CommenterPerson

Good post, Thank you. May I say Dead, Toxic Internet? With social media adding the toxicity. The Enshittification theory by Cory Doctorow sums up the process of how this unfolds (look it up on Wikipedia).

Great, my 20 year old car is now avant-garde!

"The Emperor of All Maladies" by Siddartha Mukhejee.

He is a medical doctor, researcher .. plus writes great science / medical books. This one won a Pulitzer prize. Check out his other books "The song of the Cell" and "The Gene". The books take some work to read but every page is a treat.

To the author: was there an open process to move to another role within your previous company? That could be another path to finding a better environment where one could grow in salary and responsibility?

You are special. There are lots and lots of "software engineers" in the world. Very very few can bring scientific experience and knowledge to the job. I might look for a developer role in a large university project where they need programming skills and scientific rigor. Or a R&D person in a large software company or the government . These kinds of jobs aren't listed on Indeed or Monster. Attend conferences related to your field (don't attend the talks, hang around in the lobby and chat with people). Reach out to professors in your university or your field.

All the Best!

Hear hear. The word "Technology" has also been redefined to mean computer or phone stuff. As a real (manly) engineer, this pisses me off no end! :-)

To answer the OP, this Civil engineering blog / video site is really good. I always learn something new, and his enthusiasm is infectious. Well worth giving it a look:

https://practical.engineering/

Knowing SQL, and knowing how to optimize queries has pretty much paid my paycheck for 20 years.

The $445 million campaign contribution / bribe from Big Oil is clearly paying off.

I ordered a basic Windows laptop, it comes with Windows 11. It's going to be my Linux starter computer. I'm not a computer person. Wish me luck!

Firstly, Thank you to the entire DuckDuckGo team. DuckDuckGo is the browser I use most all the time. Any product that stops or reduces tracking and surveillance capitalism, I am happy to use and support.

Do you have plans to build an email service without the tracking? Would love to hear thoughts about this. There may be users willing to pay a small monthly fee for this.

We had driven to a small remote village on Vancouver Island BC, to catch an early morning ferry. We had reserved a room at the only motel in town. We got there around 9PM. The a*h** owner ignored the doorbell and did not let us in (we could see him moving around in his attached residence). We went to a restaurant that was just about closing, told our story, and asked the owners if there were any options. Their friend, who was hanging around there overheard us .. he invited us to come over to his house and spend the night. The next day he insisted on buying us a wonderful breakfast.

When we got back home after the long trip, we sent him a nice sweatshirt with "New Jersey" on it.

Yay for the Aussie government. Hope the sociopath tech bros take notice and clean up their toxic products. And the little tech bros protesting here.

The Aussies passed strict gun control laws in 1996 .. suicides and homicides decreased significantly. Another field where we Leaders of the Free world (or not) can learn from the "World down under"!

Well. Good that you were revived and shared your experience with us!

Being born can be compared to a one in billions lottery win. We're given this time. "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". I hope you get to feel more positive about being around.

My belief is, when you're gone, you're gone. All this religion and quantum mechanics speculation about coming back is wishful thinking (it's one reason religion is so powerful. It's very hard and scary to comprehend our non existence. Religion provides a nice candy wrapped solution to all that.)

I shop at Walmart and Costco. The customers at the Costco appear much better off, but they seem much more arrogant and inconsiderate. They leave carts in the middle of the aisle, talk on phones with their families blocking the way, and so forth. Same behavior in the parking lots. Maybe it's because Costco is always packed. The shoppers at the Walmart definitely look less well off. They are much more respectful and considerate of others. I like shopping at the Walmart more.

The big revenue isn't going to come from improvements in coding, or writing better emails, or protein folding. It's going to come from more seductive and compelling ads (using all the data vacuumed up from your apps and your psychological profile).

Nice Work!

I found our credit union posts the mortgage rates clearly on a plain text like page. There's no BS and no games. Whereas with the big banks, you get the games and higher rates .. no matter if they have records of 10 years of your salary deposits. When I tried to suggest credit unions to friends, I got looks. Like, people just assume what everyone else does (get conned by big banks) is good.

The charges you mention are likely all from hospitals. How about Pluvicto for advanced prostate cancer at $42,500 per monthly dose? All the players are in on it.

The sound way to manage costs and avoid these games is via Medicare for all, with premiums paid by progressive rate taxation of income. Maybe even wealth beyond a very large amount.

Had the same reaction when I saw how the 40K was calculated (BTW I strongly believe in Medicare for all to control costs and to pay for civilization. To be paid out of progressive taxes on all income).

If Aaronontheweb had the misfortune of getting seriously sick, required surgery .. he would pay $7,150 for something that could easily cost $100K+++. Saying he's paying premiums just for having a baby really feels like weaselly logic .. so he thinks he or the rest of his family will absolutely never fall sick? What if a cancer diagnosis hits one of you out of the blue (I hope it doesn't, but that's what insurance is for).

I use an older Garmin, purchased from ebay. Works fine, updated maps via a laptop recently. Needed an extra SD cards for space.

For me personally, indoor plumbing wins hands down. If you took society at large, I'd suggest the answer is still indoor plumbing .. the amount of disease and excess deaths would overrule surveillance capitalism easily.

Firstly, Good work.

Ironical but one HN front page item today is this: "Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports"

Glad you're leaving, hopefully you're in a good place financially. Take a page from Bill Gates and work on something that attempts to improve society. Stay away from surveillance capitalism and enshittification.

Maybe someone is tailgating it. And it's trying to annoy them by speeding up, then slowing down.

There seem to be so many fudge factors in the whole chain of analysis we won't have an idea until we can make vastly improved measurements.

Let's go even further back. Why not to when we were wearing skins and foraging for food. Or even further, when we were plain slime.

Sorry about this. This hairsplitting is common on HN comment threads. We lose track of the main theme and nitpick at great length on some word.

.. A grateful F-Droid supporter and user.

Words words words. I'm addressing the commenters there. The OP is 100% correct.

Please show up peacefully at the next No Kings. Take some small steps and do something.

Already in their future plans I can see the seeds of enshittification. I loved Arduino and built many projects with it. Hoping I am wrong about their future.

Found this fascinating, not just due to the plans of another billionaire. One, even if that project seemed more feasible, it shows the risks of depending on one person's whims for a very large project. What if they, you know, changed their mind? Two, a sum of 100 million was regularly mentioned, however the actual money spent was a small fraction. This seems to have parallels with talk of "billions" being invested, or spent, or earned -- the actual may be in funny money. People are entranced until the next distraction, and the next.

I do banking, bill paying, etc from a laptop. I have the minimum number of apps on phone, mostly from Fdroid, plus Uber (my location turned off except the rare occasions when I need to call uber).

It's highly likely that payments to Middle East are actively tracked. Because "terrsts" /s. So people may be reluctant to enter into business dealings.

1. Ask yourself what kinds of things you really enjoy doing deep down inside. This is going to matter in the long term. You did mention you liked programming, but was that triggered by the glamor and promise?

2. Assuming that it is still to do with computers. A software business does not have to be about building products and selling them. I imagine in Iraq (or where ever you are) there are many small businesses and non-technical people who need their computers maintained and repaired (example, this guy has posted on HN and has a small business that does this : https://www.scottrlarson.com/services/computer/repair/ .. I am not affiliated in any way with him). You might need to hit the street, ignore the fear / embarrassment / rejection, and cold call or cold visit businesses. If only 1% of the people are going to turn into customers, get the other 99% out of the way, faster the better.

3. Teaching positions may not pay well but may pay the bills while you work to build a career or business.

You country was devastated by an illegal war. Rebuilding will take a lot of time and courage. Wish you all the best.