I’m getting these messages occasionally, but usually they make sense, such as when I go to online gaming sites or torrenting portals. Didn’t try porn - don’t want a call from HR. In general, our IT policies are fairly sensible; this is one of the very few outliers.

All other MSM, even some more questionable like The Sun or Fox News, works fine. CNN is the only one blocked.

I found out that the best way to force Google Maps to update is to make the correct edit in Open Street Maps. Google seems to source its local information from there.

Just an anecdotal example: I live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and I’ve seen loads of cars drive up to my house, and then gingerly do a 15-point turn (the road is very narrow), and drive back. I checked Google Maps and found that it lists my street as open. I’ve filled reports with Google several times, and nothing happened. Then, I updated OSM to indicate that at the end of my street there’s just a pedestrian footpath to the next street. Within two weeks, the number of cars turning around decreased drastically. I checked Google Maps, and found that they fixed their map. A few years later, there’s still the odd car making the mistake, but the only map service I could identify that still didn’t update was Apple Maps.

Since then, I’ve done several edits in OSM (I live in a young estate, with loads of construction still going on, so maps are not very reliable), and Google always picked up these edits.

Funny… My company (over 100k employees worldwide) is blocking CNN as a security risk…

Got a couple of e-mails from them on one of my mail accounts, even though I never subscribed to them (in fact, at that time I didn’t even know who they were). Marked them as spam, and Gmail never showed me more of their e-mails. If enough people did the same, e-mails from the hellofresh domain may now be is some of the biggest spam filters. Way to shoot themselves in the foot.

I was one of the users who left because TabMixPlus stopped working. Never worked again, so I’m with Vivaldi. I know; it’s built on Chromium, but being able to have my tabs on the bottom of the window is worth it for me.

Fluffy. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted a killer robot and name it Fluffy. My parents never got me one, so once I hit midlife crisis I got myself a cleaning robot and named it Fluffy. At my age, I appreciate clean floors more than seeing the blood of my enemies.

I live in Ireland, where all investing that’s not into real estate is heavily taxed, and investing into idex fund is taxed extra hard (including tax on unrealized capital gains). So, that option is not for me, but it’s a perfectly sensible option for many. These days I just manage my retirement funds by rebalancing them within the investment house I’m with, based on economic megatrends.

I used to work as a financial analyst on Wall Street, and even after I changed careers I invested on my own, roughly following Buffet’s strategy. My annual returns averaged 22%, but given the little starting capital ($2000), I cashed out with just enough for a large downpayment on my house.

Anyway, just a very short primer on how Buffet is investing. He’s a student of Benjamin Graham who wrote the highly influential The Intelligent Investor. There, Graham outlined the most basic fundamental strategy: buy stock in companies where market cap is below book value and hold long-term, until stock catches up. Obviously, that’s hardly feasible in today’s markets, but there are still stocks that you won’t realize they are undervalued until you research the shit out of the companies. Not stocks, but companies. The former, technical investing, has been in vogue since at least the 90s, while the latter is the old school fundamental approach of actually calculating the stock’s underlying value and its growth potential.

Where it all comes together is portfolio building. The conventional theory is to have around 30 stocks to minimize volatility. Buffet’s approach is to maximize upward potential by having fewer stocks (around 10), while minimizing risks by researching and fully understanding companies he invests in. This ranges from understanding financials and operations to analizing the company’s management. Buffet is known for keeping the management of an acquired company in place and not interfering with their decisions because he wouldn’t invest into a company where he wouldn’t trust the management in the first place.

Of course, I didn’t have the means for investing enough to have any influence on the company or market, so I had to really dig into the fundamentals and hope the market would eventually realize the value of the company. It worked for me, as long as I stuck to companies whose business model I could understand. So, I missed loads of winners from the tech sector, but I’ve had a steady above-market return, and that was good enough for me. I followed the advice from the book On Investing by John Neff, which I can fully recommend, if it’s still in print.

Seconded. Switched my wife to Mint two years ago, and she never cared about going back to Windows. Not that she cares about Mint, either; the point of contention was the transition, which was much smoother than she was afraid of.

That’s what I’ve been using when flying and when running on a treadmill in a busy gym. But as you said, it does defeat the purpose of hearing your surroundings, so otherwise I keep to headphones where I can regulate the volume to hear better without completely blocking the external sound.

I still listen to radio on my phone. Wired headphones are required, as they serve as the antenna.

Other than that, I do a lot of running. Given how often it rains, headphones last no longer than half a year, and wired ones are far cheaper to replace. (I do have a pair of wireless Shockz, which handle water very well, but they are not good for city running with high ambient noise.)

I got a steam owen, and it’s a game changer. The reheat setting is 10 minutes at 120 C, the food comes out tasting as if freshly made, evenly hot, but almost ready to eat. If I wait for 2 minutes after I pull it out (make a coffee for after-lunch dessert), the food is just right.

The movie is based on the short story All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein, and it does a great job preserving the spirit and internal logic of the narrative. When you take that into account, you’ll realize how impressive the filmmaking is here. It’s hands down my favourite time travel movie.

That’s similar to Audible. I can’t rate the books I listened to because I downloaded the instead of streaming them through their app. I think it’s to prevent brigading and fake ratings.

Just got my first TV since my old vacuum tube stopped working in the early 90s. 55" Sony flat screen. It has gour fixtures for its stands: a pair that’s narrow close to the centre, and a pair if you want a wide stance. I didn’t mind the wide option, but I appreciated having a choice.

I use Mint, and I found that it’s the best distro for introducing my family to Linux. Those who tried it never asked for their Windows back.

I’m close to 50, been running for decades, and still pull over 2k miles annually. Almost all that on asphalt. Haven’t experienced any joint problems yet. I credit three things for that. First, modern running shoes are designed to soften the impact, and recently they have gotten ridiculously soft. The extreme cases give you 50mm (about 2 inches) of soft foam under your feet, but even more normal running shoes have advanced foam and bouncy elements in the outsole to soften the impact. Second, proper running form is not rocket science, and most people fall into a decent running form naturally. This form is the most gentle on the joints. And finally, if you are serious enough about running to go the distance where hard surfaces could be a problem, you are already likely to supplement your running with strength training, which further helps to protect your joints.

That was pretty normal. But the angel and venture investors walked away with money. And if the founders were smart or assertive enough, they also made enough money to start a new venture, possibly with less external seed funding.

Having worked in business incubation at a research university, helping researchers find angel investors, I’d like to throw in my two cents:

First of all, the article runs headlong into survivorship bias. For each Bezos or Gates, there are thousands of entrepreneurs with financial backing that went bust. And the vast majority of those who didn’t were acquired by larger, established companies before they could even hit the news (in my area, the ideal exit strategy was said to be acquired by Cisco, rather than an IPO). Many of these startups had even more initial backing by the three f’s (family, friends and fools).

Now, let’s look at those who didn’t have financial backing. For such people, there are angel investors. As others in this thread pointed out, one needs to have good connections to find such investors. Good connections are available in most, if not all, research universities, via their business incubators. Universities, however, will retain part ownership of the company (licensing any research or technology back to the entrepreneur), and they are still thinking in the medium term. They are not looking for unicorns, but a steady stream of revenue, so their preferred exit strategy is indeed the acquisition. I’m certain that the very few poorer entrepreneurs who’d strike it rich in IPO were pressured into selling their company. That’s why you don’t see any examples of a company truly being pulled out of nothing. And don’t get me even started at the wasted opportunities where the professor didn’t sign the research licensing papers because he’d make a comfortable living keeping the research at the university…

Point of this is that it will be statistically likely that we’ll get a few super-rich entrepreneurs, and they’ll come mainly from backgrounds where they could secure seed financing. That does not mean they didn’t work very hard with the money they were given.