andrew_eit

Is this data normalised to account for differences in traffic/popularity of the HN platform between 2008 - 2024?

Reason being: If the distributions of user types have changed over time (e.g. 2010 having a higher % of more entrepreneurial / founder type users vs employee-type fokls [like myself] looking for their next gig) then it could skew the results no?

Anecdotally the graph makes total sense. I'd just take the absolute ratio/differences with a pinch of salt.

I think the intuition here is: - Being surrounded by people one cannot connect with, increases the feeling that one is socially isolated and an 'outsider'. They are unable to engage with their organic natural (social) environment - Whilst being in 'a forest alone', offers the person a chance to engage with their natural environment and more easily connect with it, just by being there. You don't have to do anything but just exist in it. In a way you are accepted and do belong to that environment (genetically/instinctively). So it acts to counter feelings of 'not fitting in'.

Have you ever played the factory building game "Factorio"?

It's an amazing lesson in scale. In the early game, it's pretty easy to recover from supply chain issues and refactor your setup to adjust to your growth needs and expansion across the land. Once you reach mid to late game, and something goes wrong, your whole factory starts to grind to halt as you try to diagnose where in the whole system things have clogged up, you need to measure and monitor throughput to make sure you are producing the materials needed for consumption by other machines at a rate that is sustainable. Refactoring at this point really means shutting most of it down and building from the ground up again.

Kind of like humanity 100s & 1000s of years ago. Most of life was localized, food, raw materials. We were not over fishing the seas or pushing the soils to the limit. The scale of humanity now, is such that all the supply chains, food and resource requirements depend on such a plethora of things running as they have been, uninterrupted (gas, food, water supplies, raw materials, spare parts).

That is why this argument about "climate disasters in the past" really never made sense to me. This is an entirely different game.

And yes, "humanity" may survive. But just like the factory that stops working that needs to be largely deconstructed and re-built, a lot of people will be unnecessarily plunged into hardship, famine and probably death. Economies and societies will be affected in ways we really can't imagine.

The question then is, what will humanity and society look like after? And what will our successors and future generations think of their ancestors who had the time, knowledge and the technology to ease or circumvent their suffering.

This doesn't bother me at all, especially at an individual level.

I want to make clear - it's not the language issue per se. I think native English speakers are incredibly privileged to have their language as one of if not the international language, so I could never fault a person for not speaking a foreign language well (I'm sure I butcher the German language in ways that would make Goethe himself cry out in anguish).

It's the fact that this is an international company launching a product in a professional setting. Again, I don't quite know why this bothers me so much, but I feel its within the context of other cultural things I experience.

This is the comment I was waiting for :) It's strange isn't it, to suddenly be negatively receptive to something that you never noticed bothered you in the past.

"Dear Ms. Smith,

We would like to inform you..."

vs

" Dear Ms. Smith,

we would like to inform you..."

What you say is write and I am guilty of that too. I would feel very rude or out of place telling a colleague of mine to capitalize the first letter after Dear X. Even if I wanted to. So I just write my reply correctly and hope they notice :)

"You need scalable enterprise cloud solutions for digital business processes while maintaining complete data integrity?"

Nitpicking here, but my god, can German companies/universities/organizations please start paying for native English speakers to do their copy-writing and STOP translating directly from German?

It's "Do you need". Not "You need..."

This is the typical translation of the German marketing "Du brauchst <blah>?" or "Du bist ein <blah>? Dann...". I see pattern this all the time, such as "You are a student who wants to work on innovating projects? Then apply...".

This may sound like a rant, but I genuinely think these little details would go a long way to actually showing that the German economy does have some sort of international mindset. This persistence in sticking to these wrong ways just makes me think that 'OK this is another conservative old-school minded German company trying to play unicorn'. If there's no attention to detail or care for the little things on your front-page marketing website - your first contact with your customer - it just leaves me with a bad feeling about the parts I don't see.

I don't know why it frustrates me enough to write a comment in the middle of the day, I guess I really can't understand how global German corporations still, as a rule all make this same error, which I suspect is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger symptom of not wanting to think outside/beyond the DACH bubble. And I feel a sense of sadness that such a country with great prospects just drags its feet lazily into the the future.

Edit: I also see this all the time in Email correspondence, you can immediately tell if a person is a native German speaker because they don't capitalize the first letter in an English email after "Dear X, we are writing <blah>" (which would be 100% correct in German, but somehow no one teaches this in English classes in Germany that in English it is capitalized). For a country that loves rules, this drives me mad.

Edit2: This is definitely a rant and it triggered me emotionally for some odd reason. I concede that my interpretation is quite exaggerated, so please do excuse me! I'll leave the comment however because I'm curious to know whether any others feel the same way.

Edit3: I will also say that translating between German and English is hard as there are some fundamental differences in their structure. There are very colloquial ways to say or not say certain things. That is why native speakers are essential for such things.

Edit4: Please take this comment with a pinch of salt. This is the rant of an fatigued expat who decided to blow some off steam about the oddities of their host country that drive them bananas. For posterity, I will say there at least 10 amazing wonderful things about German culture that I love, for each odd cultural thing. But you know, at some point when you see something for the umpteenth time, something snaps inside of you and it all comes out, especially on a mid-week day like a Wednesday.

"clever one liners"

That's exactly it! It's basic clean coding style where it's better to use meaningful names and sometimes write something in 2 or 3 lines that is more interpret able than to write a perfect one-liner that no one will be able to unpack.

In this regard I almost wish we had a de-facto standard in math of presenting the 'condensed' perfect form of the equation and a more chunkier version.

What I like is that recently I saw some researchers annotating the symbols in their equations [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/sibinmohan/status/1480583840858996743/ph...

I really wonder what percentage of difficulties that stem from math are due to its representation in the symbolic language used. By that I mean, so often, I am staring at a long, condensed equation. Factored to perfection by whomever was working on developing it. I stare at it for hours and just can't figure out what's going on.

Then after much tinkering with the parameters, exploring the limits, plotting graphs, slowly I look at it and recognize what is going on and realise "gosh that is actually really F**ing simple"

I wonder how much of "learning" math is really spent on decoding the representations we are provided, rather than understanding the concept they're meant to represent.

I bet the sophons are already on their way

In many ways I agree with you. I would like also to return to simpler times. Especially insta-texting (whatsapp) etc. SMS was fine for me to organise a meetup and then talk in person.

I guess my stance is more kind of to protect my mental sanity, to try and make this a "self-discipline" problem that I can control, and hence reduce my exposure/time online. That suits me but I do agree that to some degree there needs to be a wider societal change and I do agree that it can't all be placed on the individual to be super strong mentally when the internet is now literally a life necessity for operating in society in any dimension.

I see your point and think you have quite a valid argument there! Some of the things you said definitely echo with my experiences. For example, I do surf the net too much because I love new information. And perhaps without that access I'd be a lot happier focusing on actual physical things in front of me.

I guess it's not as simple as boiling it down to the individual's own self-control. To some degree maybe my stance is also biased in that I want to empower myself to be the one to reduce my time online.

I don't understand these negative comments about what "computers/internet" has done to me etc.

Yes, there are certainly aspects of computers, the internet and especially social networking and instant-texting that have a net negative impact on our lives.

But this argument strikes me as a "I'm such a victim" argument. Surely if you allow some device to have such a massive negative impact on your life then this would be the case even pre-90s before computers and the internet became mainstream?

- Maybe you might have spent too much time hanging out at your local bar? - Perhaps you'd have been addicted to television?

The one area, where I wholeheartedly agree and recognize the serious dangerous of the internet and computer devices is in children. The threat of cyber-bullying and indeed, rather more subtle, the attention-seeking culture of always producing content at a young age is IMO, very scary when thought of in the context that these will be future adults who didn't know better. We need to guard against these enabled social pressures like we protect kids from smoking, drugs, alcohol and even to a lesser extend (i.e. it's not illegal) addictions to things like TV, video games and other behaviors that they might fall prey to.

I guess, summed up what I am saying is: It appears that there the internet has developed a predatory nature on one's attention that extends to threaten one's social status and reputation.

Where I disagree is that - as adults - we know better and can combat this with self-discipline and by choosing our friends/social circles wisely (I don't engage with friends who constantly text or post online. I'm happy to meet but they know not to expect my participation there).

Where I agree is that, children are vulnerable to this and must be protected AND TAUGHT how to treat / interact with the internet.

Unfortunately, since this is relatively a new thing in society. We have not yet developed a solid culture around what is acceptable and what is not. Just like it is inconceivable now to smoke inside a closed room, or someone's house, I do hope that in the future it would be inconceivable to upload compromising information/pictures to random servers in foreign countries. But alas, we are not there yet.

I can see the use case for these online password apps.

But I can't for the life of me understand why KeePass isn't the defacto gold standard.

It's secure, open source and you have control over the data. I would never for the life of me think of storing my important passwords with a company ever. Am I over reacting?

+1

Honestly never understood why joining startups is meant to be so amazing unless 1) They are working on exactly the niche that YOU personally want to work in and 2) The startup's company culture is exactly your kind of weird/niche culture too. IMO unless it's a perfect match, you're going to have a bad time as there is less stability and diversity of ideas/experience in small startups.

I love large orgs because there are tons of characters, experienced professionals and frameworks designed to support and enable me. I can always move projects when I get bored or something isn't right.

I would join a startup however if there is something very very specific I want to build and I want to circumvent all the corporate barriers/rules to move fast and ship something. But so far, I've not felt that yet.

I kind of torn between two opinions here.

On the one hand - an adult should be able to make their own choices regarding something like this. I mean, we're all slowly decaying day-by-day and I can understand that one might want to live while their alive and suffer the consequences of a shorter lifespan. Also sometimes one could argue it's actually encouraged not to become obsessed with _never_ doing anything that is bad for your health, we all accept that there's value in stress reduction to sometimes just go out and have an intense night with friends, order in some junk food or just do something really risky for the adrenaline rush.

On the other hand - the intense addiction factor of cigarettes is really quite terrifying and is really unprecedented when compared to other unhealthy habits. A lifelong smoker who quit once told me that the Cigarette, is more like a companion. There in the good times, (celebrate, have a cig), there in the bad, there when you wake up, take a break, or call it a day. They are optimized to be a lifelong companion and the amount of suffering caused by them (directly - to the smoker and indirectly - to loved ones impacted by their addiction) is significant enough (IMHO) to warrant questioning of its impact to human life. Alone 80-90% of lung cancer deaths are attributed to smoking [1], that isn't some minor thing at all. And although for some people cigarettes may start or may always be just a source of relaxation or indulgence occasionally on a night out, once the addiction and habits set in, it becomes a point of stress and suffering when they are not available - which IMO negates any benefits they might provide at the start. You also don't see this sort of wide spread addiction with things like cigars - which to me is a dead giveaway that they are not just some form of indulgence.

I personally would love to see them disappear and never return. I think they provide far more suffering to the individual and individuals surrounding smokers than any of the benefits could ever hope to offset.

If that's not possible, then I'd be satisfied if the addictive substances in them were highly regulated and reduced or removed entirely.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm

Exactly!

And the irony (for me at least) is, that corruption and fraud is still rampant in Germany (e.g. during corona, tons of fake PCR tests being billed to govt. Pharmacies issuing fake vaccine certificates).

This solves nothing.

Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/retention/active users per month".

Whatever product it is, whether a social media platform or an online learning platform, it will slowly be zombified into an attention sucking machine, whose goal has now become to keep you interacting with the app as much as possible (using ML and DL of course).

I mean, Twitter now sends me daily notifications that a person I follow made a random tweet (wasn't this the purpose of the news feed?), Udemy now has a notification service and an inbox that fills up with automated messages that are just a "welcome to the course" message. Everywhere I look, the pattern is the same, Product is good > Product adds social features > Product attempts to cluster user activity and make recommendations based on social features.

We, as in the IT industry, need to come up with a culture or methodology of 'declaring a product complete' whereby all product managers are gracefully allowed to move on and a product is put into a state of stasis, where bugfixes and the occasional relevant feature is built. If a product was not designed to show intelligent recommendations, use gamification or become a notification dashboard then that should be bared from ever appearing in its Backlog.

I'm deeply worried about the long-term effects of an industry that is booming by sending sending some of our brightest minds to scale the economy of distractions Or to innovate Ad-tech.

I really hope we'll look back at this age with the same wisdom-fuelled disgust we have when we look back at the early industrial age. Where smog factories were built in the middle of cities and dusty kids were shovelling coal. We lack any sort of foresight wrt. the digital economy we're building. Maybe one day we'll find a healthy alternative to make software-products users love.

But until then, seldom are the days where I do not look at the internet with such savage despair.

This reminds me of the most amazingly archaic interaction I had with the Finance Ministry.

They notified me by post that I needed to provide them with some information on their online tool. Here was the process: 1) Go to link, fill in form with personal detailed. Print, sign and post. 2) Receive a login password via post after 1-2 weeks 3) Login and do the the thing they asked.

Honestly why bother with an online system, just send me the form and I'll send it back. Done.

Also, applying to universities here also involves sending NOTARISED copies of all your documents, via post, along with the application. I don't think I've ever in my life applied to university by sending a thick brown envelope.

I agree with you actually about the Gigafactories and it won't surprise me if the Texas one finishes first.

And I also live in Germany and have worked for car companies as a contractor :) And believe me I am also quite exhausted by the slowness of so much of the industry and the old white opas running things. But at the same time I get the feeling that university-educated younger members of society really want this to change and want to participate actively in shaping their country.

I think I usually like to counter extreme positions for either approach (US-capitalist, fast moving approach vs German/European slower, more left leaning approach). I think our views might actually be quite similar, and I have actually been considering what life might be like in the US where people seem to really have no limits to their ambition and drive. I guess I just see both systems as useful in some ways and limited in others. I like the fact that in Germany, everyone has access to good education, health and a social safety net, and I am ok with that coming at the cost of maybe the country not being as disruptively innovative as it otherwise could be. On the other hand, I am extremely glad a place like the US exists, where some random south african dude can waltz into the Rocketry industry and the auto industry and simultaneously turn both on their heads in less than 2 decades.

Also what you said about Greece is pretty shocking. To be fair, it's very possible that in general the amount of people who really want to put their own blood, sweat and tears into in endeavour is actually quite small. A lot of people I know just want a contented life, which is fine, but I'd rather not have that at the expense of a meaningful, exciting career.

" too much socialism"

This is a vague and exaggerated statement, it makes you sound quite biased. If we're going to argue in that direction then let me point out that China has "way more socialism" (as you put it) than Europe, yet their lightening speed in making advancements in their private tech sector, digitalisation and even scientific research such as computer vision and quantum computing puts even the US to shame.

"People here don't want to be part of a company that does exciting things"

Absolutely false. Have you ever spoken to anyone at a German car company? They live and die for the pride they have working with their "team". Same goes for other Mittelstand companies, employees tend to be very loyal and have a personal relationship with their company and product, even if it is as simple as a company making world-class pencils. Maybe this is because of all the "socialism" (i.e. reasonable amount of time off and workers rights and being treated like a human with a personal life)

That is not to say that there aren't groups of long-tenured 20 year+ employees at such corporations who occupy a cushy job with almost no chance of being fired. Yes they exist, and I've met them.

But I think you're trying to equate the mindset in Europe to the American ideal of the individual person doing something that 'CHANGES THE WORLD'. Europeans certainly dream and want to do exciting things that make the world a better place, but the way to do this isn't exclusively held by this radical capitalist view (I say this as a believer capitalism) that one man/woman with an idea can change the world. I think we take on a more longer-term view, taking the time to research, perfect one's craft and slowly make small steps of change that last longer. And I think this view and mindset is what drives so much medical and scientific innovation in Europe.

Does anyone have any good arguments for why we lack any serious blue-chip competitors in the EU?

I mean we have things like Spotify and SAP (though they're b2b). But I really can't see any parallels with the US tech industry. There really is no company that comes to mind in the EU where I think "yeah that's where all the software engineers want to go to".

Also what I find super weird is that actually, a lot of the other industries are providing the golden ticket type jobs for SDEs that, in the US, would be reserved for FAANG. For example VW has some pretty great Digital "labs", pay is quite high, and they're even one of the biggest forces investing in quantum research, funding phd programmes and the like.

A surgeon is still a doctor who spent years studying medicine though.

"work in ML can be as dull and unfulfilling as any other domain"

I love this statement.

A while back, when I was trying to figure out what I liked, was good at and should do with my career, I realised that I can't select things based on how much I liked the good parts (because I like so many things) but rather, how annoying I found the dull parts.

It's like, if you find a profession or hobby, where even the annoying and dull parts you can say "meh, it's not great but like I'm not too bothered by this", then you'll probably manage to survive a 20 year tenure with it. Since that's where most people would tap out.

It's easy to like the fun parts. Like when you are coding and everything is working fine. But are you also fine with the nitty gritty of debugging, refactoring and all the in-between bits that round up the profession? I see this in many professionals across the board.

Those who understand the significance of the mundane, the small and boring tasks as a integral component of the wider vision of the profession, develop a special bond with that, that is longer lasting and truer.

Not too much unlike relationships I would say. The good times can be great. But if the small day-to-day stuff is slightly annoying, it starts to get under your skin, and grows over time, like chipping away at a tree trunk, eventually felling the tree. Lasting bonds happen when each person understands and isn't too bothered by the mundane and annoying, human side of their partner.

All this being said, please excuse the philosophy. I'm in Europe, it's 11am, I've had my 3rd coffee and ironically I'm supposed to be refactoring code right now.

Ok that I agree with - German conservative culture does value 'keeping everything as it is and not changing anything except when absolutely necessary'.

Actually, I would say that their history is an argument against the case that they are unstable.

The fact that Germany had such a massive political and existential crisis that led them to war and genocide is still very much present in their memory. National pride is still something that is quite frowned upon (it would make people very uncomfortable say, if you walk around the street with a German flag and it's not clearly due to a football game).

On the other hand, I would say countries that have not yet had any cultural or existential crisis in the last few hundred years as a nation are more at risk of collapse. Unless the country and culture is constantly changing and evolving and its population are similarly keen to routinely update the status quo, at some point it will fall out of sync with, people will get upset and wonder why things aren't like the good old days, find arbitrary reasons for this (identification of perpetrators and allocation of blame) and the upheaval will begin.

I don't think it's vigilante culture. People value order and organisation and this coupled with the direct nature of communication, feel completely within their right (I would say feel duty bound) to say "hey, you're not supposed to do that".

It is also custom here to voice one's opinion in extreme precision or detail. "Hinterfragen" question things, criticise, always down to the details. Not in an emotional way but very in a very matter-of-fact sense.

So think of it from the perspective of "if the rule is that you don't cross on red, then why are you crossing on red? It's against the rule". It's not personal at all.

I actually have been yelled at and told off in the streets for various mistakes such as this one. And this is not just my personal experience but my German friends also verify such stereotypes.

This is not how I understood the argument of scientific stagnation though, wasn't it more to do with 'breakthrough' discoveries that somehow radically disrupted / changed our way of life?

In that regard I'm inclined to believe there is some sort of stagnation. Though not necessarily at the fault of the community or researchers. It could very well be a mix of what you said about problems being harder that we have, between 1900 - 2000 picked all the 'low hanging fruit' in physics, and that we now need lots of patient, 'baby step' type improvements to get to a new era where the technology is powerful enough to make big leaps again.

Kind of like how Deep Learning research stagnated due to lack of data volume and processing power.

This is my perspective, but I think it's totally up for debate and I'm keen to hear different opinions.