Consultant32452

If a lot of money is involved, it's only a matter of time before all oversight is corrupt. Similarly, you can safely assume all data that is on an important (big money) topic is fake.

A website was taken down. This might technically violate some paperwork law, but the real problem is we don't actually prosecute war crimes/human rights violations. So what difference does it make if some website went down?

There's no moral equivalency between the US directly torturing prisoners of war/assassinating its own citizens and a website being taken down.

I don't see how anything has changed in a meaningful way. George Bush "tortured some folks" and Obama assassinated US citizens abroad. The status quo is literal evil and Trump is behaving in accordance with the status quo.

2022 challenger srt hellcat redeye. I absolutely love it.

I recently bought a fancy muscle car with all that crap integrated into the infotainment system. I explained to the sales guy that I WANTED to keep this car for the rest of my life but was concerned that wouldn't be possible. In 10 years it may literally be impossible to find a phone that will connect via the USB/bluetooth to the infotainment system. We may all be using something completely different. Not to mention, no one will be manufacturing replacements for that infotainment system if it ever craps out.

You can go buy a 50 year old muscle car and upgrade the radio to something kind of modern. But that won't be possible with my car 50 years from now. It's too integrated.

The sales guy had clearly never considered this issue before.

Cash for clunkers destroyed mountains of cars which increased pollution and forced a bunch of people up the food chain with regard to competition for used cars.

The infotainment system on my car can make changes to the suspension. Can change from street to track mode and even has a launch mode I can initiate for starting a timed 0-60, etc.

I can also put the car into valet mode so it won’t go fast. If I forget the valet mode password I am told I have to buy a very expensive replacement because it can’t be unlocked by a dealer.

The rule of thumb is if something has a cost and persists over time it must have some benefit even if we don’t understand what that is. Otherwise, creatures not paying the cost will outcompete over time.

the average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe. ~H.L. Mencken

The bad guys will say you only need privacy if you’re guilty and the plebs will lap it up

Most workers enjoy being emotionally manipulated by their employers.

A friend of mine was gushing because their new employer sent some chocolates to everyone at Christmas time. They felt “appreciated”.

At my shop employees had to RTO but us consultants are still remote. I suspect this is exactly what it looks like.

Executives have done all manner of things which reduced productivity. Hoteling alone must have cost billions in lost focus.

They’re suspicious of work from home because employees like it. If they were concerned about productivity they’d make deals where you can work from home but have to work 10% more hours or something to make up for whatever imagined productivity was lost.

The elites have put themselves in a position where the two main options are the sentiment above or Luigi Mangione. It honestly scares me a bit what's coming.

I agree the empire is in a very dangerous place because it has expanded the labor force more rapidly than it has expanded supply of jobs. This is an existential risk to the empire.

We have flooded the STEM market with foreign workers. Sometimes we don't even give the foreign workers real jobs, we pretend they are "grad students" and pay them a pittance doing high level science at the universities. I generally like all the foreign folks I've worked with, but they are definitely suppressing the wages of natives to an insane degree.

I would argue the purpose of public education is directionally to attempt to level the playing field between people who start with a lot and people who start with a little. And in this regard, it is an absolute failure. People sometimes attribute public schooling to helping someone "escape poverty" or whatever, but I think it's mostly IQ and big 5 personality traits. And it's extremely unfortunate that both of those appear to be largely genetic.

Here's a real brain bender. Let's assume it takes approximately average IQ to understand basic algebra, so approximately 100 IQ. Half of the population has less than that IQ. Squinting really hard and making things up, something like 40% of the population is intellectually incapable of understanding exponential growth and decay. So how can it be legal/ethical for them to sign a contract to get a credit card or a mortgage if they literally cannot understand it? That's just one example. Once you crack this egg open, it breaks a lot of things required for modern society to function.

I've been advised by my ChatGPT lawyer to say "No."

I have no incentive to delete bad code and replace it with good code when doing megacorp work. For things I own, it's situational.

If we started prosecuting CEOs who don't meet goals/expectations, they'd all be in prison. You have to prove Elon was intentionally lying, which I suspect many on this forum are sympathetic to that view, but in a fair court system that is a difficult standard. You'd have to have emails or some other hard evidence where he acknowledges he knows he's being untruthful. Short of that kind of evidence coming out, they are most likely going after him for political reasons.

Unless you want to get into a pure management position, the most senior (pay) technical resource is almost always a consultant. And you can give yourself the promotion to consultant any time you want. And when you're a consultant, job hopping is the expectation.

There is always an aspect of luck in everything. Also, the kinds of social skills which help you weed out bad potential employers and bad potential employees (when hiring) are likely learnable.

At one company I worked at someone had been fired for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company didn't even press charges. I guess the PR issue wasn't worth it. Wild.

I was amused by the fact that in the same week that AI generated fake nudes of Taylor Swift was hitting news headlines another AI tool which puts clothes on e-girls pics also popped up on my radar.

The internet is amazing and stupid.

The closest I've heard of to something like this is some autist creates a low cost mesh internet connection for his neighborhood, then you could use VOIP on top of that.

If that's true, then no one should be watching TV anyways.

It also gives the parents an excuse to limit their children.

"I'm not being mean, it's the law."

The form of government is irrelevant compared to the culture that is being governed.

Japanese cities are incredible because the Japanese culture demands safety, cleanliness and beauty. You could make just about any change to the form of government you want and the result will be the same.

Depending on how you slice this problem, you will get a different result.

If you slice it up per mile traveled, airplanes win.

If you slice it up per trip taken, driving wins.

If you slice it up per hour spent traveling, driving and flying are about the same. (according to the book Freakonomics)

Flying is very safe. The statement "flying is safer than driving" is industry propaganda to help appease fears of flying. They cherry-picked the statistic that made them look best and flooded the whole world with it.

If you had a magic genie and you made your one wish to replace all passenger vehicle trips with commercial airline flights, including quick trips to the grocery store, you would kill a lot of extra people.

Because the idea that airplane travel is safer than passenger vehicle travel is propaganda/marketing. Flying is safe, but in practical terms the sentence "flying is safer than driving" is not only nonsensical but also false.

If you could magically replace every passenger vehicle trip with a commercial airline flight, including the quick trips down the street to the grocery store, there would be more fatalities. Because, statistically, flying is less safe per trip.

The reason why flying is safer for long trips is because the "danger window" of a flight is generally takeoff and landing, while the "danger window" for driving is basically the whole drive.

You can slice this another way. In the book Freakonomics, they discuss that "per hour spent traveling" the passenger vehicle and the airplane are approximately the same risk level.