HN user
Software Engineer in the PNW
Two things: 1) This is war. It's not pretty and it's never not messy.
2) This is precisely why every human, and every leader of humans, should avoid war at all costs. The image of a "clean" war is a myth. Even the Allies in WWII were not immune to this, see the bombing of Dresden[1].
Whatever you think of either side in this, it's clear that neither is doing enough to end this.
original project (a bus)
This is actually insane to me. Like bonkers, even. The MBA types are surely the source of that idea. From a brand perspective, the only car that ever truly made sense for Apple to make was something at least resembling a supercar. They could have made do with a Telsa Model S kind of car perhaps, but I'm shocked that a brand-conscious company like Apple thought a bus was the best bet as an initial product.
First impressions are vitally important. In my opinion, a car brand can go from making high performance cars to more "practical" vehicles once they've established their brand, but not the other way around. Slapping an Apple badge on a Corolla isn't going to work. Steve Jobs said it best, paraphrasing "We want to build computers that customers would want to lick.". If Apple wants to be a legitimate car company that enthusiasts like, they'd have to build a car those people would lick. Not a bus...
And yet it's the best system we've devised so far
This is the truth, and it's the saddest part of all...
It was neither particularly violent
Wow. I know perhaps this makes sense from a non-American perspective, but as an American, January 6 was incredibly violent. I think some people forget that this isn't normal.
What are some examples of these crucial incidents?
I'd say it's the opposite, actually. If Amazon embraced WFH, the Seattle commercial real estate market (and the city itself) would suffer major damage. So the mayor and many CRE groups are lobbying the C suite to go back to the office.
Look, I agree with your fundamental sentiment. But I think you're being incredibly naive too.
I don't see how the world can function if everyone were to think and act like that
My brother in Christ, the world barely functions as it is right now. We have a war going on because of one man's misguided attempt at recapturing his country's former glory as an empire, we've had planes fall out of the sky because of boneheaded engineering decisions demanded by MBA types (737 Max), we had a massive train derailment / chemical spill in Ohio caused by other MBA types not wanting to properly maintain the trains and tracks, we are maybe a few weeks away from the most economically powerful country on Earth defaulting because our moronic leadership can't agree to pay our debts (NOT because of an inherent inability to pay)... I could go on. The world is chaos, and it's pretty much always been that way.
there was a time where this kind of personality type would just go get an MBA, but Computer Science and Engineering were considered too hard to really be worth the effort.
This part of your reply really, really grinds my gears, because to me it's sort of saying that MBA's can cheat all they want, but CS and Engineering grads should be 'chaste' and not cheat... because reasons. NO. The MBA's took over the technical companies and fucked everything up, but we're just supposed to keep doing the 'right' thing? NO. Fuck them, we should get ours.
Is it sad that this is the current state of affairs? Absolutely. Would the world be an immensely better place if NO ONE was unethical, and no one cheated? Hell yes. But that world doesn't exist. And the people who have the power to bring such a world into existence are not entry level engineers.
They are applying to different companies? Do you believe these employees made a decision to work for one of these companies for life and will now never again get another job? What is your point with this part?
Who is hiring in tech right now? Honest question.
As for the rest of your post, the main issue is having a say. The ill effects you are describing can indeed happen in a single-employer system. But at least in a democratic state, every few years the population has a say in how the system is being run. Right now, nobody except the CEO and the board has a say in how a company is run. They fire thousands of people, many with mortgages and children and people who depend on them, with no regards for what that means. And then to top it off they pay themselves millions of dollars to make these savage decisions. AND, I have no voice and no vote in all of this. Yeah... no thanks.
On the surface, yes, there are many employers. How's that going for the folks that have been recently laid off from checks notes... Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, EA, Indeed, Yahoo, Github, Zoom, Dell, Paypal, IBM, Spotify, Goldman Sachs, Coinbase, HP, Cisco...
I'm not really sure that going from many possible employers who cannot guarantee my job to a single entity who can is a way worse deal, but ok.
This is a simplified version of the argument, but basically: right now, I am dependent on an employer for my survival. Keeping a roof over my head depends on my being competent at my job, AND my employer not deciding to fire me. One of those I can control - the other is completely outside of my control. If instead I was dependent on a democratic government for my survival and keeping a roof over my head, at the very least I and other citizens would have a say in the direction and decisions of that government every time an election happened.
Your point does stand in autocracies and dictatorships though.
You and I both know that as messed up as this was, nothing will be done to reign in the power of these VC's. I always vaguely knew that the billionaire class has the government over a barrel, but now they know, concretely, with real world evidence, that this is the case.
My experience working in a small startup, a largish tech company and a FAANG, is that management (especially at the top) follows a highly unbalanced bimodal distribution - that is, about 85-95% of management has no idea what they're doing and in many cases are actively hurting the company. But 5-15% are actually great and know what they're doing, and can carry the deadweight along. But since they're a minority, they are completely focused on getting the business to work; the deadweights are the people making the open office decisions.
Can someone explain the differences between Google and the C++ standards committee? I understand it has to do with breaking ABI, but what exactly does this imply?
As someone much more experienced in other languages like Python and Swift, my biggest surprise when using C++ is that the language standard and the compiler are two different things. In Python, the default CPython interpreter is the standard - if it's not in CPython, it's not standard Python. But in C++, there's like 3 different compilers, all of which implement different subsets of the latest C++ standards. IIRC, the latest standard that all compilers implement fully is C++ 14. I understand C++ is a broad and complicated language, and I actually have liked using it in the few times I've had the chance, but the compiler/standard situation seems like complete lunacy from where I stand.
How can he immediately turn from "people shouldn't post publicly available information that can be abusable" to posting someone's abusable public information?
Hypocrisy
about to learn yet another lesson
Bold of you to assume they're capable of learning at this point.
It's literally initialed TRAP. This is Looney Tunes levels of villainy.
C'mon, corporate America, at least put in the effort to make the dystopia believable.
Oh dear God, here we go...
Are you planning on bidding on the Puerto Rico generation privatization contract? Because you fit right in with the clowns at Luma Energy.
See, the problem is you used logic here, unlike senior management.
How unreliable is your power grid?
If you live in Puerto Rico, extremely unreliable [0, 1]
It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure
Indeed it is, if they're competent [2, 3]
Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever
Puerto Rico, along with the mid to southern east coast of the US, along with coasts on the Gulf of Mexico, are not strangers to powerful hurricanes. As climate change gets worse, the impacts of these phenomena may increase. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September of 2017, it took *months* for power to be restored to most of the island [4]
[0] (Island-wide outage in 2016, before Hurricane Maria): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37436392
[1] (Island-wide outage in April of this year): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/07/major-...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/businesses-puerto-rico-f...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/us/puerto-rico-power-outa...
[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/15/638739819/nearly-a-year-after...
This seems to be a sticking point among high achievers, but you really need to dial back any societal expectations you may have. You’re here for a short time, and you’re given the option of watching the spectacle at your leisure. Enjoy it while it lasts.
You're right, but understand, it takes many intelligent people years to figure this out. It's such a brutal state of reality that many parents are loathe to explain it so clearly to their children.
In my opinion it is a shame that society is mostly driven by the dumber elements of our species. I know this is pie in the sky, but perhaps in the future when humans are multiplanetary, a group of above average intelligence could choose to colonize a planet and only admit those who are similarly above average intelligence. Would be an interesting experiment to see which planet has faster technological and societal progress over time.
Who captures most of the profit from these better devices?
You're opening the floodgates to massive governmental and corporate control.
The irony of this statement in a discussion about taking a public company private
Isn't it interesting that many otherwise intelligent people don't seem to understand this? I don't know _how_ we solve this problem, but the sheer amount of people who refuse to see this as _a_ problem (and who should know better) is frankly astonishing and scary.
for example, in a "free" twitter, i could post some racist tirade, and expect it to gain no traction/retweets from my followers & some random others. people might see it, but it is principally no different to making the same speech in the city center: i'm going to be heard, but no one is going to listen.
This is the biggest misconception many proponents of absolute free speech have. Many movements, both good and bad, have begun in social media (Twitter / Facebook, etc.). Everything from the Arab Spring, to BLM, to Unite the Right in Charlottesville and January 6th, were at least in part organized on social media. Just because _you_ don't think an idea is worth listening to, does NOT mean that there aren't hundreds or thousands of people who disagree and will listen. I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but to assume it's not real is just plain wrong.
I would kill to not have deadlines... I also work here heh
Really depends, some of it for sure is autogenerated code. I've seen similar situations.
How?
You weren't kidding about Google, damn...
Sigh... I laughed hard at your comment, but it reminds me of just the sheer amount of idiotic shit management comes up with... It's like they're living in a totally different universe from the ICs.