InterimNew

So I would send the entirety of the information to every newsroom that could receive it, then pray that I: A) was not the only initial recipient of the Epstein drop and B) that the information I received doesn't contain any content that could be uniquely identified to me.

Afterwards I would sit down and have a long think about how my life got to the point where Epstein is communicating with me personally.

It's not clear to me that free software is any more essential to a free society than libraries are. Which is to say, it's a clear public good but that's not a compelling reason to position it as a requirement for a free society. I would very much appreciate if you could expand on why it is childish to believe otherwise.

Look, there's free software that I absolutely love like Vim, but unless things have drastically changed in the past 12 months many open source "alternatives" trail their paid alternatives in features and ease of use. I would choose open source applications if they could demonstrate a superior experience, but I'm unwilling to jump over hurdles for promises of quality that have yet to materialize.

For instance, I agree that Adobe's model is just awful, but Procreate is miles ahead of Gimp so I'd rather give those devs thirty bucks as a one time fee over using free software that is less enjoyable or expedient for my work. That's the crux of it really: for most people computing is a means to an end so it makes sense that users optimize their choices around results rather than ideals about the future of computing.

Also, what you've described doesn't sound like a better economy at all from where I'm sitting. I love not being a sole proprietor or part of a small dev shop. It's great being able to go home on a Friday and know that if anything comes up over the weekend that someone else will handle it. It's equally great knowing that I have the resources of a large company and the combined expertise of a massive pool of employees. I would certainly be less happy as a consultant, independent developer, or entrepreneur.

$28.6k - 401k contributions & match

$112k - RSUs after tax

$14k - Monthly emergency fund contributions from paycheck (yearly total)

~$16k - Bonus after tax

My expenses really haven’t increased in line with the compensation. The picture would look different if I had a family, but I’m in my late 20s. I suppose I could eat high quality sushi daily, but I’ll settle for weekly.

I'm sorry, how was I supposed to read that? If someone tells you that they lack experience, it is entirely within the pale to comment on or draw conclusions from their lack of experience.

And no, I do not want to measure your genitalia. That doesn't have any place on Hacker News.

I saw somewhere else in the thread that you yourself are a new grad, so I'll chalk this up to lack of experience but on sufficiently large products it is trivial to make incremental changes that will produce more value then your salary. In my own career I saved a big tech company 250k in reoccurring costs with a 9 month project I completed as a junior. Yes, that number is a rounding error for a large company but the value is clear.

Additionally, perhaps you have never built a team before, but the value of a potential employee extends beyond their year-to-year output. If, for example, I have great confidence that a currently junior hire will output ~$1M of value over a four year period than I am willing to overpay that first year as they grow and develop.

This isn't going anywhere interesting and I am uninterested in continuing the conversation further. Have a nice day :)

(There is a certain irony to me about this back and forth. A large portion of my personal time is spent volunteering in an organization that agitates for unions and other forms of direct action aimed at tackling the gross inequity of this society head-on. You're clearly keyed in to a real and present problem, but rather than suggest any solutions you've decided to whinge ineffectively about... developer salaries?)

It may not have been your intent, but your comment has (at least on my read) an accusatory tone. You ask a number of rhetorical questions which indicate that you have low-regard for the work of the engineers in question.

You appear to be doubling down on this with your recent comment.

Why so defensive

Calling someone defensive because they disagree with you is uncivil and a great way to start an argument. In the most literal sense of the word, my comment offers some justification for these salaries because yours appears to discredit them.

If the discrepancy between engineering salaries and research/teaching/nursing salaries is bothersome then perhaps the blame should be placed on the economic environment that has produced this result, not the twenty-somethings that are accepting great compensation.

I’ve been spending a lot of time over at https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/index.php recently. It’s THE forum for modular synthesis in all forms and for me it really scratches the hacker/musician/tinkerer itch.

I was actually really heartened to see this article on HN because slow mornings have been life changing for me. Spending 3 quiet hours in the morning on my own pursuits has been wildly mood elevating. Plus, I usually use one of those hours to read about tech (although HN is banned from my morning hours). Five hours of study a week is easily ~240 hours of spaced repetition even if you miss a few weeks, and I would bet good money that it's more studying than the vast majority of my coworkers.

Balance is thriving in SF/SV from what I can see.

From a software perspective I’d also recommend Ableton, it strikes a fantastic balance between providing an intuitive workspace and letting the user shape the environment to their preferences.

That said if you want to make music, software/hardware is the smallest part of the process.

For a beginner I’d recommend learning the basics of music theory and synthesis, and then spending a lot of time starting and finishing tracks in a limited environment.

If you enjoy your iPad, I really recommend Auxy. The app gives you just enough freedom to explore your ideas, while being streamlined enough that you won’t waste hours twiddling knobs on effects chains. Plus it can export to Ableton if you want to flesh out your tracks at a later date.

Ableton actually has a great resource for beginners[1], as well as a good resource for the basics of synthesis[2]. If you find you enjoy learning about synths then I’d also recommend the Syntorial iPad app. It’s an exhaustively comprehensive, interactive course on subtractive synthesis. It’s worth it for the ear training alone, imo.

Most importantly, start making bad music. I believe we all have a certain number of bad beats/tracks in us, and the best way to learn is to get them out. You’ll improve way more from churning through your first hundred songs than from setting up the perfect DAW.

Happy noodling.

1.https://learningmusic.ableton.com/ 2.https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

After relocating for college and again for work, I have family across four timezones and friends even farther abroad. In my experience, nothing short of a flight bridges that distance better than video calling. I can see my mother's eyes light up when we haven't spoken in a while, my younger brother can hold up his latest pair of sneakers to the camera while he geeks out about them, and watching my best friend's new puppy bounce around his apartment is much more interesting than hearing it bark in the background.

I'll probably make a FaceTime call 3-4 times a week, which from observation and casual conversation appears to be a similar frequency to the rest of my friend group (mostly coastal millennials, largely Bay Area + NYC, ages 24-31).

With regards to the eye repositioning I agree with the grandparent poster. All captured images are reproductions of reality, and if I were to place this one on a spectrum between corrective glass elements for lens distortion and cat-person filters I would say it's much closer to the former. In my opinion the correction captures the intent of the user, and I feel that's truthful enough.

The moral response seems to be to intervene rather than let someone commit suicide, regardless of how long it takes.

[1]https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664

At this point I would be somewhat saddened to move away from a network I've been building for ~15 years.

I've just tested this on iOS 12.2.

While you can't swipe to queue, you can force-touch on a song to bring up the quick menu, and then release over 'play-next'. A different gesture, but still a single gesture/tap.