| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3737 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This HackerNews comment by notacoward (Hacker News) on the article Entrepreneurs Aren’t a Special Breed – They’re Mostly Rich Kids by Nimmala (Asia Times) offers a lovely analogy for what it takes to succeed as an entrepeneur.
“Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts.
“Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.
“Rich kids can afford many throws. If... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article John Oliver, Dustin Hoffman have heated exchange over sexual harassment claims illustrates exactly why we should be very careful of whom we let carry our flag for us. Many people like John Oliver because he generally punches upward and he’s quite funny. His schtick is wearing a little thin, but he’s still pretty funny.
He took some time off of obsessing over every detail of Donald Trump’s life recently to interview Dustin Hoffman about sexual allegations.[1] When Hoffman said that “it... [More]”
Published on in Miscellaneous
The book store at the Zürich Airport has a decidedly more diverse assortment of literature than I would have expected. I just expected a ton of Clive Cussler and John Grishman and John LeCarré, but I was pleasantly surprised.
On the first couple of shelves, I noticed three Chomsky books and a Varoufakis[1] book.
Another shelf held Naomi Klein, Chomsky and Varoufakis:
On another shelf, Laurie Penny showed up and, once again, Varoufakis.
Ishiguro’s classic and Arundhati Roy’s latest were... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
This is a public-service announcement. There are several ways of blocking trackers and ads on desktop browsers. I’ve been using Ghostery for years, but am a little leery of the company behind it. For a while now, my browser of choice, Opera[1], has included ad-blocking natively. I’d also heard about a tool from the EFF named Privacy Badger that is supposed to do what Ghostery does.
I wanted to figure out which software I actually need to use in order to turn off tracking. To that end, the EFF... [More]
Published on in Quotes
“There’s been a class war going on for decades and it’s time the bottom 80% of us got fucking pissed off, with or without a permit.”
~ 174 ~ Tax Bill Fraud, Secret US Spy Base, Genetic Warfare, Suppressing Dissent by Redacted Tonight (YouTube)
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article The Non-Apology To Lindsay Shepard, Eh? by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice) sums up my opinion of Jordan Peterson better (more succinctly, at least) than I could:
“I’ve never been comfortable with Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson. Much as I agree with his position that people can’t make up their own gender pronouns and demand others use them, under force of law, there’s something unseemly about him. Too self-promotional. Too one-note. Too . . . obvious.”
The article itself is about a professor in... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
I’d recently started using Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect to my desktop at work from my laptop. The advantages are many: My nearly 4-year-old laptop no longer has to groan under the strain of running Visual Studio with 150 projects open. It was working very well, actually, but drained the battery considerably faster than I’d like. The battery lasts longer and the CPU no longer runs so hot, making it a viable laptop again. Hat tip to Björn for telling me to give it a go.
... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
The following is composed largely of links, citations and notes that I make on almost everything I read. I’ve expanded my notes slightly and cleaned them up for public consumption. Instead of letting these notes moulder in an unpublished draft (as I’ve done many times), I’ve put together a format that I think might be useful for readers but that doesn’t take as much time as individual articles on each topic would.
Mobiles are Huxley’s Soma
tl;dr: I’m trying out a new format that lets me... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Quotes
When asked about being “driven by this fear of inertia”,
“I’m almost 60. I’m 56, so I’ve got a few more years. It’s not old, it’s not young, it’s not anything, but it’s not 20.
“Unless you keep some amount of intensity and anger with it, whatever that is, where you’re like, I’m getting up today, I’m going for it, what are you angry at? Whatever it is, bring it on. I gotta be a little mad at it … to get through it. I have never been able to lose that. What I have done to displace some of that... [More]”
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Quotes
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the... [More]”
Published on in Technology & Engineering
Every once in a while, I feel bad for not using the only remaining truly open-source browser: Firefox.[1]
Opera is my go-to browser, but that’s been bought up by the Chinese, right? So far, things haven’t changed but who knows what’s going on under the hood? Chrome is a decent testing browser, but offers me nothing better than Opera and its memory profile is, for whatever reason, consistently worse. I’m a very happy Opera user.
Still, Firefox is, in version 57, supposedly much faster and uses... [More]
Published on in Quotes
“If you find yourself angry at someone lower on the economic ladder than you, then there’s a pretty good chance that you’re being manipulated by someone higher on the economic ladder than you.”
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in earthli Albums
I’m going to use a recent example for the screenshots below. The orange text and arrows in the screenshots are instructions. Click any of the pictures to see a bigger version.
I published two journals describing the two big days that I had in the mountains:
To continue, right-click “Private Granfondo San... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article Katko, Tenney to Donald Trump: Don’t tell people to leave Upstate NY discusses President Trump’s recent statement about Upstate New York:
“When you have an area that just isn’t working like upper New York state, where people are getting very badly hurt, and then you’ll have another area 500 miles away where you can’t get people, I’m going to explain, you can leave. It’s OK. Don’t worry about your house.”
Trump is only one of many people who think that the answer to an utterly failed... [More]
Published on in Miscellaneous
Dear Netflix,
Have some respect for your content. It’s pretty good. Can I just watch it, please?
Why can’t you just relax?
Why do you feel the need to play something all the time?
Your content is good. Your aggressive need to constantly decide for me when to play it is severely annoying.
Did I leave a show selected for more than 5 seconds because I was waiting until I was ready to watch it?
BOOM. Netflix gonna play a trailer that spoils everything.
Or, worse, yet, Netflix just gonna up... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Books
Disclaimer: these are notes I took while reading this book. They include citations I found interesting or enlightening or particularly well-written. In some cases, I’ve pointed out which of these applies to which citation; in others, I have not. Any benefit you gain from reading these notes is purely incidental to the purpose they serve of reminding me what I once read. Please see Wikipedia for a summary if I’ve failed to provide one sufficient for your purposes. If my notes serve to trigger an... [More]
Published on in Movies
Published on in Quotes
“There’s an idea I myself have helped spread, that a vegan is someone who doesn’t like food. That’s wrong. But it is accurate enough, and often enough, to be mildly funny to some people. And, what with new dietary restrictions cropping up every day for any number of reasons, it’s tempting to mock the gluten-intolerant, the diverticular and the Celiac sufferer. Suffering is funny! Comedy is tragedy happening to people you don’t care about. (Emphasis added.)”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
We’re told that democracy is the mechanism whereby we can effect change in our society. While true, it is irrelevant in all but the most trivial of applications.
For example, legislators in the US are legally allowed to take money from lobbyists and corporations. There are some restrictions, but, for the most part, bribery is legal. And it seems to work quite well. How does democracy help us combat this? We can elect other people, people that don’t take bribes. What if none are running for... [More]
