BizarreByte

I want to feel bad, but shipping anything across borders is a huge gamble, or at least it feels like it these days.

One has to wonder if the customs agent even knew what a floppy is, as there’s an ever increasing chance they’d never seen one before.

It's both the identifying thing and of course the steady (and mostly - high) income.

It's the income for me. This career was my only ticket out of poverty, it actually saved me from an otherwise horrible life. Now supposed to cheer that I might very well be replaced in the foreseeable future? It's the only line of work I'm skilled at or qualified to do and I honestly don't know what awaits me if I lose it.

You say that, until you start spending those hundred dollar bills on therapy.

The only people who wouldn't prefer that are ones who haven't endured true poverty.

I have little sympathy for those folks unhappy with their conventionally successful lives when that same kind of life allowed me to escape. When you grow up without basic needs being met they come off as having a severe lack of perspective.

I mean sure I hate my job, but I like having heat in the winter more than I hate my job.

Same for me as well. I've also gone as far as moving any paying business away from the US. I have completely moved off paid US services as of about a month ago to Canadian or EU equivalents.

I’ve been to the U.S. a hundred times and nothing has really changed to make me blink at continuing to go.

Let's hope you never get unlucky, it only takes one border agent having a bad day after all. I've been to the US many, many times and as I said I no longer consider it safe, but we all have different risk tolerance levels.

when it’s objectively far safer than visiting any all-inclusive hotspot in the Caribbean

I don't visit those places either.

Cry to someone else about how it's all media based fear while ignoring the very real changes in attitudes, policy, and atmosphere, but I personally see no reason to take the risk when I could...just stay in Canada and be safe.

Again I do not care. The US has done more than enough to instill fear in Canadians like me.

Would you travel to a country where its leader is constantly making threats against your country, some as serious as repeatedly calling for your annexation? The current US administration has made it very clear how it feels about me and my countrymen.

I don't consider the US safe and I do not need someone to americansplain to me. You aren't exceptional, you're a threat.

The specifics of this case are largely irrelevant to me, the fact is I am scared to cross the border into the US at this point.

For the foreseeable future I will not be travelling to the US for any reason. Canada is safe and there is nothing in the US worth risking my freedom for. I will remain here and I will continue to avoid travel to America as well as spending money on American goods/services.

My favourite part of my .ca domains is that personal data is protected by default and I don't have to pay for it as an additional service.

There's no need for people to know my information because I happen to own a domain.

Perhaps, but I can normally force myself in overcome fear/anxiety if there's a real benefit to me. When it comes to these drugs? I can only see neutral or negative outcomes.

I've read most of the comments on this post and I can honestly say none of them make me want to try hallucinogenics. It just seems like playing with fire and asking for trouble, especially for those of us with severe anxiety issues.

I'm not rich and I have this mindset. I make far less than most people on HN do, less than industry average too, but I've been able to live an okay life regardless.

The goal was never to get rich as I realized early on that was improbable and I focused on other things.

So maybe seeing that at interview time is a good thing?

Perhaps, but an interview is a fundamentally different environment than day to day work.

There's no way to solve the interview/interviewee problem though, the whole thing is impossibly fucked and is going to have false positives/negatives no matter what.

That's completely unrealistic though. If you have a job that allows you to support yourself and doesn't make you want to veer into oncoming traffic daily that's about as good as it gets for the vast majority of people.

There's so many reasons why purpose should be found outside of work.

Having lived next to a semi-main street through a smallish California coastal city without much rain it is pretty eye opening how much black dirt and junk just coat everything next to the road.

One day I made the mistake of leaning against the wall in a TTC subway station while in a white shirt. I didn't realize how much oil, brake dust, and other mechanical grime there was until that moment.

I had to go home and change.

I am so tired of this gender war nonsense.

It's worse than that, if we're being entirely realistic most (all?) companies would kill you if they could profit from it.

Proof? Cigarette companies, Dupont, and others were happy to do that.

What socialist laptop do you recommend?

You have options other than Macbooks. The communist kid with a Macbook is a meme for a reason, they're out of touch. It's absurd to call oneself a communist or socialist while buying one of the most expensive options from one of the biggest companies.

What a different example? It's easier to take a communist/socialist who drives a basic Corolla seriously than one who drives a BMW.

Even within the system you have options and ignorance isn't a good excuse.

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Why such a hostile response to someone who cares about presenting themselves in a way they see fit? Your image is very important and it's logical that they want to control theirs.

or because you haven't been properly compensated for your contribution to the content on the internet?

This comes across as snark, but I will assume you are well meaning. I have put code, guides, and videos on the internet for other people to consume for free in the hope that those people find that stuff useful.

I did not put stuff on the internet for it to be hoovered up and frankly stolen by massive AI companies to enrich themselves. If they are going to use my things in their commercial product than yes, they should be compensating me for that.

Is this because they are multi-billion dollar companies, or because they behave poorly

It's also both of these.

It is very likely that voting, or voting with your wallet, or probably any kind of activism, would have more impact than withdrawing from the (online) public life.

The only true control I have is withdrawing. I don't give these companies money, I don't live in a country that can meaningfully legislate against them, and I would consider withdrawing a form of activism.

I refuse to support these AI companies in any way (as long as they continue to be bad actors) and I have taken down all Youtube videos I've created, my personal website, and I have moved all my code to a self hosted, private Git service in order to deny them my work.

AI haters? I don't hate AI I just don't want things I've created being used to enrich multi-billion dollar companies for free. These companies are behaving poorly and they should expect this kind of push back.

500k/y jobs are not common and as such the vast majority of us are not making that much.

Feelings of entitlement are wrong here.

How dare people have feelings right? A lot of contractors (like myself) are treated like employees who are easier to fire.

I understand the separation from a legal perspective, but at the same time I've developed relationships with the people I work with and enjoy working with them. Being entirely honest? It hurts being excluded from things and not everyone has the option to just "become an employee".

I suffer from the same issue and I've always assumed it was astigmatism as well. There are different types of astigmatism so perhaps some types have this issue and some don't? I'm unsure, but I know that dark mode is legitimately hard for me to read.

Six months' wait to see your GP for an in-person visit is a worryingly long wait.

I always find it cute to see what Americans consider a long wait for any medical service.

For myself in Canada the very minimum time to see a GP is a month and a half and that's a best case scenario. Get a different GP? Impossible.

I felt that way about the master to main debacle, but some angry people online won anyway.

“Therapy doesn’t work” is always refuted by this claim that you just haven’t found the right one yet.

It’s tiring honestly, you are not allowed to criticize therapy in the current year.

All kinds of pseudoscience makes people believe they feel better. Without proof therapy works it’s no better than homeopathy.

but you need to use buzzwords like these to convince executives.

And yet we’re told execs are smarter than the rest of us and deserve to make so much more than we do.

Someday I pray the executive class gets its comeuppance.