[..]I think tech companies may have something to do with it too.These companies basically create massive book assets (and income streams) without requiring much capital, or being capital constrained.
John Van Reenen talks about this in this paper [1]. He has been looking into how and why the giant companies have been concentrating all power in their market : Amazon, Google,...
His hypothesis is that to become a giant company you used to need capital to buy the best factory and the best machines but that nowadays to become big you need to have the best version of intangible capital : proprietary software, users' data,...
Markets become winner takes all and this creates the rise of "superstar companies". To become a giant company you can't just dump money at the problem anymore to build, say, a new factory. The only way to dominate search is to have Google's tech along with users and the data they generate. To become a retail giant you invest heavily in logistics and inventory control management.
This has several consequences :
- You don't need to borrow mass amount of money to become big.
- Changing the interest rate doesn't have as big as an impact as before (if you don't need large amount of capital to grow big, making money more expensive won't prevent companies to grow big).
- wages inequality rise (the few workers that produce the intangible capital in the have high wage while wage become stagnant for the rest)
Buying millions of machines, running in 100 data-centre, has the same capital of building a factory. I doubt a startup can compete with a giant without a lot of money for hardware and people to code
I have a Lenovo X1 Yoga which, confusingly, is completely different from the "non X1" Yoga rviewed here. Also not to be confused with the X1 Carbon which is pretty much the same product as the X1 Yoga but belongs to a different line. Thanks for the clarity Lenovo.
Anyway I like the balance the X1 Yoga strikes : it has a regular Thinkpad keyboard which is nice to write code on AND it is a 2-in-1 touchscreen that you can flip into a tablet. The keys recess into the case when you flip it into tablet mode.
This is probably the best course of action, plus, you can always search for topics from the textbook, and presumably find the most useful sources for your needs organically.
In my personal exp as a late-twenties self-learner: finding high-quality sources of information is simple, identifying best relevance and staying focused is not. Perfectionism over resources is a total disaster for productivity. (And very mediocre, very shiny resources are easy and mildly profitable to create, and are often more for the authors' benefit than for the public good.)
Good heuristics are a savior - search for talks from authors of textbooks and langs, subscribe to those high-quality conferences (I like PapersWeLove), mentally blacklist channels judiciously.
Honestly, it's hard to just learn from books. YouTube videos are that personal connect if you are a lone developer. It feels like you are working with whomever is in video
If possible you might consider looking for the personal connection in a more face-to-face setting, and choosing a broadcast learning medium that works best for you without that as a consideration (which may still be video for some people, but I'll echo the sentiment that books and textual stuff seems to work better and be faster in my experience.)
Even if you only study/work on your own, there are conferences, meetups, user groups, social/networking events, etc... That gives you the added bonus of being more than just a blip in the view count of the person you're learning from. Worst case, even if there aren't any in-person options in your area, try forums/chat rooms/etc... with a focus on your subject(s) of interest (especially if they're more learning focused ones rather than just social -- the communities around many of the MOOC and online bootcamp programs come to mind.)
Several contemporary settlements have been excavated: Nevalı Çori, Jerf el Ahmar, Mureybet. So we know what the houses, communal buildings and granaries looked like. Göbekli doesn't look anything like that.
The location also reveals that it wasn't used to live, gather food or trade: It's built on top of a rocky hill without access to food or water. You don't extract 15 tons pillars, carve them and move them atop a hill to make things prettier.
The buildings themselves are the biggest proof. No roof, inconvenient and small entrance, holes to let the soul escape. The carvings found at Göbekli were also found on other sites which were associated with religion and death. One example would be the carving of vultures and headless bodies. Vultures which are associated with death and the ritual of excarnation: the floor of the buildings were made waterproof and sloped to allow the draining of bodily liquids. We know that people in that area would bury bodies without their head or even reopen the grave to remove the head. They also have been known to put plaster on skulls and keep the heads around.
My thought exactly. Might not want to stay there long, but as shelter from a raiding party, stocked with food and water, possibly with shelter for a flock, might be worthwhile.
