Yes we see this comment rehashed on every crypto thread on HN, why?
Because it still bears saying, especially given how many people are just looking for greater fools to hold their bag. Inevitably the replies include a barrage of whataboutism centered on “fiat currency” in an attempt to normalize or justify the cryptocurrency shitshow.
This story has nothing to do with whether cryptocurrency is a bubble. It’s a simple instance of theft. Sophomoric prognostications on the future value of cryptocurrencies have nothing to add to the conversation about the article. This kind of thing is depressingly common on HN, and I believe the majority of them are written by people who have not read the article. They usually have nothing to do with the content of whichever article triggered them.
You turned off flags, but now you’re doing something else yourself. You’re being honest, but not really telling the whole story.
Your thumb is very much on the scale however, where existing community sentiment doesn’t do the job.
Edit: I didn’t intend to be cryptic or confuse you. I mean just that proclaiming you’ve put one of many tools on the shelf for this thread in no way implies what you tried to imply.
From what I’ve observed, the idea is to work in hell (edit: obviously hyperbole) until enough money is made to work on your own. Needless to say that doesn’t seem to be the majority experience. The carrot is money and security and the dream of fuck you money. The stick is being a code monkey who is still treated like shit, but who can’t even dream of early retirement and personal projects. It’s a shallow philosophy, but there it is.
The willingness to take tons of shit from above, and the ability to rationalize the waste of talent seems to be what you’d expect from a glorified casino for billionaires. Variable-Ratio reward training will fuck you up.
Edit: I would guess that fear plays a role too. I recall a poster here saying they wished they could change their circumstances, but they look at the guy delivering their pizza and feel terrified that could be them.
Edit: Or a mod can just minimize this, but sadly it changes nothing, least of the the reality of your situation.
I'm not sure conditions in most tech companies are adequately described as "working in hell". I mean, the article above mentions "free cafeteria, gym, yoga rooms, and all night snack bars", and in companies like Google it goes way beyond that, plus salary that is way over the average... pretty much anywhere outside banking industry? plus vacations, medical coverage, 401k and other nice stuff - and then on top of that, you also get a small chance to be a millionaire. Not exactly how the hell looks like.
They give you all that stuff to some degree to cover over how toxic the culture and job is otherwise. Leaving Google was the best decision I ever made despite the fact that I now get none of those things and make significantly less money.
I had the same issue, and essentially developed a lingo to speak to those kinds of people. More contractions, dropped g’s, “fucking” used as an adjective. It’s been a couple of decades, and every time I switch to that, I feel like an utter fraud, but sadly it works. I can’t imagine what I’d do if that hadn’t been an option though.
Edit: Support group at my place everyone, coffee and donuts will be provided. ;)
I remember once in high school in a kind of AV class I walked past a video camera that was hooked up to a monitor with a live feed. What happened was that as I was walking across the room, I saw out of the corner of my eye a very nerdy person walking across the room on the monitor, and then I suddenly realized that it was me! I walked nerdy! After that, I actually studied the other kids to see what they were doing different, and I adopted two specific changes: 1. Walk with a strut. To me this felt exaggerated and ridiculous until I got used to it, but it was just what the other [male] students did. 2. Hold my books in my hand loosely, as though they might fall out at any time but I don't notice or care. Those two deliberate self-conscious behavioral changes led to a night-and-day difference in how other kids related to me. I was still a nerd, I didn't become popular overnight or anything, but it made a huge difference. (I went to a big public school where you didn't know everybody. FWIW.)
"Act like a dumb-ass and they'll treat you like an equal."
Yess. There is more than one language you have to learn as a smart kid. One is for smart adults, other is for average or worse adults (I'm sad that OP immediate family was part of that group) yet another is for other kids. Same as second one plus ton of swearwords.
A friend from college told me about a buddy of his who took a summer job working at a naval shipyard, assisting mechanics. Those salty old sailors used "fuck" quite liberally. Any noun had a good chance of having a "fucking" in front of it.
The pinnacle occurred one day when they opened up an engine that wasn't working, and saw that it was totally beyond repair. The head mechanic turned to his crew and gave the verdict: "This fucking fucker's fucked".
> It’s a great place to be young and wealthy, with minimal affect and empathy.
Is it though? The article makes a point that SV doesn't have the glitz and glamor, so if you're truly young and wealthy wouldn't you be better off somewhere else?
I don't know if there is any correlation to age and relative wealth with regards to success as an entrepreneur, but I do know that actually being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, regardless if you were raised with a silver spoon or not. There is a lot of hustle, and a lot of grind. Maybe if you're rich you can immediately just use your own money to pay others to do the hustling and grinding, but at that point aren't you really just an investor?
> and reclaimed woods that we can't afford to grow any longer. and wood fiber products. and hdpe.
Copper (all metal) yes. But reclaimed wood costs more than alternatives. I looked into it once - the premium I would have to pay to keep wood out of a landfill was just unrealistic.
Wood fiber is only worth it from industrial plants that create it in quantity, and without contaminants.
HDPE is not worth recycling - it costs more than just making it fresh.
I propose just burn it for energy (and thus reduce oil use). Then use that oil to make other HDPE. The lifecycle works out better that way.
You're right. Scrap metal collection, architectural salvage, and so on are all important forms of reuse. I was being a little glib and talking mostly about the kind of multiple-plastic-bin consumer goods recycling that's most visible.
Glass is so worthless for recycling, all they do with it is crush it and use it to cover landfill each night to keep down rodents and dust. That's considered "recycled".
> As for an honest society, do you have some historical reference point, or are you just aiming for utopia?
For some reason greenwashing is really prevalent among people who should know better (policy makers, scientists, environmentalists). And regular people desperately want recycling to be a real thing so that they feel better about themself.
It's a perfect match, leading to the situation we have now.
No, glass is definitely recycled in the true sense at least some of the time. The key word to look for when researching this is "cullet": crushed glass used as a furnace input.
e.g. Here, http://uk.saint-gobain-glass.com/trade-customers/float-glass... : "SGG UK also utilises, on average, 30% recycled glass (cullet) in the batch, which has the additional benefit of lowering the melting point of the batch, resulting in a more efficient process."
Broken glass may be essentially worthless, but intact bottles can be cleaned and refilled. Since that actually happens, I imagine the logistics involved to be somewhat cost-effective compared to making new glass (or maybe it's all fueled by subsidies).
Only a very small percent of them. You are probably thinking of soda bottles, and yes, they used to do that. But today it's plastic bottles (and I'm glad for it!). Milk in glass bottles is all but dead.
Most glass these days is jars for olives, and salsa, and tomato sauce, and other random things, where there is just not scale to collect them. It's not anymore all uniform, every jar is a difference size.
Beer from the very largest companies might still work, although I think it's mostly cans now. But there are a lot of small producers, and routing the glass back to them would be too expensive.
We haven't even touched on how there is basically no point in doing it anyway. The entire crust of the planet is basically made of glass. We can't run out without dismantling (discrusting? :) the planet. It's also harmless to dispose of, just crush it first.
Recycle metal, burn plastic and paper (for energy!! not for disposal!!), crush and landfill glass and other organics. Those are the most environmentally friendly options.
It takes far more energy to make new glass than to clean and reuse old glass. Even melting existing glass is valuable, as it lowers the melting point of the raw materials and therefore energy expenditure. Until glass manufacture uses solar or wind or something similar, it’s an issue.
The problem isn’t a lack of silica, it’s yet more waste of energy and pollution purely screwing is over.
Glass can only be recycled so many times and then it is worthless as you say. Value depends on the quality, color, and clarity of the glass. Given that cullet is necessary to make new glass, there is always a market for it. Best of all though, bottles can be cleaned and reused many times for a fraction of the energy cost of making new ones.
There are a lot of subtleties to recycling, some in favor generally, environmentally, and economically... some not.
It’s a feature, in the same way that the decentralized nature of white collar crime is a feature. The bug is in the people who naively believe that technology changes human nature, rather than empowering it.
Those people need to be locked in a small room with an excellent library to study history for at least a year.
The bandwidth, latency, and fidelity with which information is transferred between individuals has changed the calculus of billions of people dramatically.
Because it still bears saying, especially given how many people are just looking for greater fools to hold their bag. Inevitably the replies include a barrage of whataboutism centered on “fiat currency” in an attempt to normalize or justify the cryptocurrency shitshow.