I want to realign HR under a "Chief Productivity Officer" who is also responsible for IT. The CPO's goal and metric is maximization of workforce productivity by getting employees working smart, working hard, retaining good people and getting rid of the bad, improving management skills, and leveraging technology.
Lots of people from Southie take UberPool to Seaport, Downtown, and Back Bay neighborhoods because the bus service is so terrible (#7 in particular).
Imagine it's snowing or raining on you and three buses skip your stop because they are already full... the extra couple of bucks for door-to-door service without waiting outside and faster, predictable transit is very much worthwhile.
In addition, Uber has offered a month-long/30-day "POOL Pass" for a flat fee, with a buck or two fee per ride which isn't affected by surge pricing. When the pass was introduced it was just one cent per ride, which made it cheaper/comparable to a bus pass. The pricing has since been raised (not cheaper than bus) but still a good deal, considering the benefits. And the program has seen many adjustments without being widely rolled out or promoted, so it seems to still be a program that they are testing out.
Warren Buffett put his money where his mouth is: he won his $1m wager on the S&P 500 beating a basket of hedge funds over 10 years. And he won despite buying the S&P right before the great recession -- you'd think the hedge funds would have thrived in that market crash by "hedging". It's one more proof point that the vast majority of hedge funds are more risky than justified by returns, regardless of the amount.
There is similar situation in the diamond engagement ring market, of all places! NiceIce, Beyond4Cs, Yourdiamondteacher, ProsumerDiamonds -- all affiliate marketing blogs that drive a lot of sales. No lawsuit yet to reveal the inner workings, but undoubtedly there is the same shadiness.
Was it really a time saver or did it just feel like a time saver? In the US I found Waze unrealistically optimistic that back-roads and alternative routes would save time -- my ETA started great, but slowly worsened until I was better off riding out the traffic.
Since most people aren't doing enough waste monitoring in the first place, shrinking oversized instances should be low-hanging fruit to free up some budget
Same teachers as anywhere else? At my public magnet school I was taught by a National Teacher of the Year, a board member of a national mathematics group, and a few PhDs. The faculty needed to guide/craft winning entries for prestigious science competitions, and coach nationally-competitive mathematics teams, and teach classes years past Advanced Placement courses. That is not your run-of-the-mill teacher.
The faculty I had was enthusiastically involved in all of these things and performed well. The few exceptions that did not live up to that level were well known, and the very involved parents pressured the principal and leadership to change at every opportunity - but public schools don't have much flexibility for getting rid of teachers.
Of course, the caliber of the faculty is determined by many factors, and other magnet schools may have terrible teachers. But it is up to the principal, school board/leadership, parents, and teachers to give the kids the opportunity to reach their potential.
Singapore should not be circled. Singapore haven't distributed masks, they don't mandate masks, they only encourage masks for sick/hospital, and NYT said on Mar 13 "most... do not wear masks out, because the government has told them it’s not needed".
From discussion the scientific /r/Covid19 subreddit:
> Flawed article (not testing in cells expressing TMPRSS2 and / or Furin), gets upvoted 800 times... the usual Reddit COVID19 story... Two months ago an article said pretty much the same. Both articles only test antiviral properties in Vero E6 cells, which is not useful, since HCQ is also very effective in Vero E6 cells, but overall underperforms.
Hitachi Vantara | Waltham (Boston), MA (remote during Covid) | Full time
We make one of the leading private cloud object storage systems -- like AWS S3, but used by the largest IT departments where on-prem is cheaper than the AWS profit margin. More than 80% of the Fortune 100 trust Hitachi Vantara, which provides hardware, software and services to help companies manage their digital data.
The comment predicts a precipitous fall in price. A gem-quality diamond price index [1] shows fluctuation but nothing precipitous:
Jun 7 2018: 124.79 (day of Reddit comment)
May 4 2021: 124.27 (today)
The reddit comment ignores obvious macroeconomic trends. Growth of middle class in China and India are adding to the diamond demand (a lot), in addition to general global population growth and greater purchasing power.
Diamond engagement rings date back to 1477, and diamond jewelry dates back much further. It was viewed as very exclusive/rare. Diamond engagement rings for the masses was from DeBeers advertising starting in 1938.
The growth in diamond mine production in the late 1800s tremendously increased diamond supply. DeBeers took advantage of historical perception of rarity and actual lower cost of materials to create a new market.
I currently use Voice Memos to record multi-hour rehearsals as a single recording.
I assume recording with Tape It would prevent/interfere with recording with Voice Memo. So before I try recording a rehearsal with Tape It, I'd like to load existing Voice Memo recordings to see how Tape It would add value.
Right now after rehearsal I manually extract each full run-through of a song (or important excerpts) into a separate file (then I put it into dropbox for sharing). I would find it useful if Tape It automatically creates a separate "file" for a play-through of a song, so that I don't have to manually do it. But I can't tell from the Tape It website whether something like that is possible or not. So I'd like to load an existing recording and see whether that happens.
It would be extra useful if Tape It would automatically determine and label the name of the song to each "file". I don't plan to put down my instrument and unlock my phone to label each song before/after the run-through -- I am paying attention to the rehearsal leader and don't want distraction, don't have time, etc. If it doesn't happen automatically, then Tape It's usefulness depends on how easy it is to go back and label each song -- again, I want try it with existing recordings to see how easy that would be. (It would be even better if it could identify a whole song play-through versus just an excerpt/segment. Scenario being "We made a small change and only practiced that part without a full run-through.")
For promoting the app, consider advertising on /r/bandmembers and /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers and other super-relevant subreddits. Or you can encourage some Tape It users to create/participate in threads in those subreddits about "how do you record your rehearsals".
PBS Kids has at least two free apps: one video streaming, and one educational games. Both are great.
Sensical [1] is a free streaming service/app that only includes content that meet Common Sense Media criteria. Common Sense Media [2] rates/reviews media for quality and age-appropriateness.
Kanopy [3] is a streaming service/app that is freely available through many libraries. It has a walled-off kids area with movies, shows, and videobooks that are not garbage. I have no concerns letting my kid loose in the kids area to choose among that content.
YouTube Kids [4] is a free streaming service/app that can be terrible or decent. To be decent, you must curate the content yourself (rather than the algorithm) so you have to find and add "channels" or even individual videos, and remove them when they are outgrown. Some channels I found are...
YTK General: PBS Kids (collection of 5 channels), Sesame Studios (collection of 6 channels), Khan Academy Kids, Bluey, Deep Look, PBS Space Time, TheDadLab, Super Sema, Mystery Doug, Brainzy Games, The Kiboomers [for toddlers]
YTK Animals: Nat Geo Kids, The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, Animal Wonders Montana, San Diego Zoo, BBC Earth Kids
YTK Drawing: Super Simple Draw, Muffalo Potato, Draw So Cute, Art for Kids Hub, drawstuffrealeasy, Red Ted Art
Enough with the streaming video. For educational but fun apps, I recommend:
PBS Kids Games, as mentioned before.
Khan Academy Kids [5].
Teach Monster: Reading for Fun [6].
NumberBlocks/Alphablocks [7] have freemium game apps (NumberBlocks World, AlphaBlocks World) that combine the show and games. They also have lame free apps (MeetTheNumberBlocks, MeetTheAlphaBlocks) that I wouldn't waste time on.
This is a feature, not a bug. Once you learn the general philosophy, you will be fine. For a 2-lane roundabout: Use right lane if you want to turn right. Use left lane if you want to turn left. Either lane is fine if you want to go straight.
It's like when you approach a traditional 4-way intersection, some of which add a left-turn-only lane and some of which add a right-turn-only lane: once you learn the general philosophy, you will be fine.
