AdrianB1

I don't think that most competent IT people are pushing for digital-only systems. The people that I see pushing for digitalization are either clueless politicians or corrupt or incompetent IT people selling snake oil. The sad part is that the snake oil sellers are probably a majority already, so fighting against politicians and snake oil sellers is a tought one.

It is not corruption. Or not just corruption.

A close relative, government employee, was in charge of building a new application. They have nobody in that entire organization of several thousands people that know how to write specifications for an IT application, nobody that knows how to design, test and deploy it. This is because some government employees have decent salaries, but in IT the private sector is paying a lot more, so almost anyone remotely competent is going to the private sector. So in this case an organization of non-IT people had to deal with the contract and all the associated problems - there is no need to guess, it did not go well. That kind of project could have been done properly with ~ 10% of the budget in the same timeline.

I have a friend that worked as a developer in such a government IT project. The project cost was ~ 5-10 times what was worth, a chain of sub-contractors did the work, less than ten competent people doing the project, charged by the bid winner for over 100 people and actual staff was around 70 at most, for a short period of time.

Both projects above are in Romania. Lack of competent people in the projects, especially in decision roles, was the main problem.

I mean that higher end jobs don't want to be in an area where they don't enjoy. They are the higher tax payers and they want to enjoy their lives far from the kind of people that live in rent controlled housing - there are differences in education, culture, habits that make people want to separate. Not elitism or something like this, just living with similar people. Whatever we want or say, people are different, not identical, not equal as potential friends and buddies.

And it is also a matter of age and stage in life. I enjoyed living in a big city (Bucharest) for the parties and socializing (in my 20), dancing (Casa de Tango) in my 30-40, with schools nearby. Now I sometimes work from a house in the mountains next to the Ukraine border, my neighbors are hundreds of meters from each other, the nearest supermarket is 15 km away (15 min drive) and a family of deer live in my outer yard.

This is a very bold and subjective statement. I don't disagree it is the best city in US for some people, but the objective best - I doubt it.

New York is a city that people all around the world want to live in I don't know anyone that wants to live in NY. I would not move there for a 7 figure salary. I think some opinions in this discussion are based on old realities from 50 years ago, no longer accurate.

I guess many jobs don't want to be in the places where very cheap housing exists. What is the point of earning SV money and live in a bad neighbourhood?

That is the point: as a citizen in a city, you are part of that city and any contract the city is part of. Otherwise, what/who is a city?

That is just a bad deflection, not an answer to the point.

just being a resident of a city doesn’t give you standing to sue over any decision that has a tenuous adverse effect on you

Why not? If you are impacted, why not? When do you have a standing then?

Visitors out of town have less standing than the people paying taxes to the town, that is fair, but the city IS the people, each and every person, not an abstract third party that herds them like cattle.

If it is a park, does it mean anyone living in the city has standing because their entire city lost the park?

How about we make taxation as a fix amount per citizen and then nobody needs to declare their income OR land? And it is equal and fair, as in "pay your fair share", and that's it: you are a citizen, then you pay $X as your contribution like everyone else. Problem solved.

Yes. Most of the people I see are on the extremes of either hating LLMs or fanatically loving it, but I am somewhere in the middle ground, I think, where I see it as a tool that sometimes helps to some extent. I don't depend on it, it almost never gives me new ideas or ways to do things, but for trivial tasks it helps me relax supervising it - usually writing the first draft for documentation or suggesting initial updates, even filling in some semi-repetitive code patterns in web apps ("create empty functions and link the buttons to it"). It is just a tool, not too bad to ignore, not too good to get more productivity, sometimes useful. Using it is like using an IDE 30 years ago or Intellisense 15-20 years ago.

LE. I see current versions of LLM like an intern that helps me doing work. We work together, I give directions and supervision and I am responsible for the results. I cannot give complex tasks and I cannot skip checking everything, but it usually helps.

What does the percentage has to do with anything? Do they have more percentage in voting? Or in the spending of the money they pay as taxes?

I don't know how people have the guts to pretend equality, but not in taxation. One human, one vote, one dollar.

At least in the newest headset Sennheiser announced user replaceable battery, without announcing the price or if it is a standard format that you can buy everywhere or a very pricey gold-pressed latinum custom audiophile one.

First you are deflecting and going in discussions about points that were never made, then you keep preaching a system where you don't have property rights under the nice "think of the children" pretext that it is a "pro-development". Basic communist argument of the greater good against the individual.

You bought the land, so it is yours, right?

Yes, I am fine with taxes, but not with any type of tax, not property taxes (it is bought with money already taxed) and not with taxes as punishment or taxes as political games. I am opposed to taxes as a purpose, I am for taxes as a means to pay for some universal services that you cannot pay by consumption.

That is basically removing property rights, when the land is not yours but you just rent it ... you will own nothing and be happy.

I also think UBI is necessary, but I don't have a political agenda on how to force people funding it. Maybe it's me growing in a communist country and hating it to death (communism, socialism and all the variants that treat people like cattle "for the greater good").

I see the point, but I don't see what is wrong with that, and I am relatively poor person. I see calls for equality all over the place, but nobody wants to be equal, especially not in taxation - a fix amount (not percent of something) sum per citizen is equal and nobody wants it. Equal rights, equal taxes, equal obligations, no exceptions - be it financial, demographic, military, etc.

I don't understand how some people write hundreds of text/chat messages per day. I am communicating by talking to people almost 100% of non-work, most of the discussions are face to face, I write or receive a handful of texts or chats per week, maybe a dozen per month.

I find text messages impersonal and it also takes longer to communicate clearly what we need. There is so much lost. Even chats and emails for work are at risk of creating misunderstanding, especially because English is not the native language of most of my coworkers, all these adds to result in pretty low quality communication.

I heard that lie about "sensible restrictions" so many times, now I am waiting for "sensible violence", "sensible beating to death" and so on. It is a false argument that "there will be restrictions so all I can do is suggest more sensible restrictions", what you can do is recognize that "no restrictions is an option".

It is like negotiating with a terrorist that wants to kill you and this is his starting position and then he wants to agree on some compromise, like seriously beating you. There is no negotiation.

Yes. Not often, but yes, it happens: when I am working on something where it takes me a few hours of deep focus to complete and I get interrupted, it can derail me for days. What disappears most of the time is engagement, I tend to postpone that work for next day or more.

Lacking not just courage, but also character. Wasting company money on buzzwords and dubious outcomes is lack of character.

I am paying taxes in US for over 20 years, don't hold a green card, not interested in ever getting one and not complaining that I don't have the right to vote. How are these things related?

What I did not see in the article or comments is the fact that people dictate how things evolve. People vote with their wallets (or via local councils) in ways that directly or indirectly influence the outcome. The title can also be, and still correct, "We killed the brick and mortar toy store". This makes people think more than "it's raining", which is impersonal and somewhat inactionable.

A false flag to fight for. A wrong purpose in life.

In my part of Europe doctors are paid extremely well. Construction workers also earn quite well given the lack of qualification required, a highway worker earns more than a junior developer and even more than many mid-level developers. The raise in these 2 sectors are definitely above the IT sector for the past 10 years.

Wealth distribution is a false flag. Rain distribution across the globe is not equal, solar light distribution is not equal and they impact people's life more than wealth distribution. USA and the entire planet's population is at record high in living standards and wealth, but some people are still unhappy because not everything is perfectly equal and at zero entropy like the thermal death of the universe: this is more than illogical, it is just envy without limits.

That does not address the point. You say they should pay even more to address the idea that very few people pay most of the taxes, what is the logic here?