HN user
I dunno why people seem to have these weird relationships with commercial companies where they get disillusioned, feeling betrayed even, and then have to go through what essentially is a break up with these tax entities. Is there a term for this psychological phenomena?
This is crackpot physics. The only reason this gets any sort of publicity is because Mr. Weinstein has a (non-scientific) podcast and is associated with Joe Rogan and Sam Harris. People wasting their time invalidating the work of a man who can't be bothered to even publish it is completely ludicrous.
It’s sad to see Mr. Weinstein squander his supposedly not entirely inconsequential intellect on nonsense out of some misguided angst against “the establishment” and deeply rooted insecurities and egotistical tendencies.
Not to mention the embarrassing and cringe-inducing attempts to coin the term “The Intellectual Dark Web” as a way for him to leverage Joe Rogan’s and Sam Harris’s popularity. Dark indeed, alas not for the adolescently edgy reasons he has in mind.
Here’s to him rebounding from this foolishness and doing some actual scientific work worth of merit.
Of course, one must consider the possibility that the issues lie with him and not blame circumstances blindly, but as you can see we are many - and all of us have very similar difficulties and problems with how things are. This points to something systemic. To dismiss all of this as the complaints of malcontent crybabies would be silly.
People can find bliss and happiness even in the direst of circumstances - and sometimes they have no choice but to do just that. As obscenely well educated people living in first world countries, we do have a choice - and advocating complacency for the sake of making your life easier reeks of moral degeneracy if not outright solipsism (same goes for repurposing Zen - "wherever you go, there you are" - to help you turn a blind eye to the world). We can do better.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
My problem is, if not grad school, then what?
I've worked in the tech industry for almost a decade and I'm returning to the academy because the tech landscape is filled with scam artists, MBA's and ego-tripping managers - which would be tolerable if you actually got to work on something that wouldn't be completely rewritten or became irrelevant in two years time, but that's just not the case...
Correct me if I'm wrong but in the academy I hope to work on research which has at least some consequences on the future, and to find smart and kind people who are actually interested in knowledge for knowledge's sake, even if they are surrounded by gray bureaucrats.
Thank you for sharing, this is both informative and inspirational.
this is incredible. And I thought I had it bad with politics in tech companies... this is some next level not giving a fuck right there - people who cheat like that should be punished severely, and work as supermarket cashiers, not become fricking professors. Unfortunately, I too, were I in your shoes, wouldn't pursue it much further past filing a formal complaint or two: the game is asymmetrical, it's much harder to nail someone for wrongdoing than it is for them to fudge up some lab results. Not to mention the emotional toil and waste of time and potential political blowback the would be whistle blower would suffer...
Pretty depressing stuff.
You have to see this through 90's lens: back then the media wasn't nearly as polarized, and the public had much greater trust in news networks, especially in CNN. "Fake news" was mostly relegated to the domain of conspiracy theories, and blatant promotions of political agendas as neutral news wouldn't fly back then (although, of course, the networks did have an agenda and did promote it, but they were... much more subtle and civil about the whole thing).
The way I interpret it, Mr. King is suggesting to Clinton he (Clinton) might be interested in establishing a reciprocal relationship with one of most prominent media moguls and politically influential billionaires, Ted Turner.
Teddy helps Billy with the optics on CNN, maybe funding various campaigns, and in turn Billy helps Teddy with his own projects, like I dunno, passing a bill to kill off competitors and so on.
The yin and yang that are Politics and Media.
yikes, what a sleazebag. Larry hit the anti-Semitic trifecta (Jews, Israel and media moguls in bed with politicians) in under a minute of just random chit chat. The mind reels at the shady backroom deals this man was responsible for.
I (very seriously) suggest consulting a mental health professional. Please take this with the kind intention it was meant. I had a good friend a while back that also was quite intelligent and got off on conspiracy theories, had severe trust issues, and used his intellect to drive himself up a wall.
You’re the same type of person who wants to dictate where and how his taxes are used (“I’d like a 70%-30% split on health and education. What’s that? Defense? Yeah I don’t like tanks, no thanks. Oh but do make sure it goes to building MRI machines - I do like those very much, the hum is soothing to me”).
While the sheer arrogance and borderline solipsism do bring a smile to ones face, they are completely impractical.
Skepticism is thinking they exaggerated some facts and perhaps over emphasized the importance of Stoicism and his mental fortitude to paint a prettier picture.
What you're describing is unfounded paranoia. The elites are out to get us? McCain is a hoax?
reddit morphed from a fun place to visit to an absolute cesspool of the internet. With popularity came the idiot masses, and like locust they decimated the comments section and post so much inane content it’s no longer possible to find anything worthwhile. That in itself would be enough to bring a site like reddit down, but then the management also made two crucial mistakes: first, they redesigned the site and made it completely unusable (especially on mobile), and then they decided to push social agenda and turned the site from a neutral, user content centric, free-speech oriented site to a left-wing sjw haven, which served to further lower quality of content and comments.
So it’s not surprising at all that the same people who think they have the right to push social agenda they consider “correct”, also choose to remove the name of a “notorious” co-founder from the records. Personally I find the behavior of reddit’s management abhorrent and want nothing to do with them or anything they have a hand in.
To remind yourself of your mortality when being embraced by a loved one serves to amplify the love and gratitude you experience, not to diminish it so that you’re less likely to be bummed when something bad happens. I'm afraid you have misunderstood Stoicism.
because they don't have solutions or useful advise. They don't think anything is wrong but the person who's presenting the actual problem. It's sometimes useful to consider the possibility you're wrong, but what OP describes is clearly not unique to his team or company. Many of us are in the same boat. So at least in this particular case, the "toughlover" is indeed, a "douchebag".
Yea, big corp sucks. Few more points:
- Your performance does not correlate with your compensation, not to mention that there are huge disparities between competency levels. You have people who don’t know how to use git getting the same paycheck as 10 yr vets that could reimplement git in a single day. You have executives getting outrageous equity plans and salaries for running entire product lines into the ground before going on to the next company for even bigger paychecks. Welcome to capitalism, lol.
- There is tremendous waste in these organizations because humans haven’t yet figured out how to scale them properly while retaining individuality (i.e. it’s easy to create an organization comprised of 1,000 robots that do exactly what they are told). There is simply too much politics going around, too many conflicting interests and “market forces”. And so processes are invented and have to be followed, entire departments need to get involved in code reviews, design meetings and so on and on. It’s pretty depressing tbh.
- Don’t listen to people telling you your job should be your job. Work drains you mentally and precludes you from doing stuff you’d otherwise do. Don’t accept the moronic (sorry, stoic?) concept of “well, you have to pay the bills!”. These people trade more than half of their lives “just to pay the bills” and have an occasional vacation. It’s beyond depressing. Your job should be your passion, and the major provider of meaning in your life. Getting a hobby will not compensate for selling your soul.
Calling Unix philosophy a ״philosophy” is being overly generous. It’s a mindset shared by many early computing hackers, propagated through the times because it’s simple and easy enough to follow. See “worse is better” for why this has been a detriment for the software industry.
As for webapps, they have nothing to do with unix philosophy and much more to do with Steve Jobs, iphone apps and too many non technical product managers angling to push out “products” (also an aspect of the whole MVP and ship early mentality)
They are funding a lot research. Anything specific in mind?
Side note on emails in-general: talking to my younger colleagues it seems that email is going away. We all, me included, prefer to use chats like slack for work and recreation (see discord) and email is used mostly for registrations and getting spam. It’s an obsolete format.
You can configure it to not auto format or format only modified lines, in addition to using whatever style formats you actually want...
In a world of space architects and ignorant cargo cult practitioners, this post is a breath of fresh air. While some might find the style vitriolic and “toxic” it’s nothing but honesty peppered with salty experience.
Having said that, the guy represents the old guard of tech, the kind of people who ask “why do you want to do this” instead of trying to help you, and usually follow this up with a useless suggestion for an alternative that sort of does what you want but not really. Thanks, I guess. They have a very concrete idea of how things should be done, new ways of doing old things are frowned upon, and anyone challenging their “authority” is seen as an imbecile.
I had the dubious pleasure of working with such a man a few years back and while I couldn’t but admire his technical expertise and competence, I grew to hate him to a degree that would rival that which the author of the blog post hates Google. Get off our lawn, old geeks! You’re not the only ones with opinions around here.
It is an amusing example of cynical exploitation on behalf of advertising agencies, leveraging the expected controversy on social media fueled by PC culture.
Assuming the majority of hn is US-based, you folks have to understand that PC culture is often seen as a joke at best and an extension of typical American hypocrisy at worst (i.e. the usual double-speak and fake politeness that covers actual opinions and motivations). Sure, the PC/SJW wave is gaining momentum outside of the US as well, as the cultural influence is significant but it still remains an odd thing for most. Having to work with Americans used to be a chore because of how indirect they can be (not to mention the widespread tendency for workaholism) but now it’s becoming insufferable. Taking this “philosophy” to its logical conclusion, I cannot see how anyone can rationally deny we’re destined to a nightmare where you need to learn how to speak and act “the right way”, just like what happens in China. At least over there they have no pretenses about what they’re doing, and are not hiding behind supposedly noble ideas of equality and tolerance.
Make no mistake, American society is to a large extent Machiavellian in nature, especially the urbanite population and even more so the technocratic elite. Political Correctness is merely a tool of oppression and cynical exploitation at this point (just look at the Gillette ads if you still are unconvinced).
Started off wonderful, went into nose dive, now picking up again.
It's hard living with someone during lockdown, especially when you're used to getting "alone time". You start feeling trapped. But that's something you can resolve with your own self, and talking about it with your SO helps a lot.
Additionally, I realized just how much work depresses me. What I enjoyed were the lunches and the laughs, not the daily meaningless grind and annoying people. And when you WFH it's so easy to just immerse yourself in stuff you actually care about and interests you, and forget all about that stupid 3rd party service you need to integrate into your system. But then, of course, you need to make up for lost time which creates a certain amount of pressure. And the urge to tell people to fuck off over video is so much greater than in person, maybe because they are too less polite and understanding because of w\e they are dealing with.
Why oh why do people abuse twitter to post entire blog posts. Do they also drink from plates, and shower in the sink? Write kernels in Javascript? smh
i found that at least in relation to tech and software engineering, procrastination happens when you need to do mundane work, or worse - work on code you know is ultimately meaningless. another factor is stress, which is usually generated by management via deadlines or constant harassing to get things done (tm). it's basically oppression, it's just hard to see or admit because you're being reasonably compensated, and not doing hard labor. but it's oppression nonetheless.
free yourself, before you have a nervous breakdown or get fully domesticated by the system.
at the previous company i worked for, we were developing several products that either no one wanted or were so bad you wouldn't use even if you could for free (i didn't even install the app thing on my phone because of how morally corrupt our mobile team was).
we had bizdev guys running around making deals in third world countries, and pr dept. working overtime just to create the illusion something was moving. r&d dept went through like 3 org restructures within span of 6 months, for no reason other than to satisfy the ego of r&d vp. i mean, i've seen politics that would make machiavelli seem virtuous by comparison.
it was beyond bizarre.
companies like github should remain apolitical. this is pure nonesense, merely a show of force by otherwise impotent and misguided liberals. take your outrage somewhere else.