anon9001

I did. If you list a room for rent in SF that looks nice and is competitively priced, you'll also have thousands of applications.

What do you think is the innovation here? He's offering housing in a market with no housing supply. Of course he has market fit.

It seems the steps here were: Be born in commune. Notice SF has a housing problem. Suggest building a commune in LA and SF. Get funded by YC.

Maybe it's like asking for a date with a very attractive person, where everyone thinks they can't possibly get the date, so nobody ever asks?

Serious question: how does a guy like this actually get into a business like this? If I walked into YC suggesting to build dorms, I'm sure I'd be laughed out. What's the differentiator for Jon? The only distinction I can see is that he grew up in a commune.

I do see the potential of the idea. The next obvious step is to bundle it with office space. You could give a discount for every employee you move into the dorm below the office. It's easy to imagine a building with shops on the first floor, dorms in the middle, and offices at the top. You could live on a budget, never have to leave the building for work or food, have 0 commute, and some sense of community.

I think there's going to be a rising demographic of people that don't want to work and are willing to sacrifice having kids for an early retirement. This would be an excellent choice. I could have graduated college, put in a decade in a dorm above a software factory, have minimal expenses, and retire by 30-something.

> But Twitter is still worth fighting for — it remains the only free platform for many Saudis.

Found the problem. Twitter is not worth fighting for -- it was never a free platform, it's a corporate platform. Twitter's internal security breach, paid for by this state actor, is a perfect example of why we need federated or decentralized services.

IMO the biggest threat to 1Password is Yubico. Webauthn already works, all that's missing is the adoption.

In the not-so-distant future, the idea of password management will be laughable.

It's always had politics. It just used to be run by communists, anarchists, and libertarians. Then money got involved, and now it's run by social justice warriors.

You're right, but you missed the biggest part of the problem. The "nothing at all controversial" part changes, often without warning. Your history, however, is immutable.

I think the only way to fix it is for everyone to be cancelled.

If you exile enough people, pretty soon that itself becomes a problem.

We're currently in this dangerous middle point where people think it can't happen to them, or that the accused probably did something wrong.

There's a chance we might be creating a permanent underclass of people who have said or done unacceptable things in public. If that's 10% of the population, that's a big problem. But if it's 50% of the population, that's actually a smaller problem.

Is it possible that the ethical thing to do here is to join the cancellation brigades?

The gains of investment can offset the losses from inflation, yeah, but I'd also be drawing down. The problem is that I might live longer than 25 years and I might not be able to work by that point.

I checked my math again with https://www.firecalc.com/

I would need about $50k/yr in expenses at present (adjusted for inflation in the future). If I'm planning for 50 years out, that means I need a portfolio of about $1.6M to have a high probability of being able to make it 50 years.

So not quite $3M, and maybe I could cut more expenses, but I think at least $1.5M in liquid assets is what I need. If by some miracle I can get a $1M payday when my current employer sells, then maybe I've got a chance at being done in the next few years.

If I could get my spending down to $30k/yr, which might be possible, then I could get away with $1M, but I'll still have to put in another 5 years or so to hit that $1M number.

Keep in my mind for US people, we have to buy our own health insurance, and if something medical goes wrong and you can't work, you can easily go bankrupt that way. There's such little safety net that I'd like to have more than I think I'll need.

That's also exactly my experience. Thankfully (maybe?) society recognizes that I'm too mentally deficient to do it on my own, so they pump me full of amphetamines so that I can be a good boy at and get my work done.

It would be a worse situation for everyone if I wasn't given the drugs, but there's something awfully dystopian about the whole thing.

I can't wait to be done forever.

I think you're wrong.

I make a typical SF software engineer salary and I live in a low cost of living area. The reality is that I still need about $3M to permanently stop working. Healthcare is expensive and the dollars that I'm making now will be worth much less later in life, even when prudently invested.

I'll probably be able to achieve independence by 40 or 45 instead of 55 or 65 because I have a low CoL and won't have kids. I'm very much looking forward to the freedom I'll have purchased for myself, but it's still an absurdly long time to wait to start living.

Until then, it's more pills and more work.

I have no idea how people manage to live fulfilling lives while still working 40+ hours a week, but I sure can't do it.

I just cannot understand how so many people would find meth enjoyable.

It's clearly an epidemic, but why? I take regular old amphetamines for productivity (technically ADHD), and they're really effective, but not what I would consider a recreational experience.

If I take too much, I'll be focused like a laser beam, but I'll forget to eat/drink, dripping in sweat, unable to sleep, and in a really unpleasant headspace when they wear off.

It makes me wonder if most meth users are starting out by self-medicating for ADHD and it somehow spirals out of control? I wonder if meth users had access to prescription stimulants if they'd still need more and get addicted. Maybe some people react differently than I do.

I'd like to try meth once just to see why it's such a big thing, but Desoxyn is pretty much impossible to come by, and I'm not smoking street meth or cooking my own.

Well, I am very surprised, thanks for the info :)

I love free software, and I hate non-free software.

Writing free software doesn't pay very well, on account of it being free.

Maybe I should work for FSF or Mozilla, but I'd really like to make enough in industry to be comfortable far into the future before I forfeit the chance to retire.

Git is an immutable history of all work ever done on code.

Take a look here: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master

And here: https://lkml.org/

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of maintaining document and discussion history as well.

In both projects, you can pull on any random thread and trace it all the way back to its origin. And if the team (and maintainer) is doing a great job of capturing the thought process behind a decision in commit messages (as Linus does so well), then you're in really great shape.

This doesn't work for me.

1. What do I love? Software!

2. What am I good at? Software!

3. What can I be paid for now — or something that could transform into my future hustle? Software!

4. What does the world need? Software!

I absolutely hate being a commercial software developer.

I would be very surprised if that were true. Apple needs to be able to help users reset passwords and recover data. And it would be a complicated key management situation when adding or removing devices.

> My guess for the next great Satan?

It's Cloudflare.

edit: Just to be clear, the reason I'm so suspicious of Cloudflare is that they're inserting themselves between users and their destination. The service they provide is a great value, and their contribution to the public (free dns and vpn) is extremely admirable. But they only exist because the infrastructure maintained by the old corporate guards is so poor. Once they take over all network traffic, they'll be the next great Satan. Their story will probably turn out similar to Google.

I think you just replied to one of those "attempted kidnappings" from Nextdoor's point of view.

Sure. I'm happy I could help.

I take the "extreme" (but IMO correct) view that all proprietary dev work is immoral. This seems clear to me because whatever you build will some day need to be rebuilt in a libre way.

That might not be true if you work at some exceptions, like Mozilla or Open Whisper Systems or FSF, but for 99% of jobs, you're doing a bad thing that's making the world a worse place.

With that understanding, I recognize that I'm pretty much a slave until I can achieve financial independence. If that ever happens, then I can work on things that matter.

So I don't choose my work domain based on what I like or dislike, I choose it based on pay and living conditions. Right now I'm remote and have pretty good pay, so this is ok for now, but I know everything I'm doing is contributing to a great evil. I hope it won't be that way forever.

Selling ads is about equivalent to me as working on surveillance systems or malware. I don't want to do any of those things, but I'll do whatever is legal and pays the best, so that I can someday get back to the business of making computing better for humanity.

I think you've got some great advice here, and "recursively learning" is a good way to explain it.

In open source, especially, this is such a good strategy to follow. It's why Linux is fun :)

I don't know how you apply your philosophy to employment though. At work, I pretty much do the opposite of what you're suggesting to avoid my 9 to 5 becoming hell. I focus only on the end goal, where that goal is employer satisfaction.

Here are some pragmatic tips for how to achieve satisfaction for all parties in employment:

* Maximally pad estimates. Don't know how long something will take? Tell your team that you need some time to figure out how long a project will take. Use this time to get to an 80% solution, or at least have a very solid plan. Now that you understand the problem but your employer doesn't, you're in a much stronger position to provide good support for your heavily padded estimate. If a manager pushes back, you have lots of info already and can speak with confidence. Compromise as appropriate and be friendly about it, but remember that every hour you can pad is another hour you've reclaimed. This is by far the most important thing. The ratio I look for is 40 hours of estimated work to 8 hours of heads-down problem-solving.

* If you can't figure out the solution to a problem in a couple of hours, break the problem into parts. Only give estimates on the parts you've already solved. Managers are happy to see multiple tickets for what you might think of as one task, because it gives them the appearance of their team achieving more.

* In agile, you should try to stay at least one sprint ahead. Your team will appreciate you being proactive if you're always looking at what's coming up next sprint.

* Save your teammates from themselves. Look at their estimates before sprint meetings, try to come up with a few things they maybe didn't think of, and ask "are you sure that's enough time? what about x, y, and z?". You want to both pad your estimates and help your coworkers and managers pad their estimates as well. I believe the #1 reason for underestimating is not putting in enough time to come up with good reasons why something may take a long time.

* Keep good notes. Always be ready to give an update on what you did on any particular day. I write bullet point notes every day in a personal wiki, and I use them as talking points in standup the following day. Share some of these notes (re-phrased as a friendly update) a few times a week with management via text. If you think someone's nervous, take a little extra time to give them an update so they feel in control.

* Make sure you have one "no meetings" day where you can go heads-down with a stimulant of your choice. Complete all of your obligations for the sprint on that day, but keep them stored on your local machine so you can roll them out as you like. Try to make sure that's your only real work day. The rest of the time should feel more like a social club if you're doing it correctly.

* For remote workers, always be on Slack. Use a script that prevents you from going idle, and set up your phone to get your messages. That shows that you're always online and available if someone needs you. Usually people won't bother you outside of core hours anyway. Respond quickly when contacted, even if it's just an acknowledgment that says you saw it and you'll get back to them.

* For office workers, spend as much time in the office as you can. Try to make it pleasant for yourself. Come in early and have breakfast while people show up. Eat lunch with the team, but take a little extra time for a personal phone call to catch up with a friend or handle some personal business. Late afternoon, a few days a week, try to get to the gym. Your goal is to be first in and last out, but without actually making any personal sacrifices to do it.

* Sometimes hold your commits until after work hours. Managers who pull these metrics from github are evaluating the completely wrong thing, but it doesn't hurt to give them what they want to see. You can use a shell script to sleep then commit/push/pr.

* Be friendly and helpful. A little extra attention goes a long way. Make notes about significant events in people's lives and reference them later to show you care, just like a CRM.

* If you see someone stressed and struggling, offer to jump into their problem with them and try to help them solve it. If you can help, great. If you can't, at least you tried, and maybe you added some value.

* If someone asks you for something or to do something, write it down and set a reminder. Never let a request go unanswered. Failure is often ok, but disregard is never ok.

If you follow my approach, you should be able to acquire goodwill with your team and a track record of dependability. You'll complete all of your work with minimal stress, make friends along the way, and present very well to management.

I still hate work, and I would rather do pretty much anything else with my time, but this is the most palatable strategy that I've come up with.

When I tried your approach, which again, I think is the correct way to actually learn and build anything, work was a daily struggle. Now that I do about 20% of the "work" (as I used to think of it) and spend 80% of my time managing relationships, I find myself in a much better situation.

Fascinating. I didn't know that was so significant to Google. That does explain a lot of what we see in the search results though.

Thanks. Almost all of that makes good sense, and it's pretty clear that optimization kept working so they just kept doing it. I wonder how much farther it will go.

You lost me here though:

> Hundreds of pages a day that were of absolutely no use to anyone but to Google

Do you mean like spam/clickbait blog posts on their own domain? I'm having trouble connecting "producing garbage content" to "increased ranking from google".

Can you elaborate more on what that industry is doing? How would you snoop on people's browsing behavior?

I'd be curious if you know of any industry blogs or forums that you'd read to stay current on techniques.

I haven't followed SEO since the early days of link trading and keyword stuffing.

They're called awesome lists and this is the problem they attempt to solve. Here's a starting point https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

It is. I can't unban them and see what they said.

HN does it correctly. I can show flagged posts. This adds a helpful dimension in figuring out what a community values. I think moderation being opt-out is wise.

> One of reddit's most common in-jokes is the moderation team on /r/the_donald ...

This right here is my point. I know that and you know that. I don't subscribe to that subreddit.

But I still hear about what goes on there sometimes, because you know, reddit, stuff leaks out a little if it's popular.

So that wouldn't be an in-joke if they weren't self-aware that they're outcasts on reddit. Now tell me a voat in-joke, because I don't know any.

Do you know what goes on at voat? I don't, so I just made an account. What I see looks like a community isolated, not a community scorned. It's much worse than any unmoderated community on reddit could ever be. That's what I think is dangerous.

From my point of view, reddit dropped the banhammer and this thing called Voat popped out.

It also took me a while to realize that things don't run on a merit system.

My theory is this: If you're smart enough to think that merit should matter, it's easy to fall into the trap of meritocracy. If you look around and realize, obviously, that this is not a meritocracy, then value must be derived from something that isn't merit.

Spoiler: It's relationships that matter, not merit.

It's as good as it ever was. If anything, it's probably better since 8ch imploded.

> Subjecting people to the degrading and hateful ideas that target them for the sake of the well-being of the people spewing it is not an equitable proposition.

Is that really true on the internet? "Subjecting people" makes it sound so extreme. In reality, all you had to do was hide a few subreddits and you'll never see them again. They were already removed from the frontpage well before any casual user would encounter them.

So by "subjecting people", I don't think you honestly mean subjecting the community to those people. I think you mean that you want to shame the service provider into de-platforming them because you disagree with their views.

You weren't going to see their content on reddit anyway, except due to reddit outrage about how that content was ever allowed on their service.

You'd only find a lot of the things that were banned if you knew where to look.

> You can go to voat and debate white supremacists tho.

I didn't interact with them when I was on Reddit, and I don't care to now. But at least they were in a space where they were frequently challenged by people who did feel like debating them. If you don't want to interact with them, you're free to ignore them. That's why I think it's such a small ask and net good to not de-platform unpopular opinions.

Congratulations! Your personal values are presently inline with corporate values.

The world's largest moderators have you in mind when they're removing content. That must be great for you, because your experience is tailored for your personal satisfaction. And if you ever do happen upon something that offends you, you can report it and rest assured that corporate america will take care of it for you.

Now imagine you have a deeply held belief, and suddenly, it's been canceled. Your content has been banned, even though you made some well-received things. What do you do? Where do you go? Maybe you just give up on that belief, replace it with the new corporate belief, and move on.

But some years tick by, and now you find that all of your old beliefs have been canceled. Have you assimilated and given up contact with people that talk about canceled ideas and share canceled content? That's what you should have done. That's why our corporate monoculture is so harmonious. This is a wonderful thing... right?

If you're not ok with that, then maybe you need to get onboard with platforms that allow alternative opinions, because you might need one some day.

What those people really need is to have their opinions challenged by outsiders. That used to happen more on the early internet.

Keep in mind that they didn't leave Reddit because they wanted to leave. They left and made Voat because they were banned. Now they don't have to interact with people that have dissenting opinions, and they can ban you if you dissent.

Reddit is relieved because their users are no longer exposed to this toxicity. Unfortunately, now those users are no longer exposed to anything but toxicity.