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My hypothetical nightmare is easy: Wake up one morning without any usable skills to carry with me through the next transition. I call this end-of-the-world scenario for my job the “career cliff.” career In this future state of loss, I’m left with nothing. None of the right tools, none of the right experiences, none of the right connections. I’m stuck without a job and without options. As a result, I can’t pivot, and I’m forced to watch the rest of the world pass by and continue to grow and learn and advance while I…don’t. This paranoia cuts deep for me. As a child of Baby Boomers, I’ve watched more than my fair share of adults around me hit a wall in their careers and then get stuck, wedged like rocks in a waterfall. Whether casualties of the 2008 recession, of the DotCom boom (and bust), or some other circumstance, they are left in tricky scenarios. The macro-environment flows one way — down, and in full force — but not everyone gets carried along with the current. My dad, who spent thirty years of his life in the automotive industry at Ford Motor Company, is just one anecdote of many thousands of people just like him — individuals who spent 30- or 40-year careers in a single industry, only to lose those jobs in the great recession of 2008. When you lose the only career you’ve known for 30 years, how easy do you imagine it might be to pivot to something new? What’s happened to the millions of Americans who were impacted by this event just over a decade ago? Where are they now? Who has rebounded? Who hasn’t? All in, the U.S. economy lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, . the highest yearly job-loss total since the year when World War II ended While my family was certainly impacted directly by one end of this loss, it hit me in another way, too. I graduated college in 2009, at a time when the U.S. job market was acting like this: As a result, I learned pretty early on that careers were not for messing around. If you can’t roll with the punches, you’ll get rolled over. This is probably part of why I immediately starting stretching the limits of my journalism degree right from the start: I’m not just a writer, I’d say; I’m a communicator. And if I’m a communicator, then maybe I can do sales, too. And if I can do sales, then maybe I can do marketing. And if I can do marketing, then maybe I can work at a venture capital firm one day. And who knows what else. Every role I’ve take on has helped me pick up a new asset or . I think about it like acquiring a new weapon or tool in a role-playing computer game, . skill like the moment you earn the “ice rod” in Zelda In Zelda, the Ice Rod lets you freeze enemies and put out fires. Much like picking up a skill like cold-call selling. The more tools I have, I think, the more I hedge against my nightmare scenario where I’m left with nothing and no options. Along the way so far, I’ve gotten a fair bit of experience in retelling my story in different ways, and pushing on walls that open up new doors. I like to look at jobs as a sum of their component parts and the skills you use. I like to create multiple “choose your own adventure” pathways for myself to always have a failsafe, ripcord option if “shit hits the fan.” I’m always thinking about my next job, no matter where I am in my current one. But I’ve noticed that this kind of thinking doesn’t come naturally for a lot of people. It can seem impossibly overwhelming to look at the world of options and choose one thing to do next and improbable to consider how you might break through into an industry where you don’t currently have any connections. In addition, I’ve also started to notice more and more instances of “career cliffs” all around me. There’s the mid-career transition ), there’s the unexpected downsizing event there’s the skills gap in under-resourced communities , there’s the technology wall , there’s the immigration issue and so many more. (How does a longtime, stay-at-home mother return to the workforce? (If the company you work for shuts down entirely, how do you move on from there?), (If you’re the first person to go to college, how can you get the support you need to break through and succeed?) (If your area of expertise can now be controlled by a more automated system, what else can you grow into?) (If you’re new to a country, how can you get hired and advance your career without visa sponsorship?), With so much fluidity in our labor market today, I believe it’s more important than ever to maximize your job options to hedge your own career, much like you might build out a risk profile for yourself financially. And while this may be a deeply personal issue for me, I imagine it’s never a bad idea to have a couple of alternative options for you, too. Originally published on Dry Erase .

Hedge Your Work Against “Career Cliffs”

We were about an hour into the board meeting and one of the board members looked right at me and asked me a question— I tried my best to focus and say something, but the lights in the room were getting unmanageably bright. My head was hurting uncontrollably. I felt very nauseous, so I excused myself and ran to the bathroom. I tried my best to throw up, but the more I would try, the more my head would hurt. Eventually I gave up, told the board and my coworkers that I had to go home. About 4 weeks before that incident, I had been taking about 2–3 Excedrins . My headaches were getting persistent and uncontrollable and only Excedrin (that had caffeine it) would help. In fact my doctor had even given me advice on how frequently I should take Excedrin. He had also told me that to get the pain reliever into my bloodstream sooner, I should take the Excedrin with a carbonated drink. I did all of that. The Excedrin would give me moderate relief but as soon as it wore off, I felt even sicker than before. Vicious cycle. a day The day after the board meeting, I was back at work and once again had another uncontrollable headache. This time the nausea got the better of me. In fact I was having trouble keeping food or drink down. So my wife rushed me to the ER, where they gave me pain relievers intravenously. I remember the ER doctor telling me, “ ” I went back to my primary care doctor, who referred me to a . And the diagnosis was, . I had also learned the very hard way about . have you gotten checked for migraines? neurologist migraines the long term side effects of using NSAIDs like Excedrin My neurologist very quickly got me started on a drug called . The recommended dose was 100mg. As someone who has stayed away from prescription drugs all my life, I decided to start with 50mg. I was also given — a migraine abortive. I was told Sumatriptan was a “ripcord”, in that, if I felt a migraine coming on, I should immediately take some Sumatriptan (100mg). Sumatriptan was a magical drug. It made my mouth super dry, but it helped me get numb to the pain. Topamax or Topiramate Sumatriptan About 6 weeks of staying on Topamax, I started noticing some interesting patterns that I had been warned off. I would try to communicate but on occasion, words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. The thoughts were crystal in my head, but I couldn’t speak. Regular foods started tasting bland and weird. In fact, most times I felt like my appetite wasn’t there. Within 6 months of using Topamax regularly, I lost about 20lbs (went from 150lbs to about 130lbs). No matter what I tried, I couldn’t gain weight. When I told my neurologist about this, he joked, “ ” On my request, my neurologist also started researching alternatives to typical prescription medications. So I also started taking Butterbur, Riboflavin, Feverfew and CoQ10. All in all, the Topamax (50mg) + Sumatriptan (50mg) combo was working. I became the guy that had Sumatriptan in his backpack, by the bedside and some at work. My migraines were down from 8–10 a week to about 3–4 a week. But the 3–4 a week were seriously debilitating. people would kill to have that sort of weight loss. In fact, I knowlayers and bankers who take Topamax just to keep their weight down. For about 4 years, I stayed on this combo. My neurologist never suggested anything to entirely eliminate the migraines per se — in his experience of having done this for 30 years, no one had entirely gotten rid of their migraines. Our thesis, however, was that the migraines were triggered by lack of sleep. So in addition to the pill cocktail, my neurologist also suggested Magnesium, . My migraines were particularly bad on flights — I couldn’t get through a 5 hour flight without at least 150mg–200mg of Sumatriptan. Which means I also chugged water constantly because of the dry mouth. Which also means I had to constantly go to the bathroom. Middle seats were the bane of my existence. which is known to aid with sleep The one other nasty side effect — I was constantly “crabby”. I wasn’t quite myself. I recall being obsessed and quickly getting upset over mundane things. I tried to work out, but my head would start pounding as soon as I tried anything that was remotely exertive. I couldn’t run or walk long distances. As someone who had spent their entire life playing basketball, my life had become very sedentary. People would constantly tell me that I had lost weight, and it wasn’t like a “ ”, it was a “ ”. hey, you are looking good wow, you look creepily thin After about 4 years of seeing the same neurologist, I decided to get a second opinion. In July 2017, I made an appointment at the UCSF headache center. I met a , and he assessed me very briefly. He asked me about my coffee drinking patterns. The coffee snob that I was, I told him about the delicious light roasts I had to have morning. About 1 cup a day — that’s all. But it had to be at least 1 a day. I had been drinking coffee for about 15 years. Dr. Levin interrupted me and said, “ ” I told him that I had tried that before and I would get serious withdrawal headaches — so he suggested I wean off coffee gradually. I was dubious, I couldn’t function without coffee and there was just no way I wasn’t going to do it. Dr. Morris Levin every I’ve heard enough. Stop the coffee immediately. That’s it. You don’t even need to schedule a follow up appointment. Good luck. I had been a long time follower of and I finally got a chance to listen to . These words stuck with me: Shane Parrish and the Farnam Street Blog this podcast with Naval really We also unconsciously pick up habits in the background and we keep them for decades. We may not realize that they’re bad for us until we’re ready to move on them. … What we do is we accumulate all these habits. We put them in the bundle of identity, ego, ourselves, and then we get attached to that. … It’s really important to be able to uncondition yourself, to be able to take your habits apart and say, “Oh, okay, that’s a habit that I probably picked up from when I was a toddler and I was trying to get my parents attention. Now I’ve just reinforced it and reinforced it and reinforced it and I call it a part of my identity. Is it serving me anymore? Is it making me happier? Is it making me healthier? Is it making me accomplish whatever I want to set out to accomplish right now?” … I did a lot of habit changes over the last few years. I’ve now got a daily workout that I do, which is a great habit. I cut down heavily on drinking. It’s not totally eliminated, but it’s mostly gone. I dropped caffeine. … You can untrain yourself. It’s just hard. It takes work. It takes effort. Usually the big habit changes comes when there’s strong desire-motivators attached to them. After my daughter’s 4th birthday, I had decided to make a concerted effort to get healthier, both physically and mentally. With that commitment to myself and my family, with Dr. Levin’s suggestion, and Naval’s take on habits, I decided to, gradually but surely, quit coffee. At this point, I was still getting about 3–4 migraines a week, but as I started going off of coffee, I noticed my frequency of migraines was declining. I used to get withdrawal headaches, but those were very different from the migraines, and very manageable. It took about 6 weeks to get off of coffee entirely. Finally in mid-September, I noticed my migraines had all but stopped. I was entirely off of any form of caffeine at this point. And coincidentally just around then my Topamax prescription had run out. I decided not to refill it. It turns out I was addicted to my . It has now been . I hesitated to write this post for the longest time — not only am I superstitious, but I have been very concerned that the migraines would recur. I have since taken 4 cross country flights without any Sumatriptan in the last 3 months — no migraines. More importantly, my taste buds are back. . I have been working out consistently about 4–5x/week now, and I get no migraines when I work out. The most interesting thing however was how I felt like my “peripheral vision” had returned. We live on top of a hill, and every weekday we drive down the hill to go to work. A month or so ago, I noticed the most amazing view from this hill. When I mentioned the view to my wife, she said, “ ” I was just noticing it! When previously I felt like I was struggling for words, I am also now able to listen, comprehend and respond more cogently. migraine trigger about 3 months that I have been entirely migraine free I have since gained about 11lbs yeah, you know we do this drive everyday. Are you just noticing it? My weight gain since going off of Topamax (via ) HealthMate And an interesting byproduct of the exercise, my had increased by ~50%: HDL via Forward I have read about the . But to me coffee is a dangerous addiction. Had it not been for Dr. Levin and , I would not have thought to challenge my coffee addiction. Fairly often I meet fellow migraine sufferers and we share stories. When I tell them that coffee was the cause of my migraines, they are usually in disbelief. Most commonly I hear, “ ”. Does it though? amazing benefits of coffee Naval Ravikant but the coffee usually makes me feel better Migraines are debilitating and extremely painful. If you are a migraine sufferer, I am so so sorry. There is no known cure for migraines, and there isn’t a consistent pattern for what triggers migraines. Naval’s advice was extremely poignant for me — so if you are a migraine sufferer, it might not hurt for you to revisit your habits. It has definitely changed my life for the better. PS: Please consult with your doctor or neurologist before making any changes to your diet.

I was addicted to my migraine trigger

In 1637, a would sell for several multiples of the average annual wage. , which hit $5,000 yesterday, has drawn more than a few comparisons to the old Dutch irrational exuberance. tulip bulb in Amsterdam Bitcoin There are people who believe will upend the Fed, bankrupt Visa, or become the major mechanism for remittances. At the extreme, . Personally, I’m a skeptic who admires the math and technology of cryptocurrencies, but doesn’t think it makes a ton of sense practically as either a store of value or means of transaction. cryptocurrencies some people compare cryptocurrencies today to the Internet in 1993 Yet, despite my skepticism, I own cryptocurrencies. At this point, I should mention this article isn’t an argument about whether cryptocurrencies are good or not. There are plenty of well-written pieces around the interwebs to confirm whatever you want to believe. This article also doesn’t touch on the more general applications of blockchain technology. Rather, this is meant to be a concrete look at handling “uncertainty of uncertainty” in investment risk using cryptocurrencies as an example. Let me explain my ownership starting with Investing 101. A typical way to evaluate an investment is modeling its . Econ nerds may prefer or even something fancy like the . Whatever your decision process, you’re relying on the existence of good estimates of underlying returns. Whether you’re looking at bonds, stocks, angel investments, or bets on a casino floor, methods exist to predict the range and distribution of outcomes and invest appropriately. They’re not always perfect but they do offer a decent baseline. (Pro-tip: table games at the casino are almost never a good investment. ) expected value expected utility capital asset pricing model Unless you’re FedEx. Great. So with that knowledge we just need to come up with a probability distribution for cryptocurrency outcomes and invest appropriately. Here’s the problem: There are two causes of this uncertainty: lack of historical precedent and lack of it being an unalloyed replacement for something already in widespread use. Given either we could at least construct a starting point. it’s impossible to come up with an outcome distribution for bitcoin. Millions of cryptocurrency users here? If you’re confused about the impossibility of deriving an underlying distribution of cryptocurrency outcomes, consider a thought experiment. Take a set of hypothetical civilizations that evolved a currency system somewhat like ours (e.g. fiat or precious-metal-backed-paper). Let’s further say they’ve all developed an idea like cryptocurrency. What percent of those civilizations end up adopting the new technology as either a primary means of exchange or a store of value? a cryptocurrency revolution is completely inevitable, comparable to the way civilizations seem to always transition from schlepping around goats for barter to using precious metals and eventually slips of paper for transactions. no civilization ever ends up moving away from fiat and crypto will forever be a side project for nerds. Instead of trying to quantify the results or speculate on unknowable probabilities, we should bask in our ignorance and proceed. I honestly have no idea and nor does anyone. Maybe Maybe Normally when presented with an investment for which I cannot create some distribution of outcomes, I pass. No need to take unknown risk when more confident investments are available. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take risk — after all, angel investing is probably the riskiest investment on the planet. But I can somewhat quantify it: most companies fail, a few get acquired, and an even smaller number drive overall returns. But, if I literally have no idea how to evaluate a company, I like to keep the . dry powder Cryptocurrencies are an entirely different beast. Since my current investments are predicated on those beliefs, I . Owning cryptocurrency isn’t merely another investment to be compared against a stock or bond, but rather a hedge against my model of the world, the uncertainty of uncertainty. If my skepticism is misplaced, then my assumptions about economics, politics, and the dynamics driving the world are wrong. expect cryptocurrencies to be negatively correlated with the rest of my investments Of course the range of possible outcomes for cryptocurrencies isn’t binary. Perhaps they maintain value as a technophile niche or the less scrupulous parts of the Internet continue using bitcoin for illicit transactions. But these aren’t really interesting to me as they don’t call into question any fundamental assumptions about the world. However, if the dollar/yen/euro/pound collapse or cryptocurrencies become a big player in the world economy, I can confidently say “I was wrong in a really significant way.” More generally, I think we should all constantly consider the question, Not if we’re wrong about a single decision or outcome, but rather what if our way of analyzing the world is fundamentally flawed. Importantly this is different than merely being unlucky. For example, suppose I jump from an airplane and my parachute fails to open. During my rapid plunge I’d at least know I wasn’t wrong in any fundamental sense, but merely that I unfortunately drew the short straw (or rip-cord). On the other hand, if I construct an economic model that utterly fails to predict reality, it necessitates a reevaluation of the model entirely. It requires I rethink my assumptions about how the world functions. In this way, owning cryptocurrencies is best thought of as a hedge against a potentially significant defect in my schema of the world. “what if I’m wrong?” To the moon? So, personally, I own a basket of cryptocurrencies in what I call the In the scenario best for Bitcoin/Ethereum and the worst for my epistemic confidence, cryptocurrencies go “Justin is wrong about the world portfolio.” to the moon!

Digital Tulips or: How I learned to stop worrying and embrace the coin.

Letters. Personal Records. Dated Notes.

The notes on Sculpture

At Plivo, we’ve been brainstorming about how ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-adjacent natural language processing tool, might help our customers. Our cloud communications platform provides APIs that let businesses automate sending and receiving text messages, as well as voice calls. The first step toward figuring out how ChatGPT could elevate those tasks has been to try it ourselves. We wrote this post to help other organizations get started more quickly. Your application and can interact in two ways — think of them as “to” and “from.” An application action (in Plivo’s case an incoming call or text message, for instance) could be a trigger invoke ChatGPT. For instance, someone might text a question to a given phone number designated to communicate with ChatGPT, or tagged with an #askChatGPT hashtag. We could then use OpenAI APIs to pass that query to ChatGPT and return the answer to the person who initiated the query. ChatGPT to Another use case, for data going in the other direction, would have someone invoke something ChatGPT that triggers an action in a third-party application. For instance, you could go to the OpenAI’s page and ask ChatGPT to text everyone in a list a weather report for their area. from Playground Unfortunately, that second use case isn’t ready yet. Any application that wants to allow ChatGPT to use its APIs has to write an — and “plugins are a limited alpha,” according to the company. If your company wants to join the program, get on the waitlist now. OpenAI plugin Still, calling ChatGPT from your service’s APIs can accomplish some pretty useful tasks. From Plivo to ChatGPT To see how a Plivo action could trigger ChatGPT, Plivo CTO Mike Ricordeau wrote a short proof-of-concept program in Python, using the Flask framework. His code is , so you can clone it and play with it. sms_bot.py publicly available on GitHub To test the application, you’ll need a few bits of information, starting with an OpenAI API key. If you don’t have one already, sign up for an OpenAI account, then click , and create a new secret key. Make sure you save the key somewhere secure because OpenAI will never display it for you again. Crisis? Not really — if you lose your key you can create a new one. View API Keys If you want to use Plivo as your test application, you’ll also need Plivo credentials. , and note the Auth Key and Auth Token on the front page of the Plivo console. You’ll also need to that’s capable of sending SMS messages; we give you plenty of credits so you don’t have to spend anything to get one. Sign up for a free account rent a Plivo phone number The last variable you’ll need is the name of an OpenAI model or engine. We used -turbo. GPT-3.5 Now, turn to the instructions in the GitHub project’s README file. Follow the instructions to install, configure, and run the application on a local machine. Before you deploy the application, you must expose it as a public URL. To do that, we recommend using a secure tunneling application such as . Make sure to specify to ngrok the same port on which the sms_bot.py application is running (8080 by default). Ngrok will return a forwarding IP address you can use. ngrok Copy the forwarding address from ngrok, visit the Plivo console, and add a Plivo application. Specify the address, postpended with “/sms,” in the Message URL. Next, click the phone number you rented and associate it with the application you just created. In the Application Type drop-down, choose XML Application, and under Plivo Application choose the name of the Plivo application you added. Now the application should be live and available. You can try it by texting a question in the form of a message to the phone number you used. What happens when you do that? The Plivo platform receives the message and POSTs it to the Message URL. Ngrok forwards it to the Python application running locally, which connects to OpenAI by using the APIs in the program and asks the question. OpenAI gives the answer. The Python application then returns a Message XML element that contains the response, which Plivo sends to the user’s phone number. In our test setup the entire “transaction” took about four seconds from when we tapped Send to when we received a response. Try It Yourself This simple use case helped us understand how to use OpenAI APIs with Plivo. You can adapt what we did to your own use case. Let us know what you learn — we’re on Twitter @Plivo.

How to Call ChatGPT with OpenAI's APIs

THE CONQUEST OF THE VENEREAL DISEASES

Esistono ancora persone che interpretano la parola in modo sbagliato, nonostante gli enormi sforzi dei veri Hacker nel cercare di spiegare come stiano veramente le cose. Hacker La cultura Hacker si fonda semplicemente sulla ricerca continua del . Non si tratta di entrare nella rete di una banca, fare truffe informatiche, rubare , accedere senza autorizzazione ai server e roba del genere. Un Hacker non deve essere necessariamente un esperto di sicurezza informatica. non deve necessariamente essere un esperto di informatica. Anzi non deve necessariamente essere un esperto. Ma un Hacker che non lo è, probabilmente vorrebbe esserlo. La distinzione è sottile. divertimento intelligente password Anzi Un vero Hacker, di quelli che questa parola hanno contribuito a definirla fin dagli anni ‘60, è . Nel suo sito c’è una interamente a questa parola. La pagina stessa è interessante solo per un vero Hacker. Chi non lo è, probabilmente la troverà banale. Molti altri rimarranno stupiti dallo scoprire che secondo Stallman, in un certo senso, anche Lady Gaga ha qualcosa di Hacker, in sé. Ed ha perfettamente senso. Richard Stallman pagina dedicata , nel senso puro del termine, è stato ai tempi delle scuole medie e non riguarda nemmeno lontanamente l’Informatica. Mi piace molto raccontare questa storia perché è estremamente esplicativa e allo stesso tempo innocente. Il mio primo Hacking All’epoca era diffuso l’apprezzamento per quelli che chiamavamo, italianizzando il termine, “ ”. Erano semplici intrecci di stringhe colorate, fini a se stesse, ma divertenti da costruire. I bambini che sapevano farli cercavano di venderli e non volevano insegnarmi le tecniche di intreccio per non perdere il mercato. Decisi quindi di comprarmene uno e lo studiai. Resomi conto che il motivo era estremamente ripetitivo ne tagliai uno a metà. Srotolandolo, compresi chiaramente l’intreccio e imparai a riprodurlo da solo. scubidù È una sorta di . Il termine è più che appropriato. Nella cultura hacker, tuttavia, lo scopo degli hacking non è necessariamente economico. Spesso lo scopo è solo quello di capire come funzionano le cose, anche in modo fine a se stesso. A volte anche se farlo costa più di quel che si ottiene effettivamente. Si viene ripagati dall’esperienza. reverse engineering Possiamo dire che l’Hacker è un . Gli Hacker odiano le regole, le vogliono aggirare e trovare strade nuove e migliori. Non amano i recinti, specialmente quelli mentali. Vogliono scoprire cosa c’è sotto, non si accontentano mai di una visione superficiale. Scavano a fondo nei problemi e si sentono insicuri se non hanno sotto controllo tutto l’iceberg, non solo la punta. Esplorano a fondo e traggono soddisfazione dalla sensazione di aver coperto tutta ciò che è ancora inesplorato. esploratore Ma soprattutto si nel farlo. divertono moltissimo Un estratto dal film “Hackers” del 1995 Per un Hacker la ricerca del divertimento intelligente è tutto. Non importa se informatico o non. Si può essere Hacker in tanti modi. È vero, alcuni di essi riguardano la . Molti di essi. Ma sono solo una parte del divertimento. Sono i media che hanno convinto le persone che Hacker e Cracker fossero la stessa cosa. sicurezza informatica Quel che è importante ricordare è che gli Hacker hanno un’ . Un codice che sottoscrivono istintivamente. E che sono le persone più interessanti di questo mondo. etica

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