mcntsh

my point is, in germany it takes longer than a test to get your license, unlike the US.

45 minutes? In Germany getting your license takes most people around a year and costs thousands of euros.

What action can Iran take today that they couldn’t take a year ago?

Remove of sanctions, ability to monitize traffic through the strait, guarantees against aggression and a cessation of military bases in their region. IMO, a much stronger position than they were in a year ago.

Every cost is disconnected from the value it generates. Do you pay the price for gasoline, electricity, or food based on the value it provides you?

Wasn't this always the idea behind combating inflation? At the end of the day you need to make people poorer to make the dollar worth more...

Streetview is such an incredible product - one of the few digital products that still manages to bring me joy every day. it'll be a shame when it's inevitably enshitified.

He says:

1. Strong data governance 2. Tax implications for layoffs (offshoring?)

Wealth doesn't go straight up, it bubbles up.

And thinking about bubbles, imagine what happens when the GenAI one pops. The wealth some new billionaires had will go up in smoke, their assets will go on sale, and they'll be gobbled up by the old billionaires.

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

It's simply because money is compoundable. The more money you have the more you can make, and the more you make means less other people have.

You could argue that the world is way more globalized today.

You're just saying this because you're American and accustomed to it.

To you, a 0-100 scale makes sense but to me it doesn't because 0f (-17c) is way rarer of a temp than 100f (38c).

Anyway, from the metric perspective, most people look at it like... 0 is coat and boots weather, + 10 degrees is jacket weather, + 10 degrees is t-shirt weather, and + 10 degrees is hot. IMO, using "freezing" as the reference kinda makes sense...

It doesn’t make sense to base your car purchase on hypotheticals like this. As it stands right now, costs plus infrastructure make electric cars less desirable to own, and that’s why if you drive around Germany, you’ll notice the vast majority of cars are diesel hatchbacks.

Electric cars in general don’t really make much sense in Germany.

Most people live in apartments without access to personal chargers, combined with high electricity cost you end up not even saving money for the inconvenience.

you only think that because a bunch of roads were constructed for cars

globally speaking

What if instead of comparing people in, say America to people in South Sudan, you compare people in America to people in America.

It's all about picking the right tools for the job. The "cognitive load" might be larger in a vanilla project compared to React when your interface is more complex and interactive.

If the author doesn't want to work with NPM and the JavaScript ecosystem he could just get a job writing Spring/Boot, which makes up probably 90% of the jobs at large enterprise companies. I don't agree that this world has disappeared...

Agriculture produces food... it feels silly to compare the two.

I think if someone forfeits stability for money then that's their choice. I personally think that's an extremely strange one to make, but I'm one of those people who left the US for more stability, safety, so maybe I'm biased.

Because Europe offers clean safe cities and good WLB? Again you’re just looking at it from the angle of money…

If all you want is to be in a big Indian diaspora and make a lot of money then I guess California is a good fit for you. Glad you like it!

I’m also living a 15h flight away from my country/culture/people and I never felt the need for money to make up for it. Sounds like you just value money?

Also Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam et all are large, diverse metropolises. Not sure where the idea comes from that you wouldn’t be able to find your tribe or your cuisine in these cities.

There’s more to life than money.

I’ve worked for big tech in the Silicon Valley, worked for big tech in NYC, worked for big tech in Berlin. Though I make way less money here in Germany, I’d never move back to the US.

Grateful to be living in Germany where this will not be allowed due to strict data privacy rules.

When I worked in the US I had “Kaiser Permanente” which seemed to be something like an all-in-one system. You have specialists, GPs, labs and pharmacy all in one building covered by one insurance. Could something like that scale to the whole country?

In Germany, access to health care is becoming a major problem. I have two young kids and I’ve experienced on multiple occasions not being able to get appointments with specialists for them. Sometimes you offer to “self pay” - basically paying full cost with no insurance - and sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.

Germany has a major doctor shortage and it can’t just attract foreign doctors like Anglo countries due to language requirements. This issue will continue to get worse as the population ages.

This argument really breaks down when you consider that it requires a lot more training to become a teacher than an investment banker, and there is a massive shortage of teachers, and none of these factors makes teaching a lucrative career.

working hard at creating value does, and that is still true today

This is the point that the parent was making. How you define "value" is the topic of discussion here, which in my opinion has become so abstract that it's impossible become successful around. Investors make money on failing businesses, software engineers make money on products that never monetize, top AI researchers make millions working for 2 weeks at one company doing training modules before moving to another.

In the modern economy, money is made by ideas, concepts, potentials. Not value.

working hard at creating value does

"Creating value" is such a subjective phrase. Societal value? Fiscal value?

Someone who drives around your city for 12 hours, rescuing and resuscitating people in life-or-death situations probably provides more societal value than a software engineer who builds CRM features for large social companies but we all know which one gets paid more and who is considered "more successful."

Maybe the problem is exactly that people are rewarded based on this other type of value, and that it is increasingly hard to define it, and be the one to provide it.

Instead of relying on people actively checking the git-blame for all of the code they're reading, why not just put a clearly obvious comment within the code itself?

I wish tracking took 20 seconds. In my org (big tech) a JIRA ticket has 10+ required fields.