Competition in this space is welcome! Can't wait to see what their difference / what sets them apart from Echo. Given Google's propensity to sell Ads, it will be interesting to see if customers are willing to put a device like this in their house.

Reminded me of a humidifier for some reason - http://www.amazon.com/Aromatherapy-Essential-Oil-Diffuser-co...

Good riddance. He's this noise box who keeps clamoring all the time.

I try to use Lyft as often as I can, they seem to genuinely care for their employees(drivers). Uber is quite ruthless when it comes to pricing. Simple features such as tipping is not present.

It is my part-time hobby of sorts to interview drivers who drive for both and inevitably (27 - 1) they prefer driving for Lyft. The one case where the driver said she prefers Uber was that the #rides were more (Bay area).

I think voting with your wallet is a powerful concept and in some cases, it is the only thing we can do.

Used to watch my dad come back from work and stay glued to the television tracking the tickers. I used to help him keep track of a few stocks as well. Slowly got interested and picked up some random book that explains the stock market terminologies.

The #1 takeaway from the book is "Before you buy the stock, give an elevator speech with facts(data-driven) and reasons as to why this stock is going to be a good buy."

Turns out a lot of my investments don't stand this test!

The problem is that there are pros and cons to every stock. Weighing them and getting the timing right is incredibly difficult though.

So if someone makes an elevator pitch for some stock, what I would be asking is why these pros are going to outweigh these cons.

And that's where we're back to square one where everything is just opinion and ituition, albeit better informed, which has to count for something.

I'd like to add some sort of quantitative discipline into the mix. And I mean something that has some statistical credibility.

I've taken a couple of courses and paid for one. The reason I paid it was simple - I loved the course, wanted to make a clear commitment that I was going to finish this one (I am poor with finishing projects :/).

The $49 for most courses was something which I could afford and it helped in serving as additional motivation. The reward at the end of it all felt good as well!

1. The environment is generally positive, love my co-workers and I do a reasonable job as a platform engineer.

2. Would love to have more input in the direction of certain aspects of the product.

3. My #1 priority is work-life balance. It is taken care of here.

4. If work starts becoming tedious (monotony?) and starts eating into my free time / weekends, I would leave right away.

Does your company have more product engineer roles that you can shift to?

Subscribed to : - Snap Judgement (Story telling, with a beat. It's awesome!) - Criminal - Tim Ferris Show - Planet Money

What is your take on WealthFront so far as a product ? How has the investment experience been?

Very easy to set up. The first 15k is managed free, and I am investing less than that, so very happy with that as well. I chose the least risky option as I am just trying to keep up with inflation and will probably be withdrawing in a year or two when I graduate. It gives good visualizations and stats on what range to expect with each option.

Just started with Betterment - pretty simple to use and acts as a blanket over investing. I experimented previously with individual stocks in the market, had reasonably good response. However, I cannot spend time on reading up and making informed decisions.

Curious how betterment will do against WealthFront. On the longer run, I am thinking about splitting the money two ways and put in a bit with both Betterment/Wealth Front as a strategy, possibly.

I subscribe to NewYorker and try to get in some deeper reading of a few topics every week. I like their insightful journalism on a variety of topics, which is fun to know about and of course, their cartoons!

Other than that, I use quartz once in a while - a nice interactive messaging format based news application. I recommend that for people who just want a few notable headlines.

Additionally, I skim through NPR and NYTimes first thing in the morning for the headlines for the day.