repomies691

If it doesn't generate cashflow, it probably isn't worth anything. I would just forget the codebase and focus on how to create value somehow else.

How is art liquid? I don't know much about art but my gut feeling would be that it is very illiquid by default. Also very hard to value and difficult to know which pieces will actually have value 10 years from now.

Compared to ruling by force, yes, democracy is inherently good for the people

I don't understand why people here see democratic system as a replacement for ruling by a force. Democratic countries also rule by force in the end. Democratic countries also need polices, guns, armies, prisons, tax inspectors, prosecutors etc. Those same institutions are also the tools for dictatorships, they are just governed in a different way.

(I also think democracy is good, but however in the end both democracies and dictatorships rely on violence to be effective. I think that's quite basic lesson on how society works.)

It's not the alternative, democratic countries also rule by force in the end. The governments wouldn't work if they didn't have guns, prisons and nice interrogation methods in their toolset.

With democratic country everyone has some minimal effect on how those tools of violence are used, unlike in dictatorships or monarchies. So I think also it is a better system.

Probably meant: business should make profit, from that profit the business can save some money for the rainy day. And I agree.

However I don't know who are behind PINE64 - maybe they have some long-term investor backing them up, and they try price at this point as low as possible to get the community going.

Actually, I would be interested in investing to this pine thing.

Well, personally I would prefer them to make profit. I would be willing to pay a bit more since the product seems quite interesting - not actually in the current state, but what the product could be if the business actually flourishes.

Better would be something like "Disclaimer: the product can have up to 10 dead pixels which are not covered by warranty."

Instead, all effort is going into a building a flawed second layer that is theoretically unsound and a usability nightmare.

I don't know much about LN and actually I'm quite sceptical about it. However I have tried it now couple of times with different wallets and it seems to work very fluently from user perspective. And saying this as a very old bitcoin user, so I'm used to sending bitcoin payments a lot, LN payments don't seem to differ that much from usability perspective. You scan the QR code/invoice and press send.

It is more about the general "conspiracy" tone of the article. It is like "OMG banks can create money, what a conspiracy" by some people who are surprised by the facts on how financial system works when they finally learn some basics.

There is strong demand for any kind of vehicle which allows transferring value digitally outside of the traditional banking system. I don't think tether users trust tether because they advertise on their website that it is "backed", but more because they have strong need for something like it and there are no alternatives.

Of course the huge demand has been spotted by many others and now there are loads of these "stablecoins". Some are more regulated and might take quickly over if feds decide to stop tether.

The good side of being ugly guy like me is that I always can spot these scams and never even respond to them - I just instantly block them. Because I know that no such a beautiful lady would actually approach me.

However I guess the scammers will soon figure this out and start using normal looking ladies in these contacts. Similar to those "bang ugly chicks near you" advertisements on porn sites.

I'm not advocating for tether. But it is not a ponzi scheme. And I think that most of the users understand what tether is - they are not excepting returns, they also understand that it is unregulated vehicle where the backing can disappear any time if the issuers get into trouble. I would guess biggest use-case is moving fiat between exchanges without having compliance issues, which you would have with banks.

Tether supply is 4.2 billion, Madoff defrauded 60+ billion, so tether is nothing compared to Madoffs scheme. Also, tether is stablecoin - people don't buy it for investment purposes. Patio11 is still sour that he was against bitcoin when it was $1 and it seems to be difficult to get over it, therefore the strongly negative bias towards everything crypto.

However if you take into account where the writer is coming for, the article is quite good at explaining the situation.

The whole technical debt discussion often makes me wonder if there's a fundamental distrust (or even disrespect) of software engineers as domain experts.

LOL, seriously? Guess you haven't worked that much with other practitioners, for example lawyers.

There is some distrust always with business relationships, and I would say that it makes sense not to trust everyone 100% all the time. In the opposite, better not to trust everyone fully, even yourself.

Similar experience with Estonia. It is way overhyped to what it is in practice. It is quite tiny and poor country, and understandably they try to attract foreign business and investors. However just some e-residency card which is not that useful in practice doesn't solve that. The general operating environment feels like that old fusty soviet union, and that is just not that easy problem to solve.

I think the point is that companies shouldn't be frat houses full of brogrammers.

Usually the founders/owners decide what a company is. Often it seems to me that there are plenty of other motivations to run a company. The founders hire people who they like to hang out with, maybe same hobbies etc.

However I personally have never came across a company that could be described as a "frat house" or even which would have that kind of hiring policy. However I find it entirely understandable that people do hiring decisions on various reasons which are not only about job throughput.

When my partner was on pills, she had way more mood swings than after she stopped taking them. I would say our life changed quite drastically to better after she stopped taking birth control pills.

what you call freedom I would call criminal. In that regard cryptocurrencies have a problem.

No, cryptocurrencies don't have a problem if some random guy on internet thinks nonsense.

I feel much safer depositing my savings in a regulated bank than I would converting them into any type of cryptocoin. Is my perception wrong?

I converted all my fiat back in the days to crypto. I didn't feel safer back then, but later on as the value skyrocketed and I diversified crypto gains to all kinds of assets my comfort level increased very nicely. I still have good stake of crypto, now I wouldn't feel safe not having some amount.

And a growing field of business, I would bet.

I know a handful of people who benefited a lot from Bitcoin by just speculating with it. They got wealthy, some even rich and now they have much better living standards. That group fits into the niche that were quite well "served" by Bitcoin.

Just pointing out that "scammers and criminals" is clearly not the only ones benefitting from Bitcoin, and I would suspect it is also minority.

Remarkably bad at human and helping humankind.

I would say that the way how Uber aggressively expanded throughout the world has massively helped humankind. Because of Uber, many countries have changed their taxi laws, and many local competitors have sprouted up. More efficient taxi and ride-sharing services help save the environment and make cities nicer. Of course this is quite theoretical but I believe Uber was the needed company to push the mass transit development forward.

For years I have heard that being a game developer is a miserable job, with long hours not matched by an adequate pay.

Does somebody have an explanation for such cut-throat industry? Software development generally offers good jobs, so why isn’t that true for game development?

I think there are miserable jobs in software industry overall as well. With game development maybe it is a little bit more about passion for the industry, so the employees are a little bit more exploitable than in other fields.

This. This is niche-within-niche-within-niche level stuff. Gaming nowadays is insanely big market and there are endless weird niches for all kind of tastes. Businessmen like Jeff discover some specific niche and make living out of it.

If the context of the discussion was about developers instead of artists, how would HackerNews feel about someone lamenting the fact that they can't get any "affordable" developers to work on their projects?

There are plenty of entrepreneurs here that hire all kinds of people, and always try to find good bang for the buck. Isn't that normal? I personally have hired artists, developers, marketers, lawyers, managers, you name it... I don't see why I would deal with any profession any different.

To make life changing amount, you need to join a company where the market cap goes to $10B+, but even then a Google employee probably would make more overall and with greater reliability than most startups.

Btw, have to take in to account that it is also about where you can actually get in. It can be quite difficult (sometimes) to get a position at Google. Startup jobs are often easy to get if you are in the right place at the right time.

Splunk isn't good at acquisitions. I've seen it first hand. I'd never go back there willingly. I hope the SignalFX crew ends up better. But at the end of the day you're working at Splunk.

Is there some company that is provably good at acquisations? To my understanding they are always very risky and maybe more than 50% end up failing somehow.

On average, the problem with being an employee in a startup is that actually it is easy to over-value your shares/options. However, there are still lots of cash-out stories as well, where the employee has made nice bonus on top. But to me it seems that for each cash-out story, there is like 9 or 10 stories where the options/shares have turned out to be worthless.

I think it is very easy to answer to this question in a way that will steer the discussion away from your work, if you want. Just answer with general decription like "software developer, in a small company", whatever. Unless you are really unlucky any natural person will just lose interest.

I myself ask this question now and then just because there is nothing else to talk about.

I can only assume the "nothing to do" retirement crowd didn't do much when they were working, and therefore have no idea how to fill the time.

Well, the common pattern seems to be for those who retire early that it was preceded with a lots of work. That was also my case. At some point I just realised that I want to do something else, and I had enough savings for lifetime so money wasn't any kind of motivator any more. So, previously I was working 24/7, then suddenly I was working only couple of hours a week. Slowly I started picking things to do, but it takes a lot of time to find hobbies etc.

Funny coincidence because just few days ago I was using zoom for the first time long time. The image/sound quality for sure was crappy and it was lagging/spotty multiple times. On the other hand there was like 7 participants. I also don't like how you have to install separate app to use it - and I heard the OS X version had vulnerability issues.

When I'm hosting a video call I prefer google hangouts. Works OK without installing apps.

Every company I have worked for has had showers. Even the lousiest office I was working in back in the days had this kind of shower installed in the cleaning room. Did the trick.