thepryz

One of my greatest criticisms of higher education, or at least the academic institutions (having spent almost 20 years working for one), is that they approach education as a means to an end. Students are viewed as a resource to extract money from and little more. It’s no wonder people are questioning the value and ROI of higher education given the cost.

What educational institutions and the community should be doing is reframing the student-teacher or student-institution relationship and working to build a system that provides better support for lifelong learning via low cost classes people can drop in rather than limiting or overly emphasizing degree programs.

Do we really take away from the artist? In what way?

The obvious answer is that you take away a purchase the person to give the gift would have made. One could argue that there is also value in propagating someone’s art and potentially increasing the artists customer/patron base. Think of it as advertising or to put it in the context of a drug deal, the first hit’s free. The gift recipient may then go on to buy another work from that artist and even pass on the one they were given to someone else, continuing the cycle.

I’d also argue that there isn’t widespread agreement on reasonable compensation for artists. Personally, I don’t consider artists to be special enough in the context of people that make and produce goods, that they should get unique treatment. Why does a family deserve the financial benefits of trademarks and copyrights decades after the artists death. That’s just one example, but in a time when many’s artists view their livelihoods to be at risk because of AI, it’s not popular to engage in any debate that undermines the artist in any way.

Data centers surely provide jobs to the local community. Construction can bring in thousands, but even the operation of a modern data center employs a lot more people than the common narrative would lead you to believe. What obscures that operational employment is that it’s not uncommon for a large percentage to be contingent workers or third party vendors

This is the issue. There are big differences in how individual companies build and operate data centers. The average hyperscale data center from a major player is vastly different than some of the crypto mining, small time data center builds I’ve seen.

An AI-focused center from AWS, Google, or Meta tends to be large, but also relatively quiet and they make a lot of effort to ensure they’re not overloading the local infrastructure because it poses operational and strategic risks. They also don’t want to alienate the community because they need to get their workforce from the community and they they require a lot more people in site than what most believe.

At the same time, I’ve seen “data centers” built from shipping containers that you can hear cooling fans whining from a mile away.

At the end of the day, the blame really should fall on the local governments to enact and enforce regulations and any anger really should be directed at them.

The common man is grossly uninformed and highly susceptible to misinformation of which there’s a lot of around data centers.

This highlights what I think is missing within a lot of tech companies today. I don’t know too many people who are so passionate about what they’re doing that they would sneak into their former employer’s office buildings and then find employees willing to work together with them to finish a project that simply had to get done. That alone makes me a bit sad.

I would disagree. Theres enough information readily available to be able to see what relative home values are, where the good school districts are, etc.

The only reason I’ve ever used a realtor is because I don’t have the time to deal with the contract/legal side of everything. Most would be better served by hiring an attorney and title company if your state allows.

I view self help books in a similar light as management books. They're usually not going to teach me anything new. What they will do is present something I already know, in potentially new ways and new contexts that allow me to contemplate them and keep them more front of mind. I tend to think of it almost like right thought right action. It's also worth noting that sometimes you just need to be at the right moment in time for a lesson to resonate and stick so reading such books can provide more opportunity for that to happen.

I do, however, try to limit who and what I read though because there is a lot of derivative garbage out there.

Easy to say, harder to stand behind when you’re savings are depleted, you have a mortgage and a family to care for, and maybe you’re on a work visa about to be kicked out of the only country your kids have ever known only to return to a country they don’t even speak the language of.

I don’t disagree that there are many evil companies and one should try to be selective in who they work for. But life, in my experience, exists in shades of gray and it’s foolish to judge others without understanding their circumstances and the path that lead them to where they are today.

Sorry, but your rant comes from a place of naive privilege when you assume meta engineers all had options.

I know a number of people that accepted roles with companies they vowed never to work for after being laid off and unemployed for a year. The reality is that when you look at tech in abroad context, there really are very few ethical and/or noble companies.

Representative Beatty serves her own interests and her involvement Kennedy Center naming was just more of the same performative politics she routinely engages in. She's on the verge of being an octogenarian and missed a number of key votes, like the bill that cut funding to NPR, PBS, and other govt. programs. Kudos to her for working to remove Trump's name from the Kennedy Center but she needs to go.

I agree with the post, though I have to admit I was tempted for a split second to send them an email offering to buy them a coffee.

You can occasionally find great deals on Facebook marketplace which is where I found mine. It can be a bit stressful to give someone off the street a couple grand in cash and assume the risk but in my case, we were able to meet at an Apple Store, I was able to evaluate the unit and it was new enough that it had the original box and packaging along with that new Apple smell.

Swappa’s another place I’ve had decent success for used Apple products but like any market, it’s often a matter timing and luck.

Better than most businesses. Most data center campuses I've seen, regardless of construction, were behind a substantial permitter fence and had some on-premise guard force. Like razor blades, they would be better to intercept GPUs or other equipment when in transit though there have been decades of rumors that such goods are usually done by trucking companies with ties to organized crime.

Elon's was definitely illegal/unpermitted gas turbines as countless news stories that came out can attest but do you have any support to claim Meta's turbines are?

You obviously have never been to Ashburn, Virginia. Look up Lord Fairfax Pl. in Ashburn, VA on Google Maps and note the data center just outside that neighborhood.

I recently just picked up a used, like new, M5 Vision Pro for a steal. I've had it for a month and use it a few times a week, mostly for content consumption but very occasionally when I need to work, want a bigger screen, and don't want to sit at my desk.

Out of curiosity, do you have a similar example of a Democrat doing something like this?

Most left leaning people I know aren’t exactly happy with Nancy Pelosi’s insider trading activities and are in full support of outlawing Congress from actively trading and are willing to hold Dems accountable for other unscrupulous actions.

That seems to be what Barnes and Noble has become. Every store now has books, toys, and a coffee shop inside and it seems they’ve been thriving in the last few years.

My biggest complaint though is that the bargain bin no longer contains books they are cycling out but instead seems to be books and other items specifically meant to be sold in the bargain bin.

I personally consider the war on drugs to be a colossal failure and there tends to be widespread agreement that the War on Drugs was somewhat effective at enabling enforcement, but ineffective or counterproductive at eliminating drugs or reducing long-term harm.

What America continues to ignore, intentionally or not, is the root cause of drug addiction which tends to be a more complicated and nuanced

I think this time is different. I’m not Gen Z, yet once my kids are out of school, I’m planning to leave tech behind as much as possible.

When I started in tech, at the dawn of the internet, it was an exciting field full of hope and the promise to empower and enrich the lives of people. Tech now is largely the opposite.

Enshitification is making things progressively worse. tech companies are creating systems and tools with dark patterns abound to ensure you no longer own anything, are under constant surveillance, and populations at large are manipulated through the magic of propaganda and illusory truth. Even the productivity gains are perversely used to not give people more time through fewer work days/hours but to instead give them more work. People are losing their connection to others and the world around them.

Everyone tends to focus on Orwell’s 1984, but I find Fahrenheit 451 to be the more prescient book. I used to be annoyed by the book people’s choice to leave society and wait for it to collapse so they could help rebuild. In my mind, they should have been mounting an resistance. Fair to say I understand the book people’s perspective so much more now.

Speaking as someone who has gotten dirty looks and questioned by mothers who wanted to know who I was, why I was at the playground, and which children were mine, it does happen or at least it did years ago when my kids were much younger.

It’s a frustrating experience that changed how I interacted with other kids on the playground that weren’t mine. It made me more careful about whether I would let another kid join our game of tag or push the kid in the swing next to us when they asked. Sad really, and truly hope things have changed.

I’m curious if you looked into the industry to see how much water and power modern data centers actually use or whether you’re just blindly accepting the popular narrative?

I’ve seen a lot of verifiably false claims being thrown around data centers.

While I don’t disagree, the problem I often have with medical professionals is that they tend to be arrogant and unable to take in new information to adapt and evolve their frameworks.

I was married to a doctor, helped them study for board exams, etc and was surrounded by other doctors within our social circle. What most people don’t realize, and most doctors themselves refuse to acknowledge, is how limited by specialization their knowledge can be and how the education of most doctors stops after med school and residency. Nutrition, for example, is barely covered at all.

Yes, there are continuing education requirements and countless journals but most doctors do the bare minimum and don’t keep up. I’d even argue that most physician knowledge tends to be updated more often through drug and instrumentation reps promoting their products by taking them out to dinner and entering them into referral programs, etc.

The core issue is that most Americans aren't civically engaged. They don't take the effort to track what's happening within their government which then means that they don't know and are unable to hold their elected officials accountable.

Communities can have more effective politicians, but that means voting out individuals who make bad decisions or decisions that are counter the will good of the community they serve.

While I'm interested to see how they adapt Neuromancer to the screen, I get a sense that the author of the article never read the book nor took the time to understand Neuromancer's place in culture.

To start, there is a lot of misinformation out there and the NDAs that surround data center construction and operation don't help. People will cite water consumption as a huge problem when modern hyperscalers use substantially less water because they're now using closed loop cooling instead of evaporative cooling. You'll see people cite noise because they saw a video online of a crypto mining grifter who bought a bunch of shipping containers and haphazardly threw together air cooled mining rigs with 80mm fans screaming away. I even saw one video of a woman who claimed data centers gave her diabetes despite the fact that she was obese.

Amazon and other companies already have job training programs because they cannot find enough skilled labor to build and operate their data centers. The number of jobs commonly cited are comically lower than what is common to operate a modern hyperscaler. In my experience, hyperscalers often have at least 100-200 people on site to operate the data center and I've seen more than 1000 people on a site when the data center is under construction.

The real issue, as always, are the local governments and utilities that sellout out the citizens and fail to create and enforce building codes. The governments should be using the demand for data centers to partner with the companies and have them pay to modernize and fix the power grid. They should be using them to help subsidize green energy initiatives among other things and fund other projects to benefit the community.

The inconvenient truth is that the problem with data centers lies with the people in the communities who continue to elect politicians who, time and time again, make decisions counter to the best interests of their community. Data centers just happen to be the latest scapegoat to distract people from corrupt politicians and an community that is not civically engaged enough to hold their politicians accountable.

Also worth noting that several studies have shown pay differentials to be highly correlated with women being less likely to negotiate compensation or ask for less.

https://www.nber.org/digest/apr13/do-women-avoid-salary-nego...

Or it might simply be that there is a lot of unreported or unacknowledged mistreatment of men. I recall reading a study about harassment in the restaurant industry. Both genders were harassed but harassment towards men was largely ignored in the analysis because it didn't fit the focus or narrative of the authors.

As a man who has worked in a predominantly female workplace, my experience has taught me that harassment is less about gender and more about power. Those in power will always feel entitled to behave poorly, regardless of gender.

I saw more than one video about datacenter noise that were clearly crypto mining. There are some questionable designs leveraging shipping containers and what sound like a lot of 120mm fans.