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lilsoso

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Thanks for the browser recommendations.

I switched to the Mullvad browser. The other recommendation, LibreWolf, provides the following warning on install which scared me away: "Warning: librewolf has been deprecated because it does not pass the macOS Gatekeeper check! It will be disabled on 2026-09-01."

[dead] 9 months ago

The article is light on details of the substance of these lectures. While I couldn't find the referenced lecture, the following lecture might be similar:

Hoover Institution: Apocalypse Now? Peter Thiel on Ancient Prophecies and Modern Tech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqHueZNEzig

Burner Phone 101 11 months ago

You can buy prepaid SIM cards with cash, and without hassle, in the US as well.

You can do this in many countries, I believe, as well as online through services offered in exchange for crypto.

You didn't define where "here" is for you. Mexico is a better option than the US because the retail price of a SIM card with a number and service is around 50 pesos (maybe lower).

Burner Phone 101 11 months ago

In Mexico you can buy prepaid SIM cards with cash, and without an ID, at convenience stores such as 7-11 or Oxxo.

Is this actually a problem you see? I'm going on 15 years in the industry and haven't seen any issues training people up on a new language in just a couple months.

Some years ago the largest company using Elixir in the US, or at least on the west coast, abandoned Elixir because they couldn't find enough developers.

Yes. The adoption is poor despite the loud voices.

Marc Andreessen mentioned what's called "Operation Chokepoint 2.0" in relation to many tech founders being debanked. In the crypto industry you can find many examples of this, however they're often not so public. Here's an instance from the entrepreneur Sam Hamidi-Kazemian:

'Kept quiet about this for almost a year out of fear but since I'm in good company with @tyler @cameron @brian_armstrong @elonmusk now.. Last December, I got a call from JPM saying "we have to close anyone's account that we know their primary source of income/wealth is crypto. This is directly from the top from Jamie. I'm really sorry."

I had a close relationship with my banker so I assume 99% of people wouldn't even get that kind of transparency/explanation. Wanted to add my own name to the debanked OCP list @nic__carter. It's real. It happened. Hopefully now it will soon be over.' -- https://x.com/samkazemian/status/1861956394079101391

Furthermore, this phenomenon affects not only founders but is common to retail investors. Try cashing out seven figures to your bank via a crypto payment rail and see how the bank reacts. If you get close to a successful crypto investors you can find many cases. However, this crowd often stays quiet: revealing that you're a high net worth individual, particularly in crypto, can be a security risk so these stories are shared in private chats amongst individuals of the same status.

Another case of added pressure, perhaps in a different vein, can be seen here: https://nypost.com/2024/11/13/business/fbi-seizes-polymarket...

Tailscale is not a good option for this (hiding your geo-location from work). As the article states,

'Additionally, in the case of a DERP-relayed connection, if one were to run a “traceroute” on your connection, they would see the public DERP relay server IP address, since it is routing your traffic in the middle. This IP obviously belongs to a commercial/enterprise IP block, but it’s only visible by running a traceroute which is able to see every “hop” your traffic makes. Whether or not your employer’s telemetry would pick up on this is what would determine whether this method would still work for you or not.'

Tailscale is not built for anonymity and contains strange surprises.

Here's a number of articles outlining the A16z support for Trump:

- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/17/co-f...

- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-16/andreesse...

- https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/16/andreessen-horowitz-co-fou...

Here's a broader article on Silicon Valley support for Trump (potentially paywalled):

- https://www.ft.com/content/e2ffd807-1c18-436c-9f70-2fa7181ac...

- The FT article includes the following names: Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Shervin Pishevar, Keith Rabois, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, Doug Leone, Shaun Maguire, Joe Lonsdale, Jacob Helberg

Please keep in mind that not too long ago vocal support for Trump could get you fired (and still might). Fighting against censorship is important.

Thanks, I didn't know that. So if you have a VPN server at home and you bounce through it from a foreign location to a corporate job then perhaps the employer could identify the connection is a relay.

I'm talking about the part of the connection outgoing from the VPN, not the incoming traffic to the VPN, to be clear. I know for example that China can do deep packet inspection and that there are a number of projects to attempt to thwart this technique. But you seem to be saying that the part after the VPN can be identified?

They can determine a connection to their network is through an OpenVPN server even if that server has a clean/normal IP address? Is there some otherwise basic tell that the host is running a VPN server? Could Palo Alto Network also identify say a different VPN server, such as Wireguard?

The startups you're describing are bad deals -- excluding the rare unicorn liquidity event. The DEIA candidates can afford to be pickier, as their applications are boosted in cushier companies (explicit quotas, etc).

Bay Area web app developers shouldn't be working 70 hours a week. By and large they don't.

SpaceX, counter to what you wrote, probably does push employees to work 60-ish hours a week. I recall reading job descriptions that said something to the effect of "expect to work weekends". Autists are likely the ones to be ensared by this trap.

Yes, startup culture is bullshit although not for the cliched reasons outlined in the article.

The author displays a lack of familiarity with US startup culture: "seventy-hour weeks", "Selection biases filter out most women, underrepresented minorities, and those without connections."

Forward all your Gmail email to a more private service like Mailbox.org and read your Gmail from there. Then you won't be logged into Google products nearly as often. Watch Youtube with various browser plugins to skip ads etc.

Though, I find it's difficult to avoid Google on your phone. I have Google Maps where I'm not logged in but they know who I am as I'm logged into Google Voice.

In corporate-type environments, I've seen individuals working within the company be put on something like a secret discrimination list for not passing enough underrepresented candidates (even when there are not many options): you are forced to or there will be consequences.

Co-workers giddily talk about this after work at bars.

A transcribed quote from the above video:

"Let me go deeper into Red Hat, multiple leaders over the last year plus that were held accountable to the point that they're no longer here at Red Hat because they were not willing to live up to the standards." -- Paul Cormier, Chairman at Red Hat

Paul Cormier and Arvind Krishna should be fired.

While scanning your comment history looking for unusual interests, I found an intriguing comment that's unrelated to this topic: "Cash is already heavily monitored and most petty criminals have already moved on to Amazon gift cards."

Can you describe what you mean when you say cash is heavily monitored?