Social media feeds have been completely broken for many years. What social media used to be, has now moved to group chats and channels.

But, I guess, there's still room for those channels to be run through the enshittificator. Wouldn't surprise me if we in the not-so-distant future start to see random ads and paid content in group chats.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that dreams are often just that, dreams. Once they are realized, many will not live up to the expectations.

Managing your expectations plays a big part.

So at least for me, that knowledge has helped. Another discovery I made, was that some of my best experiences and decisions have been by pure chance. Things I never planned to do, or had any desire to do, but turned out to be more than I could ever imagine.

It’s ironic how some things you plan for your whole life, but never get to do, while some things you never planned for, ended up overshadowing those initial dreams.

And lastly, many things in life is like a bus stop - there’ll come another bus if you just wait.

In my professional life I chases “prestige” for the sake of prestige, and ended up hating those things.

Of course, there are things I really wanted to do, but never got the chance to, and I’m too old to do now, but that’s just something I’ll live with.

My FOMO and regrets plummeted as I started approaching 40.

It's also worth reflecting on what's underlying the dream. Your "dream" was prestige. You obtained it and it disappointed you. My hypothesis would be that underlying your desire for prestige was a fundamental desire to be loved. Then you realized that prestige only looks superficially like being loved but it's actually something very different and materialistic. If you had reflected that earlier you could have avoided wasting effort for obtaining prestige. The same mechanism is true for all dreams.

The inverse was true for me, at 40 I realised a lot of doors are now closed or closing.

Having grown up in Norway, where soccer has always been very popular, accessibility is a factor - I'd agree with that.

The majority of soccer we played as kids wasn't even on a pitch. If you had a wall, a football, and two objects (usually jackets) to mark the goal - you could play - and that's exactly what we did.

But yeah, small neighborhood pitches were usually easy to find.

My pet theory is that it is more nurture than nature. These (VC) veterans have seen thousands of startups come and go, and become so desensitized to the ruthlessness.

Of course to people like the author, it seems borderline sociopathic to casually suggest such levels of betrayal. It is like trying to get into the most exclusive nightclubs, and when you're finally in the front, the bouncer will look at the group and say "You can get in, but not those two". It sucks, but to the bouncer it is just business as usual, and you're just another face.

Nah, he was talking about taking their stock. That’s morally theft even if by some convoluted reason it’s not legally theft.

I get the business as usual analogy but the specifics of the interaction are different. You just showing up to your club with your friends is different than having equity in a company you cofounded.

Heard one tailor say that business was suddenly booming again, as many regular and new clients would come in to have their clothes altered, after jumping on GLP-1s.

TL;DR: After moving from Europe to the US, he had to verify his address by entering a code from a physical YouTube letter. He requested it three times, but it never arrived, so his channel was demonetized.

I also think that's one reason.

Where I'm from (Norway), the majority of computer science and software engineering studies do not have the same math requirements as, say, engineering or math/physics/etc. - nor do they have the same amount of math as the latter ones.

When I did my CS classes as an engineering student, I did meet a bunch of students that viewed math as some niche subject only relevant to those that wanted to work with computer graphics, computational stuff, or similar.

My (UC) CS (pure software) program required a bunch of math, but not for the math. You could talk almost anything (I did set theory and meta-logic), it was required to ensure a certain level of mathematical formalism and reasoning. Which is very helpful in CS.

Not American either, but in the US many schools use/used standardized admission tests (SAT/ACT) on top of things like HS GPA/grades.

There are many countries, especially in Europe, where entrance/admission tests are not a thing.

Yeah, in England only certain universities like Oxford and certain subjects like Mathematics have separate entrance exams.

That said, the Sixth Form exams are mostly standardised with only a few different exam boards for the entire country, so the Sixth Form grades end up being something akin to standardised tests anyway.

As a guy that started experiencing moderate hair loss in his 20s, I spent countless hours researching the Turkish hair transplant industry.

It's a case of having the right people at the right place, at the right time. Turkey have some of the leading doctors and clinics in this field, and have had for years. They were also located in a place which was close to both customers from Europe and the Middle-East, and could offer FUE (Follicular Unit Extraction) procedures at a very nice price.

Even the very top doctors there were charging a relatively modest price, compared to their (more) western colleagues. And I guess with the sheer volume they'd go through, they discovering new best practices, techniques, etc. along the way.

Back when I did research on this, now 15 years ago, the industry was starting to really take off. This was reflected in the prices that the best clinics charged. Some of them jumped up 50% in a short time, when photo-driven social media like Instagram started blowing up.

And then a whole industry sprung out of it. Many excellent clinics, tons more mediocre (to horrendous) ones that are only trying to compete on price.

Guess this also goes for the dental industry there.

Which clinics are good based on your research? Did they survive the boom or went under?

I used to work for a oil company, and 15 years ago they were discussing this idea of installing sensors on desk which they wanted to use for practical reasons: Instead of having to walk across the building to see someone, you could simply check on some internal website if they were at their desk. No wasted trip!

But that idea was shot down real fast by the unions, who informed the employer that it with great likelihood also would clash with data protection laws, and GDPR (this was not in the US). So it was quickly abandoned. Among workers that was one of the most dystopian ideas we had heard of.