Buying my first home (mobile/manufactured) has been a combination of the best and worst thing I've ever done. The house cost nearly 3 times what my grandparents paid about ~30 years ago in the same neighborhood (on the same street!) while the construction and finish quality are sub-par at best, with a nearly endless list of things that are constantly in need of repair, multiple water intrusion issues, etc. To make matters worse, the housing market in the area I live has reached unreasonable levels, with my current home being 'valued' at 1.4x what I bought it for roughly 3 years ago.
Additionally, I keep seeing homes built that are on monolithic slabs and nearly everyone I know personally who is a homeowner is having issues with their home's foundation due to the high movement soil (clay) even in recently built homes. I would build homes that use pier and beam foundations with piles deep enough to resist soil movement, ensure site drainage was appropriate for each home, and generally put all the necessary care and work into ensuring that each home built would last for multiple generations.
I want to build homes that last and allow others to flourish without the litany of concerns I currently have to struggle with on-top of my day job.
The slab part of the foundation generally is meant only to transfer the load of the house onto these footings rather than support the weight itself, sort of like a desk transfers the weight of it's contents onto the legs.
While this can help resist movement, it all depends on the drainage and expansion qualities of the soil where the bottom of the footer rests. If the area sees periods of extreme drought in highly expansive soil and the drought 'reaches' the bottom of the footer then you'll end up with significant movement as the weight of the foundation and home settles down into the void created by the now dry soil, while the opposite is true during periods of extremely heavy rainfall.
When you combine periods of extreme drought and heavy rainfall in close succession of each other on highly expansive soils, pretty much any slab that is not supported by bedrock in some way will be at risk of cracking due to the frequent seasonal movement of the surrounding soil.
This can be mitigated somewhat during periods of drought by 'watering' the areas surrounding the foundation, and during periods of heavy rainfall by having a properly graded home site that routes water away from the home in every direction. Unfortunately these are mitigations that require monitoring by homeowners who may not be aware of these issues at all.
Ideally prior to building any permanent foundation a core sample would be obtained from the site and analyzed to determine the footer depth necessary to compensate for the 'worst case' rainfall and temperature fluctuation in that region, additionally accounting for local movement due to topography.
Except most folks building out in my area are just trying to make as much money with as little investment as possible, and thus do just enough to not be liable if any of the above scenarios conspire to create problems for their long-since-forgotten customers.
As for foundation issues, I live in a Gulf Coast state 2 miles from the Gulf as the crow flies, and my crawlspace is so humid that I had to get it encapsulated. I have 2 dehumidifiers, and now that summer is here 1 of them runs 24/7. On the flip side, the deterioration has stopped, but now the joists and subloor are drying and warping (I was warned this would happen, though).
It's my understanding that wood rot occurs mainly due to frequent changes in moisture, the expansion and contraction causing breakdown of the wood fibers, while warping occurs when wood transitions between 'wet' and 'dry' too slowly/quickly/unevenly.
Allowing the moisture to increase back to previous levels *may* reverse some or most of the warping that has occurred, followed with a gradual decrease in humidity with an adjustment period between changes using the aforementioned control system may allow you to find a happy medium and ease the wood into a more stable moisture content without having to deal with squeaky subfloors and uneven joists.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They have a knob on them that sets it to a specific humidity level, which I believe is 55 or 60 percent.
>Allowing the moisture to increase back to previous levels may reverse some or most of the warping that has occurred
Warping has already occurred on the joists due to the ridiculous levels of humidity in the crawl space, this is just more warping occurring. I'm talking like 90% or more humidity down there, and the moisture content of the joists were at 21% and mold was growing all over. At this point, I'm willing to take warping over the other path, which is having my joists rot out. Encapsulation is part 1, and part 2 will happen next year in the winter where I'll get beams and jacks installed.
When I first bought my house I tried to put in a warranty claim due to *MAJOR* deflection of subfloor in the kitchen and suspected water damage related to the installation of some plumbing. They refused to do anything unless I got the state involved; Literally they gave me the contact number for the state department responsible for ensuring everything was Good Enough™
Months later, nothing was fixed because according to the State as long as I can't stick my foot through a hole in the ground and get hurt there is nothing wrong. Never mind the fact that there is a slow water leak and the subfloor and joists are undergoing structural deterioration before I even moved in.
Had I known the headache this would cause, and known I could have taken other legal recourse I would have lawyered up at this point, but I was a young 24 year old with a 2 year old and another child on the way. I didn't know what to expect, I trusted the State, I trusted the builder, I trusted the realtors who all told me it was Ok™.
Up to code means it's safe to inhabit, not that you'd *want* to inhabit.
The big issue that I found is that people aren't actually interested in cheap houses, they just want something that is affordable at a discount but will grow in value, just like their parents did.
If the market says the cheapest house in a market is $250k then that is my budget ceiling for equipment and materials, while all labor is provided by myself and any like-minded individuals in a similarly absurd situation. The 'difference' I would be making is the invisible-to-the-market value created by putting the cost of labor and any expected profits back into making the home a standing testament to human engineering.
There would be no marketing, no sales pitches, no brand or company associated with the construction of these homes. Simply going from place to place doing my best to make an insignificant difference at a societal scale and a silent but substantial difference to the families who eventually occupy those homes both now and in a hundred years.
Your best bet is to either find a company near you that specializes in tiny-homes and ask for a quote on a custom home that is built on a trailer (that you or the company sources) or simply buy an RV / Camper.
At the end of the day though if you're looking for something that is 'ultra affordable' then you will want to build it yourself. For that scenario I can point you at a number of resources that would help you along that path, just email or text me using the contact info in my profile.
You can get shipping containers pretty cheap, and the trailer doesn't even have to have wheels for it to be considered not a permanent residence.
The short of building out a house is basically you cut holes in the container for all the inteface to the outside world, do insulation on the inside, facade on the outside, run all wire/plumbing stuff in cut channels in the insulation, then build out the walls and furniture from treated wood. A lot of the existing RV stuff (shower, retractable beds, e.t.c) can be reused.
I want more homes in the world built by people like you.
After that, who knows what life will throw my way :)
I'm currently working with a team that's recreating the Prodigy online service servers in Elixir. Having a blast, and I have my next project already in mind, also in Elixir or some other BEAM language.
On top of that I'm reading programming-adjacent books and papers, for example on Category Theory and lambda calculus. I'm going through my backlog of interesting papers I've printed off over the last 30 years.
So no, not saving the world but keeping my mind engaged and loving it.
I have a question for you: How do you assess your learning ability at 55? Let me explain -- I'd like to pursue studies in some Physics topics when I semi-retire (I can't do that now due to lack of time), but I'm not sure whether my brain is up to the job then. I know you are not studying Physics, but category theory is definitely non-trivial. How do you assess your ability to grapple with difficult theories?
A side question: do you exercise routinely, and if so do you think it contributes significantly to your health?
Thanks for any insight.
But in terms of study - academic work - we're free. She's got a PhD in theoretical physics and has finally had the time to start publishing, including picking up quantum chromodynamics.
I've picked up my original doctoral work, too, which was on hold for thirty years while I supported the family. I've had no problems whatsoever tackling difficult topics - in fact, I've had less difficulty. I'm calmer, partly because I have to be in order to keep my blood pressure under control. I think I can do less in any given day, but I'm not even sure about that, because when I look back at items checked off over a week or a month, it's about what I wanted to get done.
So putting off study until you're 55 is not a bad plan. Keep reading about things in the meantime, of course. Take good notes. Keep things where you can find them in ten or twenty years. Write down your daily thoughts. You'll thank yourself later, trust me on this.
Can you elaborate on this? What sorts of daily thoughts did you write down and how did it help you?
Unfortunately, a lot of those pieces were logged on paper, but I've got electronic notes from about 2011 on, and a good content index has come in really handy for pulling out earlier ideas on various topics.
I've been working on that for the past year, and also scanning in a lot of the paper notes and starting to transcribe some of them. Looking back, there are some ideas I have every five or ten years, every time thinking I'm quite innovative.
Now that I've had the time to collate all that (and to read an absolute metric ton of literature I missed, an ongoing process), I've started to make consistent progress towards my original goals.
But just as a for instance - I have my readings and research bibliography from 1995 in machine translation. Most of that is dead as Carthage from a technical standpoint, obviously, but the philosophy has been invaluable as a starting point for recalibrating where I'm going.
But I've also got a lot of notes on related projects and just noodling thoughts I've had over thirty years of driving kids around in cars. I think the most important aspect of this is just keeping your mind active and focused on the things you find interesting, even if you don't have anything like the time you'd need to pursue them properly. Because sooner or later, the stars will align and you will. And when you do, your notes will be absolutely vital.
But I'm kind of obsessive about notes, so your mileage may vary.
Did your wife get the PHD recently or when she was young? Reading through the lines I feel it was when she was young but I could definitely be wrong.
I also feel I don't have much to write down every day. Most of the time is spent on work chores or family chores. There are a few happy moments but that's it. May I ask what type of information do you retain?
Sure, you're working, I totally get that. But you're also sometimes reading about stuff relevant to your eventual academic interests, if only articles you see on HNN or whatever. Sometimes you'll have a thought in the car. Develop the habit of journaling them when they come, in some place you won't lose over the intervening years.
You will be astonished at what you both do and don't retain over those years. It's mostly still down in there somewhere, but if you've got a few clues to unravel the threads, it'll help more than you think now.
Regarding the last paragraph -- yeah I recalled that my first programming adventure was Foxbasing in the mid 90s. I definitely forgot all of those!
Good luck to you too.
My foray into Category Theory so far has been reading "The Joy of Abstraction", which is a layman's book to CT. So far what's she's written makes perfect sense and would be mostly obvious to anyone who hangs out on HN. Moving up and down various levels of abstraction, the idea of "functions", as I read this I'm basically thinking it's what I've been doing for the past 40 years, not a big deal. We'll see as I continue in it.
Circling back to the original question, it's hard to assess my learning ability since I'm not venturing out into totally new territory for me.
When you have a job it's hard to fit in as much exercise etc. as you want, it's easier when you're retired. But also when you're retired it's easy to fill the time with other things, errands, as you get older medical appointments, and motivation is a little harder since you don't have deadlines on your projects. Work comes in spurts interlaced with reading, which is important but doesn't move the projects forward.
I do exercise regularly, especially after the heart attack. "Make these changes or you'll die" makes a great motivator.
I do agree with the "more time without a job" observation. That's part of the motivation to pick up serious stuffs when I go semi-retire.
I hope you get well (the heart attack thing), but I'm happy that you make those changes when still young (relatively).
I’m mid 50’s. I had perfect 20/20 eye sight until about age 50, and now I can’t read almost anything without reading glasses - it came on quickly, but doesn’t seem to be worsening. I’ve always been a perfect speller (for the vocabulary that I use), but I’m finding I misspell 1-3% of what I type now (not typos). I’m also starting to misread headlines which I never did before (inserting words, misreading a single critical word, etc). It does feel like a tiny bit of haze is setting in, and I feel like this is probably normal.
So to anyone reading this, my advice is not to wait for retirement. I am lucky enough that my kids now prepare and go to school alone. So every morning I have about 45min when I can say fuck to the outside world including work and pursue studies I am interested in. I can't study any difficult or new subject after work.
Progress is slow but real.
Thanks for the advice for note taking. This is something I really have to improve.
Asking because if I was in your shoes, I'd spend all my time to invest in that ecosystem. I got a taste of it in my 3 month semester break where I was able to work on a lot of Gleam and Rust side projects. (Nothing to actually publish, but purely for fun and my own enjoyment).
The older I get the more I learn this lesson hehe.
I'll buckle down on my mandolin playing, and it's time to pick up the fiddle and give it a good effort.
Read more.
Let's not let all that coding experience go to waste: I'll go hunt down an open source project that I could make some good contributions to, and then devote a good chunk of time to that. Or write something new that the world could use.
But beware: "if you didn't need money" is a pretty loaded phrase. As I stare down the firehose of money and realize it will soon produce only a trickle, if that, I still ask if we have enough even though we're probably better off than the majority of retirees (if various sources are to be believed). Because there's "don't need an income" and then there's "won the startup lottery, and my kids won't need an income", and we are firmly in the former category. :-)
Well, it beats being one of those retirees that goes back to work because they're bored. :-) Thanks for the reply and the encouragement, and if you get to Washington in the U. S., email is in the profile and we'll go run some WA trails in the Cascades.
Congrats on today being your last day!
I am not volunteering, or consulting for non-profits. It fulfilling or interesting, possibly because I wasn't invested in the cause(s).
I am not reading as much as I thought. It is lonely and boring to read for more than half a day, day after day.
I am not doubling down on family, as they are busy doing their own things.
I am not traveling constantly, because it is lonely traveling by myself (again, family is busy).
What am I doing?
I'm studying neuroscience at a local university (after working through chem/bio prerequisites). I had zero interest before, now it is all I care about. Surprise!
I spend a lot of time walking through town, aimlessly. No idea why.
I average 1.5 grocery stores every day, and cook needlessly elaborate meals for my family. Again, brand new interest.
Anyway, for the record, I would be recording my lifetime backlog songs I've written. And probably re-recording in different styles. And perfecting every one, no more of this 'good-enough' demo stuff. I'd get all the needed gear and software, and have no more excuses. I've actually already started to do this, at the detriment of my actual career...sigh.
EDIT: now that I read the OP's question more closely, I guess the answers are skewed towards practical things that would make the world better...but impractical things like creative music and abstract art also make the world better, so I'm sticking with my plan!
If you expand your definition of practical, it becomes quite practical!
Socially, there are a lot of things that seem "silly" (euphemistically), and it's a blight on civilization that they are tolerated. That people in my country (USA, but can apply to many countries in the world) are homeless or starving is silly; if you were running a country, ensuring the citizenry have food and shelter might be an obvious top priority. The world can seem really complex at times and our systems become so convoluted that people rationalize why the things that seem obviously silly are too difficult to solve or worthwhile tradeoffs. I think it's generally a good heuristic to avoid doing things that seem obviously silly and fix the things that are (that is, it's often better to be naive about it!).
This portion of the comment is not a direct answer to the question but a related thought others may have further insights about. Practically, a situation in which you don't need money rarely materializes instantaneously; it usually arises from circumstances that have constituted a great deal of your life and identity. As a consequence of this, I think ego can become a real challenge that prevents people from pursuing possible "ideals". If you've been in a certain kind of position for a long time, there can be psychological barriers to pursuing something in a way in which, e.g., you are a true beginner or have less control. This tends to be something that can dissipate with age but can be especially difficult for people who've achieved financial success well before standard retirement age.
But of course that requires a significant level of investment, which is generally the limiting factor, as people who build fortunes are generally disinclined to part with any portion of them. Even for those so inclined, it is hard to get people to agree on what the 'greater good' really is, much more so these days when vast amounts of information is thrown at us often seemingly only in service of dividing us.
With my day job gone, I have a huge stack of side projects and hobbies that I'd love to put more time into. I think the hardest part, in a world where I've regained the time I spend on my job, would be deciding which of those things I actually want to dedicate my time to (there isn't enough time in my life for all of them, sadly).
I'd definitely spend more time on fitness, reading, and playing and listening to music. I have plenty of programming related projects I'd like to work on too. I like making videos and writing blog posts, and I'd continue doing that - probably at about the same rate that I currently do, creating a writeup or a video when I find something cool to share.
Honestly, I'd spend my time about the same way I do now - just "more so." I guess I'm fortunate to be able to say that!
Working on legal software as an underpaid, overworked, and abused (not joking) dev has been a real drag and it's taken a toll on me mentally and physically.
I've also realized that firefighting is my true calling. So I've been trying to turn things around; Working out, finding classes to re-up my certs, and giving myself a lot of mental space.
I'd love to go back, my local station is mostly volunteer so I'd never make much money. But maybe I can use my new tech skills to create tools that help firefighters help people as a little side gig.
The public library is free for everybody, but we aren't lining up to read the books because our system is broken. Ninety-five percent of kids can't access audiobook versions of the books they want to read.
We do have CD audiobooks for many classic titles, but these aren't always available, and many people don't have CD players or find it inconvenient to use one. Modern libraries are phasing these out. Another option is Vox books, but they are seriously limited, available in less than 0.01% of books, and cumbersome to carry around. The tiny speaker, among other issues, makes it impractical. There is a screen-time version of audiobooks called OverDrive, but its selection is slim, and these versions don't have embedded page signals—a deal-breaker for early readers and semi-literate children.
What we need now is a way to scan a book cover and instantly start playing the audiobook version, complete with page signals and a slew of other options to enhance engagement. It is widely known that active reading is magnitudes better than passive reading when it comes to developing our memory, thereby fostering better learning. What does this mean? When we read out loud, at the end of the page or book, we ask the users a few questions to check if they've understood what they just read.
This would be a non-profit organization. Contributing to society starts with literacy. Literacy begins with engagement and accessibility. This is my contribution to making a society more rational, health, and well-coordinated.
UPDATE: We have applied to the Amazon Small Business Grant, and this vision is soon to become a reality! interested in joining our mission, or following along? we need readers! we need testers! join us on discord!
There are some people who are extremely qualified and specialized in their fields, but many more would really benefit from additional formal education. Even tech literacy is taken for granted sometimes, even though it shouldn’t. It’s the kind of thing that makes an actual difference in the lives of people.
Since the option in the world we have is working 60 hours sub minimum wage trying to get through a PhD followed by bouncing round on 2 year short term contracts as a postdoc (still barely on minimum wage) while University administrators make your life hell I took the only rational route.
I switched to software and make people's lives and the climate worse for a paycheck that still isn't enough to live where I want to live.
But ideally I'd use my brain to research some of the fundamental challenges we face, battery chemistry, plastic recycling, industrial catalysts, etc, etc.
Given all this history, I'm definitely not going to pretend I have any idea what I'm going to want to do when I actually retire. I'm also not alone. What I really end up doing is contingent on not disupting whatever my wife wants to do.
My lifestyle and past choices now afford me all my time as I made great sacrifices for many years saving prolifically while others accrued more and more debt chasing the Jones. Apparently this is called FIRE now but I was doing it long before the acronym.
I have been a problem solver my entire life and have both reverse engineered many things but more importantly I have built a vast variety of personal and professional solutions using mechanics, electronics, technology, automation, and more. I am now building and patenting an energy storage device of my own design given the problem that I personally have which one can likely deduce. I am in absolutely no hurry as all my time is mine to invest where I see fit and as such I am my own boss with ONLY the goal of solving my problem.
For those with the entrepreneurial mindset, exactly like my own, I’ll answer your implicit question from the above reading: "Yes". Once I have my device functioning and it performs as I designed it to the satisfaction of my requirements then a business opportunity unfolds. Given my past choices I am referred to professionally as a serial entrepreneur so I may as well apply my time to my interests and keep solving problems. The difference now however is that I have zero anxiety in my pursuit of my problem since the goal is the objective, not money.
Stay Healthy!
OTOH, still figuring out what to do next.
I keep reminding myself of what PG had to say: By compressing the dull but necessary task of making a living into the smallest possible time, you show respect for life, and there is something grand about that.
I'd spend part of the time doing some sort of weight-lifting or low-stress cardio, part of the time working on independent B2B/B2C software ventures, and part of the time training as a musician.
Eventually I'd like to add some component of service to others there, but I haven't really felt a pull to that yet.
I don't believe that "making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated" is a contribution; this sounds like those who have private jets and go to global conventions to about saving the environment. It sounds to me like you are a narcissist as well, to think that you are more rational than others or know better just because you have money.
The world is pretty rational, if they aren't healthy, it's because people are building the Coke's and Kraft Heinz around the world, companies that are predatory and exploit weaknesses of others.
Try to live a life that you no longer need to exploit others, or animals, or the environment you live in, and of course, document it so others can do it as well.
There are way too many rich folks already trying to change the world and making it worse because they are only looking at the bright side, not the side-effects of what they do, much less on how they live.
Rich people don't try to do this because they know it's really hard. Living sustainably is harder than having a job or making money.
>It sounds to me like you are a narcissist as well, to think that you are more rational than others or know better just because you have money.
we're just sharing ideas, not implying that we know better than anyone. anyone can share their ideas in this thought experiment. i think you imposed an incorrect assumption of what i was trying to say upon my words.
I'll let you laugh at this like others, but I'm serious.
I’d shitpost online, read books, go to the coffeeshop, watch movies, go on walks, etc.
Took 3 years off in my 20s to do exactly that and it was incredible. Best years of my life. Would drop everything and do it again in heartbeat if I could swing it financially.
I guess it depends on what you think the point of money is.
If you think it’s like getting a high score in Donkey Kong, then you’ll be sad you didn’t max out your gains for 3 extra years. But if you think of money as something you need enough of and that’s it, then you’ll gladly take the 3 extra years of complete freedom.
I only need as much money as I need — not more.
Obviously there’s some risk/uncertainty there and I’m not against saving for the future so I do my best to be prepared. But I don’t see saving money as something that’s worth my time if it can be reasonably avoided.
I have dozens of book ideas, from novels to reference volumes. My research would at least partially focus on energy/power generation/storage, and partially on current scientific mysteries in our reality.
Ideally, such work could help enrich humanity. Make the world better in some way. Sadly, unless I win a lottery tomorrow or a wealthy person issues me a grant, some of this work won't get done.
Tankless is for sure one fix to that problem, but if I had a magic wand the thermal battery still feels "better" to me
If I had enough money I’d probably take up sewing full time and make furry cosplay stuff. Seems much more rewarding than building corporate tech junk.
Not only will I never learn everything about software, but I hit the point of negative returns a while ago. Every hour I spend on the computer is an hour I'm not spending on myself or my friends or on making new friends
I just want to travel, exercise, practice non-monogamy, do stuff like that I didn't do as a teenager because I was busy programming. The computer will be there when I'm done.
I started working on Next Generation Shell in 2013. I have the programming language in quite a good shape and we use it at work.
I'm working on the UI now. The main idea of the UI is to get rid of telegraph-style communication paradigm of sending text and receiving text. We can actually use the whole screen now. We have text editing using full screen since 1976 (vi) but classical shells are ignoring this capability till this day. It's time to stop treating outputs of programs as if they are still printed on paper, allowing zero interactivity.
https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs/wiki/UI-Design
https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs/wiki/UI-Chain-Design
Have a nice day!
That, and a lot of nice things you can do when you have trust ratios of local/global peers, more efficient bandwidth usage etc.
Anyways, long story short, needs lots of time and money to build something like this. But seeing how messed up Mozilla's future plans are, I really think someone should do it.
After I got doxxed by kiwifarms, /pol/ and others I decided that I have to fix the cybersecurity problem first before I can go back to this.
[1] (prototype) https://github.com/tholian-network/stealth
[2] (privacy focussed fork of webkit) https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit
My original plan was just to get back to normal and continue living as normal. This recently changed, and I don't want to get back to normal. I want to be healthier than I ever was. I want to be stronger and much more flexible. You don't know what you have until you lose it.
So without much money I'll work on myself by doing pilates and other resistance training, and if I had more money I would probably open up pilates studio so I could share the joy which I'm having.
When you're not healthy, the only thing you want above all is health. If I were asked the same question 3 years ago I would say: riding bikes all day long. This still might be the answer, but long and toned muscles come first.
The breakfast program at school is largely funded by Canada’s largest, exceptionally profitable grocery chain. But this year they’re radio silence on renewing the funding.
So I’d probably be working on making sure children are fed.
Cobbler, Librarian, Prepare food in a school, stage crew, idc just something relatively physical and with an end product/objective and for the support of others/something. It would probably change every 3 - 6 months or so.
For bonus points, you could work on not making us poor folk feel bad for having to work a 9-5! ;)
I'd like to get into some more hobbies, since I really went 100% in on software once I started working full time and I'd really hate to burn out on this. Working a shorter week or with more half days would be great too. We'll see. Life changes.
And if you decide not to stop working, there is something truly freeing about knowing that you don't need the job. In some cases I'd argue that it actually makes you a better employee (since you aren't willing to put up with bs, play politics, etc).
If you're just talking about a normal retirement? I'd go back to doing theatre, which was my first love, and the thing I was better at than anything else I've ever done. Acting, directing, teaching, writing. Theatre people are my people. Making theatre was my passion, and I could do with some passion back in my life.
Or maybe I'd just leave tech behind entirely and do volunteer work.
But I feel like that's a one-way street. If I walked away from tech for a few years, and decided I wanted to go back... it feels like it would be very difficult.
But if the need to avoid theism counts as evidence, then I guess you're stuck with the multiverse.
The best example is the existence of life. The question of the origin of life truly is the only interesting question because without life no other questions even arise.
But we can do biochemistry and microbiology at a high level now and the evidence for life having been designed is overwhelming to the point of being staggering. We found a freaking a *code* at the bottom of it all, for !*$%&@ sake!
Note that the entire Darwinian story assumes the existence of life. So you can't appeal to "evolution" to bail you out because evolution depends on reproduction and survival and so on, and none of that happens prior to the existence of life. (Read The Stairway to Life: An Origin-of-Life Reality Check by Tan & Stadler if you want the reality check good and hard).
People will commonly start throwing in big words at this point: abiogensis! protobiotic vesicles! bioenergetic pathways! abiotic polymerization! but it is all just designed to snow you into submission.
Physics rules out atheism, and the existence of life rules out deism. So we're stuck with theism.
The move from theism to specifically Christian theism can also be made, but I'm not going to do it here.
I will say, however, that unless Christianity is true Judaism doesn't make any sense, because Judaism lacks a universal cosmology (it simply can't answer the question "why didn't God choose all people").
From the perspective of Christianity Judaism make sense (the Jews are chosen in the sense that through the Jews comes salvation for all people), but Judaism doesn't make sense from the perspective of just Judaism.
I also like everything written by Stephen C Meyer. As far as I am concerned Meyer is the world's leading historian and philosopher of science.
If I had more time, or more energy, I’d program for fun more often.
I don’t especially believe in “changing the world.” Not that you can’t (though really, you can’t, to 3 sig figs) just I don’t care to.
Then researching and building open source farming robot.
And, since about two years, I am working with some friends on Common Lisp software again; far more enjoyable than anything else imho. I regret going for some of the new fads in the 90s while I could’ve been working with CL all that time. But he, regrets are useless and I did learn a lot.
I went into 2000s doing enterprise java beans (and Corba code generators in xml) and stupid over architected Java stuff with everything XML (and XSLT). We wrote our own db which stored XML (but was mostly in memory), our own frontend language in XML. All with Java under it.
Our own fairly comprehensive application server with all kinds of ready made components; we sold a lot of licenses and in the end the company for a lot to a big vendor who immediately threw it all away.
But yes, we drank all the koolaid and it was good timing of course, just all very stodgy, especially as the system and the clients grew; we did the same large sized applications as we (other ‘we’ but still me) do now, but with far more people and far worse processes. The first years we had zip file version control (until moving to csv and then svn), tests, what are those? And more like that.
In hindsight, I would’ve skipped Java until Clojure, or skipped it altogether. I was very good at Common Lisp and c/c++ and liked all those things better. But I was convinced somehow that all that was going to die because of Java.
Common Lisp, true or not, was known as an AI language and died because it was attached to the AI winter.
C++ was killed by Java for a lot of business software, including at my company. It won what I call the 80/20 battle, meaning it gave you 80% of what the old technology gave you for 20% of the hassle. You still had OO, but didn’t have to worry about pass by reference vs. pass by value, interfaces got you out of the multiple inheritance diamond problem, and garbage collection of course. Do you think if your application server was in Common Lisp or Perl that it would have sold for a lot?
Other losers of the 80/20 battles, Java over C++, XML over SGML, JSON over XML.
Cobra…shudder. Oh and COM, don’t forget COM. My greatest accomplishments in my career were avoiding going into management and avoiding COM.
COM I missed completely: we drank the Windows hatred koolaid popular in some circles back then too (Borg Gates etc), management I did for a bit thinking I would like it; I didn’t.
Easy. A nonexistent one. If you didn't need money, why would you be seeking a job?
> would you contribute towards making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated?
How does a job contribute to 'society'? Who works to contribute to society? What company exists to 'contribute to society'?
Has 'hacker' news become so cynical to believe one's existence is about finding a job?
It’s not hard to understand the spirit of his question.
If your answer is none, that’s great, I think the follow up sermon was unnecessary.
Agreed. That's why I answered as I did.
> If your answer is none, that’s great, I think the follow up sermon was unnecessary.
You proved it was necessary. Might want to look into why you are getting so defensive. Seems like I touched a nerve.
A "no" suffices. And in fact, is valuable, as it feeds the secondary implicit survey you allude to.
Personally, that's my answer. My public contribution would be in archival, I'd edit a lot of wiki pages. But it would be driven by my interest, not practicality, so it would be mostly useless to society at large. Most of my time would actually be consumed by personal stuff for my friend groups.
The question to ask is what kind of people you want to create? It is perhaps a bit arrogant to think one can upgrade such a complex device. It can be a modest modification tho. Then you find ways to push society in that direction. You probably wont move mountains but we work with what we have. This nudging might involve a company depending on where we are going.
I doubt one could contribute to society directly.
Calling it a job is just our nutty vocabulary. The ancient Greeks would probably call it leisure.
I had some pretty good ideas for myself but the problem I kept running into is that people are so fucking unimaginative and nihilistic that they get angry if they cant have their cynical 3 seconds glory of "I told you it wouldn't work"
I would study to get as much as possible formal education myself in economics, law, marketing / psychology and politics and I would try to improve peoples' lives through politics.
I would develop the most useful side projects I put on hold.
Back then if you wanted to do something where you actually "needed money" you might as well give up right away.
I guess it's a little bit like it is now that inflation has pushed anything like that out of reach for so many people who were closing in on leveraging those type abilities just a few years ago. Fortunately it's not as bad yet as it was in the 1970's.
There was no other option but to get more progress accomplished using less resources.
Especially monetary resources, this can be some of the hardest to come by, even well-heeled people can just sometimes be so greedy.
One cost that was skyrocketing so badly was energy, and it doesn't even move the needle if you can't get your consumption down to about 10% of what average consumers use. It's not easy and it takes years living within your means, working within your means, even when you do not have the cash flow of an average consumer, you can end up quite early not feeling at all like you need more money to make maximum progress compared to some very well-financed operations.
Of course some money is essential but it's good over the long term not to have an ongoing perceived feeling of shortage over what you don't have, that can be the more limiting factor.
I would say questions like this "Ask HN" are something that comes up often for more mainstream technical operators. So many are mainly working for a paycheck and money is always on their mind.
It's been so many decades and times of less-than-average money have not been a limitation on my rate of progress, operating within my means.
At the other end of the spectrum, for those who might be interested in energy projects that people would love, no matter how much money you have, I've got something you can't afford ;)
- writing non-fiction and fiction - making original music and podcasts - developing educational hardware/software projects - developing my own programming languages - continuing to refine and catalog our large home library - gardening and transitioning towards growing more of our own food.
I'd spend much more time involved with my kids since my wife and I already homeschool, but I can't put very much time into it now.
Unfortunately the time and space limits means I don't even have the time to finish my very long TODO list on my own car.
Would spend my time building an organization that helps people get dev roles, kind of like a recruiter agency, but if the person isn't getting jobs because of their experience, we give them the platform to gain the experience they need to be successful in the job market.
Would work on helping eSports athletes to make a living playing the game they love. Dunno how that'd even work yet but that'd be something I'd like to work on.
Staying with eSports, trying to 'Moneyball' FGC games. How do we track stats & data for fighting games and extract meaningful metrics we can use to improve players skills. Would want to do this for other games but there seems to be work going on there so it'd probably be best to start with fighting games where that work might not be happening.
What an interesting question; thank you for asking it!
What I would spend my time working on...I guess I would continue with what I have been doing the past 15 years.
- continue working on improving my character
- fixing my past mistakes and learn from them
- enrich my knowledge with topics I may find interesting at any time
- learn to forgive and put myself in others' shoes to see their own POV
- embrace life
- appreciate little things; such as a smile, a hug, a kiss
In a world where nobody had to worry about money, I think we’d have trouble getting enough people together to work on a very good CPU. And I don’t know enough to do it on my own. But I think I’d enjoy tinkering with it, even if I got a very poor result.
Or, in the spirit of less trail-blazing, OpenSPARC T2 is GPLv3 <https://www.oracle.com/servers/technologies/opensparc-t2-pag...> and OpenPOWER is Apache 2 <https://github.com/OpenPOWERFoundation/a2o>
- Polishing my personal website[1], and going back to blogging.
- Figuring out trading signals[2] and algorithms, testing via paper trading.
- An API[3] to verify YC company and founders.
- Monitoring my investment portfolio, re-balance once or twice a year.
- Mentoring AI/ML engineers and leaders. Free 30-min intro call[4].
- Various indie projects that are under research or haven't been launched... :)
[1]: https://ivylee.github.io/
[2]: https://www.signalstalk.com/
At home id setup a shop with a 3d printer, laser cutter, cnc machine, power tools, etc. And I’d spend my free time just making all sorts of fun stuff.
This would help create buzz and intrigue with the objective to attract top talent and essentially the seed money to self funded a hybrid medusa that is studying "organic 3D printers" with the objective of being the "Manhattan project" size of integrating nature into the manufacturing process.
I am rather inward and only care about myself and my family.
But that's a completely different question from the one in the title. My ideal job and what I'd do if I didn't need money are two very different things.
If I didn't need money, I'd have more time to do the things I already do when I'm not "on the clock", so I'd do more of them.
> would you contribute towards making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated?
Yes, absolutely. I already do. But I'd also be able to spend more time expanding my knowledge and skillset, having fun, and other such stuff with no direct connection with improving the world.
I am convinced a better alternative to the execrable SQL would significantly raise developer productivity.
If that didn't work out I'd lie on the couch, get fat(ter) and read philosophy and history. Less meaningful but still a pretty good life.
As of now, I'd split my time between a couple of things:
(1) In winter and autumn, become a part-time psychologist to help reduce some of the mental pain that people go through.
(2) In spring and summers, go for weeks-long hikes in nature, become a part-time hiking guide in the mountains. Help maintain the trails, mountain-hut infrastructure, and take people on hikes. Simply, be more in nature.
Luckily, today I can still enjoy some of these: study cognitive science as a hobby, and hike in nature in my free time.
I know all of us have these quaint answers about all the noble or fulfilling things we would do, but the data doesn't seem to support that.
Not to mention survivorship bias, the ones that reach that kind of wealth like money more than (other people's) life itself, often quite literally.
I've traveled a lot and sometimes the splurge is really worth it. Often, it's not unless the money involved is just pocket lint to the person.
On the other hand, the rest of us, the 98.7% of people who are only working for the paycheck that allows us to do the other things we actually want to do instead of our jobs. The extent to which we work is the extent to which we must pay for those needs. Remove the need to work, and we wouldn't be working anymore—not at those jobs, anyway.
What I'm saying is, I believe non-generational billionaires are weird outliers, and we can ignore them for the purposes of this question.
I think this is microcosim of our wider economy. If it is, output is going to fall off a cliff, soon.
My pet project these days is "nothing to WikiHouse": DIY a minimally viable 3D printer, print a bigger 3D printer on it (e.g. Voron), print a CNC machine (LowRider CNC V3), and use it to cut the house sheets.
In the first, I would keep working and enjoy life. In the latter, I would use it to help others. Specifically investing in technologies, companies, and public policy that helps people with disabilities and make their lives easier; better jobs, housing, everyday life, etc.
I really dislike how most software in large corporations degrades over time and increases in complexity. Some pockets are better than others, and there are momentary improvements to bad software, but entropy eventually sets in.
I would build org-wide ratchet mechanisms that make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing.
In the downtime I would go hard on learning a bunch of instruments well - piano, violin, and hopefully voice.
Been active most of my life and plan to do more of it - mountain-biking, racquet sports, skiing, etc.
My kids will be in their teens, and I hope to focus more on them and prepare them for life.
Get involved in the local community, and help less fortunate people. I do this mainly by contributing money but I hope to give time.
Travel - Not as a tourist which I've done for most of my life, but as a true explorer of cultures.
I am currently factually volunteering to a project in CERN that needs full-time attention, but unfortunately I need to feed myself and my family so I work at daytime as a full-time Software(Data) Engineer. I spent whatever time I find (mostly nights) doing science. I do hope I will manage to deliver new NN method I experiment now. This has a lifelong meaning for me.
Asking because my web developer wife, who happened to have majored in art and philosophy, is currently unemployed and kinda bummed about it.
Only sort of joking; I have no idea what the economics of a small YouTube/Nebula channel look like and I suspect it's one of those things with a tiny minority of people whose work ends up being net positive and a long tail of others who break even or lose money.
I'd like to think I'd take better care of myself, but given I know this should be the priority now... I'm being realistic.
I'll forever be angry how I had to min/max skills like this to break out of poverty. Making things accessible to others is my dream.
I'd work on house projects, too. I'd redo our flooring right out of the gate if I had more time. I did it in my previous home and enjoyed both the process and the outcome.
I still love programming, I started when I was single digits and am now in my 40s. I've been doing it professionally for just about 20 years now. But I'm frankly tired of digital everything at this point in my life. I have been filling my personal life with offline and analog hobbies and with every passing year I wish I could spend even less time in front of a computer.
Once self sustaining will branch into angel investing as well but trying to focus in one big thing at a time.
I just absolutely love startups and helping people bring their ideas to life.
In the lottery jackpot/UBI scenario where money is no concern at all I'd camp, fish, read books, and drink whisky.
In the need a job, but every job will pay my asking salary scenario, I'd make software like I do now, but probably for a smaller, less bureaucratic company.
What would you do if you don't worry about money AND law enforcement?
What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money, or opposition, and the sky itself wasn’t even the limit.
- It is MANDATORY to receive STEM education up to undergraduate level AND pass several tests unless you are proved to be unfit by more than one independent medical institutions;
- A commission consists of global scientific and engineering elites dictate what scientific humans should pursue in the next X years. So for example it could be Space exploration, etc;
- All basic needs are free. Food, housing, clothing, transportation, entertainment etc are free. But any extravagant material (e.g. a family of 3 wants a 3,000 s.f. detached house with a 2-acre land? That's extravagant) is expensive and may require extraordinary contribution to Science or Engineering;
- All other resources are poured into research and development of above mentioned scientific pursuits;
- We don't really need a monetary system because most of the basic needs are free. Instead we have a "contribution point" system. Detail to be revealed;
I could probably go on and on but that's the basic ideas.
so it seems like your vision would be to maximize understanding of the universe, which i agree with, because that is like the ultimate thing that makes sense to do in order for our species to survive for the longest amount of time possible.
- Extraordinary scientists and engineers usually don't like management, so eventually management goes into the "managers". The rest is history.
- How can we make sure that ordinary people have a say? In my model I frankly dismiss their right to rule because they cannot compete with the elite scientists.
But again maybe this is still better than what we have today. Imagine the whole society functioning as a huge university. Sure you get corruption and cronyism in universities too, but at least if you mess up something and if you get caught, you will be shunned.
That being said I'm pretty close to my dream job
(1) Convince car manufacturers to add a battery port in the trunk. They can make smaller cars with 100 mile range which covers >98%[2] of the trips and anyone who needs more can rent extra batteries from their nearest retailers. Fast chargers don't work, queueing theory explains why: What happens when you add a new teller? [0]. Fast chargers won't work because we have to solve for the peak case, which is a third of US population driving during Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Spring break, etc. Cars with smaller batteries will be cheaper, lighter and far more importantly we can make 3X the cars from the same battery materials. There will be a lone commenter who will complain that EV doesn't work for him, because he commutes every week from Miami to Seattle, but EVs work for most people's driving habits.
(2) Convince retailers to build battery banks, they can charge for free (or get paid for charging when electricity prices go negative!) and (a) rent fully charge batteries (b) participate in virtual power plants replacing natural gas, they can make bank[1]. This also increases their foot traffic, most of the big retail chains operate gas stations anyways as loss leaders. Batteries for rent will be extremely profitable, in addition to adding foot traffic.
(3) Change residential building codes to require 240V outlets in the garage, heat pump water heater, heat pump furnace, induction stove, solar panels, or better yet solar shingles. Solar shingles are coming up, may not be cost effective today, but probably soon? Also make the main panel and circuitry future proof -- home can be powered by vehicle (V2H - no need to generator for emergencies) and also V2G so everyone can participate in VPP.[2] I've already started working on this.
(4) Change commercial (anything non-residential) building code to require conduit before paving parking lot. Doesn't need to add EV chargers, but that makes the parking lot future proof, can make 10%, 20% or 100% of it EV ready whenever.
With (3) and (4) all new construction is energy efficient, future proof. People who buy these homes can have zero energy bills as well as make money from VPP.
(5) Everyone complains about high home prices. We see spirited discussions on HN once or twice a week. Convince builders to build homes to standards (#3 above) that make the old homes entirely undesirable to most people. There can be a huge building boom (builders benefit from this), very low sales of old homes, stopping the growth of home prices. Convince people to stop buying old homes.
(6) Work with cities on providing free charging at schools, parks, libraries and all city owned infrastructure.
(7) Work with HOAs/communities to build chargers in HOA managed parks, these are 10 - 100x more than city parks.
(8) Put shareholder resolutions to make companies either offer (a) fully remote (b) free charging.
(9) Put shareholder resolutions at Restaurants and Retailers to offer free charging. This is a win-win, they get high quality foot traffic, traffic that stays at least 30 mins.
I'm in my 40s, I think these are important and solvable problems, nothing more I'd love than working on these. Better yet, teach the younger generation on how to work on these. We can't change the world by thinking about fossil fuel led COP summits, Govts, but we can change by making decisions on where we live, work and shop. Gradually, then suddenly, everything will change for the better.
[0] https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/10/21/what-happens-when-... [1] https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo... [2] 98 percent of all single-trip journeys were under 50 miles in length: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/03/more-than-half-of-a...
Just look to your VC darlings, how many of them "don't need money"? By definition, all of them, and yet, what are they spending their time on? Making even more money, of course.
HN really is a cesspit of financial pillaging apologists...
I wouldn’t contribute much on a greater scale, I’d just be happy making art in my immediate community, and making food for my family and friends.
When/if I get to FIRE I'll be farm focused.
Some of my work is visible in https://WebPKI.substack.com
I have a pretty steadfast confidence by this point in my life that free markets usually converge over the long term to the best outcomes for all. So I have no real plans to stop reaping the fruits of my own increasingly-specialized labor, until medical reasons or something force me out of it.
For good food and fun.
Kinda simcity meets train scheduling
I love gaming!
I think that most problems in "society" stem from people losing track of these things.
Maybe doing something with biogas, CO2 capture
I'd likely go work for someplace better with more resources and a goal I find more interesting than my current work. Or I'd be a crazy inventor type building new machines and technologies in the garage.
I actually think about this question a lot. Thinking about all of the inventions that I or innumerable other engineers might have built, might have changed the world with, if only they had the resources to pursue mad science. It's pretty sad.
I would probably do more on that front than I currently am on the side. It's some balance of actually persisting knowledge in super-durable formats, and persisted knowledge in computer systems (Internet Archive, Arctic Code Vault, LibGen/Anna's Archive)
For dog training, most people have no idea how to treat their animals (lots of shitty "folk wisdom" and pseudoscience in that area), so I would be doing both them and their owners a service.
Would probably run a dog-retreat and charge enough for some beer money, but that's it.
> would you contribute towards making society more rational, healthy, and well-coordinated?
Can't really do that, unless society is willing to do so themselves. It's hard enough to change 1 person's mind on an issue, and nearly impossible to help someone who doesn't want the help.
Volunteer full time at my church.
The currency to play video games would be some sort of educational math and reading rabbit type games. After doing some lessons they d be able to go back and play video games for a set amount of time.
Gardening.
Currently, I’ve been on a sabbatical for two years. In that time, I’ve spent a good amount traveling and living in other areas. I’m living in NYC mostly rather than SF.
I’m interested in having a family and have been single for a few years. So, that’s why I moved to NYC. I simply couldn’t meet enough single women back in SF. The ratio is really bad in SF. In NYC it’s tolerable. (Check out census data - table b12002)
That’s what I would do because it’s what I’ve done. I’d spend all my free time looksmaxxing and looking for a partner. It’s not a trivial task. I offered my closest friends in SF over $500k if they introduced me to my future wife but no one could even think of a single woman they knew who was single. I wasn’t being facetious - I was 100% willing to offer that matchmaker fee but they knew there was no one. Thus, I had to move and here I am.
It’s better but hard to find someone who is marriage material here. Also, the standards women have here are outlandish given what they bring to the table. I’ve met several women who don’t even make $100k who demand a millionaire husband - lol. That level of delusion is just commonplace.
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