I'm 55, too. If I'd started studying HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and Rust at 17, I'd be retired now. Waitaminnit....

Sarcasm aside, target retirement plans wouldn't come along for decades. Investing was very, very different when we were 17. And many of the people who were 55 when we were 17 had just lost a terrifying amount of their life's savings in a stock market crash that made Taleb rich because he'd bet against the market.

It seems extraordinarily unlikely that a 17-year-old today should do exactly what we wish we could have done when we were 17. About the best they can do is follow advice that's now centuries old: make friends, learn skills, live below their means, and, maybe, earn credentials.

I wrote about Sifan Hassan a couple of months ago and posted my article to HN. If you enjoyed today's Olympic marathon, you might like my essay, too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40740253

https://medium.com/@tonyszhou/postmortem-1b338537fabc

The postmortem and the series itself received a fair amount of discussion on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836782

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20942543

On July 3, 2024, they posted the following, along with a trailer, on their YouTube channel:

Coming soon: A limited series featuring new video essays, followed by a short film - The Second.

The Second is a short film starring Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Ethan Hwang, written and directed by Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou.

The Second will be premiering at Fantasia Int’l Film Festival on July 20th. Followed by a special 45-min talk from Taylor Ramos & Tony Zhou, along with a Q&A session.

Cast: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Ethan Hwang, Aaron Schwartz, Richard Wes, Colton Royce, Martin Ortega, Sam Osei, Tyrus Hwang

Trailer Music: Sean William

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953756

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

An overview of the new features in the 2.4.x series:

https://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/NewInLyX24

I've used Lyx on and off over the years, and I'm impressed with 2.4.1. The last time there was a general discussion about Lyx on HN was four years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24820428

I'm eager to read what others think of the 2.4.x series.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40953660

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40740253

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

- Narrative Introduction; - Podcasts reviews (each review is 25 words or fewer); - Nerdy Software (25 words or fewer on a piece of software I like); - Bougie Products (25 words or fewer on a product I like); - Personal Finance and Investing (advice in 25 words or fewer); - Reading (each review is 25 words or fewer); - A List.

The name of my blog comes from a quote that inspires me: "In music, as in everything, the disappearing moment of experience is the firmest reality." (Benjamin Boretz)

It's hosted on Buttondown: https://newsletter.disappearingmoment.com/archive

Posts that don't fit my monthly format are hosted on Sourcehut (via Hugo):

https://disappearingmoment.com/

My favorite post is about getting to know a song that a friend recommended:

https://disappearingmoment.com/exposure-loss-jacqueline/

My point is, libraries need room for a lot more than books. We love books; that's pretty much a prerequisite for becoming a librarian, but we do a lot more for the people in your community, which is why libraries hire architects who understand that libraries fulfill different needs for different people.

[0] http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/how-well-are...

Or is this something else the library does on its own?

I also recommend checking out LibTechWomen[2] and Information Technology and Libraries[3].

[0] http://code4lib.org/ [1] http://jobs.code4lib.org/ [2] http://libtechwomen.tumblr.com/ [3] http://www.ala.org/lita/ital/

Counter to what the post's author implies, almost all librarians hate destroying books[0]. But we have to do it almost every day, because most libraries accept donations and only a very small fraction of these donated books are appropriate for the collection[1]. Many libraries have book sales, or sell donated or weeded books online, either directly or through partners like Better World Books[2]. We quickly learn that some copies of some books, either because of their poor condition or because no one is interested in reading them, have to be recycled or destroyed. It's no fun, but there are no alternatives[3].

As the post's author mentions in the CREW discussion in her post, librarians make an enormous distinction between the 5,000th copy of a book that is held in some library collection somewhere[4] and the last few copies. It's possible that San Francisco Public Library knowingly destroyed the last copy, or one of the last known copies, of a title, or even multiple titles, but I would be surprised if that was a policy rather than a mistake. In general, libraries either have a place to store such copies or can find another library that will add it to its collection and put it into circulation or storage.

[0] http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2013/killing-sir-... [1] By appropriate, I'm talking about the book's physical condition and the likelihood that it will circulate enough to justify processing it and putting it on the shelf, because it is competing for that shelf space with thousands of other donations, plus the ~1M new books per year that we could buy and put on the shelf in its place. [2] http://www.betterworldbooks.com/ [3] Unfortunately, there are only so many places to donate books, and we give away as many as we can, and then some, to places that are interested in receiving donations. [4] https://www.worldcat.org/ is one place we look, though OCLC makes it prohibitively expensive for most small libraries to make their collections available in WorldCat: http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2008/a-useful-amp...