I use QuickBooks so someday other small businesses / investors / industries could easily review my books. Some areas ripe for disruption: better serialized inventory and warranty tracking, barcode scanner support, QBAR reporting documentation, adding custom columns to printed item receipts, integrating with HR providers (Gusto), importing bank statements for reconciliation in PDF, any marketing or CRM integration, running performance comps, mileage and GPS tracking (Corrigo is step in right direction), verifying customer addresses in invoices.
Some things that strike me as odd: a feature to repair the data file (should I run daily? Annually?). Broken filters that still give reports without warnings they are broken (wrong data < no data). Multi-users in invoices, one saves and the entire system crashes. QBAR takes up to an hour to refresh data and says its on step 141 of 132. OS/2 Warp floppies had more accurate progress meters in the 1990s. If you had a button for “fax this PO to my vendor” it might be revolutionary.
I'll share for others. My dad served in similar role. They consider themselves silent professionals, and he didn't say much about it. He sent me a link today that one of that crew just got Medal of Honor, I think my dad was proud to see that. I asked him 10 years ago to record his history on video. It took him two years, we never discussed, I just got some DVDs in the mail one day. He said explaining history was hard for him to do, and discussed atheism in the foxhole. He discussed everyone's routines before you drop in - rechecking ammo, puking, praying, napping, nerves. In the end of second DVD he said the most important thing is to keep your sense of humor and be happy which surprised me, I expected grit. He is still really upset about losing one friend overseas. He went to the Wall 15 years ago and broke down and people surrounded him and helped him (apparently happens a lot). I think he graphite-copied his buddy's name. He is normal with stable finances and married 50ish years, now works with abused kids in retirement. Of that military group, most went on to normal lives and you wouldn't be able to pick out of a lineup. One owns a tire shop, one worked in tech, one refuses all contact with military folks and a notoriously shady one became an attorney. They all love the outdoors and meet at a convention once a year.
As a counterpoint, zero defect policies could be be harmful. If everyone must take a test and score 100% or otherwise end their career, shenanigans happen.
> As a counterpoint, zero defect policies could be be harmful. If everyone must take a test and score 100% or otherwise end their career, shenanigans happen.
It's not a counterpoint, it's a consideration when designing the system. Taking this into account, the system must still function 100% of the time. If what you describe did happen, than the cause of failure would shift somewhat from the officers to the designers, but the system still failed (however, one must question the judgment and character of anyone who cheats on a nuclear weapons launch qualification test, no matter how hard it is).
If your system requires 100% perfection from all of its subcomponents, it is a shitty, fragile system. Robust systems can be made of parts with known failure rates.
This this this. I really see this as the core of my job, career even. Build reliable systems out of unreliable parts. Hardware fails, software has bugs, people have bad days. Yet we still make insanely reliable stuff.
Until you actually launch the missile, it should be ok to do nothing.
People will invariably fuck up. The system needs affordences to handle those inevitablys. Ideally a drunk commander shouldn't matter, matter much anyway.
Accidentally launching a missile is pretty hard and I'm confident that we have enough safeguards against that. I'm not so sure we have enough safeguards against terrorists stealing nuclear weapons (or the essential components for making one). You only need somebody with motive and motivation, and a mistake by pair of truck drivers. It's fairly hard to make a reliable system out of that failure mode.
A friend worked with that kind of transportation in the 80s. At the time it wasn't 2 truck drivers. Perhaps 30 people with lead and follow cars. Iirc, most were us martials, everyone was armed. the trailer was a rolling fortress. Security was probably much better in the Cold War. My friend had a story about a truck hitting some ice, and tipping over. They had prepared for many contingencys and had it handled in a few hours. The only person who noticed something was up was another truck driver who stopped to help. He was confused that the trailer didn't tear itself apart, but didn't make a bid deal out of it.
Not cheap. But likely pretty reliable.
Perhaps without the Russian villains the system has atrophied. Stories like that make me think it can work, but perhaps require a bit more wherewithal to maintain it.
The Wiki entry[0] for the secure trucks reads like some kind of Tom Clancy fiction. They allegedly have automated weapons systems that will kill attackers even after all defenders become casualties.
My friend likely worked with the prior generation. They were unwilling to go into any sort of detail. they did say, you don't want to be any where near one if the operators think you shouldn't be there. Their phrase was something like "There are extensive anti personnel defenses".
You have to assume that such a truck is constantly "phoning home" and hopefully has some kind of asset tasked to watch it constantly. Maybe the process to get in involves authorization from "home base" in the form of that private key?
While I doubt that anything could stop a truly determined and well equipped adversary, I would frankly not be shocked if the whole thing was basically packed in claymores facing out, just for starters. You won't care in that extreme about compromising the physics package; you'll already be scrambling every resource including NEST to the site. You just want to buy time, and there are a lot of ways you could do that.
Hell, maybe they include an EPFCG... that would be really clever.
It's such a complex network of systems and people and policies; all of which is constantly in flux. All of which has to yield a perfect result, every time. You can argue about robust systems, but the reality is that these systems are far from robust.
Look at what happened when the USSR collapsed for god's sake! We're still cleaning that up.
Very much this: A system should be designed with the mindframe that the user won't be at 100%. Especially this, weirdly - because in a time of crisis, folks might not be at 100% even though they should be.
Its why some things just won't work unless put together just right - to account for people's mistakes. It'd make sense for a submarine to refuse to dive if the seals aren't sealed, for example. I'd think there would be something that could be applied even for this.
That sounds very good, but now here are your real-world constraints.
You have a network of detection systems which you give you (optimistically) 15-40 minutes of warning before everything and everyone you've ever known and cared about ends. In that time you have to make the decision to launch a counter-attack. Your decision needs to be something which can be rapidly acted upon, but also needs to be something that absolutely cannot be interfered with by any adversary launching the first strike. If you delay, your ability to counterattack will be forever lost. If you're wrong, you'll be setting off Armageddon.
Perimetr, the Russian system, is one solution. The USSR decided not to go for launch on warning. Their plan is that, when things get tense, they activate Perimeter. This is sometimes called "The Dead Hand". If the system was enabled, detected nuclear explosions, and there was no way to communicate with higher authority, it would automatically release weapons control to some lower level of authority. Even then, it's not auto launch; there are people in bunkers somewhere who have to make that decision.
Part of the rationale is that this didn't give the leadership of the USSR direct launch authority. They could enable the system, but that didn't cause a launch. It took H-bombs on Moscow plus an enabled system to do that. This provided a safeguard against the leadership going nuts.
In theory sure, but point me to the long-term practice of making it actually work. In practice, nuclear weapons have been subject to obvious and critical fuck-ups.
You also have a problem with precision. A test with a 100% pass threshold is a really poor estimator of an underlying failure rate; at best it can bound it, but you really do care about the precise underlying odds of failure.
I used Consumer Reports car buying service for a new Toyota Prius. Two local dealerships submitted offers but couldn't find am exact match. Dealerships then attempted bait and switch (successfully).
For two summers I was irritated every time I sweat in my car without tinted windows because I wouldn't pay $350 additional for their tint.
But it was probably a better deal than I would have negotiated myself.
Money can help get through the time you need to get back on your knees. I've had the misfortune of having my cofounder die after 18 month and two investments rounds and some money would have really help.
Also you have to prepare for this kind of problems in advance because all of a sudden a substantial part of the shares of the company will be in limbo until the legalities are handled (and it can really stink if the family of the deceased is not helping...) which means: you can't raise money anymore, you can't really hire someone good as most people are very afraid of this kind of situation.
I couldn't imagine any small company who didn't have life insurance on its owners - I thought that was like one of the first things you did. Guess it gets overlooked.
Given the recent revelation by the New York attorney general's office [1], what confidence do you have that you are actually getting what is on the label?
Fairly confident, although I do believe there is snake oil on the same aisle. I've used brands Natrol and Nature's Bounty.
I understand DHEA as a steroid hormone that is a precursor to testosterone. I consider the drug's banned status in athletic competition as a signal it might be effective.
From Wiki: "DHEA is legal to sell in the United States as a dietary supplement. It is currently grandfathered in as an "Old Dietary Ingredient" being on sale prior to 1994. DHEA is specifically exempted from the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 and 2004 It is banned from use in athletic competition."
While DHEA may indeed be effective, if 80% of the natural supplements that were tested did not contain what the label said, one might conclude that there is an 80% chance that a bottle labeled "DHEA" really doesn't contain DHEA.
Yes, after closer reading of the news articles it does seem that they only mentioned "store brands". However, I couldn't find anything where it said brand names were "OK".
My Google foo is failing me, I can't seem to find an actual report, just news articles. Help a fella out with a link?
I attended a VC dinner event a few years ago. A networking session followed. I felt shut out of conversation by most of the "money" folks and a few aggressive MBAs.
The only two polite people were 1) an open source developer and 2) a guy who turned out to be YC alum. Neither wanted anything from me, and both offered good advice.
