losing decades off their lifespans. And it's not because of poor choices exactly, there is a scientific formula that harnesses the right combination of sugar, salt, and fat that triggers pleasure centers in your brain without delivering nutrients - to chemically induce addiction. They discovered this in 1975. look at what happened immediately afterward.

It's quickly becoming a global problem. Worldwide obesity has doubled since 1980. England is already there today.

I could be wrong but I believe this is from Bob Cringely's fantastic PBS special Triumph of the Nerds

He also wrote a book called Accidental Empires which is as equally fantastic. Bob, not his real name, was something like employee #13 at Apple and wrote for Infoworld for many years and was able to sit down and talk with all the big players in a very candid manner.

Nazis used census data (particularly 1933 and 1939), birth records and the most recent tabulation technologies (provided by IBM through its German subsidiary) to identify and isolate the "racial Jews." This book by Edwin Black tells how this happened and documents IBM's involvement with the Nazi regime.

To anyone interested in the history of that battle, I'd recommend Console Wars.

I like ETH a lot more than BTC, but am going to come to BTC's defense here because I disagree with some of your points.

>I've seen a few people argue that BTC is an excellent SoV because it's up thousands of percent in 5 years. But that makes zero sense to me..

This also makes zero sense to me. BTC is not a SoV simply because the price has generally been appreciating over time. It will be a SoV in the future because of predictable monetary policy enforced at the protocol level.

>So then it became a 'Store of Value'...

The SoV/digital gold narrative has been around for a while, dating back well before the late 2017 bubble (e.g. this book from early 2015).

I think BCH is closer to fulfilling the promises of digital cash with fast txns with low fees. But fast txns with low fees for a currency whose only purpose is to be spent (i.e. no incentive to hold, like what there will be with ETH) presents pretty poor tokenomics unless it can actually replace fiat (obviously very difficult in the short term), especially when compared to a model where the whole point is to hold and not really use your BTC for anything (enforced through increasing scarcity and, like it or not, slow txns with high fees that incentivize people to treat BTC like digital gold). So what we've really learned from 2017 is that the SoV narrative is worth a lot more than the digital cash narrative, despite the fact that it is undermining some of the principles from the initial vision.

>Since it has become a SoV it has had only 7 months out of the last 21 months (since Dec 17) where it has been trading above $10k.. so how does that at all prove that it is a viable SoV??

BTC is not supposed to be a SoV right now. I generally disregard any person who tries to insinuate that increases in BTC's price can be attributed to the same flight to safety that drives up gold and bond prices (at least, at this point in time).

The value of BTC as a SoV is inversely correlated to the value of BTC as a lucrative investment. In other words, by the time BTC actually begins to act as a viable store of value, its price will be much higher than it is now.

I remember reading Good to Great back in college business class about these transitions in business. Pretty interesting.

you should read the toyota way, it's one of the smartest run corporations in existence... so much so that when the 'accelerator problems' that didn't actually exist appeared that summer, i figured it was bunk, or would be fixed within a couple months.

What exactly do you want to pursue? Which field? What type of position?

I ask because in my job, and in my previous job, I use maybe one-tenth of what I learned in college. And, like you, I graduated with a 2.9 GPA, nor did I take the FE (and I never plan to). I don't believe this to be a negative for you.

If you want to do something technical like design work, then you should keep fresh with Solidworks (and other modeling programs) as well as analysis software (Cosmos and other FEA software, Matlab, etc.).

If you want to do something like manufacturing, just read up on manufacturing in books, like The Toyota Way and maybe do the things listed above for design, just so you can keep it on your resume.

And based on your comments below about wanting to "be a leader"... you have to start at the bottom, I'm sorry to say. You can't expect to just walk into a company and be someone to look up to within your first week, month, or even year there. You're going to spend many months (and maybe more) just learning - learning about the culture, learning about the industry, learning about the technical stuff, learning about the product or clients, etc. Then you will do things more on your own, rather than for someone. Then after a good while of doing that, you may have proved yourself to move up the ranks. That's just how it goes.

If you want a great book about computing in the heady sixties and seventies, I highly recommend John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said

It had a couple of downvotes, no big deal. The comment doesn't even touch on an adequate defense of Walmart though. If you are at all interested, I would suggest this book for a really informative read.

I never shopped at Walmart, until I read this book. One thing it really touches on is Walmart's absolute laser focus on the customer, which, as a customer, is something I can really get behind. It is possible to get really great deals on a variety of items at Walmart. I think it is a pretty wonderful store.

That Walmart is exploitative is arguable. On the one hand, it does pay bad wages, fights unions tooth and nail and doesn't do well in terms of benefits. On the other hand, as I alluded to above, Walmart is entering a voluntary arrangement with consenting adults, paying a legal wage for a legal job. It isn't at all clear to me what people who oppose Walmart want to happen. Force Walmart to pay employees more? This will drive up costs, that will in turn reduce the quality of life for poor people and/or it will cause Walmart to reduce headcount, close stores or use automation instead of workers. This will help some people (probably not current employees if wages are raised by too much as they could be outcompeted by incoming laborers) while hurting a wide variety of others.

Many redditors have a bad habit of reading a news article and believing that they are fully informed on a subject. "Oh, Walmart mistreats employees? I see that headline a lot, Walmart must suck" without ever really deeply considering the problem or getting real information (beyond a pulp news piece).

I'm sure there are some good books on the matter, and hopefully someone else in this sub will have some recommendations for you as well.

Politics and economics make terrible bedfellows, but if you would like to know about policy making some historical books would probably be in order.

Lords of Finance

Piketty's Capital

Sorkin's Too Big to Fail

And most readers of this sub know that nearly anything by Michael Lewis is good, if a bit dramatized.


Really though, economic policy making is done mostly by politicians, or politically motivated economists. The politicians don't have a clue about economics, and the economists tend to be picked by the politicians for saying what the politicians like to hear.

This is more a political question than a finance question. The guys in finance don't really care who's in office as long as regulatory capture is still around.

The Idea Factory is an excellent history of Bell Labs.

The Carterfone was acoustically coupled to the phone, not electrically. This is why early modems required you to put the phone in a special cradle rather than just plug into it.

While the carterfone ruling was indeed a landmark, it was a regulatory revision in the 70s that led to the development of the RJ11 jack, and ultimately the breakup of the Bell system in the late 80s that led to private phone ownership being viable

If you want to know more, here are some good books on the phone system:

• Exploding the Phone
  
• The Idea factory

You might like these pictures of the (an?) original, taken at (Nokia) Bell Labs. More dust. https://imgur.com/a/wPYNY3z


We owe so much to them (Cell phones, Satellites, C, Unix, etc etc). For those interested,this is a nice book on the topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797

I read The Master Switch (mentioned in the article) last week and I can't recommend it enough. It's a great look at how we got here.

If you're interested in this, I highly recommend The Master Switch by Tim Wu.

> Hi--I am considering law school and want to focus my studies on LLCs, Corporations, wealth and liability protection, etc...

You are an undergrad? If you want to be a lawyer, study an actual applied topic, now, while you can - and that means not government or english. Economics, computer science, any natural science, most social sciences, history, anthropology. Law is a tool set that without historical context, knowledge of the world at large, horse sense and business savvy is almost completely useless. So unless you are learning actual things, law school isn't going to teach them to you. If you are already out of college, it is not too late. You just have to teach yourself.

I'm exceedingly lucky to have the job I have. And I would not recommend entering this law job market. And one of the primary reasons I actually got this position is before even entering law school I had pretty deep knowledge about the types of business I cared about - I had a background in software and a very high level of financial sophistication for an early twenty something.

If you really want to go to law school, I have to say, it is not a very good investment unless you get in to a t14, get offered a near complete scholarship, have a very unique angle into an industry that you have a pre-existing matching skill set for and the passion to match, or a combination of all of the above. If you are lacking all three of the above, your money and time is far, far, far better spent doing other things.

And if you really want to learn about:

> Corporations, wealth and liability protection, etc...

You won't learn a damn lick of it in law school. You will learn the casebook method. And you will learn all about regulations, formalities, and a whole bunch of shit. But if you are interested in business strategy, which is what it sounds like you are, you can start learning about that now. Start by reading non-fiction business books. And I don't mean bullshit strategy, management or advice books. Use those for kindling. I mean read books about actual businesses, written by serious investigative journalists and businessmen. Here's a short list to get you started:

• Business Adventures. Bill Gates' favorite business book. 'Nuff said.
  
  
• Liar's Poker, The Big Short and Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis. You will get a real crash course in wall street.
  
  
• When Genius Failed. The story of Long Term Capital Management, the first catastrophic failure of a major hedge fund, that nearly imperiled the world economy.
  
  
• Conspiracy of Fools / The Smartest Guys in the Room. About Enron. Insane. Completely fucking insane. Learn what they did. Learn why it was wrong. Don't do it.
  
  
• Black Swan. About the most recent crash. If between Taleb and Lewis you have any faith left in the wisdom of wall street, I have a bridge to sell you.
  
  Just get started, and keep reading. Read about real world businesses - don't read guidebooks about how to do X. See what is in the world and go read it. Are there publicly traded companies that you find interesting? Log on to Edgar and read their public filings. They tell you every goddamn detail of how the business is run, the strategy, the risks they face and how they choose to mitigate them.
  
  Once you get started on this stuff, you will be drawn in and be able to keep up your own research paths. Follow the people on twitter that you find interesting - a lot of VCs are very vocal. Many publish reading lists. Look them up.
  
  But for the love of god, don't think law school will teach you any of this. Corporate law, securities law and corporate finance will teach you the technicalities of all sorts of bullshit you will likely never apply, and, if you do, you will be as good at it as you would be at basketball after having spent three years studying the rules without ever having touched a ball.
  
  Good luck, dotcomrade.

Anyone who grew up in this era should read Console Wars by Blake Harris

Read this book. It's all about why Sega was great for a time. Plus it's a really good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

Furðulega fáir sem vita að það má þakka þessum íslending fyrir Playstation. Samkvæmt þessari bók átti hann líka stóran hlut í að koma leikjum eins og Wipeout á framfæri.

• “Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies” by Andreas Antonopoulos
  
  
• “The Internet of Money” by Andreas Antonopoulos
  
  
• “The Internet of Money (Volume 2)” by Andreas Antonopoulos
  
  
• "Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and Dapps" by Gavin Wood and Andreas Antonopoulos (Available for Preorder)
  
  
• “Digital Gold” by Nathaniel Popper
  
  
• “Cryptoassets” by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar
  
  But, the internet is also your best resource.
  

I would like to do that. How do you set up the auto buy? I'm relatively new to the community, so I don't know the acronyms or any of the mechanics really. All I've really done is read this book.

> Need to have good source material to read and preferably academic reference

Read the book Digital Gold. It's a detailed history on the formation and history of bitcoin (basically everything 2015 and previous.). It's written by a New York Times reporter so it's from a reliable source. It's also amazingly well written, it basically reads like a novel.

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

Go read a book: https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

I read "Digital Gold." Would highly recommend, as well as "This Machine Kills Secrets." Both fantastic exploratory introduction works to the community by top-notch, easy-to-understand journalists who turn the crypto revolution into the fascinating, potentially world-changing story that it is through their writing.

• Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money https://www.amazon.com/dp/006236250X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_yHSqzb7NB84J0

• This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers https://www.amazon.com/dp/0142180491/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_7HSqzbMTVSMFP

This is basically the classic "Good vs Great" argument that CEOs love to talk about in business.

Check out the book- Good to Great.

"Good To Great" is a great read on what fantastic leadership looks like.

While I'd be cautious to form opinions based on one article, it seems to coincide with the findings of the 10-year research project "Good To Great" underwent... namely that the best CEOs aren't motivated by money, and that internally vetting successors is crucial to a company's sustainability.

I recommend these two books. really helped me with my management style and allowed me to see problems from different perspective

Asking the right questions:a guide to critical thinking

Toyota Way Mangement Principles

Just wanted to make some counterpoints to what you said.

• There's a book What the Doormouse Said which makes the claim that the culture of the area did have an affect on it becoming a tech hub. It cites difficulties many startups had in procuring venture capital from New York companies, but people in the Bay were more open to new ideas and were willing to take those chances.
  
  
• I love the weather in SF. It's never humid, never freezing cold, and never unbearably hot. Also the east side of the city rarely experiences fog.
  
  
• There's plenty of foliage in the neighborhoods. Not really sure why you felt the need to mention this.
  
  
• SF is as interesting as NY or Chicago IMO. There's plenty of art, culture, and events.
  
  
• It's still the liberal mecca of the US, but if that's not your thing, you're gonna have a bad time.
  

To tag onto that with:

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

I found it an interesting read on the counterculture influences.

Also, any of the BOFH series.

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I really enjoyed What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the PC Industry.

...you do know that hardware sales in this day and age aren't based on consumer pre-orders, right? Like, not at all?

Microsoft doesn't even get consumer money for these products (unless bought through the MS store). Generally speaking, when you buy a product from a store your money does not go to the manufacturer of said product. The manufacturer was already paid by the store's national branch months or maybe even a year ahead of time. Your money goes to the store's parent company.

And so launch decisions are based on what big box stores think and only trickle-down to what you, the consumer think. Especially so when you consider the fact that a minority of gamers are actually on or using Reddit, Twitter, et all, and so those reviews are... statistically speaking... misleading. Also, big box stores are crap at gathering statistics from social.

Which is not to say consumer reaction can't impact re-up orders (which are also critical), but that's a murky territory done on a case-by-case basis. Suffice it to say, "the internet getting angry" isn't a sure victory.

You should really grab an Econ book and flip to the section marked "big box stores and their impact on sales." Or something to that effect. Edit: Or, if you don't want to read an Econ book or sit in on an investor's meeting where these things get discussed -- and I can't blame you because both are boring as all hell -- there's a book called The Walmart Effect that discusses this phenomenon. Additionally, some news shows like 60 minutes and Frontline have discussed how large chains impact manufacturing and marketing decisions. All of those might be more interesting.

Tl;Dr You're looking at the wrong pre-order numbers.

I'm repeating myself, but Pulitzer Prize winning "Lords of Finance" comes to mind.

http://www.amazon.ca/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800

Apocalyptica covered Sabaton's Fields of Verdun before Sabaton's version even came out. Now that's some serious collaboration by musicians. Props to the two bands. I like their work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDJpL_PbGg

This year marks 100 years since the Paris Peace Conference. An event that began in January and was signed in June, the conference set the groundwork for a century of world events ranging from the sequel to The War to End All Wars to anti-colonial movements & nationalism. Fun fact: signing the treaty at the Palace of Versailles was no accident; Prussia had France sign the 1871 treaty ending the Franco-Prussian war at the Palace of Versailles as well, so the 1919 treaty was a multilayered political statement by the French. (This also included a provision that Germany return Alsace-Lorraine, which was acquired in 1871. That territory has a fascinating linguistic and cultural history since it's a border province.)

This is a hell of an important centennial.

> “If we aim at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare say, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the later German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation.” ~John Maynard Keynes

Btw, if anybody is interested in the Treaty of Versailles, I highly recommend Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed for its portrayal of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and its economic & political effects on Europe and America.

I know I'm almost two months early, but I have ... expectations ... for how POTUS will handle 28 June 2019.

>Companies that make robots and 3d printers are not massively valued on the stock market despite the very low long term interest rates right now.

My sense is that the private sector is typically not very good about investing in the development of technologies that aren't likely to pay off in the fairly near-term future, that's why basic research, and many really novel technologies like the internet, are often government-funded in their early stages. There are some exceptions like AT&T's historical Bell Labs but that kind of thing seems rare enough to be more like an "exception that proves the rule"--see this article which notes "Companies have moved away, however, from the Bell Labs and Xerox PARC model that afforded research scientists in the private sector more time (and funding) to focus on research that may not have direct application, at least in the short term."

As a matter of history, do you think it's typically true that the companies most involved in technologies that end up having massive economic effects, like the personal computer, are massively valued more than say 10 years before their impact becomes obvious? (leaving out examples of companies involved in major new technologies that were already very profitable for other reasons before the new technology was developed, like IBM long before the personal computer)

I'm currently reading a book about how several different tech industries developed, from phone and radio to TV, movies, and the internet. It's called The Master Switch. It's not as much about how the tech was created, but more about how it became mainstream.

That's all quite easy to google, or consider giving this book a read:

https://www.amazon.com/Glock-Americas-Paul-M-Barrett/dp/0307719952

https://www.amazon.com/Glock-Americas-Paul-M-Barrett/dp/0307719952

Wow thanks for the gold and the sticky, glad to see other people find this interesting too. Not gonna lie I'm also pretty excited about getting tweeted by MachinePlanet.

It's easy to draw parallels between any 2 things, but the volume of similarities here goes beyond that. I reread Bad Blood recently and didn't see nearly this much overlap. The main takeaway is that both Enron and Tesla started out with good intentions but their arrogance wouldn't allow them to admit when things needed to change.

Anyone interested in this type of thing should definitely check out The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Here's a few other recommendations that cover business failures. And of course if you haven't read Bad Blood yet do that as soon as possible, can't recommend it highly enough.

​

Billion Dollar Whale: How an opportunist stole 2 billion dollars from Malaysia's government and blew the money on parties with Leo DiCaprio

https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Whale-Fooled-Hollywood/dp/1478947993

​

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street: The rise and fall of Bear Stearns

https://www.amazon.com/House-Cards-Hubris-Wretched-Excess/dp/0767930894

​

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management: How a hedge fund run by geniuses, including 2 Nobel prize winners, lost 4 billion of capital in just a few years.

https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259

​

Fatal Risk: A Cautionary Tale of AIG's Corporate Suicide: How AIG ended up needing an $85 billion bailout during the housing crisis

https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Risk-Cautionary-Corporate-Suicide/dp/0470889802

The lower your ping rate and less hops to the exchange API's the faster you can trade. Someone quicker may be gaining the upper-hand on order fulfillment.

Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393244660

No but I just read Micheal Lewis's new book "Flash Boys" about late 2000's Wall Street adoption into technology, and a significant chunk of it had to do with programmers and algorithms. Flash, as in milliseconds. Really crazy world that stock traders live in. Good luck and stay out of trouble around those guys!

Link to the book. 2000+ reviews, I guess I am not the only one that liked it!
http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393244660

If you enjoyed The Big Short, check out Michael Lewis' latest book Flash Boys. It profiles "a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post–financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks." They then set out to create a fairer stock market. It's a really fast-paced, fascinating read.

Same author. Guy also wrote The Flash Boys, a book on high frequency trading firms. The Big Short is what this movie is based on. Michael Lewis is really knowledgeable of the financial industry.

You should read Flash Boys by Micheal Lewis!

I see that Intelligent Investor by Graham has already been posted but that's certainly a good one. However it can be a bit dry for most readers and if you would prefer something a bit fresher I would read Deep Value by Toby Carlisle. He discusses and critiques Graham's teachings along with the strategies of other notable value investors such as Buffet, Icahn, Greenblatt and many others all in a more modern tone. It's been the bible for my own value investing strategies.

Other books to look into are:

• Dhandho Investor by Monish Pabrai (lots of simple strategies and examples for small risk - big payoff investments)
  
• Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier (good for understanding the discipline and mental state of a good value investor)
  
• Michael Lewis books such as Big Short and Flash Boys (These are less for learning investing and more for generating your own interest in finance with some fantastic writing. It's also good for learning what the reality of the markets and Wall Street are.)

This was read by Michael Pollan who wrote a book (The Omnivore's Dilemma) which is a pretty good narrative and comparison in what actually happens in industrial food (from the grain, to the meat, to the table), organic industry, sustainable farming and hunting/gathering your own food. It's well researched and very well written.

Another book that's also similar in topic, but specific to the history and current operations of industrial foods is Salt, Sugar, Fat. I would recommend both.

Edit: I think a lot of people are missing the point of the video. It's not about industrial food = bad. It's about having a relationship with the food that you eat, to treat it as an experience rather than calories. Seriously, try cooking! It's very rewarding when you happen to make something delicious and enjoy it by yourself or with others.

There are a lot of scientists who get paid a lot of money to design processed foods such that people will eat them more often and eat more in a sitting. It's more than just "X ingredient is/isn't addictive," there is serious research being put into how to make people crave food, and that's happening because there's so much money to be made from selling those foods. It's not an excuse for being overweight, at the end of the day you're still a human with willpower and the ability to pay attention to what you eat and exercise, but junk food is absolutely designed to be addictive (keeping in mind that "addicted" doesn't necessarily mean "physically dependent.")

If interested (because it really is fascinating), I highly recommend "Salt, Sugar, Fat" by Michael Moss. Great read if you're interested in how that (figurative and sometimes literal) sausage gets made, or just want to have a better idea of the health aspects of processed foods.

Here are some that I enjoyed. However, it's difficult to make a specific recommendation without knowing what you're specifically trying to learn. These are all quite good though.

Death by Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

Faster, Higher, Stronger: How Sports Science Is Creating a New Generation of Superathletes--and What We Can Learn from Them

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Hard Drive by James Wallace and Jim Erickson is really good.

Amazon Link

The NT kernel was derived from VAX/VMS and it's mostly the work of Dave Cutler, an ex-Digital engineer hired by Gates to work on a new 32-bit Kernel. (http://www.microsoft.com/about/technicalrecognition/david-cutler.aspx)
If you want to get a feel of OpenVMS, telnet to jack.vistech.net. (http://jack.vistech.net/JACK.shtml)
Looks UNIX-y but has little in common.

The kernel in Windows 9x was a toy. There was no memory isolation between processes and no hardware abstraction layer (HAL). I could talk directly to your Sound Blaster from my poorly written Win32 game. If my game didn't step on someone's else's stack, it surely mishandled something in the hardware and there you have it, BSOD became pop culture. Oh yes, and i could overwrite memory in kernel space. Sorry, i just overwrote the I/O scheduler with my highscore, let's BSOD and call it a day. First OS to address this in personal computing space was OS/2, followed by Windows NT 3.1.

I highly recommend picking up a copy of "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire" (http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292) if you have an interest in OS development history, it's an epic adventure with just the right amount of technical bits thrown in to keep it very entertaining.

The Microsoft Research IPv6 stack was released after NT 4.0 shipped. Source code is publicly available and for the "historian programmer" makes for a very entertaining afternoon. (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/b92f7517-a39e-4c51-968e-079e7178807e/)

As for Firefox and its IPv6 support, my screenshot shows Firefox 2.0.0.20, which not only supports v6 but it prefers it over v4. They were just ahead of their time.

Why is there a will? Just like some watch football (i should probably say soccer, shouldn't i?) with a passion, i poke around at computing history trying to figure out where it all came from. It's my thing.

And, going a little off-track here, if anyone wonders (probably not), the "Hide file extensions" checkbox was there in NT4 and was ticked by default, just like in Windows Server 2012 R2 today.
http://i.imgur.com/XTczvv1.png
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bq-K8XgIAAAn3f9.png:large

Some things never change.

If memory serves this book at least had some mention of Gabe during his time at Microsoft: http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292

There was a Reddit post of it a while back I think, I can't remember if it was even this sub though.

Edit: Found it, it may or may not be useful in your paper: http://www.reddit.com/r/Gaben/comments/2cvijb/what_it_takes_to_become_gaben_xpost_rgaming/

Reading all of these three books will provide a very well-rounded over-view of these (and many other) events. They are all very quick reads and quite fascinating:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_19/182-4895270-7226860?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=fumbling%20the%20future&sprefix=fumbling+the+future%2Caps%2C410

http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Competition/dp/0887308554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410918861&sr=1-1&keywords=accidental+empires

http://www.amazon.com/Insanely-Great-Macintosh-Computer-Everything/dp/0140291776/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410918880&sr=1-1&keywords=insanely+great

Definitely this. And look what I found.

Followed by Nerds 2.0.

Also, I highly recommend the book: Accidental Empires.

IBM is the prime example of a company that did work for Nazi Germany. It became especially famous for the 2000 book IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black. It is must reading for anyone interested in Jewish History or Holocaust studies.

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Edwin-Black/dp/0914153277

Many Jews, my parents included, have a list in their house of companies they won't do business with due to their dealings with Nazi Germany. Some make exceptions for companies that have tried to owe up and make donations to Jewish/Israeli charities. Some do not however.

Infamously, many Jews confuse the German coffee maker company Krups, started in the 1950s, and the Nazi Ammunition company Krupps.

> Did everyone forget how IBM used technology to facilitate genocide during WW2?

Not everyone has read Edwin Black's comprehensive research on the subject.

It's a cross-promotional brought to you by the people that sell you both the soda and the drugs for the diabeetus.

In a related vein, read this book

Try the book Salt. Fat, Sugar.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/1400069807

I wouldn't say I really buy into the idea of any kind of wholesale "obesity apologia" like I think you're referring to, but my stance is sort of middle of the road in that I no longer can accept that "personal self-control" is the only thing that has to be discussed.

Now that's not to say I don't think it's extremely important on the individual level, because it is. But a friend loaned me their copy of Salt Sugar Fat, a new book about the food industry in America, and I've only read a bit so far, but my takeaway is that the industry has a role to play in all of this and it can't be denied.

You read these stories about how much time and money food conglomerates have poured into researching how to make unhealthy foods as cheap, addictive, and unbelievably satisfying, and you can't help but feel like the people in charge of these massive companies that have the power to influence the eating habits of millions should feel compelled to act more responsibly in what they're producing. I mean, I know some people would call the comparison extreme, but it really does seem like the tobacco industry all over again to me. These companies are selling products that they know are awful for you in excess, and yet they are willingly designing them to make it so that people eat them in excess.

Bottom line, yeah, people should be looking out for themselves and nobody deserves a pass for not taking action to keep themselves healthy. But it doesn't help anyone that these multi-billion dollar companies have a vested interest in making them fat to line their own pockets.

Have him read this book. My hammy-in-training and super picky eater husband read it and he's down 20lbs in the past 4 months. It can be a real eye-opener for someone who is a critical thinker. I call it the fat-logic detroyer.

I love "How they did it" stories. They are so inspiring and as an entrepreneur myself, they remind me to keep pushing even when times are hard.

A couple of resources you could use (and I recommend that every current and future entrepreneur takes a look at)

1. The book Founders at Work --- The stories of how the Paypal co-founder foound himself passed out on the floor on the day of the big launch and so many others like these were SUPER INSPIRING
   
   
2. A YouTube channel called This Week in Startups --- Jason Calacanis has interviewed almost every founder of every tech startup in the last 10 years. I watch this show a couple of times a week and I have always learned something that I could use in my own startup

Founders at Work is a great read. It's first-person stories from people who founded great companies.

http://www.foundersatwork.com/

Edit to add amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem-Solution/dp/1430210788

>September saw a spasm of retrospectives on the 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis. Lost in all of the hoopla was the 20-year anniversary of another collapse — that of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in September 1998. In many ways, that episode was a precursor to the next crisis.
>
>This privately held investment firm believed — incorrectly, we later learned — that it had come up with a new and more profitable way to invest capital. And for a while, it did: Returns soared, with annualized gains after fees of 21, 43 and 41 percent in its first three years. The team had the appearance, according to journalist Roger Lowenstein, of being a “$100 billion money-making juggernaut.”
>
>Although the firm’s managers were brilliant — two future Nobel winners had major roles in developing its investing strategies — they made some not-very-smart decisions.
>
>This is what happens when too much risk and too much leverage meets too little humility. As detailed by Lowenstein in the masterful book “When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management,” the telling of the LTCM story reads like a crime thriller. But even more important, the story contained many of the themes that played out in the financial crisis.
>
>The investment team at LTCM found many small, overlooked opportunities. Thus, it had an edge. But it was so small that it wouldn’t have created any worthwhile gains after expenses. The solution was leverage, and the key was managing the associated risk through hedging strategies.
>
>At its peak, LTCM held $124.3 billion of assets against equity of $4.72 billion, for a 26-to-1 leverage ratio.
>
>But let’s back up a bit and set the scene leading up to the firm’s collapse. Maybe it will seem familiar:
>
> • Falling interest rates led fund managers to reach for yield;
>
> • Asset managers searched the backwaters of finance for opportunities in exotic, illiquid credit markets;
>
> • A single firm amassed huge derivative positions;
>
> • Debt obligations of one firm intertwined with the rest of Wall Street, necessitating the involvement of the Federal Reserve.
>
>You know how this ends: It doesn’t take a whole lot of trades to go sour for a fund that’s levered 26-to-1 fund to go bust. If LTCM only had had a few million dollars in holdings, no one would have ever heard of it, and it would have quietly gone bankrupt. But all of those big brains attracted billions of dollars; leverage that up enough and it begins to smell like what we now call systemic risk. By the end of September 1998 as the firm’s trades unraveled, capital had shrunk to a mere $400 million while assets were still more than $100 billion, giving the fund an unsustainable leverage ratio of about 250-to-1.
>
>The towering leverage ratio and rapidly depleting equity meant an imminent bankruptcy. The Fed, under the guidance of Alan Greenspan, organized a group of 16 financial institutions to pony up $3.6 billion to keep LTCM afloat while the derivatives and illiquid holdings were unwound over time.
>
>In an email exchange, Lowenstein said that the implosion of LTCM had many of the hallmarks of a financial panic. “In 1998, it didn’t feel like a dry run” for 2007, he wrote. “It felt like the end of the world.”
>
>Lowenstein added that while the Fed’s rescue of LTCM worked to “soothe traders and numb investors,” it also taught the wrong lesson, namely that “the government would always be there” to help out in a crisis.
>
>“Modern finance remains overly complicated.” Lowenstein observed. “Speculation and bubbles are a regular part of markets. Government involvement and the occasional bailout is the default setting, rather than allowing market participants to suffer the consequences of their own actions when the pain would otherwise be too severe.”
>
>This was exactly the moral hazard that helped to create the financial crisis. If the collapse of a private hedge fund leads to a bailout, well then, the lesson here is make sure you are big enough, highly leveraged and intertwined with the rest of Wall Street.
>
>In a nutshell, Greenspan failed to understand the impact of private gains and socialized losses. In doing so, he set an awful precedent that to this day has not been corrected. 
>
>“We live in an age of bubbles, perforce of occasional crashes.” Lowenstein said. “The Fed was created as a lender of last resort, and we should expect that its services (at some point) will be called upon again.”
>
>It’s obvious that the lessons of LTCM were of no use in preventing the crisis that followed 10 years later. The same can probably be said of the main event in terms of the next crisis, I’m afraid.
>
>(Corrects Long-Term Capital Management’s assets in sixth paragraph and leverage ratio in sixth, eighth paragraphs. )

​

Wenn der Order Flow an HFT verkauft wird, heisst das nicht, dass der HFT ausführt, sondern auf die Information handeln kann. Legal ist es kein Frontrunning (das ja illegal ist, siehe wie Goldman Sachs in den 80ern und 90ern Geld verdient hat), sondern sie sind einfach faster to market als die Banken/normalen Trades.

Ich will jetzt nicht tiefer einsteigen und erklären wie HFT den Order Flow im Detail nutzen, aber ja, es ist Frontrunning :)

Dazu empfehle ich übrigens dieses Buch.

I'm currently reading a great book, Flash Boys , that goes into this. It's actually what got me researching and coming across this video. People were/are making millions from having this competitive edge, paying tens of millions to save literal nanoseconds.

I too am an outsider, and have no formal education/experience in the stock-market but this stuff is just so interesting!

• Here is the author of said book with the main character, Brad, debating with one of those who benefits from this speed
  
  
• Here is another video about the book and how all of this works. Super intriguing, will take you on a journey.
  
  
• Here is a tutorial on what "High Frequency Trading" is and how it works.
  
  
  

This book: Flash Boys provided a pretty incredible look at how things are setup and how we (the average, individual investor) is always going to be at a loss the way the system has been set-up.

If you want to know what's really happening read this, you'll be pissed by the end. https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393351599

​

​

> A limit order is an order to buy (or sell) at a specified price or better. A buy limit order (a limit order to buy) can only be executed at the specified limit price or lower. Conversely, a sell limit order (a limit order to sell) will be executed at the specified limit price or higher.

http://www.investopedia.com/university/intro-to-order-types/limit-orders.asp

 

We can start with a very simple answer to your question. It first depends on how much stock Albert is willing to buy and how much stock Steve is willing to sell.

 

Bids

10.52 200

10.53 500

 

If Steve puts in a sell order at 10.52 for 500 shares or fewer, he will be filled at 10.53. If Steve puts in a sell order for 600-700 shares, he will be filled at 10.53 for 500 shares and 10.52 for 200 shares.

The more complicated answer to your question depends on which exchange you route your order to and on which exchange the bids and offers exist. There's not just one "stock exchange" or two - Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange - but rather many places where bids and offers exist in the market.

 

Bids

10.52 200 ARCA

10.53 200 ARCA

10.53 100 BATS

10.53 300 EDGA

 

If Steve sends an order to sell 300 shares at 10.53 on EDGA, he will get filled on 300 shares from EDGA. If he sends an order to sell 500 shares on EDGA, he will get filled on 300 shares from EDGA and possibly be able to get the other 200 shares at 10.53. The reason this is so complicated is that high frequency traders are able to get to the other exchanges quicker than Steve's order is able to get from EDGA to ARCA and BATS to get the other stock. So we can only be sure that Steve's order will be filled in the size listed on the exchange to where he sends the order. This concept is explained in Flash Boys.

 

In essence, your questions are a bit too simplified because orders are placed with respect to a size, price, exchange, and a host of other properties. Some orders are even hidden!

 

TL;DR Steve's order will fill first at 10.53 for whatever stock he can get and then finish at 10.52 if there is enough stock there to finish the size on his order. Albert's order will fill in the converse. Buy limit allow you to purchase a stock at that price or lower. Sell limit orders allow you to sell stock at that price or higher.

Read this & this. It shows perspective from both sides of the aisle.

Hi Purge. Big fan of your stuff.

That aside, the human body (particularly the tongue) reacts very nicely to salts (required for basic neurological function/homeostasis), fats (mass-wise energy efficient, a trait inherited from our ancestors who ate fatty meats in large quantities when they could as a more abundant food source, in comparison to grains and fruits which originally required frequent foraging for. a point established by /u/alf666.), and sugars (glucose <--gluconeogenesis+cori cycle/glycolysis+krebs cycle--> ATP, required for virtually all functions in the body.)

Sugar in particular is interesting because typically it take a while for the body to pull glucose into the blood, which is then stored in the liver if in excess as glycogen(like a zip file for glucose). But until sugar levels in the blood rise high enough, the body is okay with eating more and more. Which is the problem with sodas and sugary snacks. Your body doesn't have the opportunity to say "It's time to stop." until its too late.

As a result, food companies (well, not just food companies but a good case in point) has used increasing quantities of salt, fat, and sugar in their products. It's just appealing to most humans, and caters to their basic physiological needs for this trifecta.

This is a good book as a reference.

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193

Also video with same author. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2auTOPUxE

Edit: Some additional detail.

I just read Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss and he has a chapter about Todd Putnam (the guy interviewed in the article). Putnam is a former Coke executive who went a South American country to promote Coke products and realized how unethical it all was. So he developed snack packs for baby carrots and is now doing this, taking what he learned from Coca Cola and applying it to healthy foods. Pretty cool stuff. I highly recommend the book.

Two books I have found very helpful are The Hungry Brain by Stephan Guyenet and Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. The Hungry Brain goes really in-depth into the neurobiology of how our non-conscious mind influences decisions and regulates eating behavior. The modern food environment triggers some very primitive responses in our brains and makes us want to eat far more than we should. Salt Sugar Fat is about the food industry’s part in that. Food companies (very understandably) want us to buy and eat as much as possible, and they spend an immense amount of time and money designing foods that tap into the brain circuits Guyenet talks about to get us to do it. Together the books have been pretty motivating, and I feel like knowing what’s going on in my head has helped me put together a way of eating that’s sustainable.

I should do a better job at archiving studies. Quite a few were posted within the last 6 months. I think this video provides a lot of medical evidence supporting fasting. Might also check out The Obesity Code book.

https://youtu.be/tIuj-oMN-Fk

IF Success Stories

Here are some recent people that had success with IF that posted recently. Seeing these real people experiencing life changing weight loss is pretty amazing!

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/dvt79a/i_qualified_for_my_600lb_life/
   
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/dtu85k/one_year_later_this_forum_has_helped_me_lose_100/
   
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/d3a0zb/i_have_been_doing_if_186_since_february_and_most/
   
4. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/ds2sll/tried_on_my_old_clothes_after_losing_220_lbs_2018/
   
5. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/drr6wt/from_november_4_2018_2224_to_november_4_2019_1456/
   
6. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/dkcpmc/july_2018_october_2019_keto_if_with_some_ef_65/
   
7. https://www.reddit.com/r/intermittentfasting/comments/d8wu28/down_170_something_in_13_months_every_day_is_a/
   
   Calorie Restricted CICO
   
   Why don't I think traditional calorie restricted diets (CICO) work? Because it has been the mantra for the past 40 years+. This was the result or a nationwide study:
   
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obesity_state_level_estimates_1985-2010.gif
   
   Our country is now 40% obese. You may be one of the few that have bucked the trend. But for most Americans, obesity is a worsening problem and people just can't control their weight. They want to, but don't have the tools.
   
   Opposition to Fasting
   
   Not everyone is in favor of reducing obesity. Because a lot of companies and people that run those companies make a lot of money by selling food, drugs, and services to the obese population. Be it sodas, cookies, cereal, chips ... insulin, statins, diet pills ... Dr visits, hospital stays, medical procedures ...
   
   The food industry makes a ton of money selling insanely expensive (relative to their cost to produce) foods designed to make people crave them. And they have plenty of money to influence medical research (which they definitely do) in their favor. Good studies are expensive. And its typically the food companies that fund such studies. And studies they approve and fund are 7x more likely to have favorable results for them. Studying fasting is not high on their lists of studies to fund - unless they introduce variables to try to give them an edge.
   
   One of the favorites is to have short term monitored studies. For example, two groups. One does IF and one does traditional calorie restricted diet. They eat exactly the same things. A month later they both lose the same amount of weight. Bingo - they're equally effective. But then you read in the notes that the IF folks remarked they weren't hungry and that the non-fasters complained they were constantly hungry. Is this relevant? I'd say that study proves IF is going to make it much easier to lose weight. Guess its all in the spin. And they headline is they are equally effective.
   
   Is the food industry just an innocent player providing safe healthy food to a nation? You might want to read this New York Times Bestseller from a few years back. Follow the link and click the look inside and read the first chapter for free.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193
   
   (TL;DR - They knew the their food is what makes children obese more than 6 years ago. They collaborated secretly and decided to ignore it because of the impact to their profits)
   
   Benefits
   
   People don't need a triple peer reviewed longitudinal falsifiable studies that definitively prove IF works to give it a try. If they need to lose weight, let them try it for a months or two. Doesn't work, what have they lost? It's free to try.
   
   The benefits don't end with losing weight. Look into autophagy. It might help prevent Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and cancer. And fasting makes your body do it. Fasting is anti-inflammatory. So many health issues are related to inflammation.
   
   Here's my story.
   
   

• lost 50 pounds in 5 months and maintained it for 9 months (so far)
  
• never get hungry
  
• eat big delicious meal every day til I'm full
  
• have a lot of energy and feel great
  
• exercise every day because I can and my body wants to
  
• Dr is thrilled. My resting pulse is in the 40s and My LDL dropped by over 60 points into the normal range. (He was so surprised he wanted to understand what I did. I explained while is pudgy nurse listened in. A few months later the pudgy nurse was slim and trim - she did OMAD and dropped her weight! She was very appreciative!)
  
• achy knee isn't hurting anymore and I can run 5k
  
• haven't had a sinus infection or illness that has sent me to the Dr (while before I was going at least twice a year)
  
• my toe nail fungus is cured after 2 years trying to get it to go away - better circulation and a stronger immune system
  
• dentist is thrilled with my teeth and gums (I guess if you're not eating so often, there's not much food bacteria on your teeth)
  
• love eating and living this way - going back to food addicted eating multiple times a day would be a huge step backwards for me.
  
  I'll mention one other thing. Life has been especially stressful recently. None of your business but it a very sick child and some very complicated decisions that are largely out of our hands. My wife and I aren't sleeping very well. (Reddit is a nice distraction.) Its very easy to turn to food at times like this. And my wife has been. But I have not been craving food outside my eating window even in this state. If I were, I might succumb to be honest. I do eat well every day. A few more carbs? Probably. But weight staying within my normal 5 pound range. If I can do this with the current level of stress in my life, I can't imagine anything derailing me.

This one is from one of the engineers who made the original Macintosh and includes information from a bit before and a bit later of Mac's story. It is a book form of this site basically (which i think has slightly more content than the book), but i find the book much easier to read than the site.

There is also another book about Microsoft's early history (until ~1992). I have read a Greek translation only so i'm not sure if it is the same, but based on Google's preview of a few pages i think it is this one. I do not have the book with me (i am in Poland and i left it in Greece) so i cannot confirm if it really this is the one i'm talking about. It is hard to find a translated book published almost two decades ago :-P

I could add so many to this list, but this one is most fitting with the books you've posted.

https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292

Wow. You haven't spent must time in business have you?

In a truly competitive free market system it is almost impossible to honestly earn a billion dolllars.

With rare exception such as in the cases of true innovation like say the google founders - earning a billion dollars requires some illegal monopolization of a market thus I wouldn't trust such a person becuase they have shown themselves to be willing to break the law or be dishonest.

For example Microsoft was of course convicted after a trial of illegal monopolization in the software market which put many other better softare innovators out of business and increased software prices for all of us for the past 3 decades as well as limited our choices. (incidently Bill Gates got the contract to provide IBM DOS becuase his mother was on the board of the United Way with The Chairman of IBM. Gates didn't own DOS at the time and after getting the contract went to an un suspecting software programmer who had written DOS and bought it from him without telling him hey had a preexisitng contract to resell it as Microsoft DOS to IBM.
according to the GREAT book ["Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire"](
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887306292?ie=UTF8&tag=reddit0e-20)

If you had spent much time in real business at the levels where big money is made you would know this.
(and that's not a criticism just a fact. I have spent a lot of time at high levels and have seen this first hand. It makes it very hard to be an honest person in big business today when others around you routinely cheat and lie.)

Another rare exception is investment advisors who by shear size of the investments they make can earn large amounts as a small percentage of the investment however in practice I have seen they usually are dishonest about the safely or expected returns of the investments they place their investors money in to get higher percentage commissions.

There are VERY few inventions or entertainers which can earn 1 billion dollars which is also an honest way to make money.

However is is possible to earn 10 or even 100 million honestly in business although it is hard because you often compete against others who cheat and most are therefore forced to cheat to to be able to remain competitive in their market. however there are enough niche markets without huge competitors where you can still build a business earning 1 to 10 million a year (making it worth 10 to 100 million at a 10% cap rate) without being rapidly squashed by cheating competitors.

Another recommended book is "Accidental Empires" by Robert X. Cringely. IMO, it's by far the best and most entertaining book about the early PC industry.

Here's a big list.

https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-researcher-dupont-helped-nazi-germany-out-of-ideology-1.7186636

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ibm-holocaust_b_1301691

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277

https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PD3S20TYT0CRAFMCV31W

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/books/review/the-brothers-by-stephen-kinzer.html

https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret/dp/0805094970

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/1/20/the_kochs_the_nazis_book_reveals

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=asc_df_0307947904/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312669563714&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5810486821632951259&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9021356&hvtargid=pla-432540147973&psc=1

https://www.thenation.com/article/hitlers-willing-executioners/

https://www.thenation.com/article/kodaks-nazi-connections/

https://www.academia.edu/21745112/The_Myth_of_the_Good_War_America_in_the_Second_World_War

https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Good-War-USA-World/dp/1550287710

https://libcom.org/files/How%20the%20Allied%20multinationals%20supplied%20Nazi%20Germany%20throughout%20World%20War%20II.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaWz42tmxug

https://www.amazon.com/Trading-Enemy-Charles-Higham/dp/044019055X

I fear lists. Something I get from listening to older relatives.

Lists might be created with all the best intentions, but they often outlive whatever 'good' / well intentioned reason for which they were created. And more than lists, I fear the information one may gather from cross referencing lists, even if the information on each individual 'list' might appear innocuous and harmless on its own.

This book should be compulsory reading to first year CS or IT student (and/or anyone somehow involved in information technology) - a good read for anyone else for that matter, and this was from a time before electronic computers were around.

In early human history, food wasn't always easy to come by. There would have been lots of times of feast and lots of times of famine. Those with fat stores on their bodies during famines were more likely to survive the famines than were those without fat stores. How do you get fat stores? Having a preference for energy-dense foods is a good start, and so those with preferences for fats and sugars would have been more likely to survive over the long term. They would have passed those preferences to their offspring, and that's why we have them today.

If you're interested in this topic, a great book to read is Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss.

Fast food and soda are designed to be addictive not nutritious.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/1400069807

People who make excuses are a lost cause and are cheating themselves. Not to defend those people but a couple of good reads:

• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400069807/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143114964/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  The food giants want you to consume shit food and stay fat.
  

As someone who has done this over the past few years, my two pieces of advice for your next steps are (skipping accounting as I assume you have that covered!) ...

1. Don't write native iPad/iPhone apps. Write a web application that works on iPad, iPhone, Android, PC. Sell it to businesses on a subscription basis. Businesses make rational buying decisions, you'll ideally displace something they are already paying for, they are easier to market to and you can build up relationships. By writing a web app you aren't dealing with the app store, free apps, publication woes, limiting your supported devices and the expectations consumers have around stupidly low app pricing.
   
2. As it sounds like you may have some assets worth protecting, setup an entity with liability protect from the start. This includes a bank account, etc. I picked an LLC as it is easy to create, easy to manage, I wasn't going to be taking on investors in the short term and could still elect to be taxed as an S-Corp. I didn't use my lawyer - we talked about it over lunch, but with a single member LLCs it was so simple to setup it wasn't worth getting him to do it (I know there are lots of Reddit lawyers who disagree and feel only they can fill in the few bits of paperwork correctly!)
   
   As for books to read. I found Founders at Work the most motivating as you realize how many different paths to success there are.
   
   Good luck!

In his interview for the book Founders at Work he clearly attributes his early success to luck. They were rapidly pivoting and threw a hail marry that landed.

Having said that, there's a reason why serial entrepreneurs are aggressively sought after and cherished for advisory roles by early-stage startups and entrepreneurs. Guys that can produce hit after hit are not merely lucky, they know what they're doing.

A lot of it is knowing the right people, the trust that they've built with investors that allows them to make decisions without as much scrutiny, and finally the fact they've weathered the storm before. Simply being able to avoid mistakes of the past is huge. Also having been successful at least once before, they tend to trust their instincts more in the face of serious risky decisions; something that new guys out the gate do regularly.

On the flipside, they wouldn't be where they are if they didn't have a rare combination of skill and risk-taking.

The two books I'd recommend are Founders at Work
and Don't Make Me Think . even though this is more on the technical side it's an amazing book about user experience which most entrepreneurs should try to master :)

"Behind the scenes" meaning stories that aren't fabricated to make good TV but to give the viewer a better understanding of what goes on behind a product / website. TED talks are great with that so I'd highly recommend watching these https://www.ted.com/talks?sort=newest&topics%5B%5D=entrepreneur

The more dramatic but easy to keep in the background type shows are

• Shark Tank
  
  
• The Great Food Truck Race
  
  
• Undercover Boss
  
  
• Hotel Hell
  
  
• Kitchen Nightmares
  
  Hopefully some of these help!
  
  

Great - btw. I really enjoyed reading "Founders at work" - I got that hint from Seibel's announcement of his upcoming "Coders at work"

When I find myself in this position (which I'm currently in after burning 18 months and a big chunk of cash on my last startup only to have it fail), I usually slink off, lick my wounds, do a lot fo reading and then approach my next project feeling a little more educated, refreshed, and ready.

Some suggestions if I may:

• The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win: http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strategies/dp/0976470705
  
  
• Founders at Work: http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1430210788/
  
  
• Business Model Generation: http://www.amazon.com/Business-Model-Generation-Visionaries-Challengers/dp/0470876417/
  
  Founders At Work is an easy, fun and somewhat inspirational read. The concept behind 4 Steps to an Epiphany is pretty simple, so odds are you won't need to read the whole book as its a little dry. It is authored by Steve Blank and I highly recommend watching his lectures on youtube. Business Model Generation was a mind bender and I've read it about 6 times. I've run all my past businesses and current business through it plus a couple non-profits. It is fantastic and I love it.
  

whats the purpose of the research ?

read founder at work http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Problem-Solution/dp/1430210788

http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30164-report-shows-us-invasion-occupation-of-iraq-left-1-million-dead

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-War-on-Terror-Leaves-1.3-Million-Dead-in-3-Countries-20150330-0011.html

These are all from a separate report -

You dismiss alternet out of hand as written by a "disgruntled redditor" then proceed to ad hominem my writing chops. Ok buddy - the facts speak for themselves that's not the only report written on the casualties in the Iraq war. You also haven't provided a source for your pitifully low estimate of 100,000, which by itself is a gargantuan number of deaths. The link to the sources I cited are by NOBEL PRIZE winners, as stated in that source.

Academi is blackwater Renamed, but nice sidestep there. Erik Prince, the terrorist evangelical Christian leader that was head of blackwater paramilitary, has had his crimes documented by none other than highly acclaimed journalist Jeremy scahill --

https://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary-ebook/dp/B0097CYTYA

They renamed themselves academi because their violent crusading savagery and murder in the name of Christianity forced them to. All well documented - a simple google search of Jeremy scahills articles and book on the topic are available.

You discredit the Middle East eye source when it clearly indicates that these are wars that don't include wars like the Iran Iraq war, a war which by the way the United States provided chemical weapons to saddam Hussein, and shipped weapons to both sides.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

And of course let's not forget Iran contra - I love this idea that the United States exists to bring democracy to the world, all while planting and encouraging dictstorships all over the world everywhere from Guatemala to Iran to Iraq, to Syria, the list goes on and on

My Shield K1 tablet had to be RMA'd for a screen issue, so I'm without a gaming tablet for the next week or two. So instead of actually gaming, I've been reading some history on it instead, via Console Wars by Blake J. Harris.

It's a good read and I'm enjoying it a lot, though I'd prefer a more "pure" history and less of the embellishment and/or "simulated" conversations.

Also, not retro, but I managed to (somehow) finish Hitman: Absolution this week. I don't know what's wrong with me. I love stealth games in concept, but I'm so bad at them, and never really get better. It's been this way pretty much since the first Tenchu. Oddly though, I don't have this issue in 2D; Mark of the Ninja was a blast to play through.

It really depends on what kind of subject matter and presentation you're looking for. For my money, the gold standard of all video game history books remains David Sheff's ["Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World"] (https://www.amazon.com/Game-Over-Nintendo-Conquered-World/dp/0679736220/) which, despite the ominous title, is a phenomenally well-researched and compellingly written account of how Nintendo came out of nowhere in the early 80s to resurrect and dominate the home gaming industry worldwide.

The more recent Console Wars is also a good one, covering in great detail the 90's era 16-bit rivalry between Nintendo and Sega in the US.

These are both fairly well known books; my favorite "off the beaten path" books are all 3 volumes of the "Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" series, which are giant tomes full of lengthy, staggeringly in-depth interviews with dozens and dozens of largely unknown developers behind very well known Japanese classics of the 80s and 90s. Pure treasure for anyone particularly interested in Japan's golden age output.

Digital Gold is a good read coving the creation and history of Bitcoin. I'm almost done with it. Knowing my blockchain history and the big players in the original tech has come in handy more than I suspected, definitely worth the read!

I just read Digital Gold, which I'd recommend. It's more about the history of Bitcoin and major events around it, as opposed to details about the technology. But it does explain what Bitcoin can do, who can benefit from it, etc.

Since you're a newbie, you really should first start by getting caught up on Bitcoin's history. I suggest reading materials and interviews that occurred before 2015. Andreas Antonopoulos may be a bit of a Core shill now, but all his talks before 2015 were really great and inspiring. Then there's this book that was first published in 2015 and does a great job recanting the history and foundation of Bitcoin's beginnings up to 2015.

If you wonder what direction Bitcoin should be going, why not read what Satoshi Nakamoto himself had to say? All of Satoshi's public thoughts are published on http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/

edit: forgot to mention James D'angelo's blackboard series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhe61JaNFLU&list=PLzctEq7iZD-7-DgJM604zsndMapn9ff6q&index=6

A book called Digital Gold.

This book gives you more of a history behind bitcoin, how it started, what some of the hurdles were...etc. You'll better understand bitcoin because of it. It's not technical, but it does explain some things.

Excellently written.

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1505798888&sr=8-5&keywords=bitcoin

How are you marketing your business currently?

Here's some good books to read although they're geared more towards managing and motivating a workforce. Others may have better recommendations for books on growing as a startup or small business. Ultimately, you need to focus on marketing your company and targeting your ideal customer.

Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet
https://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Turning-Followers/dp/1591846404

How to Become a Great Boss by Jeffrey Fox
https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Great-Boss-Employees/dp/0786868236/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484506909&sr=1-2&keywords=how+to+a+great+boss

How to Be a Great Boss by Gino Wickman
https://www.amazon.com/How-Great-Boss-Gino-Wickman/dp/1942952848/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484506909&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+a+great+boss

Good to Great by Jim Collins (I just started this)
https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484507074&sr=1-1&keywords=good+to+great

EDIT: Here's another one.

Traction. Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman. I haven't read this but the CEO did and we use the structure and methods from this book to run our company. https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Personally, I'm not huge on social media, especially FB. You need feet in the door as you are a physical business. Just getting virtual clicks isn't enough.

What you need is good old fashioned business advice. The fundamentals of business never change even though the tools (such as social media) do.

I recommend these two books:
Good to Great

Fish!

• The Lean Startup - Reis
  
• Good to Great - Jim Collins
  
• Crossing the Chasm - Moore
  
  People react differently to books, but Crossing the Chasm was one of the best books I've ever encountered on business strategy.
  
  

This is a must read: "From Good to Great" - http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/0066620996

Happy belated birthday. I finally have some time to respond to this when I'm at the office and have relevant things handy.

Books to read:

• 
  
  
• The Board Member's Book: Making a Difference in Voluntary Organizations by Brian O'Connell, published by the Foundation Center. If you only read one of these books, read this one. Despite the title, this book is about creating and using good volunteers at all levels. For organizations I work with, every time a new "class" of volunteers comes in, I like to give all of them copies of this book and have a few discussions about it.
  
  
• Developing Dynamic Boards by James Hardy. This book is more focused on the board of directors, and it's very detailed-- a good textbook and road map.
  
  
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. This one may even have been translated into Estonian. In brief, it's a system for looking at big processes and finding the places where your effort can make a difference.
  
  
• Good To Great: Why some companies make the leap and others don't by Jim Collins. This book looks at factors that create success or failure in growing organizations.
  
  
  

I've not seen it, so I'll have to look it up. Thanks!

Related media to NUMMI - The Toyota Way is an excellent book to learn about Toyota's production system, and the lessons learned from implementing it at NUMMI.

May I stand on a soapbox?

Automation isn't that simple. Automating processes that are already flawed to begin with is worse than no automation at all - as all automation does of a bad system is just compound the issue, and bring in new constraints.

Basically - automation is a solution, but it isn't the only solution - in fact, automation should be the last solution looked at it - and your solution should be the last step in the process improvement.

If you're serious about getting into management, and you work with processes that you feel could be made better or automated - I'd suggest the following reading:

The Goal

The Toyota Way

The history of Toyota and Honda are interesting on this

Honda’s global strategy? Go local. tldr Honda are a lot less automated then you would think as this improves their ability to innovate

The Machine That Changed the World and others on Toyota go into how they changed their production methods

There’s a book about the Toyota manufacturing and management methodology that’s really interesting

https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Way-Management-Principles-Manufacturer/dp/0071392319

MIT opencourseware is pretty interesting

Also The Toyota Way is always a good start.

Actually, this is your link:

http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397098997&sr=8-1&keywords=what+the+dormouse+said

This is a "clean" link to the same Amazon item:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143036769

Given that the first TCP/IP connections were only used by military, banks, and universities, it's not entirely unlikely that the first transaction by a consumer was cannabis. I could picture a group of IS students making a network for such devious deeds.

Still, it will probably never be known because it was 40years ago and a bunch of he said she said to try to find out the literal first transaction. We at least can verify that it is the first known/recorded.

>In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana.
>
>Source
>
>Article

Funny enough this was also the year that Nixon declared the "War on Drugs", and the Stanford Prison Experiments happened.

Ask the people who led the PC revolution.

Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made
Written by a member of the original Mac team
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1449316247/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1394998489&sr=8-3&pi=SY200_QL40

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The only official biography, very in depth on the later years, but glosses over a lot of the early years when he was in my opinion a giant prick.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451648537/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1394998612&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40

What the dormouse said: How the sixties counterculture shaped the Internet

I don't have anything Atari specific to recommend but this book is excellent and covers a lot of the early people and companies that invented all of this

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143036769/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1394998761&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40

I read that book. This is it;

https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483015331&sr=8-2&keywords=walmart+book

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World is a pretty good book about the global fincial industry post-WWI. I would definitely recommend it.

Lords of Finance is very good. It's the story of how central banks post WW1 responded to a financial and political crisis and sowed the seeds of the next crisis... sound similar to anything that's happened recently?

For anyone interested in the technical history of how we got here, The Idea Factory (Amazon Smile link) is a really fascinating read. It details the major players within Bell Labs (the research division, not business or development) from the 30s up until the 90s/today. While I'm sure the antitrust suit was beneficial for the average person, by the end of the book I was really rooting for Bell Labs to keep the guaranteed funding ensured by the monopoly.

The people who worked in this lab were responsible for the vacuum tube, transistor, solar panel, laser, satellites, cellular phones... the research for all of those breakthroughs was done in a single lab, funded by the monopoly. A huge part of why the modern world as we know it today exists is because of the monopoly that was dismantled in the 80s.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu. I was already out of law school when it came out, but I did a lot of work in broadband regulation while in law school, and this book just nails what's so important about protecting the internet.

>Boys Don’t Cry was about a trans man pretending to be a cis man to seduce a woman, and had hardcore-enough sex scenes to receive an NC-17 rating on its first cut.

There's a film called "this film Is Not Yet Rated" that examines the MPAA and how subjective it is as a control system for what gets into the public's eye. A segment of this film discussed the MPAA's issues with Boys Don't Cry.

From a blogger:

>In addition, the MPAA system often fails to take context into account. For instance - as director Kimberly Peirce comments in "This Film is Not Yet Rated" - the MPAA threatened Peirce's brilliant "Boys Don't Cry" with an NC-17 rating based in part on the very rape scene that is directly central to the movie. In the scene, the protagonist is raped as a brutal "punishment" for what her attackers see as her impersonation of a boy. Here, the MPAA's rating seems especially senseless: How could it hurt a sixteen-year-old's psyche to see a depiction of a brutal hate crime, presented as exactly what it is? If anything, the film is rightly educational.

​

From Roger Ebert:

>"This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is a catalog of grievances against the MPAA: The membership of the ratings board is anonymous, so the filmmakers have no right to appeal directly to the people who are judging their work. The ratings board is supposed to be comprised of "parents" -- but hardly any have children under 18, which is the only age group to whom the ratings apply. Although the MPAA ratings were allegedly created as a way of heading off government censorship, some say that has always been a ruse -- and, besides, a government system would actually require rules, documentation, transparency, accountability and due process. These are not things the secretive MPAA is fond of.
>
>And although the MPAA ratings are supposedly "voluntary," agreements between the studios that fund the organization, the exhibitors who show their films, and the media in which those films are advertised, make it something less than optional for most films. Check your newspaper to see if "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is playing in your town. If that newspaper accepts advertising for unrated films ("This Film" was originally awarded an NC-17 for "graphic sexual content," but the rating was "surrendered"), you'll see that "This Film" is not playing at one of the studio-owned theater chains.
>
>[...]
>
>The whole kangaroo court is founded on a doozy of a Catch-22: The MPAA insists that it has procedures that it applies evenhandedly. But the procedures are secret so nobody can tell what they are. If something is not allowed, it's because it's against the invisible rules.
>
>So, how do you make sense out of the MPAA's decisions? As "This Film" demonstrates, you don't. The Kafkaesque absurdity behind the movie ratings is beyond belief. Matt Stone ("South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut," "Team America: World Police") testifies from experience that studio pictures are treated a lot more kindly than independently financed and distributed ones. Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry") and Wayne Kramer and Maria Bello ("The Cooler"), intuit that the raters are uncomfortable with depictions of female sexual pleasure, while Allison Anders("Grace Of My Heart") suggests that orgasms of any kind are frowned upon (although women's do tend to last longer, and may therefore make the raters more uncomfortable), and that the male body is even more verboten that the female body. And everybody agrees that the MPAA is very liberal when it comes to violence, and conservative when it comes to sex.

​

the MPAA is important to this discussion largely due to their rating influence which affects the marketing and release of a film. This is why you hear so much about the studio trying to get a 'PG-13' rating instead of an 'R' (or in the case of Boys Don't Cry, trying to get an 'R' rating, settling for 'NC-17' after making cuts to shake the 'X' rating). The biggest issue issue sin't necessarily the rating system, but the power enshrined in a select group of anonymous and unaccountable influencers. It's pretty eye opening to see how much power they have over culture.

​

link to film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpbxzP2mkoA

​

Great write up!

Also, I'm a Gen-Xer and recall all of thee films and the milieu very well. It's interesting to see analysis from a younger viewer.

​

If you like this topic I'd also suggest "Pictures At a Revolution" which discusses the 5 Best film nominations of the 1967 Oscars, and how these films changed the Hollywood. It's a nice context for how we got to 1999.

>In the mid-1960s, westerns, war movies, and blockbuster musicals like Mary Poppins swept the box office. The Hollywood studio system was astonishingly lucrative for the few who dominated the business. That is, until the tastes of American moviegoers radically- and unexpectedly-changed. By the Oscar ceremonies of 1968, a cultural revolution had hit Hollywood with the force of a tsunami, and films like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, and box-office bomb Doctor Doolittle signaled a change in Hollywood-and America. And as an entire industry changed and struggled, careers were suddenly made and ruined, studios grew and crumbled, and the landscape of filmmaking was altered beyond all recognition.

​

As a supplement, I also suggest Tim Wu's "The Master Switch" which goes into detail about the rise of various media, how they supplanted the old media (i.e. telephone vs. telegraph; broadcast tv vs. Cable tv) and were in turn supplanted by other technological industries. There is a bit about the various takeovers of the film industry in the mid 90's that set the stage for the making of these films and the subsequent dawn of the Internet age. It's probably in need of a new edition now, but I really enjoyed reading about media and technological history in this context.

A really good book which is potentially related based on me reading the title of this post: Master Switch by Tim Wu.

https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empires/dp/0307390993

The FCC has almost always been used to further corporate interests. See Tim Wu's The Master Switch if you want a good account of how it has basically always been business's way of controlling the industry.

The Master Switch by Tim Wu is a very interesting read.

Basically outlines how all info technologies become ossified and controlled.

Glock was good. The book, not the dude.

Still employs American workers - would you consider an M1 Garand to be an American gun? Downvote all you want but it is "Americas Gun"

Thank you for the well thought out reply.

Fat tailed distribution is what your are looking for, or more [popularly black swan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory].

This is a good part of what lead to the downfall of LTCM which if you have not read the book When Genius Failed, I would highly recommend it

For the average person, it's very hard to argue with the advice to invest 10% of your salary into low load broad market index fund (or funds) and follow basic asset allocation rules.

Right now people don't save at all, whihc compounds the social security problem. Basically there's not enough there to keep people 'living comfortably' which leads to ever increasing taxation, which has failed to address the fact that people don't save. So people bitch that SS is not enough yet also bitch that taxes are too high.... Same goes for medicare and a whole host of other govt services.

Not to say those would disappear as they are good programs...

However we seem to be in a death spiral of ever increasing taxation to fuel programs that account for the fact that people fail to save and plan for their financial future..

> Is it reasonably possible?

Yes.

> What languages should I learn?

C# or java.

> What contacts should I make?

Recruiters.

> What is the best course of action?

Familiarize yourself w/ finance. Here's a reading list to get you started: After the Trade Is Made, The Essays of Warren Buffett, Too Big to Fail, When Genius Failed.

Well its not really a trading book but I recently read When Genius Failed and found it not only very interesting but relevant to markets today.

There is a great book about that called "When Genius Failed"
http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259

If he can't finish his degree at least tell him to go read "When Genius Failed". Those guys were really sure they knew the system, they also had multiple Phds and years and years of experience. They also lost a massive amount of money in a short period of time, they had it all worked out -- the computer models, the math, everything.

• Read The Money Game, by Adam Smith. At least read the first sentence, and internalize it.
  
  
• Read Where Are All The Customers Yachts?, by Fred Schweb
  
  
• Read Liar's Poker, by Michael Lewis
  
  
• Read When Genius Failed, by Roger Lowenstein
  
  
• Read Fooled By Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  
  Then:
  
  
• Continually educate/train yourself to acquire/maintain the skills and knowledge necessary to survive and thrive in the 21st century economy.
  
  
• Buy a house you can life in the rest of your life if you have to. And in general, never buy a house as an investment; always buy it with the thought that you might end up living there for much, much longer than planned.
  
  
• Insure yourself against disaster. Among other things, this means various types of insurance and readily accessible cash. People have mentioned 3 - 6 months. That's a good start. I have three years worth of staggered CDs, and I feel pretty comfortable. Consider that a target worth aiming for.
  
  
• Find a really, really good, stand-up person to marry. If you make the right choice he/she will be invaluable in hard times; if you make the wrong choice, he/she will be the hard times.
  
  
• If you plan on having kids, remember this: there will always be ways to get them through college without gutting your nest egg. Don't put them through college at the expense of risking having them need to take care of you in old age.
  
  
• Stay healthy. Exercise. Eat good foods. Get regular check ups.
  
  
• Be thrifty. Study thrift. Make it a game (although don't be a bore about it). Learning to be a good cook, for instance, is a great investment in more than one way.
  
  Finally, always remember the first line in The Money Game.
  
  Good luck!

Have you read Console Wars?

This question really piqued my curiosity, because it reminded me not to take the things I know for granted. Being born in the early 80s, and having been introduced to videogames by older siblings and my parents in that decade, and then being involved with videogames either in the industry or as an avid enthusiast, the obscure (and most times useless) history of the medium is something I've taken for granted.

Recently, as older millennials and younger Gen X'ers have reached maturity (or middle age), there have been a surge in books, documentaries, and other materials about videogames... As they're seminal in many of our lives and so now we're looking back and writing these nostalgic retrospectives. Many are trash, even some of the best are still trash, but I'd recommend a few of them... The following are either entertaining, informative, or some balance of both:

• Blake Harris' Console Wars Amazon, a book released in 2014 that details the rise and fall of Sega of America. I think the writing is rough, at least, it tries to Aaron Sorkinize too much of the history and comes off insufferably cheesy at times, enough so that I just had to put the book down and shake my head with douche shivers, but because Harris' has one on one interviews and access to Kalinske, the head of SoA at the time, you get a lot of first hand details that just aren't available anywhere else.
  
• David Kushner's Masters of Doom Amazon, written in 2004 was one of the first contemporary books to get into the details of the videogame industry. This was mostly an untapped medium when Kushner was writing the book, as writing about a videogame company was just not in fashion in 2002 or 2003. Like Console Wars, the conversations are fictionalized but most match up to the actual events detailed in the book. It follows the origins and rise of id software, one of the most influential western developers who more or less invented the first-person shooter (even if they weren't truly the first, they certainly popularized the genre and most of what we take for granted in the first-person genre, id pioneered and introduced). id's fingerprints are on thousands of modern games, and the two founders of the company -- John Carmack and John Romero -- are often considered father's of modern action games, they also have a tumultuous relationship with one another, at the time often likened to John Lenon and Paul McCartney, and so the story of id software is also the story of their personal relationship.
  
• Gaming Historian YouTube Channel (google it, it should come up). Many of these videos are dry and some border on clickbait, but the majority are well researched and provide a good nugget of history into videogames.
  
• The King of Kong Documentary. It's not completely factual and it takes artistic license to make a better story, but it's probably the best videogame-focused movie ever made, even despite those inaccuracies. Why you should watch it? It's a great introduction into competitive gaming in the 1980s and how videogames worked. There are other materials that have informed this movie and you can start with the movie and just google questions, and because the movie was so popular there's a lot of interesting research that goes into the mechanics of it.
  
• NoClip, a Youtube Channel. NoClip has only been around for a year or a little more, but they're well funded and produced videogame documentaries... Most focus on some new aspect of gaming, but still walk back into the influences of the developers, which aren't cheesy... they're well informed and well made. Particularly, the interview with the developers of CD Projekt and how being under the heel of communism influenced how they built games and ultimately what makes a game like The Witcher so compelling.
  
• SuperBunnyHop YouTube Channel. Guy who does breakdowns of videogames and his informative retrospectives are some of my favorites. He introduced the concept of, "But what do they eat?" to me, which goes into a wider theory about creating realistic or believable game worlds. If you're in any game world, walking around, and there are creatures living there, if the game subtly answers the simple question "But what do they eat?" it makes the game world so much more believable because it's an indication that the developers/designers have really put more thought into the believability of their world. Most great games answer this central question or punt on it in a convincing way.
  
• Joseph Anderson YouTube Channel. His video breakdowns of games are just so good. He's probably most recently gotten notoriety by being critical of Super Mario Odyssey, at least, critical enough to say "the game isn't perfect..." And after playing Odyssey and feeling kinda meh on it after a while, I watched his video and it just felt so apt for me. He also does great analysis of mostly recent games, but most of those are informed by previous games, and goes into the mechanics of balance, pacing, mechanics, and the simple systems that inform most good game.
  
• RetroGame Mechanics Explained YouTubeChannel. These are typically technical breakdowns of how concepts in retrogaming worked, and are usually pretty involved. Not always light watching but informative.
  
• Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit YouTube Channel. Breakdowns of videogame theories/concepts, largely.
  
  This is by no way supposed to be an exhaustive list, just a list of stuff that I enjoyed and others might too... Part of these videos/movies/books is video game theory, part is history, part is just sheer entertainment value, but I think anybody who is into videogames enough to talk on 'True Gaming,' would probably enjoy most of those.

I know this is no filter because it wasn't taken using Snapchat.

This should be under $15 CDN and its super awesome.

Merry Fridaymas! This weekend is going to be more of the same - job apps, gym, and trying not to disappoint my mother which is getting more difficult by the day. Bleh. I guess an exciting thing I may do is heat up that dairy free- gluten free almost paleo frozen pizza I bought on a whim last night. xD

/u/beautifullystrange89 Have I told you lately that you're strangely beautiful? ;)

You might enjoy the book Console Wars ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062276700/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_rWkzxbGJ69PT3 ). It covers the 16-bit fight between Nintendo and Sega, but it gives an inside look at the relationships between the Japanese and American branches of both companies.

Until 1994 Sega had 54 percent market share. Nintendo didn't catch up until 1995. This Play it Loud campaign emerged the same year. PlayStation also emerged the same year and Nintendo didn't have a 5th gen console to put up for another year.

The book Console Wars details Nintendo's thought process in creating more aggressive marketing, and how Sega's aggressive marketing helped to propel them to first place.

Buy a copy.

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

Life is Strange Complete Season (Episodes 1-5)

​

My favorite book? That is a hard question since I myself own a good bit of books and have a large amount of books which I own but I would have to say that it would be Console Wars since is a good read about the old Nintendo-SEGA rivalry

Fwiw. This was a really good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

There's a book and a movie coming out starring seth rogen:

http://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450203413&sr=8-1&keywords=console+wars

A great background can be found in book Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation.

It covers the strategy of each of the big 80s and 90s video console creators, their partnerships or lack thereof, and the choices made in technology. Basically everything in the comments but with depth and color!

You should read Console Wars by Blake J. Harris (the audio book version is also really good):
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700

I urge everyone who was alive during this period, or just in general has an interest in gaming history to read Console Wars. It's a fantastic book from the perspective Sega during their 90s rivalry with Nintendo. It chronicles the creation of Sonic to just about up to the dreamcast. It's a really engaging and fun read. READ IT.

This is a good source written by a credible author:
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1469793347&sr=8-6&keywords=bitcoin

I also recommend Digital Gold. Tells the history if bitcoin. Great read.

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/006236250X

Here is the post for archival purposes:

Author: TecnoPope

Content:

>I wanna gift a book on bitcoin to someone. Preferably a beginners guide. I searched this sub for some good recommends but there's a lot of them it seems.

> This is the #1 most reviewed on Amazon.

Start here...https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2RU29TVWKP2KQ&keywords=from+good+to+great&qid=1565032356&s=gateway&sprefix=from+good%2Caps%2C184&sr=8-3

Two other related books I've enjoyed are Good To Great by Jim Collins and The Master Switch by Tim Wu, maybe others here are familiar with them too?

I've got a week long trip planned soon and because I've read 2 books out of your list (Zero to One and Rework,) I'll be looking into the rest of your list for some suggestions, thanks!

A few books that I absolutely love are; Good to Great, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (this isn't exactly a business book, but a lot of the principles in it help you be a better leader/person which is extremely important when running a business) and Rework

Good to Great is a fantastic book that interviews CEO's from different companies and looks at what the great ones did differently from the good ones.

How to Win Friends and Influence People is an old book (early 1900's) that interviews people like Henry Ford and others to see how they "get their way" in business.

I'm drawing a blank, but I'll come back when I remember the others.

This is one of the best books I've read.

From good to great

Books on negotiation skills are also really worth reading and marketing and so on. I don't even remember how many books I have read on business.

ps. yes, I added my referral code so I can order some more books if someone finds the book interesting.

Like everyone else says, it's having the parts show up right when you need it rather than buying bulk and storing stuff until it's needed.

This process (now coined "lean construction" or "lean manufacturing" or "lean xxx") was started by Toyota and has spread all over the place. I had a Lean Construction class in college (BS in Construction Management) and we used The Toyota Way as our text.

I consider google to be a product of a generation of people who mixed a lot of acid and technology. I'm not saying that this cannot be corrupted, but that combo is pretty resilient against corporate bullshit.
Related Book

I recommend What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, by John Markoff.

https://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769

Not a technical book, but a terrific history of "personal computing" from its cultural roots in early 60s thinking about human augmentation and artificial intelligence. Many parts have to do with how visionaries and engineers invented ways to interact with machines.

Less than 30 days later 400,000 people watched a rock concert near Woodstock NY that would have a much larger influence on much of the populace.

> The term Woodstock Nation refers specifically to the attendees of the original 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Festival that took place from August 15–17 on the farm of Max Yasgur near Bethel, New York. It comes from the title of a book written later that year by Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman, describing his experiences at the festival.

> More generally, however, the term is used as a catch-all phrase for those individuals of the baby boomer generation in the United States who subscribed to the values of the American counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The term is often interchangeable with hippie, although the latter term is sometimes used as an oath of derision. The characteristic traits of members of the Woodstock Nation include, but are not limited to, concern for the environment, embracing of left-wing political causes and issues allied to a strong sense of political activism, eschewing of traditional gender roles, vegetarianism, and enthusiasm for the music of the period.

> The Woodstock Nation also counts as members individuals from later generational cohorts, as the underground cultural values and attitudes of 1960s bohemian communities such as Haight-Ashbury and Laurel Canyon have seeped ever more into the mainstream with the passage of time

The influence has been credited up to the early days of the personal computer.

> What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, is a 2005 non-fiction book by John Markoff. The book details the history of the personal computer, closely tying the ideologies of the collaboration-driven, World War II-era defense research community to the embryonic cooperatives and psychedelics use of the American counterculture of the 1960s.

Post Apollo 11 moon missions struggled to find a TV audience.

I don't remember if I had finished it, but I found What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry to be interesting (and it's especially interesting to consider in light of the trend toward cloud computing - if counterculture influenced the personal computing revolution, what cultural force is pushing us into the cloud?)

Not related to hackers or the computer revolution at all, but I also very much enjoyed Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture.

There are also a lot of fun stories on https://www.folklore.org/ relating to the creation of the original Macintosh. Along those same lines is the documentary from 1995 called Triumph of the Nerds. You can find it on YouTube.

If you want to see something truly amazing, go watch The Mother of All Demos. Or rather, first imagine yourself in 1968. Intel had just been founded earlier that year. The moon landing was still ~ 6 months away. Computers were things like the IBM System/360. UNIX was at least a few years away, much less the derivatives like BSD. OK, now that you have the proper mindset, watch that video. It's pretty amazing to see all the things that they invented and to see just how many have survived to this day.

In 1968 "The Mother of All Demos" was unleashed by Doug Englebart, a man who gave up millions out of his desire to better humanity. It was the first time anyone had seen a "tiny" computer with a GUI, mouse, wysiwg editing, shared-screen video conferencing, windows, collaborative editing, version control, networking, context-sensitive help and hyperlinks. It was greeted with amazement by the press and public, but capitalists yawned.

The moneyed elite knew about and used mainframe computers, but only had interest in AI which they hoped would replace their white collar workers. A small, personal machine that "augmented human intellect" did not interest them.

Years later capitalists would lift this idea and give Englebart no royalties, and take all the credit. Most people assume Steve Jobs invented the mouse.

A book if you're interested in the birth of the PC:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769

As for pollution and exploitation, democratic production would take externalities into account, and would be controlled by workers rather than capitalists. The slaves that capitalism uses to mine raw materials would be empowered, as would the suicidal and impoverished manufacturers, and they'd all be able to use the computers they give their lives to create.

Sure, Im biased. Im expressing opinions. I have the opinion that if you are an adult, and you make a shitload of money, and you get a girl pregnant and you publicly defame her as a whore, and you refuse to acknowledge the child until she is an adult, that's a pretty good clue you are a bad fucking person.

Also, of all companies, Apple was ostensibly founded under the principle of decentralization of power. (great book...also discussed in the bio) Steve Jobs legacy has landed very strongly on the opposite side of that.

Here, enjoy the reading.

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet- I'm a little late to the party...
The WalMart Effect

this really sets a lot of things straight about how they operate, eliminate competition, and cheapen the products and material handling for themselves while passing the buck to the manufacturers.

For some interesting insight on how the process works I recommend reading The Wal-Mart Effect. Fascinating, and disturbing how much influence they have. When you say "large retailers" you may not mean as large as Wal-Mart, but you can still get an introduction to how cut-throat retail can be. https://www.amazon.com/Wal-Mart-Effect-Powerful-Works-Transforming/dp/0143038788

Aka the Walmart effect

And they never dealt with there bad banks or companies. They should have shut them down over that time. They have walking dead companies and banks.

Here's a good book regarding The Great Depression. Loads of information. http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319242032&sr=8-1

Independent research. If you rely on the media to form your opinions you are already lost.

Lots of people talk about these things e.g. [vdare.com] (http://www.vdare.com) and amren, all the alt-right blogs and sites etc. but you're a racist for looking at those sites obviously.

I'm not a huge fan of the gold standard (it had its day and collapsed as there was not enough new gold mined to meet demand with economic expansion and the US had the vast majority of world gold so noone had anything to trade) but it is probably better than the gangsterism we currently have.

EDIT: Interesting book on gold standard:
http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1463343826&sr=8-3&keywords=bretton+woods

>there is nothing else meaningful to base your government policy, or your ethics off of.

My ethics are based on providing maximum freedom to the individual, irrespective of what they do with it. I'm not concerned about promoting the greater good by central planning. Why does the good of the group outweigh the good of the individual?

>I am not sure there is any realistic example in which some can suffer a lot for others benefit, and this maximises utility.

I would say this depends on the scope of the group you are talking about benefiting. The US harms many overseas to benefit the domestic population, for example.

>Ultimately I have some faith in governments... to fail less than the market does. i simply think they fail less (or have the potential to fail less) than the free market.

When the government fails, it does so after having threatened the people with violence, taken their money, and then wither wasted it, lost it, and hurt the many to benefit the politically connected. Market failures certainly do happen, but they are the result of the choices people make, which to me is far less unethical than a government failure. Do you think governments have the potential to fail worse than the market, with worse outcomes from those worse failures?

>I am a Keynesian, so I think deficit spending is terrific.

Even Keynes only suggested deficit spending during recessions, not every single year during good times as well.

>The only way to deal with this is a very informed electorate, which is hardly an exciting solution.

It's an irrational solution. Have you ever read anything like They Myth of the Rational Voter? The amount of time it takes to become educated on all the relevant topics compared to the meaninglessness of your vote statistically among many millions makes it a very poor investment of your time.

>These are deeply heterodox views, and you would have a hard time finding a respectable modern academic to back you up on them.

The government isn't exactly known for its historical honesty, and supports people who support its views. However, there are some recognized works, including this Pulitzer Prize winning book. Ben Bernanke has a concurring view of Milton Friedman's work to show the great depression worsened by Federal monetary policy

>respectable

The trouble with this word is that in today's discourse anyone who supports a heterodox view of anything is instantly branded as "not-respectable."

I'm going to skip your stuff on austerity, as I am not familiar with the particulars of those countries and don't have anything informed to say about them. My apologies.

>I am all in favour of a smaller military

Yes, but if you're concerned about the environment, then the military is currently and ongoing government failure, dare I say a disaster. Can you point to something the market is failing at that has an equally large impact?

>that energy would have been consuming by the free market equivalent of the services provided by government anyway.

This assumes the government programs are as efficient as market ones. Would you make that assumption?

>Again, while the government is not perfect, it is the better than the alternative.

False dichotomy. What is the alternative? There can be many alternatives.

>Almost all of the top universities in the world are publicly run, Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford etc.

Harvard is private. The Ivy league schools are private. Also, what does "top" mean? Top at what? Promoting an orthodox view? Producing the best minds to go into politics and lord over people?

>higher than many poor people could afford in the free market, this is the ultimate problem of education in the market.

In much of the developing world private education is stepping in where the government fails.

>What sort of social mobility can you expect when the lower classes are educated so badly relative to their more rich counterparts?

The US government is a worst offender of this I can think of, because it funds schools on property taxes. Government education is a massive failure, yet it produces people at the ready to denounce private education.

I read (in Lords of Finance) that one of the main reasons that France and Britain insisted on the high reparations was that the US insisted on both of them paying back their (also quite high?) war debts to the US. So one the one hand the US tried to get a lighter treatment of Germany, on the other hand they indirectly caused it. Again: one of the reasons, the book does not try to explain it all with that argument.

Part finance, part economics, I highly recommend Lords of Finance (https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800). It discusses the actions of several key people and subsequent events in the banking sector leading up to the Great Depression. Largely shaped our world today.

Wow there is way too much flawed in there... where to start?

Maybe the beginning. There's no proportionality in loses, no agreement of "for every dollar you lose, we lose 0.60). That's an absurd claim. They have more to lose too. The country may get a bail out but it's the IMF that's funding this non sense. The IMF isn't in the same "all in" predicament as greece is. In such, it can lose more (because it has more) without talking bails. Strictly loss.

Next, money paid on the interest of loans isn't money lost. Loans in theory should be only taken when their net benefit, that is, the interest is calculated to be less than the value you are getting from the loan. That's econ 101.

The comparison of Greece and Germany arn't about circumstances of a war, but the similarity is absolutely there. Germany borrowed insane money (like greece has done) to fund infrastructure they didn't need (there's alot of examples of them approaching a bank for a small loan and being convinced to take our 1 for 10x as much). The Germans printed money to service debt and they fought the austerity measures places on them by Europe (I'm sure you learned about the Dawes plan and reparations measures in school, though probably not in depth... I know we only scratched the surface of it). Germany wasn't at all about the destruction of infrastructure...

If you're interested, http://www.amazon.ca/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800
Is a great book.

Better pull that latex off son, you're shooting blanks.

Lords of Finance?

I was just reading about this! The Idea Factory is a great book that tells the story of Bell Labs.

This book on Bell Labs was fascinating.

I would like to hear it.

The Idea Factory was a good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797

​

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

The development of fiber optic cables is incredible. I only know the very, very basics, from [this fantastic book](http://www.amazon.com/The-Idea-Factory-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797 "really amazing for so many reasons") which I can't recommend enough. It shows the pioneering of a ton of the most important current technologies (tubes, telephones, microwaves, satellites, cell phones, fiber optics, cavitrons and a bunch more), and the revolutionary environments and cultures that fostered that growth. Corning (of course) made the fiber.

Cables in general were amazing. We think of plastic as so cheap as to practically cost nothing, but back then (IIRC, can't find my book D:) the insulation was one of the most expensive parts as it was made from natural latex from the gutta-percha tree (god I wish I could find the book). As you can imagine it took a ton of work to make a machine to produce cables that were kilometers long. The first real transatlantic cable was laid in 1955 and working up to that required a huge amount of research and iteration. It was fundamentally made possible by polyethylene. The first test cables just randomly started turning into swiss cheese; turns out shipworms don't give a damn about what they eat. Steel jackets. Then the cables just started snapping. It's pretty damn hard to figure out why an underwater cable three miles long is snapping when you don't have cameras, underwater radio, or scuba... turns out that sharks sense and apparently have an innate hatred of electricity (jk) and attacked the cables. Copper shield, steel cable reinforcement, thicker cables. Works pretty good. Minimizing crosstalk and such took some effort. Then microwaves start replacing cables on land- can't do microwaves underwater. Everybody wants to upgrade the TAT, but its actually pretty fucking tricky making a cable out of a bit of glass 3600 kilometers long and a fraction of a millimeter wide.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation

Very good book if you are interested in Bell Labs. He really pioneered the idea of having engineers, scientists, and inventors working together. Which was not common at the time. If they needed a specialist in an area they brought one in.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Idea-Factory-American-Innovation/dp/0143122797

Great book that covers some of the key players at Bell labs. Its certainly not a thorough technical history reference but I thought he did a nice job of laying out the relationships of the engineers, the inventions, and motivating factors.

just this

I am going to start doing this in every US telecommunications thread.

Read Tim Wu's The Master Switch.

It is a thorough, extremely interesting, and very smart examination of the history and the possible futures of the telecom industry. All these random redditor comments add nothing to it, and if everybody read it, the discussion could be so much better.

Heres a good book on the rise of Glock in America.

https://www.amazon.com/Glock-Americas-Paul-M-Barrett/dp/0307719952

The Gun by C.J. Chivers is another one I will always recommend.

>I recently read the book "Glock"

This one?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307719952/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_AF9QwbP813TQ4

Correction to myself - it was originally his 17th patent, so previous things may have been non-guns, as /u/presidentender mentions.

I had originally read about this in Glock: Rise of America's Gun

After reading this: http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259

I realized that it's all just a crapshoot because you can't accurately model EVERYTHING that will affect market conditions, and that hedge funds are incentivezed to make risky decisions in order to get higher gains.

You're not really gaining anything by investing in a hedge fund like that because you're just trading risk for gains -- just like a normal investor could do.

Brexit = Death of the Technocrats
Michael Krieger | Jun 24, 2016

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.– J. R. R. Tolkien

What transpired last night in the United Kingdom represented one of the most extraordinarily expressions of democracy of my lifetime.

When faced with an event of such monumental significance, it’s difficult to pick any particular direction for a post like this.

I have so many thoughts running through my mind and so many angles I could potentially address, it is simply impossible to do them all justice.

As such, I’ve decided to focus on one very meaningful implication of Brexit: death of the technocrats.

To start, I want to dive into one of the more interesting controversies from the weeks leading up to the vote.

What I’m referring to is the statement made by Vote Leave’s Michael Grove regarding “experts.”

From the Telegraph(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/06/eu-referendum-who-needs-experts-when-weve-got-michael-gove/):

On Friday night, during an interview on Sky News about the EU, Faisal Islam challenged the Justice Secretary to name a single independent economic authority that thought Brexit was a good idea. Mr Gove’s response was defiant.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/03/how-did-michael-gove-cope-with-the-sky-news-audience-and-faisal/]

“I’m glad these organizations aren’t on my side,” he said.

“I think people in this country have had enough of experts.”

Mr Islam spluttered incredulously.

People in this country, he repeated, “have had enough of experts?”

Mr Gove stood his ground.

Yes, he said, people in this country had had enough of experts “saying that they know what is best”.

Mr Gove had “faith in the British people”.

The so-called experts, clearly, did not.

For his words, Mr. Gove was attacked relentlessly.

He was lectured about his dangerous language and scolded for its supposed anti-intellectualism.

The “very smart people” issuing these condemnations did so in their typical self-satisfied, smug manner.

Nonetheless, Michael Gove was absolutely correct in his assessment, and in this post I will detail precisely why.

First of all, what is an “expert?”

From what I can gather this term is bestows upon someone with an advanced degree who has successfully maneuvered him or herself into a position of prominence within government, a think tank or academia.

As someone who worked on Wall Street for a decade, I was constantly surrounded by people with advanced degrees from the most prestigious institutions.

I also know that your degree means absolutely nothing the moment you walk in that door for the first day of work.

You enter a place filled with people who have battling it out for years if not decades in their profession of choice, and the only thing that matters now is performance.

If you don’t perform you’re gone, and nobody’s gonna care about the long string of letters next to your name.

The world of politics, government and central banking famously and problematically does not work this way.

Look around you at all the discredited “thought leaders” who continue to be paraded around on television, and who still advise Presidents and Prime Ministers the world over.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis no changing of the guard was permitted.

Sure we were given a fresh face with Barack Obama, but his advisers didn’t change.

He immediately hired both Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, and that’s the moment I knew he was a gigantic fraud.

To summarize, the exact same people who ruined the world bailed themselves out, avoided all accountability and continue to call the shots.

These are the men and women we know as “the experts.”

The point isn’t to say that having an advanced degree in a particular field of study doesn’t make an individual especially useful to society. It does.

The issue here is accountability.

If you want to go around calling yourself an expert and demanding that your views be implemented across a given civilization, you had better do a good job.

If you do a poor job, you should be immediately replaced with someone who has a different perspective.

After all, there are plenty of experts out there to choose from.

Unfortunately, our societies tend to get stuck with egomaniacal, incompetent, but politically savvy experts who never go away.

They can blow up the world a million times over and still somehow survive to call the shots.

This is the main reason the world is in the state it’s in, and it’s the reason reactionary forces are rising across the globe.

The Brexit vote in itself proves the point.

Sure, David Cameron has announced his intention to resign, but where are the the resignations of EU technocrats?

If anyone was discredited by this vote it’s the leadership of the EU, but they aren’t going anywhere.

Why?

Because they’re experts, and experts stay around forever.

Like Larry Summers, bank executives and neocon war mongers, these people never suffer the consequences of their actions and thus remain free to run around endlessly destroying the world from their unassailable perches of power.

That’s the point.

Being an expert does not make you infallible.

Your credentials should certainly offer you a seat at the policy making table, but from that moment on you had better demonstrate performance.

It’s the same way with a corporate job.

The resume gets you in the door, but your production day in and day out keeps you in the seat.

The status quo doesn’t see things this way.

To the status quo technocrat, this is a lifelong position.

They consider themselves to be the wise indispensable elders required to steer the world in the right direction irrespective of any and all calamities they cause along the way.

Unfortunately for us, history shows us that the biggest disasters happen precisely when you combine such expert arrogance with unbridled power.

One of the best modern examples of this relates to the tale of the 1990’s mega hedge fund Long Term Capital Management (LTCM).

A story that was perfectly captured in the excellent book by Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed.(https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259)

The leadership of LTCM was hailed as the best of the best from the beginning and expectations were high.

It’s principals consisted of not only Wall Street veterans but also several former university professors, including two Nobel Prize-winning economists.

Yet, what transpired after only five years in operation was one of the most spectacular failures of modern times.

A train wreck so large and so completely out of control, it required a Federal Reserve led bailout.

What happened with LTCM is happening right now across the political and economic spheres in virtually all nations.

You have a collection of self-assured, arrogant “experts” running the world into the ground with their policies.

As I said earlier, I have no problem with experts.

I have a problem when experts are permitted to operate with zero accountability.

The EU represents such technocratic immunity better than any other in the Western world.

The British people recognized that they couldn’t remove these technocrats from power from within (something proven once and for all by the fact no EU leaders have resigned), so they decided to leave.

I commend that choice and I think the sooner the status quo is disposed of, the greater the likelihood for a positive long-term outcome.

As I warned last year in my post, A Message to Europe – Prepare for Nationalism(https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/11/14/a-message-to-europe-prepare-for-nationalism/):

Actions have consequences, and people can only be pushed so far before they snap.

I believe the Paris terror attacks will be a major catalyst that will ultimately usher in nationalist type governments in many parts of Europe, culminating in an end of the EU as we know it and a return to true nation-states.

Although I think a return to regional government and democracy is what Europeans need and deserve, the way in which it will come about, and the types of governments we could see emerge, are unlikely to be particularly enlightened or democratic after the dust has settled.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the victims of these horrific events, but the Paris attacks didn’t happen in a vacuum.

The people of Europe have already become increasingly resentful against the EU, something which is not debatable at this point.

This accurate perception of an undemocratic, technocratic Brussels-led EU dictatorship was further solidified earlier this year after the Greek people went to the polls and voted for one thing, only to be instructed that their vote doesn’t actually matter.

Actions have consequences, and we’ve now witnessed the first of these consequences.

The “experts” have warned us of the disaster to befall Great Britain should it Brexit.

Well we now have front row seats from which to observe the outcome of the UK versus large economies that remain in the euro such as France, Spain and Italy in the years ahead.

As usual, I suspect the experts will be wrong.

More: http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/06/24/brexit-death-of-the-technocrats/

yah, it was Lowenstein - http://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259

/r/SecurityAnalysis maintain a decent reading list.

The following is taken from it:

History

• A History of Financial Speculation - Edward Chancellor
  
  
• A Short History of Financial Euphoria - Kenneth Galbraith
  
  
• Barbarians at The Gate - Bryan Burruough
  
  
• Irrational Exuberance - Robert Shiller
  
  
• Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
  
  
• Manias, Panics and Crashes - Charles Kindleberger
  
  
• Money of the Mind - James Grant
  
  
• Oil 101 - Morgan Downey
  
  
• The Box - Marc Levinson
  
  
• The Prize - Daniel Yergin
  
  
• The Big Short - Michael Lewis
  
  
• The Great Crash of 1929 - Kenneth Galbraith
  
  
• The Panic of 1907 - Robert Brunner
  
  
• The Predators Ball - Connie Bruck
  
  
• This Time Is Different - Rogoff & Reinhart
  
  
• Too Big to Fail - Andrew Ross Sorkin
  
  
• US Bank Deregulation in A Historical Perspective - Charles Calomiris
  
  
• When Genius Failed - Roger Lowenstein
  

I read the book about them. By the end they just kept shorting vol hoping mean reversion would bail them out, but the rest of Wall Street squeezed them into oblivion. There really was no algo.

There are several good books.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1439164991/ <- the best. also

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812975219/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/081297381X/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0273731963/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375758259/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470393750/

I just heard an NPR piece about this. here

Michael Lewis (author of moneyball) 's book on it is called Flashboys

What is the popular opinion of this book: Flash Boys ?


It has been getting a lot of press.

I just read the news and follow up on issues. NPR has covered a lot about food stamps and walmart. And the Daily Show is a great way to find out about random outrages that the media really isn't interested in covering, like this book that CNBC and others are attacking http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393244660

as /u/el_douche points out, a prestigious school and a great GPA helps a lot. I have a friend who's a programmer at a high-frequency firm and gets paid around 200k, and it requires very deep understanding of computer algorithms as well as computer architecture in order to create extremely fast running code for high frequency trading.

High frequency trading companies are very recent companies (and usually independent companies) that arose as the stock market went from man-powered to computer powered. Your typical big banks (like goldman sachs, morgan stanley, etc..) are still trying to play catch up with the high frequency trading companies by implementing their own version of HFT (high frequency trading). Unlike traditional banks which usually have more bankers than engineers, HFT companies are usually more engineering focused and thus have a larger percentage of engineers.

I recently read a [pretty good book] (http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393244660) on the rise of High Frequency Trading that was very fascinating... I just wish I remembered more about it (it contained too many complicated finance/investment terms for me :( ). Would recommend it if you are interested in some background knowledge

For investing and money management:

• The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
  
• The Millionaire Next Door
  
  And for fun:
  
  
• Liar's Poker
  
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
  
• Flash Boys
  

No tengo un libro sobre trading de alta frecuencia en México, pero sí en NYSE: http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Michuael-Lewis/dp/0393244660

https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393351599

In this book it talks about how in the early 2000s fiber cable was the fastest thing and most expensive thing anyone could possibly get so that's what the stock market used but today they don't use Fiber anymore. They use various types of microwave Wireless way faster than fiber, why? Light bouncing around inside of a cable travels a much further distance in a straight line than light transmitted between two points with line of sight.

I assume you mean this? Flash Boys

Dude, read [this one] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393338827?keywords=the%20big%20short&qid=1450542815&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) and [this one.] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393351599?keywords=the%20big%20short&qid=1450542815&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3) [The first one they already made a movie.] (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/?ref_=nv_sr_1) The second one I'm only starting but people say it's brilliant.

Edit: forgot to say that I really liked the first one, The Big Short.

There are always drawbacks to any investment. If you know how to properly evaluate individual securities (and perhaps have access to an algo or two highlighting the proper buy and sell signals) then there are a whole range of additional options available. Yes, REIT ETFs tend not to be correlated with stocks in general but during extreme events, many different types of investments will fall in unison. Remember though, correlation does not equal causation. If your time horizon is long and your main objective with holding REIT ETFs is to have some "rental income" that doesn't get taxed as rental income and be diversified owning a fraction of a portion of thousands of different properties; then they are great. Massive market downturns are perfect times to buy more REIT ETFs and increase your average monthly dividend as a result; just keep DCA and market dips (especially flash crashes like the 2010 one or the August one) are silly little things that you simply ignore. Not much the average investor can do about those anyway unless you're running your own HFT firm and have a server in the basement of the NYSE or TSX. I might be a tad naive but since there's no way that I can ever beat an HFT at individual trades (don't know how quickly you're able to fill your orders but I don't operate in nanoseconds on my end) I figured that I might as well ignore them. Just avoid market orders (stick to basic limit orders) and if you're really paranoid you can limit your trades to specific exchanges thus avoiding most darkpools. But we're talking about "scalping" fraction of pennies per share or even per trade here. Not really something the average person, especially not the long-term investor will ever really worry about. And unless you have millions of dollars, you're likely uninteresting to HFT algos anyway. Anyway, as you said... off topic from the original stuff but wanted to point out that I'm aware that I'm over-simplifying many of my statements (but in reality, most people don't need to know about the plumbing how their trades are executed and how flash crashes can occur etc in order to invest for the long-term). So despite finding the topic very interesting, I tend to stay away from it. For those wondering what on Earth u/FFrozen1 and I are speaking about, have a look at this data from Nanex looking at how many quotes are created sent out by HFTs vs. how many actually get filled. Also, there are a few great books on the subject: Dark pools and Flash Boys to name but two. These are slightly more advanced than "The Wealthy Barber Returns" for example but they make for a good read for anyone interested in learning more about how the market operates.

If only I would have been aware that Behavioural Finance existed as a field before starting my studies, I would have most likely pursued that instead. At least I'm in a related field so I can always do some research in that area. Time will tell... As for leverage and ETF effects on volatility (those are future post ideas so stay tuned :)

Thanks for the extra suggestions!

A-K-E

Cool contest :) Happy cake day!

I am an example of someone who could be working for a much higher income but chooses to help people and minimize my income to maximize helping those in need.

>Assume that you aren't a healthy individual.

I am though. Hypothetically? I would listen to people who write books like this and this and this.

> https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193
> There are plenty of cites in this book.

A journalist's pop book is not demonstration of a conspiracy by every corner of the food industry to get people addicted to anything.

> You're mirroring. Reread your mistakes and let me know when you correct them.

Mmmmm yeah I kind of figured it was going to go this way eventually. A lazy attempt to source something you said and then running away.

AH well, maybe the 5th time I try to get you to clearly state what you're trying to say will be the charm.

Here's all my favorites! For books:

Fast Food Nation.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manifesto.

Salt Sugar Fat.

"Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal".

For movies/documentaries:

Fed Up,

Fast Food Nation,

That Sugar Film,

Food Fight,

Forks Over Knives,

The Future of Food,

Sugar-Coated.

I believe all of these are on Netflix!

Those companies invest millions researching what works which is why they are so successful. Here is an awesome book about that.

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193

Try this book. https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193

Artikel [1] har lite tveksamma källor, bara en primärkälla. Dessutom går inte siffrorna i tabellen på sida 4 inte riktigt ihop, om det nu inte är jag som är dum.

Vidare läsning:

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193
[3] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/is-butter-really-back/
[4] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/butter-is-not-back-limiting-saturated-fat-still-best-for-heart-health/

And an excellent book...

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

I know my comments are going to get buried under all the other ones. I think that's a good sign because you have obviously tapped into a very real and significant issue.

I was a picky eater, by most standards I still am. I didn't try a green pepper until I was 26 because my mom worked a full time job and I was alone at home with nothing but a microwave. When I met my gf/wife I lived on Domino's (they had a special named after me :( ) and bagged salad.

15 years later I now eat a lot more variety and make sure to include veggies with every dinner/breakfast for a more balanced diet. I can eat most anything raw but cooked veggies send me heading for the hills (there is a video of my trying cooked broccoli trying not to wretch).

Here's my point...I came around because as I read and learned more I knew I was basically poisoning myself with crap processed food that was high in fat and salt (BLISS POINTS!) I eat a lot better now and if my wife who is a SAHM puts food in front of me I damn well eat it. ;)

In reference to kids try this. Go out and catch a possum then strap it into a high chair and try to feed it mushed peas for a while. Kids are already hard enough to feed without a united front (not to mention the concerns with in utero...crap in crap out). My kids will eat anything because we don't make faces or act up in front of them if we don't like it. Hell my wife is Vegan but still makes meat for all of us and she doesn't say jack shit about it.

My point is I think your concern is valid. I think if she at least showed signs of being open to change you'd probably feel differently. I too had a great metabolism at 25...not so much now at 40. Plus again all that processed food is basically a death sentence.

These books are good reading IMHO:
http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072518&sr=8-1&keywords=sugar+salt+fat

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072547&sr=8-1&keywords=omnivores+dilemma

http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0547750331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421072565&sr=8-1&keywords=fast+food+nation

> name one area I'm saying we should oppress

Your support of capitalism is support for oppression - especially your own.


> I've done my research...


You've swallowed your propagandist dogma.


>and the fact that youre refusing To do research totally doesn't surprise me

What do you need me to research? How you can be so obtuse?


> there's a reason people were trying to escape the soviet block to the west, and it's not just prosperity, but freedom.

I responded to this, but you chose to block it out because you can't think, just vomit dogma. Read back.


>You've called me a slave to production and consumption. Explain that, how the heck does that take away my freedoms

You are being forced to produce and consume at the behest of the capitalists, at their discretion, for one purpose, to maximize their profit - not yours.


You are manipulated to eat crap they misname food, that only addicts and sickens you. They have a habit of tricking you into buying crap you don't even want.


>I'm here to have a discussion to try and understand why the heck people would support communism despite completely and utterly failing wherever its tried.

You would have to acknowledge what we do support, not what your owners tell you what communism is. I have explained this yet you hold on to your lies.

Food scientists have mastered exploiting our dopaminergic reward system with processed foods.

Back when cigarettes were being demonized, Phillip Morris (a leading tobacco company) purchased Kraft and other food companies to repartition profits (and save their asses). These companies combined forces to sell people cheap and addictive convenient processed foods. As families got busier, and their incomes weren't keeping up with inflation, and the stay at home mother was an endangered species, both parents had no choice but to work, and whole food home cooked meals turned into processed convenient foods.

All the while Phillip Morris was branching out into other countries, a western diet imperialism, assailing their cultures and damaging their health getting everyone in the world hooked on processed foods. This was a recipe for worldwide health deterioration as well as a huge influx of profits for the once prominent tobacco company who now had their hands in our foods all over the world. Silent weapons for quiet wars.

The consumption of vegetables and other antinutrient foods over the decades more or less just exacerbated the already malnourished populace.

Check out the book: Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812982193/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_RR9SCbA6PS64E

Read Hard Drive if you want a better picture about gates.

100x better than the Pirates movie.

I wish it were in PDF form. I bought it on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0887306292

54 used from 0.01, not bad pricing.

Think you mean "Triumph of the Nerds" which is the documentary based on the book Accidental Empires, How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date written by Robert Cringely. A good read, IMO. (Revenge of the Nerds was a movie with Lewis, Gilbert and Booger!)
Also worth a read are: Dealers of Lightning, Xerox parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael Hiltzik; Go To by Steve Lohr; and Hard Drive, Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by Wallace & Erickson

Buy the book Hard Drive. It goes really in depth into Gates life and subsequent business ventures. It also doesn't appear to be written by someone sucking his cock, in fact quite the opposite. Great read IMO.

It came out in 1992 I believe as well, so not far removed from some of these things.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292

Plus you can make pics with yourself kissing him (look at the cover ;)

If you want a good book on early Gates/MS (Pre 1995)

Hard Drive is a great book (1993). Very inspiring.

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0887306292/

For those who would like a good read, Mr. Cringley based Triumph of the Nerds on his own book, Accidental Empires.

And both are far superior to the heavily-dramatized Pirates of Silicon Valley.

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor
by John McPHee

Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell

Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century
by Steven M. Johnson

Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date
by Robert X. Cringley

Tog on Interface
by Bruce Tognazzini

Amusingly mirrors (with the "moral" of the story reversed) the opening anecdote of the chapter about Microsoft in Cringely's Accidental Empires, probably equally apocryphal, but at least with the pedigree of being printed 25 years ago in a real book by an author who at least claimed to have done contemporary research.

> William H. Gates III stood in the checkout line at an all-night convenience store near his home in the Laurelhurst section of Seattle. It was about midnight, and he was holding a carton of butter pecan ice cream. The line inched forward, and eventually it was his turn to pay. He put some money on the counter, along with the ice cream, and then began to search his pockets.
>
> "I've got 50-cents-off coupon here somewhere," he said, giving up on his pants pockets and moving up to search the pockets of his plaid shirt.
>
> The clerk waited, the ice cream melted, the other customers, standing in line with their root beer Slurpies and six-packs of beer, fumed as Gates searched in vain for the coupon.
>
> "Here," said the next shopper in line, throwing down two quarters.
>
> Gates took the money.
>
> "Pay me back when you earn your first million," the 7-11 philanthropist called as Gates and his ice cream faded into the night.
>
> The shoppers just shook their heads. They all knew it was Bill Gates, who on that night in 1990 was approximately a three billion dollar man.
>
> I figure there's some real information in this story of Bill Gates and the ice cream. He took the money. What kind of person is this? What kind of person wouldn't dig his own 50 cents out and pay for the ice cream? A person who didn't have the money? Bill Gates has the money. A starving person? Bill Gates has never starved. Some paranoid schizophrenics would have taken the money (some wouldn't, too), but I've heard no claims that Bill Gates is mentally ill. And a kid might take the money -- some bright but poorly socialized kid under, say, the age of 9.
>
> Bingo.

There is a book called, "IBM and the Holocaust." Most of the leg work was allegedly done by a German subsidiary. But yeah, allegedly IBM is covering up their involvement and there have been questions into the actual extent of ther involvement, but the Nazi's were absolutlely crazy about keeping records.

You read this, too, huh?

Albert Einstein attacked the US for failing to stop Nazi Germany and claimed White House was 'controlled by near fascist financiers', private letter reveals

Plus one of a host of books on the subject.

You can absolutely have an addiction to food, especially modern processed food which is quite literally designed to addict you. Here's a quality book on the subject... it might just piss you off enough to help you resist.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/1400069807

I recommend avoiding sugar completely. It's got to be the worst of the three, but avoiding excess fat (especially deep fried foods) is also a good idea. At least salt doesn't have any calories. Read the nutrition labels and learn where hidden sugar is. Don't just avoid cokes and cookies, avoid ALL SUGAR as much as possible. Alcoholics don't drink a couple of beers a night and expect to stay on the wagon.

Sugar is so bad. If I simply have my usual sandwich for lunch with honey glazed turkey instead of plain over-roasted turkey, I'll finish it and find myself craving more. With the plain, I eat it and the thought of having more food doesn't even cross my mind (on the rare occasions that it does, I eat the end of the loaf of bread for an extra 50 calories of whole grain... that fills me right up).

I was the same way. I spent years doing daily cardio and couldn't make a dent.

3 months ago I found Eat To Live -- I'm down 24 pounds.

Hell, I lost a pound in the last week and I haven't been able to get to the gym for 2 weeks. And I'm stuffing my face, not starving to do it.

Inspirational videos on Netflix:

Forks Over Knives

Hungry for change

The key is real education, something the meat industry, dairy council, and the makers of processed foods (Salt, Sugar, Fat) doesn't want you to have.

i would say to stay away from those 100% natural fruit juices, a lot of them have more sugar than coke. Also, the way a lot of them are made is pretty much a sugar syrup that was derived from natural fruit juice still making it "natural" so its not very healthy (all info found in Salt Sugar and Fat)

Something i do when i'm getting a craving for something i should have is chug a bottle of water real fast, that works almost all the time. it gets rid of hunger/thirst and i'm good to go. Also, listen to what your body is hungry for, if you are craving sweets, you may be lacking in carbs.

Lots have people have said it- salt, sugar, fat. Check out the book of the same name by Michael Moss. It is pretty eye opening. Food scientists working for places like McD's manipulate the mouthfeel of food by changing the chemical structure of the fats in it and other frankenfood stuff.

It also talks about the marketing aspect where places shift focus off the health risks of their product by pumping in more salt/sugar and selling the new product as “fat-free”.

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/1400069807

"Sugar Salt Fat" by Michael Moss is an excellent book to read if you're interested in the history of how food became manipulated like this (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/1400069807 ) though there are a few good others (and some decent documentaries). I'd also recommend you read the always excellent books, if you haven't yet, by Taubes (easiest is probably "Why We Get Fat") or watch one of his talks (there are a bunch on youtube -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4 is one of them) for background on the nutritional road to it.

TL;DR yes, it is a concerted effort, but a lot of the effort has to do with money/greed, market demand, politics over science, and a few bad studies done half a century or so ago.

There is an entire book that says the opposite.

I am currently reading Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.

The description of how companies spike products like Oreo cookies with sugar & fats is frightening. I might need to check the book again but if I remember correctly one Oreo cookie has something like 5-6 tea spoons of sugar. I am hoping Parle-G is not in the same boat.

Now coming to your point of how to deal with this challenge: start with a plan of going through one day without Parle-G. No matter what, avoid eating a single Parle-G. If you feel cravings, have a glass of water instead. The next day will be easier. Soon, you will be a week without Parle-G and your cravings would have subsided.

I tried this with processed sugar and went 6 weeks without any processed sugar. Took a break for a day or two and am now trying to start the process all over again.

Have you guys read Fat Sugar Salt?

http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/1400069807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367597146&sr=8-1&keywords=fat+sugar+salt

Entrepreneur Reading List

1. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
   
2. The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
   
3. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
   
4. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
   
5. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
   
6. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
   
7. Ikigai
   
8. Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
   
9. Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch
   
10. The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time
    
11. Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web
    
12. The Web Startup Success Guide
    
13. The Best of Guerrilla Marketing: Guerrilla Marketing Remix
    
14. From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product
    
15. This Little Program Went to Market: Create, Deploy, Distribute, Market, and Sell Software and More on the Internet at Little or No Cost to You
    
16. The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
    
17. The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
    
18. Startups Open Sourced: Stories to Inspire and Educate
    
19. In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters
    
20. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
    
21. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
    
22. Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed
    
23. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
    
24. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
    
25. Eric Sink on the Business of Software
    
26. Words that Sell: More than 6000 Entries to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas
    
27. Anything You Want
    
28. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
    
29. The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business
    
30. Tao Te Ching
    
31. Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
    
32. The Tao of Programming
    
33. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
    
34. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
    
    

    Computer Science Grad School Reading List
    

    
    

35. All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School
    
36. Introductory Linear Algebra: An Applied First Course
    
37. Introduction to Probability
    
38. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    
39. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society
    
40. Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery
    
41. What Is This Thing Called Science?
    
42. The Art of Computer Programming
    
43. The Little Schemer
    
44. The Seasoned Schemer
    
45. Data Structures Using C and C++
    
46. Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
    
47. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
    
48. Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming
    
49. How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing
    
50. A Science of Operations: Machines, Logic and the Invention of Programming
    
51. Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences: Computer Science and Computational Biology
    
52. The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
    
53. The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine
    
54. Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory
    
55. How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
    
56. Types and Programming Languages
    
57. Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Elementary Algorithms
    
58. Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Mathematical Methods
    
59. Commonsense Reasoning
    
60. Using Language
    
61. Computer Vision
    
62. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    
63. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
    
    

    Video Game Development Reading List
    

    
    

64. Game Programming Gems - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    
65. AI Game Programming Wisdom - 1 2 3 4
    
66. Making Games with Python and Pygame
    
67. Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python
    
68. Bit by Bit

I would also recommend the book Founders at Work which has stories just like these.

Mayor Steinberg, you might want to dip into this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1430210788/
(even just the "look inside the book" part, starting with the foreword)

The number of great books to be read on business itself is beyond enumerable. There is even a book on the 100 best business books written here: http://100bestbiz.com/

For helping your brother decide whether he has the stomach and skills it takes to be an entrepreneur, I'd suggest Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki and Founders at Work

At the end of the day, it's a bipolar ride that I'm not sure any book can prepare you for...

It's well documented in this book and read this article while you're at it to get an inside look of who Erik Prince really is.

The reason for his permanent relocation to the UAE is simply an pretext: why the fuck would he move there just to create a mercenary force for the Sultan of Dubai? He could do that very well from home or have his army of consultants do that for him.

The reason why Blackwater went from Blackwater USA -> Xe -> Academi is because their tarnished reputation. Baghdad. Afghanistan. Hurricane Katrina killing civilians as "sport." They're nefarious and are a private military force with no allegiance.

The town he was born in was created by a Christian fundamentalist family and he kept up with that tradition. His father is the guy who invented the visors in cars among other inventions. He was born into wealth with a military background and a fixation for special ops.

There's an audio transcript of him (you can find it in YouTube) when during a presentation he says Muslims "eat in the sewers and probably like to live there since it's accustomed to their way of life."

The guy isn't liberal that's for sure. And he hates the religion of Islam. That's why Jeremy Scahill labels him as a "neo-crusader:" he thinks of it as his personal duty to use the vanguard of Christianism to rid of the world of any Islamic ideology.

He's a fanatic just like his entourage.

It's an extremely complicated mess over there that was exacerbated by the US government bringing in private contractors to act as "military without rules". In all of those places the US government essentially said "we're taking this country over" and then only allowed their friends to set up businesses and extract natural resources (like oil). So the people who lived there were suddenly unemployed and didn't have businesses to run... and then you add the lawless mercenaries who were hired to protect the US officials by any means necessary and it became a powder keg. The US officials essentially became dictators and killed the local economy. The businesses that came in were allowed to take all of their earnings out of country, so while people literally are starving to death the mercenaries are killing people willy-nilly to clear a path for the US officials to drive through.

If you want an in-depth backstory, check out Jeremy Scahill's book about Blackwater -- and you will see how we got to where we are (it isn't a new phenomenon, it's always been the way the US government operates) and why it's so dangerous to "outsource" the military functions to people who don't follow any rules/laws.

https://www.amazon.com/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary-ebook/dp/B0097CYTYA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501808631&sr=8-1&keywords=blackwater

Read Accidental Empires

I know it isn't exactly what you are looking for, but I'd recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Empires-Silicon-Millions-Competition/dp/0887308554

If you are interested in computer history.

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation-Expanded Edition

https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/dp/1430210788

>Vice has a reputation for (...) not putting too much spin on it

Wait ...what? Vice has the most controversial form of journalism you can find. They call it "immersive journalism"
What is it?
Some journalists think their job is not only to relay events, but to explain them, investigating their historical, geopolitical, cultural, social context, balancing points of view, confronting ideas,,, and maybe paint some of the many subtle nuances of our complicated world.
Then some journalists want to explore that complicated world from closer, and deliver their "raw" experience. Believing objectivity doesn't exist in the field, Hunter S Thompson "invented" Gonzo journalism by using the first person, and let's say "coloring" his stories with alcohol and drugs.[(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism) "Immersive (Vice) journalism" is kind of a modern evolution of that idea, with a billion dollar business plan.

>How in the world does Vice get this footage?

Typically their notion of "immersion" imply they are very willing to be very friendly with scary people. They won't object to bad things being done in front of them, they'll do what they're told, they will not try to ask too many questions, preferring to let people talk... Contemporary media has learn a lot in the past 15 years frm reality tv, see A Reality TV Producer's Secrets to Provoking Unforgettable Moments

So what's the problem with all this?
At first you might be interested to learn that Robert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox has 5% of Vice's shares, So they're not that independent from "traditional media".
Then, their money comes from advertising, in the form of "branded content". On a web full of blogs and buzzfeed, it's getting harder and harder to make the distinction between journalism and Native advertising So you might be at loss when it comes do what defines news for Vice. How do their editorial team work, what rules do they follow?
They find great footage, I think anybody would agree. But at what cost?

If that question interests you, I suggest a little comparison, about a fascinating subject, Blackwater and the world of private military.
Vice recently did at sponsored short doc about it: Superpower for Hire: Rise of the Private Military
Compare their message to what tell Jeremy Scahill, who wrote Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Here's a short clip of him talking to Bill Mohers about it, and there him giving a longer presentation of the book.
Not the same thing...

I usually stick to Christian books - there’s some great one’s out there. I value learning new ideas based on scripture.

However these are good books recommended by my pastor -
The Fred Factor: How Passion in Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385513518/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_IjuZDbQQ2VTZX

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't https://www.amazon.com/dp/0066620996/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_cmuZDb23KNDR1

Both are related to leadership - which we all are leaders as Christians.

You should look into Toyota, especially the Toyota Production System. For me they're the prime example of a company following a long-term vision over short-term profits. Liker's The Toyota Way gives some excellent examples in that regard.

Here's my suggestions:

• Freakonomics is a fun introduction to economics. It has some caveats (most high-level economists disagree with the book) but I think it's a great way to get excited about economic concepts and see some of the things you can do with them.
  
• There are a bunch of excellent topic-focused lighter-reading economics books such as: Wikinomics, The Wal-Mart Effect, and Predictably Irrational, to name a few.
  
• I know you said "pop-sci" but if you're into mysteries at all then there's a fun series of two books written by a pair of economists called Murder at the Margin and Fatal Equilibrium. The books are murder mysteries in which the main character solves the mystery using economic principles. They are a little silly but an entertaining read.
  
• If you're interested in something a little more hands on there are a number of free (low expectation) online introductory courses. The University of Illinois in particular is offering a completely free course in Principles of Microeconomics. It's fairly unorthodox and should be both fun and informative. I highly recommend it from personal experience.
  
  Hope that helps!

> this is a conspiracy for the government to gain access to the legislative right to censor the internet?

yes.

> Show me any example where that was ever in question that it was argued that the US government simply lacked the legislative jurisdiction to do so.

You are asking me to prove the various reasons for inaction. That isn't how evidence works. Fuck off.

> There have been questions of first and fourth amendment overreach, sure ... but show me a case where, had the internet been a title 2, it would have made any difference.

I already have. Closed platforms like TV and broadcast are commandeered and applied with bright line rules and regulations. You really don't get it. It's not like people now are actively getting on TV and radio and breaking the rules that the FCC have put in place. It is the very fact that those rules exist before someone breaks them. It is the difference between offense and defense. Between overt violence and structural violence. Between Realpolitik and Noopolitik. It isn't about playing cat and mouse like they have been doing. It is about subverting the freedom online by co-opting the platform and making it their turf that they control. If you create the maze you can lead people wherever you want. Perhaps you should do more reading on the history of opened and closed platforms

I dont understand what verbal diarrhea is. I used complete sentences.

boring mil search What I had to use on my 11 year old dell inspirion as a piece of meat intern working on navy projects. Treasure trove of documents if you want to actually understand what I mean by testing procedure.

You can also use everyspec.com, which is a lot less disgusting-looking.

A lot of it is redundant and poorly specified, but in the few years I worked under master gunsmiths and factory armorers, industry just did not have that daily level of rigor. There is no reason for them to change, except for the ISO cert requirements.

This fairly recent book Is where I learned a lot about Gaston, and it also reaffirmed my cynicism for the firearms industry. It is ironic, because the fanboy tunnel vision that he smashed through and flipped on his head is the same thing that keeps Glock's marketing on point. Its also just a really good read for so many reasons. I seriously recommend it.

You are better served getting a real technical viewpoint from a real old armor/gunsmith who has a good experience with handguns. But the book still gives a lot of deep information into the evolution of the first handguns in the early 80's to today.

Gen 1's are rare as hell, and outside of a museum or wealthy collector, the next best place is a gunsmith shop.

A glock is a mechanical device, prone to failure just like any other mechanical device, made of metal, polymer and springs. I've owned a g19, g17 and a g26, still have the g17. I used to shoot IPSC with my 17, and carried my g26 concealed for about a year.

My observation was it had the same failure rate as any other handgun. Nothing special about glocks except their marketing..

You might find this book interesting http://www.amazon.com/Glock-The-Rise-Americas-Gun/dp/0307719952

Read the following books:

• http://amzn.com/0375758259
  
• http://amzn.com/0393338827
  
• http://amzn.com/0307588343
  
  You'll find documented proof in those books (and in the other 15 titles I've read on this subject) that everything I wrote is factual.
  

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand ( link )

Never Stop Pushing: My Life from a Wyoming Farm to the Olympic Medals Stand - Rulon Gardner ( link )

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt: Unleash the Business Rebel Within - Donny Deutsch ( link )

It's True! It's True! - Kurt Angle ( link )

Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison - Karen Southwick ( link )

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days - Jessica Livingston ( link )

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality - Scott Belsky ( link )

Kick Your Own Ass: The Will, Skill, and Drill of Selling More Than You Ever Thought Possible - Robert Johnson ( link )

https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153277/

The "market " is a fixed ponzi scheme , ran by black boxes.
The best located black boxes can view and trade , or view and create a price and trade ,micro seconds before the competing black boxs. Seriously.
The human "investors" provide the food for the black boxes. The banks lick the icing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_trading

http://www.amazon.ca/Flash-Boys-Michael-Lewis/dp/0393244660

https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generation/dp/0062276700


SEGA was struggling even before the SNES, they never stood a chance.

yes, but they didnt steal money. theres a world of difference, and if you had even a passing knowledge of why LTCM blew up, it had very little to do with scholes' option pricing model, or even how they were pricing bonds, but because they drifted far away from their core strategy (https://www.amazon.com/When-Genius-Failed-Long-Term-Management/dp/0375758259) is a great proxy.

to think that a criminal is in the same class as them is laughable.

OP seems to be think being Swedish makes IKEA a 'saint'. IKEA is in the business of making you hooked to their 'food'. They are not in the business of promoting health and nutrient. See https://www.amazon.com.au/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193 why it is salty.

An initiated "flash crash" is the most immediate way to cause long-term economic chaos in the West. In one afternoon, they could eliminate 10%+ of our major companies' market capitalizations while injecting a very real fear into all stockholders going forward. Trillions in accumulated wealth would disappear; there goes your father's retirement.

Disclosure: I'm an investment manager and oversee a Large Cap Growth stock portfolio.

Want to learn more, read Michael Lewis. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, and Flash Boys, in that order.

Certainly, no other successful businesses hire/promote from within and certainly not a disproportionate amount of exponentially successful ones in the past 75-100 years of capitalism.

(That's right, that's an Amazon Canada link, big whoop, at least there's no referral shit)

But of course, that doesn't sell like the TSLAQ headline would. That's just boooooring ol' highly-respected textbooks by highly-respected authors.