NilMostChill

I can full stack dev, i choose not to because i don't like the current state of the front end ecosystem but that's a preference not a limitation.

I can also do devops, standard sysops, data engineering/analytics to a degree and some other misc stuff.

I would absolutely not expect that to be a *requirement* to be a member of a functional team.

> Any dev worth their salt can learn enough of a different discipline in the dev field. Or maybe I am biased because I was “raised language agnostic at uni”.

Setting aside the true scottsman of that statement, the technical ability needed to learn other disciplines isn't always the limiting factor.

Not everyone has (or chooses to allocate) the time to keep on top of the multiple sets of ecosystems needed to keep up with all the disciplines, being language agnostic is one the least important parts of being effective in multiple dev disciplines.

It's usage is still changing, obviously , but for me it's a more difficult transition because of the 'deci'

I understand the draw of seeing 'value' as a metric by which to judge things but i don't generally take that approach myself.

I find that what constitutes 'value' is too nebulous a concept on which to place foundations.

That isn't to say it isn't useful and that i don't use it, just that it's less of a core belief than it is a useful tool in some contexts.

To take your example of netflix, youtube and adult content, some may see that kind of entertainment as a valuable contribution to modern society and thus by being the facilitator you are contributing to society as a whole.

Youtube especially is the vehicle for a lot of information dissemination (both good and bad, for whatever metric you use for such things).

Spending that time making a pharmaceutical drug that then gets bought and shelved because it undercuts profit margins on an existing product because of corporate greed means you'd have essentially contributed to profit margins rather than society as a whole.

Or just absorbed my the private medical complex as a whole.

See : Insulin

And i wasn't implying people were owed anything for just existing, i specifically implied they were owed the service that they had paid in to for their whole lives.

Whether or not you are entitled to wage increases in line with inflation isn't the point i was making (the economics behind it are fascinating though), i was saying that the idea that people being negligent as a major contribution to lack of retirements funds is a faulty premise in a lot of cases, because it isn't that they could have and chose not to , it's that they never had the opportunity.

> I don't believed I'm really "owed" much besides the right to life, liberty, private property, and the pursuit of happiness,

I agree with the not owed much sentiment but i can't see how you resolve that with "except these somewhat substantial concepts", especially when you throw "private property" in there.

Working from a baseline you aren't owed anything means you aren't owed those things, you go back to pre-civilisation times, you get what you earn and keep what you can defend.

As soon as you start introducing societal concepts such as the right to liberty or private property then you introduce the idea of societal expectations and obligations, from all included parties, including governing bodies.

Even societies with small tribal numbers had the idea of looking after the elderly to a degree.

> I try to take a very humble approach in evaluating what I'm entitled to

and it seems a very privileged view of how modern society currently 'works'.

A lot of the things you have said are applicable to a specific subset of the population, namely lower-middle to upper-middle class ( the traditional class system is a shitty metric but people know it so... ) .

They don't work for anybody near the poverty line and don't apply to people who are already wealthy.

> I don't necessarily think everyone is capable of becoming a multi-millionaire,

Agreed

> but I do think (almost) everyone is capable of working harder, studying more, watching less TV, buying less "wants" rather than just "needs"

Look up the actual poverty line statistics to see what kind of numbers you are looking at for who can afford "needs".

> (recall that the most prolific purchasers of lottery tickets are the bottom two quintiles)

There is a reason for that and a reason why it's sometimes considered a "poverty tax".

With no good options for upward mobility the idea of a very low chance at changing your life is much more appealing.

People with money don't need to win the lottery, so why would they buy lottery tickets?

> of saving up money diligently, of being more frugal than we are

Partially agreed, see my response about actual poverty statistics.

> Obvious exceptions apply to people with profound mental or physical disabilities, of course, but most of us are not quadriplegics or suffering from severe schizophrenia - and even those kinds of barriers haven't prevented people like Stephen Hawking or Terry Davis from going on to produce profound and noteworthy outputs. Obviously that's not the bar for people suffering from such disabilities, but I think most people are capable of much more than we give them credit for.

How about the ones that aren't actively providing 'value' or are in fact providing negative 'value'?

That is one of the reasons i find 'value' based belief systems, when considering people, to be a weak foundation.

Stephen hawking is a bad example because he was 'valuable' before his disability kicked in fully.

Modern society is set up for the 'average' person, anybody deviating from that average is working from a starting deficit.

> I agree that this is a problem, and simply stripping people of benefits they spent a lifetime paying into is as fundamentally unfair as forcing them to pay into a program with no choice to opt out was. The solution needs to be compassionate, and it logically follows to me that the people calling for radical reform should be the first to offer self-sacrifice to be part of the solution.

Agreed and currently the head of the division in charge of creating and applying those solutions (or deciding to cut existing ones) in the US government thinks empathy is a weakness and is a multi-billionaire.

> I'm a big proponent of allowing everyone to have the option to permanently opt out of receiving benefits for life from these programs, in exchange for a small tax credit or deduction to offset the FICA taxes they will continue to pay in to help fund benefits for the current or near-current retirees. I'd be the first to volunteer for such a program.

This is interesting as a concept, though i doubt many of the current governments could pull off the administrative side of such a system.

I also think, they'd actively fight any such suggestion, because given how things are now they'd have a large proportion of the current and future generations opting out, not because the governments want to provide a safety net, but because they couldn't deal with the shortfall in the budget.

This would need to be part of a much larger suite of programs and support mechanisms, you think there's a homeless/drug addiction/crime problem now, just wait until you get a whole generation of people who have concrete proof they won't have a viable means of survival once they hit retirement age.

As i alluded to in my post i don't think it has hit the hyperbolic numbers provided in the original post.

I suspect they will be hit in the short-ish term 1-3 years, but these kinds of things are notoriously difficult to calculate, especially when the actual data around it will almost certainly be purposefully obfuscated.

As you said though ,that wasn't what you were asking.

"Move fast and break things" is a concept referring to not worrying too much about breaking existing solutions or integrations while *improving* them.

Declaring a laughably unrealistic timescale to replace a system millions of people rely upon to survive isn't innovative or groundbreaking, it's reckless and dangerous, bordering on callous.

There could genuinely be an argument made that he's so narcissistic and delusional that he genuinely doesn't realise how badly this is going to pan out, in which case the intent might not be malicious but accidentally killing tens/hundreds of thousands of people because you don't think things through isn't a good enough excuse for me personally.

But then you get statements like "empathy is a weakness" that point to him at least partially understanding what's going to happen and just not caring.

i'd like to address a specific reference in your reply:

> neglected to adequately financially prepare themselves for retirement, were unable to avoid unexpected financial difficulties in life

To me that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of just how difficult modern financial stability is to achieve for a large proportion of the population.

Living paycheque to paycheque can sometimes be neglect yes, but i'd wager that far more instances of that are due to the increasing gap between cost of living and actual wages.

It's difficult to plan for retirement when you work a 60 hour week and are only just covering rent and food.

It also doesn't address the fact that social security is funded by taxes, it's not a handout, people make financial decisions based on the information they have, the information they had was "pay your taxes and when it comes time to stop working you'll get some assistance".

If you want to kill it, fine, stop taxing people to pay in to it, removing it after an entire lifetime of paying in to the system is basically theft.

Future consequences and poor outcomes based on current day incompetence and mismanagement ?

To address your reply:

If you don't know the phrase "there is no ethical consumption" then looking it up might be interesting reading for you, it's a large part of the plot from the last half of "the good place", if that helps at all.

Anyway ,it's the same idea but taken to it's logical conclusion, everything everyone does is causing harm in some way somewhere down the chain and therefore it's impossible to do anything without some harm being caused.

If that's your point then i agree, but specifically here i was pointing out the direct point to point link between removing monetary aid and the deaths of people relying upon that aid.

You asked for costs on money and lives, and while i think billions and millions were hyperbole there are still directly attributable deaths, even now.

The key part here is the "directly"

The difference between "physically taking away someones food until they starve to death" vs "participating in a societal structure that routinely lets people starve to death" one is direct taking an action to achieve an outcome, the other is not.

I think those numbers will grow significantly larger in relatively short order, i think it's naive to think DOGE is running on any platform of competence but it's entirely possible i'm wrong.

However, there's not a lot of evidence i am wrong,

Though I'm counting that as future potential costs and deaths.

Ignoring the obvious opinion of the author, anybody who has ever worked on any sort of medium to large scale migration, refactoring or rewriting of a computer system knows that's a comically ridiculous timescale and when it inevitably fails there will be consequences, counted in both money and lives.

But that's a (very near) future fuck-up that he will almost certainly spin or move the goalposts for.

That you can draw a direct line to right now, not much other than all the cuts to critical infrastructure.

To be clear, I'm not arguing against cuts and efficiency initiatives, i'm saying he's an idiot who doesn't know what he's doing, so his implementation will be shoddy and dangerous.

See: The Cybertruck, The Boring Company, The Decline of X.

As you are implying though, nothing major so far, aside from USAID i suppose (or the VA), does removing systems actively (and provably) preventing deaths count?

These are systematic problems that will take a while to shake out into their inevitable consequences.

He'll probably still fail upwards though, unless he gets luigi'd or just drops dead of a ket induced heart attack or something.

For the same reason some department stores have the up and down stairs/escalators on opposite sides.

https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/49307/why-do-departme...

I'm not just being pedantic, it's an important distinction.

If it makes financial sense in the future to pull shenanigans with book access or content, they will do so unreservedly and with haste.

They have done this already in small amounts, no reason to think they won't do it on a larger scale if it becomes worth their while.

Steam is an interesting example, technically some of the games are DRM free (as in you don't need steam to run them) but most of them rely on steam in some form for continued usage.

The main difference here is that steam has better PR and a history of not fucking everyone over for an extra % on profit margins.

Will that remain the case, probably not, especially after Gabe Newell dies, but they certainly have the general trust of people who use the platform.

Not to say they haven't had their share of fuck-ups over the years but none of them seemed to have "I'm a billionaire so i can do whatever the fuck i want" energy to them.

That's just personal opinion though.

For literally all of the time that the written word has existed, if you bought a physical copy it was yours for whatever version of perpetuity you'd like to use.

Of course libraries exist, as do rentals, but it's clearly understood what the deal is with such services.

The specific issue i see here is that this is changing retroactively and without recourse, the ability to download a copy of the item you purchased, which was the deal at the time of purchase.

If you buy anything from now on, however, knowing the details of the sale, that's on you.

I'm not sure I've said anything that would indicate that i am , but I'm not from the US.

> Families torn apart because of how they vote

That's reductive in my opinion, I'd consider it a misrepresentation of the situation, at best.

Given your other comments i'd lean towards it being intentional misrepresentation, but i could be wrong, either way i doubt we'll come to an understanding on this point so i'll just leave it there.

> Unthinkable here, probably unthinkable over their up until 10 years ago.

I doubt this is true, but if you genuinely think it's just a box ticking exercise and not a representation of ideology and perspective then it's possible we just have a fundamental disagreement of what's actually happening, so of course we'd disagree on interpretations.

> In fact it seems more and more likely the US will erupt in a civil war, and split in 2.

This i can see though.

> It just such a shame that HN, what I see as a gathering ground of intelligent people,

"Intelligent" people aren't inherently apolitical in my experience, they are also significantly less likely to not call you on something they see as bullshit.

If you are looking for a place where you can define a perspective or opinion and not be challenged on it, this is absolutely not the place for you.

> is so much contributing to the divide by labeling people with other opinions as sub-humans almost.

I'm genuinely not sure how to address this level of cognitive dissonance.

Either it's intentional, in which case no amount of discussion will be productive or it's unintentional and i don't know how to begin to address it.

> Belligerent, closed, judging. I don't like it.

You literally rocked up and replied to a thread with judgement based on a non-standard interpretation of a statement and then proceeded to say, multiple times, how disappointed you were that people expressed opinions different to your own, so much so that you expressed that you might leave if they didn't stop.

As i said elsewhere, you don't have to (and IMO shouldn't) stay in a place you don't like, but if you're going to be upset by responses with differing opinions to your own i doubt this is a place you are going to enjoy.

That's 100% allowed, i'd personally encourage it, if you find yourself in a place you don't enjoy, stop going to that place.

That's a mature response to a self-imposed stressful environment.

That doesn't generally mean they have an ethical take, just that they recognise such things might exist and they specifically don't want to get in to it.

Is that not what you want ?

> And in come the downvotes, for speaking up against divisiveness. Doesn't that make you feel.. something?

I'd assume it was because you were claiming divisiveness when the cause of such divisiveness was specifically excluded.

They've ve deleted it now, I'm assuming because they didn't have a position they felt they could defend.

If it's something i have no grounding in then understanding the authors' potential biases is useful.

If it's something I'm relatively familiar with or close enough that i think I'll be able to understand the application of potential biases in realtime then i don't usually bother.

This issue is sometimes somewhat alleviated by reading multiple sources for the same/similar information.

YMMV

Honestly, same could be said for this one, it reads less like an attempt at making the internet better and more like a technical sounding PR stunt with sneaky power encroachment thrown in.

"We just need you to uses your government ID to sign in because of the children, we have a long track record of competent execution, maintenance and accountability, we are 100% not going to use this for other ...reasons"

It's the same governmental "Trust me bro, think of the children" they always throw out.

Outside of the intelligence agencies the UK government is absolutely diabolical at anything technical, chronically overbudget (because their original budget was decided by someone in an office with no actual experience managing an IT project) on projects they outsourced to corrupt friends who siphon the money away, not just IT, all projects.

They pay atrociously for the level of skill required for the positions advertised, so they get middle of the road staff, which isn't a problem normally, middle of the road is the backbone of IT projects.

The problem arises when you get actively bad project management, either incompetence or outright maliciousness, throw in some glacial bureaucracy laden processes that didn't work when they were drafted 40 years ago, let alone now.

and you get an entire industry of corruption and mediocrity.

/rant

anyway, i mean, sure you can take the lacklustre GDPR enforcement and use that to make decisions going forward, i wouldn't personally, because i don't think a single data point is a good basis for risk assessment.

DMCA, youtube copyright strikes, domain strikes, bank transaction complaints/chargebacks, all are mechanisms used to attack internet based businesses.

Do they serve a purpose, debatable, are they misused on a regular basis, absolutely.

This isn't a "the sky is falling" this is a "They have put into law the ability to drop the sky on me just because they (the government, or disgruntled internet denizens) feel like it"

It's up to you to decide how likely you think that is and plan accordingly.

There was a story very recently about the whole of itch.io going down because of some overzealous rent-seeking bullshit middleman (hired by rent-seeking bullshit artist FunkoPop)

As i have read it, no, it's worth a read to see for yourself though.

> it doesn't put that much of an onerous demand on forum operators.

It doesn't until it does, the issue is the massive amount of work needed to cover the "what if?".

It's not clear that it doesn't apply and so it will be abused, that's how the internet works, DMCA, youtube strikes, domain strikes etc.

> Then again, maybe he's just burnt out from running these sites and this was the final straw. I can understand if he wants to pack it in after so long, and this is as good reason as any to call it a day.

Possibly, worth asking.

> Though, has no-one in that community offered to take over? Forums do change hands now and then.

Someone else taking over doesn't remove the problem, though there might be someone willing to assume the risk.

I suppose that depends on what kind of work you are talking about and your perspective on what different kinds of work really are.

I wouldn't consider "The thing i do so me and my family don't starve" to have an inherent need to be hard or tiring.

Whereas "The thing i do to fill up my time with something i feel is meaningful" might have a hard and/or tiring component, but only if you personally feel like the hard/tiring part is required.

Things can be rewarding without being draining and value is subjective.

A single line explaining how "people vs nature" doesn't imply that people and nature are different things would have cleared this up easily but instead we get multiple instances of you saying "it's so obvious I'm not going to explain it"

However, you have full confidence that everything is cleared up, so i guess it must be.

I'll see myself out.

Of a sample size of two that's a 50% failure rate.

You stated an us vs them, i pointed out that drawing an us vs them assumes that us and them are different.

That you apparently meant something different is odd to me, but you do you.

> Oh it absolutely does. The other person understood it perfectly.

Again, 50% failure rate.

If you wish to conclude that a 50% failure rate makes something obvious in favour of one side, feel free.

Or you are bad at conveying an explicit meaning.

> It wasn't related because the other person was correct in that you misunderstood my statement.

I've outlined why i thought what i did, if that was a misunderstanding of your intention I'm willing to accept that, doesn't mean what you said was clear.

Yes, it is.

> You know what they meant.

I have clearly stated what i think they meant.

They specifically said "disadvantages compared to us." that heavily implies ( if not outright declares ) an us vs them.

It seems you have a different interpretation, I'd be interested to hear what that is if you don't mind ?

> you are just one-upping them on a technicality in a way that doesn’t advance the discussion at all.

If you don't see how what i said was related to the discussion then we probably aren't going to agree on what constitutes a technicality.