anon9001

You're right, and as a result I try to work no more than 4 hours a day, preferably less. I take every possible opportunity to extend timelines, create buffer, and reduce scope. I'm highly incentivized to farm as much time as possible, so that's what I do.

I try to target obscure projects that I already know how to do, where there's an assumption that nobody really knows how to do it because it's obscure. Complexity and obscurity are great cover. Picking up legacy projects on old tech is a good way to do this. "Oh no, PHP sucks! Nobody's touched this code in years! Not to worry, give me a couple of days I'm sure I'll figure it out." Now my estimate is 3x longer than it would be if I was working in the areas under normal development.

I've also got my notifications pretty dialed-in so I never appear absent when someone needs me. I prevent slack from marking me idle. I turn my notifications to a more aggressive setting when I want to take a nap.

Nobody knows how long it takes to get a piece of code working, not even other programmers, so who cares if it takes a week instead of a day. Sometimes I keep a local branch that's represents my actual work and a second branch for pushing to the team. If I get in "flow" and want to get something done in a block of many hours, I can drip-feed the commits over a couple of days instead of dropping a PR at 2am and having everyone think I'm free to work on something else tomorrow. With a little shell scripting, I can make commits and push on a timer too, which is sometimes useful if I need to "work late" because everyone is stressed.

When something blows up in prod, I put in the extra hours with a good attitude. That helps create the perception that I'm the go-to person for things and a team player, so it's not surprising to anyone if I'm running a little late on a deliverable because I had to drop everything and help with something important (another way to add more buffer). I also try to pair sometimes, especially with new coworkers, so that they can see me working in short bursts. Pairing serves as a psychological anchor that I must work that way all the time. After all, I don't want people thinking I'm lazy.

Sometimes mistakes happen and I do get stuck working an 8 hour day, but those mistakes would have been 16 hour days if I wasn't actively avoiding doing as much work as possible.

As much as I can stomach it, I try to use the extra time to socialize with coworkers to help raise my visibility and build allies. That's the smart thing to do. In reality, I mostly play video games, do housework, and anxiously wait until work is "over" for the day so I can detach from my notifications.

Has tech turned me into a sociopath? Maybe. Do I feel like a prisoner in my own home? Certainly. But if I don't use this strategy, I'll constantly be over-committed, burned out, salty, and missing social connections with coworkers that are more valuable than the actual work.

I can't wait until I have enough money to be financially independent and never have to do this nonsense again.

SS7 is challenging to find info about, so I'll ask here:

How hard are these attacks to actually execute?

* Can someone with an SDR and no credentials start an attack?

* Do you need a femtocell registered with a carrier to attack SS7?

* Do you need to be a registered carrier to have the access required to attack a user?

The attacks described in the article assume the attacker is a nation-state, but is it possible for any random person with the right hardware to gain access to sensitive info via SS7?

> The inability for air-gaped devices to catch malware is a nice added benefit.

As they say, "S" in "IoT" stands for "security".

Another way to do it is by borrowing bitcoin with other collateral, selling it, then buying it back at a cheaper price. You can get a sense of rates here: https://defirate.com/loans/

So you might supply USDC on Aave and borrow WBTC. You can then trade that WBTC for USD (if you're bearish on BTC relative to USD), wait for the WBTC price to drop, buy it back and repay your loan.

Though if you're wealthy enough to trade the futures, it's taxed more favorably and easier to manage.

Hah. I haven't seen that in so many years. Glad to see they're still updating.

> Maximum shedding duration was 83 days in the upper respiratory tract

So covid-19 is transmissible for up to 83 days once infected?

Even for people paying attention, it's hard to follow all the spin and understand which organizations are pushing which ideas and why.

The US now has tens of millions of citizens that believe the election was stolen. I think they're mostly just "normal" people who have tuned out and now can't tell which way is up.

The reason I pay attention is because following news daily is actually less cognitive load than trying to catch up when a significant plot twist happens that might impact me.

I think that's pretty accurate, but even in Urban America there's a divide between people who aren't taking any chances vs people who are wearing PPE but are living their best life.

For me, I'm just not going anywhere or doing anything. It turns out that I can have everything delivered, and my risk is essentially 0. I'm going to wait it out until there's a vaccine. If the numbers dip very low in my area, I might try to squeeze in a doctor and dentist visit. I'm not immunocompromised, but it's not that hard to live as if I was. I'm considering this whole thing a bit of an experiment to see how self-sufficient I can be.

Conversely, I have coworkers that are traveling all over the country (wearing masks), and staying at cheap airbnb's. Some are relocating because of the changing housing market. If you don't mind taking on a minimal amount of risk, you can get a lot of good deals on flights/hotels/airbnbs/apartments/etc right now. Personally, even a little risk isn't worth it when I know there's 95% effective vaccine being manufactured.

At this point, it's obvious that we'll never get rid of COVID-19 entirely as a disease. Hopefully it'll become a disease only for the people that believe in "fake news" and "anti-vax".

For anyone not familiar, Vanced is hacked Google binaries. It's the YouTube app, but with features enabled for free and ads blocked. They've been around a long time and are active on XDA.

I use Vanced on my phone, but if you're not into hacked binaries, NewPipe is what you want: https://newpipe.schabi.org/

> Are there outlets for straight lonely people in need of touch?

In short, no. In practice, onlyfans and right-wing politics? That's what seems to be happening instead.

Thanks. I didn't know about resq.

Switching to hidden services while we're building with decentralization does seem to be the pragmatic thing to do.

I thought everyone felt this way.

So an American with $2M to invest and a desire to live in NZ can simply invest in equities, bonds, and real estate and become a citizen in 4 years?

And once you're a citizen, you enjoy unlimited social and health benefits indefinitely?

Can someone from NZ tell me why this shouldn't be my retirement plan?

> 2) you can fire any customers who you don't like. Not so your boss.

I know what you mean, but I think there's an alternate way to look at this.

Every time I've moved jobs, I really look at it as firing my boss. The process is pretty much the same as firing someone:

* First, I voiced my concerns and gave my boss a chance to improve.

* When he wasn't improving, I began searching the job market to find his replacement (my future boss).

* After a few interviews, I found a replacement that was a really good fit for the role of "my boss".

* I let my old boss know that his performance had not improved enough, and I was forced to let him go, but I wished him all the best in his future endeavors.

* I gave my new boss a start date, and so far everything is going great.

I think what's actually happening is that we're eliminating all non-STEM pipelines for building a career. The truly adventurous can go start their own businesses, but STEM has become the default pipeline for everyone because it's the only thing that pays well. Everything else, even being a lawyer or doctor, is much more of a "calling" than a career play. Other necessary professions like teaching or nursing are considered lower tier, when the really shouldn't be.

Because everyone is pushed into STEM, I believe that the bar for engineering has been lowered. I'm a SWE and over the last few years, I've realized that more and more of my coworkers don't have any idea how computers work. Most can't use a shell, don't understand unix, never wrote a line of C, are unclear what a pointer is, that sort of thing. It's no longer a requirement to understand computers and computer culture to be employed as a developer.

I think a lot of older SWEs probably recall stereotypes of women and minorities not being able to do computers because most of them didn't grow up with the culture. In the 80s and 90s, it was much less common for those demographics to have a computer in the home and to have internet access. We tried to fix that by promoting diversity, especially in the STEM pipeline. In reality, that diversity just killed the culture by sinking it to the lowest common denominator, which looks a lot like leetcode.

> I should have dispensed with all that and started out as an artist.

Then you'd be poor, which is why you didn't dispense with all of that.

> Maybe women leave STEM because they can.

I can't wait to join them.

> horses are incredibly stupid

I thought horses were supposed to be smart, but TV may have influenced my thinking...

> As actor Alan Young recounted: "It was initially done by putting a piece of nylon thread in his mouth. But Ed actually learned to move his lips on cue when the trainer touched his hoof. In fact, he soon learned to do it when I stopped talking during a scene! Ed was very smart."

I agree with all of that.

It sounds silly, but if you can work how you feel into the comment, it's really helpful later on.

I like to use tags and sometimes emojis.

Just remember that you're talking to future you. Usually specific versions of these:

* `// XXX this is a bad thing that we can't improve yet, sorry`

* `// TODO this thing works, but it should also do something else soon`

* `// FIXME this is definitely broken`

* `// HACK here comes some magic stuff, but it works...`

* `// NOTE this is non-traditional or non-obvious, so let me explain`

If you do that, it makes it easy to search for tech debt too.

I am surprised about Canada. I always thought being nice and saying sorry were just Canadian stereotypes, but maybe it's because of a culture that doesn't promote violence?

From the description:

> The contest aims to create friendship among young people with similar interests who will lead their countries in the 21st century, as well as help advance engineering and broadcasting technologies in the region.

That's pretty wholesome.

I mentioned Nexo way earlier up the thread, comparing them to Ally, because they're both custodial retail shops that make their money behind the scenes without the user knowing anything.

But it is incredible how much crypto has changed since 2018. Back then I thought, well, maybe some day this will work. Now it's obvious that it will work, and I think adoption will be rapid once it starts happening.

I won't be surprised if there's a big wave of crypto stuff on HN/reddit/elsewhere again soon. Just like 2017, but this time it's actually useful for something.

> Only if you think that due diligence and actually collecting the repayments is inefficient.

I do think that! The due diligence you're describing is only necessary because the custodians can actually improperly handle the money. Embezzlement is a real thing in the traditional system.

Give smart contracts a few more years, and you're going to be more skeptical of the existing system of due diligence with custodians (which we know can be abused) when compared provably secure smart contracts (which we know can have bugs, but will eventually be stable).

If you think crypto is all a Ponzi scheme, you probably haven't been following it for the last couple of years.

Also if you think the traditional system is not a Ponzi scheme, you probably don't understand how it works.

How many people are involved in processing that vast ecosystem of intermediaries? It's a wild amount of inefficiency. Every major city has giant buildings filled with people pushing numbers on spreadsheets to make those products work. They're extremely inefficient. And to interact with those systems, you need to go through a middleman like a brokerage.

I think the analogue is Ally bank, which is known to give the largest returns on savings accounts, currently yielding a whopping 2%. Compare that with a crypto-ecosystem lender like Nexo which is yielding 8-10% on the same asset (USD).

> Sure, you can buy assets that don't have real profit streams attached and lend them to short sellers, but I have no idea why anyone would think that revolution would be a net benefit to them...

That's one of the profit streams my stock broker uses. Why shouldn't it be available to me?

The reason why you don't have access to any of these money-making "institutional" products (like lending stocks, underwriting insurance, or serving as a market-maker) is because they require a lot of administrative overhead. When you replace them with smart contracts, you democratize all of these services.

In a few years, it will be common for people to buy/sell/lend/insure all kinds of assets (physical, virtual, derivatives) from their phone without a middleman.

You can do it today if you're an advanced user with enough money to overcome the currently high transaction costs.

Another thing that's exciting about crypto is that it lets users participate in more fair borrowing/lending.

As it stands today, you can lend at your coins at a yield rate close to the borrow's lending rate. That effectively makes all lenders, collectively, "the bank". It also means that borrowers will get a competitive rate for borrowing against their collateral.

This will end the days of getting 0% in your savings accounts while the bank is getting 10% lending out your money once people realize they can lend out their dollars themselves for a much higher yield.

It also lets you lend out your speculative crypto investments. Imagine if you could buy AMZN or NFLX and also lend it out to other people on margin. That's exactly how a margin account works, but of course your brokerage isn't going to let you do it. Crypto lets you play the role of issuing the margin rather than borrowing it, if you so choose.

People that are dismissing crypto have no idea what a revolution in finance this is going to cause.

Obligatory security blogs:

* https://www.schneier.com/

* https://www.troyhunt.com/

* https://krebsonsecurity.com/

* https://threatpost.com/

I use adderall mostly, not modafinil, but yeah.

It's all still "overwhelmingly positive" to set out the problem you started taking it to solve...

But now that you're making me unpack it, I guess it's because when I'm on stimulants I'm working. When I'm off stimulants, I'm resting but very exhausted from the stimulants.

It makes me into an efficient worker drone though, which is the problem I set out to solve in the first place. So... mission accomplished?

If I could somehow make the same money without having to drug myself, I think I would feel better about the situation.

After over a decade of turning stimulants into code, I've just had enough. The idea that someone can do this for 40 years is absurd to me.

If it was possible to go into stasis, floating in a vat, hooked up to a computer, where your employer could extract optimal productivity from you... would you do it? How long would you stay in the vat?

Because that's how I feel taking stimulants every day to get my job done. Sure, I'm an effective employee. And yes, "it works". But I can't help but feel something important has been lost.

Just go to a doctor. Black markets are not worth the risk.

Ask around, read reviews, call the offices and be transparent about what you want. You'll find a doctor that will want to help.

Modafinil/armodafinil might actually be a harder ask than adderall just because they're less common. YMMV.

Yes, stimulants work. No, they're not that bad for you. They're also very easily legally available if you know who and how to ask.

But we probably shouldn't need stimulants to have careers.

I think that's why you get downvoted for suggesting that people take drugs to fix their problems.

Source: I also take drugs to function with a career and am sad about it.

If we're going to compare it to WW2 where they were doing experiments on humans and running eugenics projects, I think we should acknowledge that this is fundamentally different than that. Someone who didn't read the intercept story [1] might take the WW2 comparison too literally and think we've begun official mass sterilization programs. We haven't. What happened is tragic and awful, but it's not the same thing that Hitler did.

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/09/17/forced-sterilization-ice...