Work culture is so weird. What do you mean, it's reserved for the elites?
In my country you get to build your holiday days, so I could totally take a month off if I don't take any other days off this year. Hell, we even have a website to perfectly time it here so you get the most bang-for-your-days. lmao.
I will never comprehend this Silicon Valley mindset. You can also be a 10x engineer while drinking a martini in the balkans.
Lives don't exist in vacuums. If I could uproot my close friends and family and we all moved to the same place then I would, but that's not possible. I'm sure it's the same for a lot of people
This was mostly in response to "You can also be a 10x engineer while drinking a martini in the balkans." and is likely a bit of an overreaction to the amount of "just move if you don't like it!" things I've seen. Mobility is a luxury
Uprooting family and friends has little to do with taking a month off, but if things don't fall right then one runs the risk of spending their month off mostly by themselves which may or may not be attractive. I've known single teachers complain about this that they have June-August off but no one to spend it with because most of their friends are not teachers
I kinda want to join such a company as a software guy, but I really can’t take a 50% pay cut. This is really sad! Have always wanted to work at places that can grow very solid engineering cultures.
John Carmack did praise restraint of resources when he recalled his early days working as a lone contractor and as an employee of Softdisk, when he and the team had to push out games on a very tight schedule.
I think this extends to other parts of life, too. I still remember that I fondly played a game over and over again back in high school, when I did not have the Internet and had to borrow CDs from my friends — but when I went into the university and had access to pretty much every game freely on the Intranet, I rarely do that anymore. That’s why I always think an abundance of X may not be the best option for me. That’s why probably includes money, too.
I think that has something to do with the prerequisites of democracy.
I believe one important factor for a democracy to work properly, is to have a large number of citizens who 1) can stand up and push back when they feel something is wrong, and 2) is sufficiently knowledgeable. We don’t have that anymore. Of course I’m also to be blamed for that.
Democracy requires informed thoughtful voters to function.
Public education was supposed to deliver that. This is a dream that has failed in the US.
Possibly the most lacking tools are Critical Thinking (not directly taught as a subject AFAIK) and some class with a focus on how government(s) work. The latter was an elective I took in high school (not a core requirement, it should be).
At least when I was in college it helped to have critical thinking skills, but was not a basics (100 level) course. Political studies might be a different degree, but again not a core course. I find that ironic since everyone has to interact with government regulations and vote.
I always think that’s the failure of citizens, not just the officials. Eventually history is going to blame us for not taking action, not pushing back, and pretty much sleep tightly when things fall apart around us.
I think we are moving again in a very fast era. Velocity or efficiency is again more important than sipping your coffee and taking breaks. This is probably going to be a lot harder for Europe than other parts of the globe because other parts are more or less geared up already.
The other thing I can see is the greenlights that AI products will get in the next decade. AI already shows a lot of potentials and legislation already turns a blind eye about potential copyright issues. I believe every player in the theatre is going to slum dunk on this and give green light all the way.
My reasoning is built on 1) The Pax Americana is rotting away as the core is rotting away -> 2) Local dukes are going to try to grab whatever they wanted to grab but could not because Pax Americana had a hand on them (I use a feudal model because it is more accurate) -> 3) We will see more competition, which pushes all states to increase efficiency including the US -> 4) Since AI has the potential to 10x productivity, no one dares to say no to it.
Good luck and have fun! I’m very pessimistic about the next 50 years so I’m very biased.
This is _entirely_ too accurate. The land grabs of today are mostly for eyeballs on ads (even though the old fashioned pointy-end-of-sword land grabbing seems to be back in fashion). Our "lords" are forced into survival mode, and mobilize their peasant militias on social media to spread their gospel. Maybe I'm stretching the metaphor too thin, but to me, it seems like we're at the crossroads between the imminent end of serfdom and the french revolution. The people are hungry and pretty pissed.
> I’m very pessimistic about the next 50 years so I’m very biased.
You're not alone. That's called awareness, and comes with experience. I hope things will get better, but the fruits of technology are not evenly distributed.
TBH I never had issue with that as long as they did their job. I mean, executives do that all the time, right? So everyone can do that. It’s also legal. I don’t complain if my colleagues can do their job. I myself never did that because I prefer more personal time.
I recall many IBM-PC games are bootable games. I inserted a floppy , resets the computer, and then it directly boots into the game. The disk must contain a boot sector and drivers and such.
As well, although I think in the Amiga this was more common, to buy games that were already prepared like this.
At least on my circle for doing the same with PC games, we built the floppies ourselves, then again, it could be a side effect that you could hardly buy any legal games in Portugal during those days, even regular shops would sell pirated games as originals.
reply