Funny to think about now with hindsight - but a prototype version of the Magic Leap One.
It was an incredibly novel feeling of seeing the room I was in get mapped out, furniture and all, to see interfaces and 3d models rendered in a way that felt interactable in real space. Moving renders of objects around to see how things could be - well, it was just a lot of fun; it felt like playing with a new video game console as a child.
Sure, the overall experience was clunky, with the motion tracking and sub-par lenses constantly reminding you that it was only a prototype, but that first interaction excites you about all the things that could be possible if it actually is refined into a final product. Perhaps this was the same experience that led many of the early investors to put so much faith in Magic Leap while there was still a long road ahead of them.
The book "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari (which I discovered through HN) has helped me a lot in understanding so much of the context of what makes so many of us feel depression and anxiety at many points in our lives. A big part of the narrative is that we are too quick to diagnose and provide ourselves with medication without really understanding environmental variables that have impacted our overall well-being.
While I do believe our understanding of how the brain functions still has a long way to go, which includes treatments for mental illness, there is something to be said about acknowledging more the external factors of our modern day lives that fill us with so many problems.
Personally, realizing where I have "disconnected" from people, values, and truly human experiences has been a large step forward in improving my mental health. I hope it's something that others who feel so many emotional challenges can try as well to see if they can make progress with their own mental health.
> There is no evidence to justify the continued promotion of one-dimensional theories such as ‘chemical imbalance’.
The Lost Connections book, which I read a few years ago, really helped hit this home for me. Totally made me reconsider my view of depression and treatment.
Thanks for sharing your experience. As a 25 year old right in the thick of it, trying to find my own personal balance, I'm curious to know your thoughts some more:
1. What are some of the trade-offs you're still feeling the impact of?
2. How did your "adult stuff" transition play out? Was it something smooth that occurred over a long period of time or a short immediate change?
Transition to "adult stuff" was quick. I turned thirty and immediately took on a full-time job at a tech company and moved into my own apartment. I still did a lot of my hobbies and spent time with friends, but I decided to invest myself in work and try to make some money. I was lucky in that I had programming experience and connections at a company that would hire me despite having limited experience.
It took a few years before I really decided to settle down, put down roots, and get married. When I decided to do it, though.. I went and did it immediately. I moved to a quieter, less expensive city, bought a house, a 20 year-old truck, and adopted a senior dog. My wife was the first person I dated in my new city, and she worked at the cafe closest to my office. She was probably one of the first people I met.
Fucking off in your 20s can be fun, but it can also be lonely and depressing and you're never immune from all the bullshit that makes life difficult... At some point in time, I decided that I would rather be scared than bored and based a lot of my choices around that particular value. And that's one of the trade-offs: A lot of things are not going to work out, a lot of plans are going to fall through. You have to be flexible. You're going to be on a financial tightrope sometimes. Things are easier being settled. But, having more to lose, I find myself more resistant to changes and more risk-averse.
The longer-term trade-offs are just financial and professional. I could have been investing more of my money, or bought a house earlier. Getting yourself to a higher level of income is fairly easy, but missing out on 5-10 years of professional experience is difficult to make up for and that has long-term financial side-effects.
The fact that things turned out okay for me probably has more to do with luck that I care to admit.
I'm currently living in Houston, working as a SWE, and can attest to the pros of living here. Regarding your concerns, the city is quite demographically diverse from people of all walks of life. Summers do get hot and humid, but nothing unbearable. The winters are more than tolerable (its currently 68 degrees outside) as well.
I would argue Bay Area is one of the most diverse places on the planet. More so than Houston.
In the Bay Area we have the following people: white, black, indian, vietnamese, chinese, korean, latinx, middle eastern, russian, polish, european, british, etc.
Whites are a minority at many public schools in the Bay Area..and that is normal here. Yet people on HN love to complain about lack of diversity?
Cons of Houston:
-Traffic is just as bad as the Bay Area if not worse, no?
If access to clean data was what set Renaissance apart, we'd most likely see other funds/firms do just as well or Renaissance's returns be much lower.
Market data services such as Reuters/Morning Star provide incredibly clean data at great convenience for anything you can imagine, even including astronomical data.
Its kind of like the Black-Scholes model. If it really was that simple and straightforward, everybody would be using it to make a ton of money.
>Market data services such as Reuters/Morning Star provide incredibly clean data at great convenience for anything you can imagine, even including astronomical data.
Incredibly clean ,that's a very big stretch.
Source: have worked with TR sirca db for almost a decade.
Founded by Jim Simons, the "Father" of quantitative research. The firm is famous for their significant year-over-year returns and notorious for only hiring PhDs from mathematics/physics/computer science.
There is an interesting book on how Jim Simons created the company and built his team of academics from the ground up, "The Man Who Solved the Market"
Probably Edward Thorp is the "Father" of quantitative research.Since the late 1960s, Thorp has used his knowledge of probability and statistics in the stock market by discovering and exploiting a number of pricing anomalies in the securities markets, and he has made a significant fortune [1]
Oh yes I remember reading this wiki before. I just didn't remember what the company was called. I even tried to research it by googling "renaissance time series prediction," and still couldn't find it.
I don't understand why I was downvoted? I don't think there was enough context for anyone (who's not in the field) to know what you meant, and I thought it would be useful for people like myself to get clued in.
The generated pages definitely are very structured, with each page belonging to a certain area/subject (ie. "Blockchain for Kids" is then presented as "Not just a Blockchain"). A lot seems to be cut-and-paste together, and not a purist implementation of GANs. With that being said, it still is very impressive that these generic page designs can feel like real world examples of what you might see in a pre-seed startup site. The satire hits right on the mark.
Thats understandable. Where "This Waifu Does Not Exist" serves as a demonstration of GANs, "This Startup Does Not Exist" is more of a satirical jab on how "disruptive" startup endeavors are really generic efforts that don't amount to anything
It was an incredibly novel feeling of seeing the room I was in get mapped out, furniture and all, to see interfaces and 3d models rendered in a way that felt interactable in real space. Moving renders of objects around to see how things could be - well, it was just a lot of fun; it felt like playing with a new video game console as a child.
Sure, the overall experience was clunky, with the motion tracking and sub-par lenses constantly reminding you that it was only a prototype, but that first interaction excites you about all the things that could be possible if it actually is refined into a final product. Perhaps this was the same experience that led many of the early investors to put so much faith in Magic Leap while there was still a long road ahead of them.