An amusing thought I've had recently is whether LLMs are in the same league as the millions of monkeys at the keyboard, struggling to reproduce one of the complete works of William Shakespeare.
But I think not, since monkeys probably don't "improve" noticeably with time or input.
I disagree to an extent. I know people on WIC, TANF, etc. who get subsidized internet, discounted property taxes, etc. Almost all of the ones I know game the system to their advantage one way or another.
I see people stop working because they'd rather not deal with others when they already have their needs met - I have no problem with this.
I see people who continuously pop more kids to keep the gravy train running - this is an issue.
I have seen people sell the products (a lot of it is food) they get for free and people who sell the vouchers because they already have too much; this to me is an issue too.
I see people who lie all of the time to get benefits they wouldn't qualify for otherwise; literally millionaires lying to get free stuff from the government.
I don't have a big social circle but it seems everyone I come into contact with is on the take and sucking hard on the government teat.
I think the approach needs to be more holistic and consider all of the different programs people qualify for - between WIC/TANF most people will get more food than they can consume. I think they should be nontransferable (maybe it already is, I don't understand how people end up selling them) and I don't think they should be progressive. Means-testing should be ended and everybody should qualify for these programs.
I also support a shift to UBI, but your description of TANF/WIC is not grounded in reality. TANF has a 5 year lifetime, and many states actually have lower limits food stamps do not come close to covering the costs of feeding a family People do sell food stamps sometimes, not because they have more than they need, but because they are desperate for cash to pay for other necessities such as utilities.
The idea that people are getting by for years and years based on these as sources of income is a myth.
Thanks, to clarify I don't begrudge TANF/WIC but those two are a short list of benefits that are available. Rent assistance ($), daycare assistance ($), free healthcare that's better than what I can get on the market regardless of $$$$, etc. I explained in other comments how a lot of it works, and I think rather than means testing I would like to see a different form of enforcement for these programs.
> I see people stop working because they'd rather not deal with others when they already have their needs met.
While some folks do get benefits when they could be working many more are denied anything despite obviously being disabled and the money that is paid is a relative pittance that few would choose given any alternative.
> I see people who continuously pop more kids to keep the gravy train running - this is an issue.
This is basically a myth. There are TANF in most states has a lifetime limit of 5 years or less and we are talking about $283 per month for a single parent single child household and it doesn't scale linearly. The next child nets you an additional $44 for instance. Exact figures vary by state.
People effectively sell vouchers or food benefits because they are desperately poor and need other things. As the refrain goes "food stamps don't buy diapers". In the case of WIC the vouchers may be for things that they literally don't need can't eat which will expire and thereby be lost.
This is an example of the inefficiency of buying things for people instead of letting them buy their own things.
> This is basically a myth. There are TANF in most states has a lifetime limit of 5 years or less ....
Because you can't imagine it or haven't seen it that doesn't mean it's a myth. I have known women who continuously have more kids from different fathers. I think many people ignore the fact that people can also qualify for getting their rent paid, free healthcare for the kids, etc. I have seen it in several different states, lived in the same apartments as them and now know about them from their family members who are my acquaintances.
But I agree with you on inefficiency. As I said, I think we need a holistic approach that looks at the overall needs and gets rid of some of the programs and just hands out cash as you said maybe.
If 2+2=4 it doesn't matter if you "witnessed" it being 3. Anyone who has actually interacted with poverty in the past 30 years would know that benefits are miserly, sparse, and limited.
Notable virtually no cash money which is basically required to live and work requirements for other benefits.
Welfare is what poor people rely on in addition to working not what they do instead of working.
This is why virtually everyone on food stamps is either temporarily between jobs, working, retired, disabled.
You can't just keep having kids and actually live indoors because the government will give you more food stamps but not more money.
What part of tanif being a few hundred a month and having a lifetime maximum of 5 years isn't getting through?
More kids = more poverty. The only angle to work is child support not welfare which is obviously the disconnect here.
I don't think I have seen something as disingenuous on HN as trying to negate somebody else's life experience by saying "2+2=4". I won't be engaging the contents of a bad faith argument.
Just because a plurality or even majority of people aren't doing it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. As I've stated, I'm recounting these scenarios from my experience which isn't vast but it tracks in every state/city I have lived in (and I have lived in several).
It's a miserable living experience for their children. Welfare queens do exist even if they don't look like the media portrays them.
As I stated, I'm not against social programs, but I think there's substantial waste and program goals need to be realigned. It needs to be reimagined, and not from ivory towers like the techno-elite that gathers here on HN.
The 100% truth is that you had no idea of any of the detail about whatever you saw. Unless someone has a massive trust with a procreation requirement, there is no free ride for children in America.
I had direct 100% access to every single aspect of one individuals life. Talked directly about the subject dozens to hundreds of times.
I absolutely know both the financial details as well as personal motivations. Others in that sphere I do not have as much intimate knowledge of but they follow the same pattern and social circles.
This topic is something HN (or rather the demographics that tend to post on HN) simply has a giant blind spot on.
It's not so much that each kid is a net benefit. It's that having kids are a requirement to access many government programs in my state. Single folks simply don't get help. I still know people in my past life who have never worked a single day and have had all expenses paid for by the state using such programs. Add some child support in and it's a way to live, even if a pretty crappy one. There is also very little planning for when the benefits end as the kids age out.
I really think every young adult should have to spend a year living in a section 8 complex as an assistant super. It may open many eyes to the state of the US and our social condition.
You've just modified your previous statement. I absolutely believe someone might have a child to get child support or even qualify for benefits.
I don't believe anyone is popping out multiple kids to rake in extra benefits. There is no situation where multiple kids make life easier for the poor in America.
I'm not sure where the disconnect is. You pop out multiple kids so you extend the clock, not so you get multiples on any sort of payments (aside from perhaps child support, but that's a different topic). This is what OP meant by "extend the gravy train". Much subsidized housing is only practically available to women with dependent children.
As stated, I have personally witnessed this exact behavior. The common belief in certain circles seems to be this is unheard of and uncommon but I absolutely do not believe the mainstream statistics on the matter.
It's not just kids. It's a whole way of life. Usually SSDI is involved among other such shenanigans as well. It goes deep - to the point of ensuring your teenage kids show up to school exactly the minimum number of days to not get dinged on benefits.
Having one kids gives one a dependant child for at least 18 years which is virtually all of a woman's child rearing years. There is no clock to reset.
" not just kids. It's a whole way of life. Usually SSDI is involved among other such shenanigans as well. It goes deep - to the point of ensuring your teenage kids show up to school exactly the minimum number of days to not get dinged on benefits."
Adding details isn't making this more plausible. Nobody is denying YOUR life experience just your third hand misunderstanding of other people's.
Now you have them living on child support, fraudulent disability, and neglecting their kids.
Have you considered that maybe you have skeevy family and this is not normal.
I don't know what it's like now, but in the 1980s, we received aid, and you certainly couldn't live on it. It was a horrible existence. Yeah, we'd sometimes game the system. For instance, we knew if we bought something for $4.01, we'd get the $0.99 change back as cash. We'd trade vouchers for cash sometimes (to, say, put kerosene in the heater) But, we're only talking about gaining a few hundred dollars a year. If people in your social circle are living large, I'd love to know their trick.
Yeah as I said in another comment, it's a mostly miserable experience on the kids and yet some garbage humans do decide to live strictly off of it. I'm not sure how we could disincentivize that, but I do think means testing should go.
The people I have seen who really milk the system work for cash, live with their boyfriend/SO and remain unmarried to keep the benefits coming (and just lie saying that the father isn't in the picture). So the burden of healthcare/food/rent is on the state and all of the income is fun money. Trucks/SUVs, jewelry, trips, rental houses, etc. follow. The kids only benefit as far as not starving, but they get free food at school/day care most of the year anyway so most stamps get sold. There's some who do very well and just stop caring about TANF anyway because it's overall pretty low value.
Another I've seen is just lying on the application so they get their benefits (I imagine similar to the others they say their husband/SO isn't in the picture) while they have a steady income stream from renting out their house.
I've come into contact with students at different levels of their university degree... between freshmen and junior (but almost senior) and I'm baffled by what I hear.
No concept of processes, no idea about any data structures, intimidated by everything. They've studied C/C#/Python in a class but can't remember anything about it. It's really a lack of passion and interest and it's endemic I think. People study CS because they've heard it pays well.
I fully expect these people to become my managers!
Yes you can[1]. If you want to store TOTPs together with your username and password is something you have to figure out for yourself.
Browser integration works nice, but not as smooth as Apples Keychain autofill. If you go hosted you will need a premium subscription. If you are okay self hosting vaultwarden[2] supports TOTP as well.
the very fact that you don't have to think about memory management it means that there is something else taking care of it. Call it GC or otherwise, no PHP dev will be think about memory management at all, unless they are building some long-lived, large data processing
> no PHP dev will be think about memory management at all
Not nowadays, for sure. In 2009-2010 it was still something to keep in mind, and careful array handling was common so the it wouldn't baloon hundreds of megabytes for not so large data structures. I wasn't working on big data (tm) at that time, but running database imports via ETL processes in PHP required a few optimization passes.
I really can appreciate nowadays the huge memory and performance improvements that PHP went through from the 5.x days to the recent 8.1 release.
Sidenote: Shout outs to Nikita Popov who came to the scene and revitalized the language for me back then, for his proposals and features implemented in a time when PHP felt stagnant language wise https://www.npopov.com/aboutMe.html#accepted-php-proposals
i've been working with PHP for almost 20 years and to be honest i've never had to think about memory management until the last 10 years or so and only in case of long running processes (e.g. cronjobs)
The same happened to me 5 (?) years ago. I was young, dumb and excited about the opportunity. It was downhill from the moment I signed with constant extensions to my contract and excuses (like how my salary was lower because they wanted it to be close to what I would get after taxes when I became a W2 employee)
They have no respect for you or your time, and it's endemic in the company culture. Don't even try to negotiate this: walk away and MAYBE tell them why. IF they come back with EVERYTHING they promised you (unlikely that their benefits even exist) then you can consider joining if you don't have something better on the table. But even then I would still walk away 100% of the time
Don't listen to their bullshit about how it's a risk hiring you etc. You take an equal risk in a clown show of a company. There's plenty of opportunities out there at the moment to even try negotiating this one
Appreciate the perspective and sorry that that happened to you. There are some red flags, but I don't think this change is in bad faith. They're a small company, and haven't pulled the "you're a risk card". Plus the contract is really simple and open-ended. Just adding a bit more colour...
If a company defaults and doesn't pay outstanding obligations to smaller vendors without much cash to keep it afloat, these smaller vendors also have to stop paying their vendors and fire workers to try to stay afloat, recursively
I saw this play out at several businesses at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, until their business was deemed essential and they (along with their customers) were allowed to resume operations
Not OP but there's one point of yours I take issue with:
> Supposedly seniors relying on recruiters and job offers instead of using their network, if they've worked with people in the past, and can't draw on that, I wonder how that is, is it that everybody they worked with are not nice people and don't like them ?
I'm good at my job, senior and even led teams (tech lead) a couple of times at large public companies by now and when changing jobs I couldn't use my network. I don't live in a tech hub (also sounds like OP's situation) and most of my former coworkers/managers lack ambition/drive to get to companies/teams I aim to get hired at. The reason being that most of the companies I worked for were not tech and this is a severe handicap - to put it in perspective I make almost twice what my manager made 5 years ago
I'm not talking about necessarily getting a dream job, or even a good job through your network, especially if you're aiming high, but then rules are different then, you can't both be "perpetually rained-upon unlucky never getting a break unlucky dev" and be "well, I could get _THOSE_ jobs, but I'm so unlucky because I can't land absolute top-tier ones even though I definitely feel like I deserve it." at the same time.
- 3 companies/year (3y on average at a company)
- 2 teams/company (1.5y on average in a team)
- max 10 members/team
- add a 5x factor meaning you will BOND!!! (closely enough to dream of working again with you) with 50 other people outside of your team, which is crazy if you ask me, but I'm playing along
3x2x60 = 360 people. That's your entire network in 10 years, pure acquaintances, not people that you bonded with.
My humble view is that maybe you bond with 2 team members and maybe another 5 people outside of the team. 3x2x7 = 42 people. Which is actually not far from Dunbar's number of 50 friends and 150 meaningful contacts.
42. That's how many people would actually vouch for you within a 10 year period.
My network is not my problem. Everyone is wonderful and supportive. But you know very well that recommending someone isn't everything. You make it sound like if someone recommends you, then you shortcircuit the interview process and the stars align and you should just say thanks for having a job, any job.
You won’t short-circuit the process but you’ll probably get a leg up. A colleague’s recommendation is another piece of data for the folks involved in the hiring process, and maybe it’ll tip the scales.
Your colleague may also let you know of upcoming jobs, or steer you towards a particular job that you’d be a great fit for.
I guess I kinda say that you shouldn't make the interview process about your needs but about theirs, when you've gotten inside and have proven yourself, it's time to change things, but not before.
I don't understand how DocuSign was $50B while Dropbox was $10B; the barrier of entry is even lower for DocuSign and Dropbox even has a competing product
I don’t think it’s these companies fault that they have lofty market caps. Even Elon said the market cap for Tesla doesn’t make sense.
The problem is the investor class stopped believing in older, established companies as growth drivers. They don’t believe a GE, or a Ford, or what have you, are innovative.
So, they pool all their money into tech. Is Docusign going to say no to the money? They are a decent company and they are seeing large inflows and outflows because no one wants to dump their money into anything else.
Dropbox has a competing product that literally nobody uses. Supposedly HelloSign is a distant 4th place in a market with 4 participants, having a market share 100 times smaller than DocuSign. That seems to be the difference! If DocuSign was worth $50b then HelloSign is worth at most $500m.
But I think not, since monkeys probably don't "improve" noticeably with time or input.