bluejellybean

Assuming you don't need/care about maximizing salary, university research can be a pretty rewarding path. There are a lot of big institutions that need high quality software developers with 'real-world' experience to assist their teams.

Having been a bit burnt out on corporate life, I had decided to try this path out almost a year ago. My lab is in kidney research, and it has been a breath of fresh air to constantly be talking with various doctors and researchers across the US instead of simple businessmen. It has also be extremely heartwarming to hear from patients about the direct impact this research has had on their quality of life. Had someone recently speak to us, their story of struggle, and the love they had for this work legitimately brought a tear to my eye, extremely motivating stuff.

The pay is far from competitive (I have no degree, helps a LOT if you do though!) and as with any job, there are going to be day-to-day stressors. With that said, the plus includes sane working hours, lots of PTO, and typically many of these places offer top-of-the-line health care. I'm sure I'll head back to startup land eventually, the grass is always greener, but for the time being I have been able to get some excellent quality sleep, waking with excitement for what each day ahead holds.

I agree that health should be considered fully. As is the case with gas, don't put your body on the burners, the distances discussed in that paper are extremely close, less than 50mm, and upto 300mm.

From the paper linked[1]:

"the exposure of the non-pregnant models at the largest distance (300 mm from the cabinet) is always compliant with the basic restrictions for the general public even when including all body tissues for the current averaging."

And to consider the case of close distances...

"the exposure limits for the general public can be exceeded by more than a factor of 5 (distance < 50 mm; Fig. 5). When considering CNS tissues only, the basic restrictions for the general public can be reached for the child models (Thelonious and Roberta) at close distances from the cabinet edge when allowing for the overall uncertainty of this evaluation. The combined numerical and experimental uncertainty was assessed as 6.0 dB (k = 2; Supplementary Table V) or as 0.50–2.0 of the provided exposure with a confidence interval of 95%."

I read this as don't push your kids face onto the stove top, which is probably good advice no matter what cook surface you're using. It also reads to me as having the cooktop being further back as desirable, and not being directly inline with the edge of the counter.

As for pregnant mothers...

"The exposure of the mother and fetus models exceeds the basic restrictions for the general public by a factor of 6 for the mother and 3.5 for the fetus when standing at the cabinet edge, if considering all body tissues. Given the numerical and experimental uncertainty, the violation of the occupational limits can be regarded as likely for the devices with high B-fields. For CNS tissues of the fetus, the induced current density can reach the order of magnitude of the basic restrictions when taking into account the uncertainty. The combined numerical and experimental uncertainty for the exposure of the fetus was assessed as 6.4 dB (k = 2; Supplementary Table VI) or as 0.48–2.1 of the provided exposure with a confidence interval of 95%."

From this data, it seems to me that the best way to use these devices is to force yourself to 'reach' over the countertop rather than being directly up against the cook surface.

From the summary of the paper.

"The measured B-fields of 13 professional induction cooktops and the three domestic devices evaluated in Viellard et al. [2006] were evaluated experimentally. The field strengths are compliant with exposure limits for the general public when measured at 300 mm from the cooktops as specified by IEC 62233 [IEC, 2005]. The current densities reached the exposure limits according to the ICNIRP 1998 guidelines for the general public at 300 mm from the cooktop. The results were then scaled to the measured B-field levels of the professional and domestic cooktops. The findings can be summarized as follows: Most of the measured cooktops are compliant with the field limits for public exposure at a distance of 300 mm from the cooktop. Due to the high field gradients in the close environment of the cooking zone, most devices exceed these limits at closer distances. When considering the entire body of the exposed user for the current density averaging, the basic restrictions of the current density for the general public can be significantly exceeded and reach occupational levels. A generic worst-case cooktop which is compliant at the measurement distance specified by IEC 62233 can lead to current densities that exceed the basic restrictions for the general public by a factor of 16. The brain tissue of young children can be overexposed by a factor of 2 with respect to the basic restrictions for the general public if they come close to the cooktop. If exposure limits of the general public apply to the fetus of a mother in a working environment, the current density in the CNS tissue of the fetus can exceed the basic restrictions while they are still fulfilled for the mother."

There's pros/cons with any cooking devices, and it makes sense to consider the potential risks with any heat source. With that said, we are not talking about the induction burner spewing these fields across your entire kitchen, unlike say, with gas burners. From my point of view given your source's data, it is still a much healthier option to operate these devices properly than to subject the family preparing the meal in the kitchen with me to a poisonous gas.

Anecdotally speaking, my rental doesn't have a fume hood (yes in 2022!), and if the gas burners are operated my partner gets nauseous with headaches sitting in the other room. The benefits of induction are quite clear and until something better comes along, I don't see myself ever going backwards to inferior heating devices.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22674188/

Another trick that I haven't seen anyone talk about in this thread is visualization. I'll use this whenever I notice the loop, but still don't have the courage to actually stop. I'll pause for a moment, tell myself that I am NOT going to do the thing exactly at this moment, but instead I will just visualize the exact steps needed for when I eventually sit down to do it.

This helps for those situations in which I'm procrastinating due to a realized or unrealized ambiguity of a given task. If I'm slacking because I don't know how to do something, it gives me the questions that I need to go find answers to. Googling around for answers or pinging a coworker is way easier than actually doing the work, and thus I can 'get the ball rolling' so to speak.

Even if I still procrastinate a bit afterwards, the tasks seem much more manageable as I already 'know' what needs to be done, letting ideas stew at this point. Usually after a snack or bathroom break, I'll come back and just crank out the work (or at least start!) because I'm so sick of thinking about how simple that first step actually is, again, because the details are already worked out in my head.

In a literal sense, this is 'work/working', but it never feels like it, and that's part of the key for me to overcome it. It's just thinking, right?

Combination of things, if I'm cold (literally and figuratively) or I'm still warming up, if I'm really pushing hard, or when I've been going too long and the fatigue sets in. I don't really know how common it is among other typists though, I've found I've gotten sloppier over the years due to auto-correct and google search 'guessing' being pretty damn fantastic.

Another story, when I was middle school, I took what I thought was a computer programming class that turned out to be a god awful typing class. Of maybe 30 kids, over half would completely fail to complete the assignment during the hour. The students that got through it were almost all my video game/computer geek friends. I personally hated the class as I thought it was a complete waste of time as I could already type fairly well. The carrot on the stick was that you could surf the internet, play games, whatever, if you completed the the assignment. Considering that the internet was wildly faster than my dial up line at home, I would burn through the class as fast as I could, literally always finishing before everyone else, spending 15 minutes tops on it.

Well, one day midway through the semester I overheard another student asking the teacher how I was always done so fast. This guy was a completely smug hard ass and was apparently a 'computer guy' prior to his teaching career. He had the gual to say it was only because I would make so many mistakes and that I was such a sloppy typists that I wouldn't be worth much to anyone later on. During the next class I made a point to hit 100% accuracy, declaring loudly to him so that the entire class would hear. I did that the entire rest of the semester, I loved it, he never showed his smugness towards me after that. Still really bugged me though, I realized even back then that computers were getting _good_ and handling typos, and that highly accurate typing was mainly for suckers.

As an aside, this was all during the era of the 'Ask Jeves's' of the world, I switched to google simply because it was so damn good at understanding the intent behind my typos. Incredibly, they're _still_ the only auto-correct I've used that understands and corrects the drifts!

Thanks for the heads-up, I just tried it out, somehow never noticed it before!

I love that this thread popped up when it did, as part of a new years resolutions of sorts I decided to start writing short stories and have been thinking about this topic quite a lot. For me it depends, when I know exactly what I need to say, it's pretty quick 70-80 WPM or so, that's with the pauses, edits, etc.. If am really struggling to come up with the words, it's probably closer to 10 or 20. One of the perks of being able to burst type though, and I don't really have a better term for it, I'm able to just kinda tense my muscles and 'jiggle' my fingers in fast succession, is that I can backspace and move the cursor _very_ quickly on the edits. Typing is a means to an end though, the hardest part of writing is ensuring the communication fits the bill. If the bug is tricky, for example, my words per minute can turn into words per day :)

Being a programmer probably allows me to be faster than a lot of other speed typers for specific tasks, but I'm nowhere near as fast as they tend to be for straight word counts where the numbers tend to look like 100% accuracy at 200+ WPM. As an example, I always set my text editors to backspace both words, and sentences (ctrl+backspace, and shift+backspace). This trick, jiggling, and good searching, allows me to move through code _much_ faster than most other programmers I've meet. The only exceptions have been people who've setup and mastered vim, (sorry emacs folks, I've just never encountered any of you in the wild) and I've been slowly been working on gaining proficiency there.

Another user pointed out that there is a zen mode for monkeyType, I'm trying it out on this post. I just sat down to write for the night and I'm using this as my warmup (going this fast requires it for me). I knew a good bit of what I've wanted to say as I started this post but there have been some pauses and edits.

MonkeyType claimed 72 for this comment, bit faster than I would have guessed, I'm curious as to how realistic that number really is!

I've been active in my typing practice since I was about 4, and once I'm warmed up I can usually hit high 120s with 100% accuracy on unseen MonkeyType using a qwerty keyboard with red Cherry switches. If I ignore accuracy and go for 'raw' speed, I am able to achieve significantly faster WPM, typically between the range of 140s-180s. The issue I run into with programs like these is that I have to read/match the expected words. Even if I can see the words ahead of time and have a moment to try and memorize, I just go so slow trying to get the correct words. To contrast this, when I write for fun, and know what I want to say ahead of time, I'm fairly certain I'm able to burst into the low 200s (don't have a solid way to test to be sure unfortunately). Depending on the complexity of the error, Grammarly usually spits out correct solutions when I'm around that 75% error rate. The vast majority of the time I'm able to auto-correct everything with a single click. The only exception is when my hands drift and I end up typing something like 'gppnst' instead of 'foobar'. What I mean to get at is that it's somewhat dependent on the types of errors that are made. If it's easily auto-correctable errors at 75%, awesome, the person is hitting an incredible WPM, if instead it needs to be corrected by human thought, then I would completely agree with you.

The real benefit to this speed/accuracy is that when writing long-form text, rather than say programming, the speed of typing can either match or exceed the thought process. There is a huge amount of utility in this approach and the keyboard becomes a true extension of the mind. I'm still waiting to find a good real-time auto-correct that doesn't screw with my flow at high WPM, I'd pay pretty good money to have something that just works out of the box.

On a practical note, I've considered trying to hit the numbers that the author claims, but I'm already so limited by my own train of thought. With the additional finger/wrist strain (And yes, there is _significant_ strain when these levels are approached for any length of time) I just don't see the costs making sense when everything can be fixed in just a few clicks after typing a great many paragraphs of text.

Such is the beauty of America, if you don't like a place, you can go somewhere else with relative ease. People like dense urban places, they like suburban cul-de-sac, they also like quiet country living.

I personally really like a hub and spoke styled system for cities and towns, we have a little of that here in my neck of the woods (south-east Michigan). I can choose to live in a fast(ish) growing city or it's burbs, the small cozy town 15 minutes north of the city, or 20 minutes west in the rural country. To your point about biking trails, I'm in total favor of these types of developments and have been absolutely elated about the growth of it in my region.

[0] This is a recent map of the built and in-progress routes, it uses Ann Arbor, a small city with ~120k pop, as the hub, and connects it's to its various sister cities. It's got a long way to go, but having ridden some of these stretches, it's been an awesome experience to say the least. Part of this has been that, yes, it connects up small towns such as Chelsea, Dexter, and Ypsilanti, but it also connects up with various parks and recreation areas.

I've been planning a move from the city into the country, and these paths are part of the reason why. It doesn't really allow me to bike in on the daily, but it does make it a LOT more reasonable to spend an afternoon biking into the city, grabbing coffee, hitting the theater, grabbing dinner, and then grabbing groceries before heading back. Pair this with a remote job, and I don't think I would actually end up using my car very often, this is a huge win in my opinion.

[0] https://www.washtenaw.org/DocumentCenter/View/1258/B2B-Overv...

I waited a little over 4 years to upgrade from the Samsung s7 to the iPhone 13 mini. I could gush over how much I love this phone, both the hardware and software are a delight.

I've owned the original iPod touch as my first foray into smart phones, it was small (~4.3 inches tall) and it was cheap (something like $300 for an iphone without cell service). Upgraded to the nexus 5, even though both had bars on the tops and bottoms of the screen, the extra inch it offered felt magical at the time, not too big, not too small, and the price (used) felt reasonable as 'real' phone. On top of that, stock android felt so much better than iOS at the time. I then 'upgraded' to an s7 and regretted it for 4 years. The phone was similarly sized to the nexus, but it didn't feel any larger to me. Similar to the Nexus, it was a behemoth of a phone that for my tiny hands made it difficult to hold without dropping it. Unlike the nexus, which had an incredible easy snap-off rubberized casing, the s7 had this awful glass casing, which screamed 'put a big bulky case on me!'. I got the seemingly best thing I could find, a big bulky OtterBox for $50, which seemed great, but the rubber blew apart after a year. Between the case never fitting snugly and the sheer bulk of the phone+case, getting it in and out of pockets was a serious ordeal, it also made the wireless charging not work at all for me, this meant that I had to fiddle with the stupid cables constantly. On top of all that, the OS that Samsung shipped with the phone was utter crap. For such an expensive product, I was shocked by how bad it was, and sure you can mess around with roms and such, but who has time for that crap? But hey, at least the battery was massive and I only needed to plug it in once a day.

Que, iPhone 13 mini. The phone has a slightly smaller profile than the s7, but the screen feels (and is!) massive. It's still made of glass, so I had to put a case on it, but apple sells great thin cases (tbd on lifespan) that look good, slide in out of my pockets well, and do not interfere with wireless charging, better yet, the mag-safe cases made it WAY easier to do so. With that said, it's not like I even have to charge it very often, I'm getting multiple days between charges, 3-4 if I put it into battery saver mode. I have 0 worry about ever running out of energy and being unable to charge, something that on all previous phones, compelled me to stash chargers everywhere I went and carry one around. It's a shame about the recent turn wrt to privacy, but aside from that, the software is a magical delight, miles ahead of android in my opinion. Given that I paid essentially the same price for the 13 mini as I did for the s7, and that the trade-up rates are fantastic, I view the price as an absolute steal for the phone. I truly don't see myself going back to android in the future, Apple gave me exactly what I wanted out of a phone and I pray they keep this smaller line of them around.

As to why there are no big Android contenders in the mini-space, I'd guess it's a combination of apples hardware/software being ahead of the curve, and that the perception is that the average android consumer wants a bigger phone. If I'm being a bit more cynical, companies probably also assume they can charge higher prices for bigger devices/batteries. If I were to place a bet, I'd guess that there will be a slight rebound away from phablets in the coming years, Apple proved they can strike an incredible balance between size and battery performance at a price that is reasonable compared to other flagship phones on the market. They've set the trends/pacing in the phone space for years now, I don't have a reason to believe it's going to be any different in the coming decade.

It's funny you mention buying an old house to fix up, I was literally searching online this morning before reading this comment to do the very same thing. Overall I would say that your post, and the parent, resonates quite well with me. I work as a software developer (and love doing so!), but I need physical work to really feel satisfied. I've been a farm hand in the past, spending the evening hours feeding chickens/goats or putting up fence posts, it's a great way to burn excess energy after being inside in the mental quagmire that is modern work.

More recently it's been woodworking for me, having spent this last Sunday building a small coaster set that someone commissioned from me. Completing the order was the absolute highlight of my month, the physicality of the thing allows for knowing every intimate detail about it that feels somewhat similar to the early programs many of us wrote. With early and simple programs, the ones written purely by a single person without management or team input, the programmer is able to fully encapsulate their ideas of the thing at the time of creation. This includes the good parts, the corners cut, the ideas they had when crafting it, and even the memory of where they were in the world when they created it. The problem with a program is that this can get lost over time, a change here, an update there, a PR from someone random, a critique from a new team member, and after a couple years it's different, the feeling of the thing is somehow lost. Having spoken to many building construction laborers, who if you survey them will typically say they have a high level of job satisfaction from seeing their work stand before them, I think the constant churn in the work we see today contributes to the sense of burnout many of us have felt.

With a physical good though, the essence of the craftsmanship in an item remains as long as the item is intact. I can still look at an old shelf a made a decade ago and have it put me directly back into the scene I was in during the time. The slightly odd pattern on one corner an indication of losing some footing while using an orbital sander, a scuff mark from transporting it from it's original home to a new apartment, the physicality creates a true mental time capsule. I'd encourage anyone who is in this field, especially if they've never done so before, to try building real things or to work with their hands in some way. Even if you don't make money from the activity in a direct sense, the stress reduction and life satisfaction it creates can go a long way in avoiding burnout and misery.

>But energy -- of the vim and vigor variety -- is not a tank that you must fill before you can use it. It's a choice. It is in fact _created by action_. It's getting up and making things happen even when your tank is empty.

So very true in my experience with any creative pursuit I've attempted. As others have mentioned, there is a real local maxima that must be overcome, but once you climb the hill and enter the mindset of "getting the thing done", the burst of energy can be so unrelenting until the task is complete. Forcing yourself to this mindset seems like a great approach to me. I still personally need little tricks and triggers to remind myself that 'this', whatever 'this' is, is what I've chosen to do though.

>You are not your situation, your possessions, your achievements, or your past. You are your choices and your actions in the present. Think about the kind of person you admire -- their qualities and their actions. Then _be that person_. Choose to make that a core part of your identity. Not your past choices or your past actions, but who you are _right now_.

I've come to a somewhat similar conclusion. To channel my inner Horowitz, I offer an excerpt from Death Grips' - "Lord of The game".

"Fuck where you're from Fuck where you're goin' It's all about where you're at"

The present moment is all we really have, and attempts to perfect it are very high yield in my opinion.

Most people buy cheap stuff, I think there are three main factors that cause this. 1. It's what's available in big box stores, 2. It's cheap (affordable), and 3. Many people don't have the skills/space to build their own.

Personally I am quite lucky, having learned woodworking from a very talented shop teacher in high-school, I am more than capable of building my own furniture. One of my first projects was an end-table with a chessboard built into the top with a few decorative inlays, all cherry and maple. When I built it, I put maybe $20 extra (nearly a decade ago, forgive my memory) worth of support boards, the table is one of the most solid things I've ever personally see, and was capable of supporting 3 ~150lb people standing on it (yes, it was fun to test this). I remember having to beg my mom to purchase the wood, and the total was under $200, ballpark $150 I think, not including labor of course. I fully expect it to last well past my own life, and it will be a great hand-me-down to my kids.

Contrast this to a nice looking bookshelf I picked up from Ikea two years ago that had felt somewhat sturdy in the store, the shelves themselves were made of real(!) softwoods. It was $130, which felt extremely cheap, but worth a shot. The thing lasted 6 months, then summer came, with it's humidity, and the thing collapsed. Turns out having correctly designed supports is pretty important, who would've thought, certainty not a multi-billion dollar furniture company. So, for having to spend 3 hours assembling it myself, I got to watch it implode when the weather turned, lovely! The sad reality is that this is the standard for household goods in many American homes.

The experience of buying that utter garbage bookshelf prompted me to start building a workshop of my own and to start woodworking again. I had gotten a burning desire to build high quality and long lasting products for people. I've been working on small projects when time permits, mostly drink coasters and cutting boards so far, but I'm actively planning out bigger pieces of furniture as future projects. I've given a couple items away as gifts, and even made a few sales over on etsy[0]. Compared to writing software, which is lucky if it lives for more than few years, I've gotten a massive sense of satisfaction in knowing that for each product I build, it has a good shot at completely outliving the owner.

[0] https://www.etsy.com/shop/MyceliaDesigns

> I have a theory that we can eliminate 90% of the required labor in our economy with the following strategy:

Until we had extremely advanced robotics, endless land, and infinite energy/resources, this will never become reality, even then, I have an endless amount of vanity uses of human labor/resources and I could trivially think up. By way of example, if it were the case in which money no issue for me personally, I could choose to then have constant military parades wherever I go, and I shall choose to go anywhere on my 10000 acre plot of gold and diamond covered land.

> End “consumerism” behavior where every problem is perceived to have a solution in the form of a quick product you can buy - much of that is a psychological trick played by marketers and rarely solves the real problem.

This is a quick way to a very poor quality of life. I've been poor, desperately needing basic household items and yet unable to obtain them, it's much, much better from a quality of life perspective to have problems solved with trivial tools that I buy off the shelf. That said, anyone is free to choose this life, buy less things, and retire slightly earlier than our peers. The reality is that cost of most consumer spending purchases is not what at the root cause of preventing people from retiring early, 'stuff' is damn cheap today.

> Take note of the goods and services we really need. Things like food, shelter, shoes, etc. Hmm, I've heard this line of thinking before, it leads to living in abhorrent conditions. I mean, nobody really 'needs' a 2000 sqft living space, why not just put people in a 20 sqft area instead? Nobody really 'needs' carpet or nice decor, lets build with nothing but cheap concrete. Yeah, let's push for living like prisoners! Thanks, but no thanks, I'm fine with working a little extra to avoid the extremes of this line of reasoning.

> Design machines which can produce those vital things in a fully automated or highly automated way. The point of this part is to reduce the marginal cost of one more item as close to zero as possible. This makes sharing easier as it becomes cheaper to share with one more person.

Like we've been doing? How do you think everything is so cheap to begin with?

> Make those machines completely open source, designed for repair and long life. You're free to spend your time making this and even doing it, but it's wasted effort at this point, we already have extremely efficient 'open source', long-life and 'easy' to repair machines. Visit the US patent site and look at the plethora of old machines that you could go build today if you so pleased.

> Create a system where people can acquire equal ownership shares in the machines they rely on. For any given machine those users work together to keep the machine operational and producing.

Or I could just buy shares of a manufacturing company, and we can use that money along with the revenue generated by the machines use to create goods, to keep the machine operational. What you're describing already exists.

> Land must be held in common (the legal device used today would be a public land trust) and housing, farmland, and manufacturing space is allotted to people based on need.

So who, exactly, is getting to decide how to use this land? Because I need about 100 acres to be happy and live on. In your system, would I be allowed to own that? Or would I still be stuck needing to live in a cell? What about 1000 acres? What about 10000 acres? Why should some group of people or laws prevent me from doing so? Groups of people already get together and prevent me from doing what I want with my land, why would I want even more people in power over me?

> Develop a culture where getting rich is not the goal but making sure everyone has what they need is. This has worked in other human societies before so this should be possible.

Or we could just let individuals make up their own choices on how they want to live and consume life. Those that want to become rich will, those who want to dick around all day drawing pretty pictures or writing poetry will do that. Much like we already have. People create a social hierarchy, even if we got rid of money, there are still going to be people that attempt to be at the 'top' socially. How do you deal with that in your system?

> Then everyone shares the output of their machines with their other shareholders. Each person owns shares in many machines.

You're just playing with words and wealth redistribution. Companies are income producing machines, and the business units are the companies individual machines of production. Each unit shares their output by feeding it into the shareholders already. Each person who decided to buy a share, gets that combined output.

> Under this system, there is no ownership class which can suck up all the surplus value. Instead, every person receives the benefit of automation.

And here it is, saw this one coming. This system fails each time it's implemented, from one reason or another. How does your system handle doctors? What about lawyers? There are no machines there, are they expected to not be allowed to benefit? This is a question that more generally extends to service style roles where there are no machines present, those people don't 'benefit' in the way you're describing from this system. In western reality of course, they benefit by being able to purchase items that were historically extremely expensive to produce, for essentially nothing. The multi-thousand dollar chair, made from the hands of a skilled wood worker becomes a $100 and affordable for all. Also under your system, I don't have a way to retire, I have no hope but to work. If I can't own anything, and thus I can't own to be ahead, I am stuck, forever a slave to these machines.

> In such a world I believe the average persons necessary working hours would be maybe 5 hours a week. We could spend our lives with friends and family, or reading and writing, painting or programming. Most of the necessary work would be done by volunteers who enjoy what they are doing. Work that people do not enjoy could be shared in rotation.

In such a world, I know the average person would become a slave to whomever is on top calling the shots, they would work endlessly to supply more and more to wealth to a few people on top. Be it a dictator or an elite political class, I want my life ruled as little as possible from those people.

>It’s all a voluntary and market based system but captures the main thrust of Marx’s critique of capitalism - the problem with an ownership class sucking up all the surplus value in society.

Except it's not exactly voluntary if I can't own anything that would allow me to stop working altogether, I'm still stuck being a slave to the state. There still exists a power structure that both capitalism and marxist systems have.

> We could do this. End consumerism, make everything open source, share land, know when you have enough and work to serve others in your community.

Thanks, but no thanks. I would rather buy what I feel I need than have you telling me what I actually need. I've been around people long enough to know that sharing land is about the last thing I want. People fuck up public places and there is no incentive to clean other peoples shit up. We already decide when enough is enough, it's just that most of us will always want more, welcome to the human condition. I work to serve myself, and my work is paid for by providing value to my community already.

>Anyway that’s my theory.

I don't mean to poke at you personally, don't take it that way. But this is an awful theory that will lead to more human suffering. If YOU want to live this way, by all means, please do! Just don't suggest 'we' should do it together.

Which is why I don't read the articles the vast majority of the time. It's rare that I find an article worth reading slowly, but when I do, I slow down and read it. I come to this forum for the comments, not for poorly written articles with low amount of substance. Certain blogs or websites I'll read at a slow pace, because of historic experiences showing the quality is high or will spur interesting comments. Pg is a good example, I'll read those slowly as I find the writing to have a large amount of interesting ideas. Contrasted to the article in this thread, the idea isn't very new or interesting to me, and the signal to noise ratio isn't exactly good. When the signal to noise is bad so often, I want to spend my time with something else as well, and why I choose not to waste 10 minutes reading it when only a couple will suffice.

I don't really consider myself a fast reader, but I was able to get the broad strokes in about 1 and half minutes (timed it). Articles like these are 80% filler and the first sentence of two can generally tell you what the rest is about. If you can find the keywords in those first couple sentences, hint, they're typically the long ones, you can get the gist of everything very quickly. It's typically an idea or group of ideas that is interesting, not a specific line or word, and if I find something curious, it's at that time I'll choose to go slow or even stop to think about it.

Society does, it's called Oxycodone. The results of it have been quite devastating.

As a side effect, this would completely destroy the pipeline for commercial aviation (think big jet) pilots. Pretty much everyone starts on small crafts and then proceeds to burn hundreds of hours of avfuel in the process of getting to their commercial licenses. Considering the scale and importance of the aviation sector, as well as the ongoing shortage of trained pilots in the field today, the results of your policy would be catastrophic.

The industry is rapidly trying to move to do two things, 1. remove lead from the fuel, this is noted by other commenters. And 2. Pushing for more electric GA.

Pilots don't exactly like getting their hands covered in lead when they check fuel, much less dumping it into the atmosphere when they fly, but it's still an unfortunate fact of life. Times are absolutely changing though, and the future looks bright.

The market is very liquid for anything above 3 pennies.

Source, I have over 150,000 market transactions.

I've read Soros' work on this idea, he described it as 'reflexivity'. It's a meaty problem that, from my limited point of view anyway, keeps investing from being a trivial exercise. Every bet one takes on the future of the market going a specific direction changes the order-book, and thus the market direction.

As many people on this forum know first hand, it's very, very hard to write that's 'perfect'. I've had the chance to write some fairly technically complicated EVM code (on chain contract upgrades with some other admin features), even the simple lines need a plethora of testing and review. This was a few years ago, but it took myself and another engineer, start to finish a couple months of dedicated effort to write what amounted to something like 5 source files. You have to know how the code executes with extremely high confidence up and down the entire stack, this takes time even with seasoned people. We ended up going through a security review with a third-party team, this is big money to do, high five figures for what amounted to two weeks of code review and pen testing! The problem is, without this serious dedication ($$) to making sure it's as good as you can get, projects are doomed to blow up like this. Hell, who knows what happens in 6 months after release when some EVM level bug gets discovered and directly exposes a hole in your contact. This might be different now, but a lot of contracts back then didn't have anyway to upgrade from those security exploits!

So from my point of view, you have this massive upfront cost, that I suspect the vast majority of teams are not paying, and you also have the chance of success being very low. Where have we seen this before, home automation seems to ring a bell and we've seen the security horror show with that. I don't mean to be such a downer on these projects, but they're really difficult to get right and audit. And when we're talking about putting millions(90!) of dollars into a thing, I don't really want to rely on the goodwill of some hackers to give me my money back. I wish the general public understood the security aspects of these contracts more, but people seem to see these hacks, shrug to themselves thinking they'll get debugged and fixed like normal software, and then continue on in life.

Unfortunately people are going to get burned in crypto by lack of experience, lack of review, lack of investment, and pure and simple scams.

To the first point, isn't this still true? Unless I missed something, N-95s/respirators are the only way to protect yourself, wearing the cloth/surgical masks is a way to prevent yourself, who may be asymptomatic, from spreading the disease and NOT to protect yourself from someone who you are in contact with who has it.

To the second point, if I am recalling correctly this was in part due to the fact that we were undergoing as massive supply shortage. I distinctly remember my roommates (healthcare workers) being told to keep their N-95s in a brown paper bag and to reuse it.

To the third point, everyone is a critic and everyone is bound to make mistakes in a rapidly evolving situation. Given the fact that front-line folks had to re-use (Read: already contaminated and unsafe for use) masks given the supply issues, I'm not so sure he was wrong in advising the general public to hold off.

Thank you for this demonstration, you've convinced me to give this setup a try!

I've been moving towards a mouse-free environment, stemming from wanting a productive remote/on-the-go laptop setup (where the mouse is tolerable at best), and from having severe wrist pain using a mouse. I've gotten quite good at moving around the machine with keystrokes, and I also make heavy use of tools like vimium. Where I've felt stuck was my IDE, I use vscode(over full-time vim) because of the exact features you describe. I've attempted to modify vscode a lot, including keybind updates and addons, but I've just struggled to get the muscle memory down. Vanilla Vim never cut it for me aside from basic server management, and even some of the modified neovim setups that I've had co-workers suggest always felt lacking in major areas. Your setup in contrast looks fabulous and zippy, thank you again for sharing.

If an adult has 10 kids they're going to need even more.

It's a reference to PG's essay titled "Ramen Profitable"[0]

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html

Don't really need "Seinfeld money" to do it though. I'm agreeing with the top sub-comment to yours. If you don't have time for 1 hour, should really find a way to do 2.

Could always hire a cleaner and order delivery. Doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to me.

Having grown up in (very) poor rural America (~3k population), gone to work/live in an urban area (close to 3 million metro population), and now live in an extraordinarily affluent but smallish (100k) midwest city, I really don't agree with your view of the US in the slightest.

[edit] I originally wanted to make the point that one of the things we buy is increased quality of life. Wrote the comment up and completely forgot to throw that in.

>You all work so hard for almost nothing (apart from 'stuff', that is now mostly made in China).

The hours of output from an individual varies greatly, from almost none to 120 hour work weeks (literally, I have seen the pay stubs). In addition, not all work is the same, and there are a _lot_ of cushy office jobs in which people may claim 40 hour weeks, have probably half of that is what one would call 'work.' You also imply that having a lot of things is somehow negative and that it's just 'stuff'. We buy plenty of stuff for plenty of reasons, which includes recreation and entertainment.

To further iterate on the point that it's not just 'stuff', there are a plethora of festivals, museums, theaters, outdoor spaces, theme parks, malls, and community gatherings. There is far more stuff to do than there is time in the day to do it here. I should also note, a lot of which is either completely free or at least pretty inexpensive.

To push the point home, it's also almost trivial to fly over to Europe. It's relatively normal among the middle class to take trips overseas. Airline tickets are not _that_ expensive after all.

>In Europe people have a much more relaxed attitude to work, yet somehow pretty much everyone has a very high quality of life

This is very true for many in America as well; a great deal many of the people I grew up with are still in poverty or working menial jobs... but they also are out boating every weekend in the summers, skiing in the winters, watching sports on huge flat screens. They may be cash-poor but are still reasonably rich in experiences. This is a tricky thing to measure from the economic lens alone.

> judged by quality of food

The food I've had in the US has ranged from Michelin star to Mac Donald's, both are fabulous, though one is more snobby. Perhaps in deeply rural areas with low populations, the food is more of the fast-food variety. Still, in most mid to large cities, the food has been consistently excellent across both price and quality offered.

> judged by things working properly (e.g. washing machines and public restroom doors!)

I don't think you could back this up by any data, and if I were to guess, this is based on some poor luck you had while visiting. Across the various places I've been, it's pretty unheard of not to have access to washers or dryers due to malfunction. Most areas have at least a couple of competing laundromats, and it costs no more than a couple of dollars to access them. Breakdowns happen to all equipment over time, and thankfully quality can be purchased if desired. If many still choose the initial price tag over that, so be it. Servicing a machine is cheap and easy, as is replacing one outright.

As for public restroom doors, I don't understand this at all as it hasn't been my experience in the slightest. Even in poor urban areas, doors work fine. I can assure you, the VAST majority of doors here work just fine!

> freedom from fear (e.g. of losing their job, getting ill, or interactions with the 'police'),

This entirely an individual thing; losing one's job isn't exactly the end of the world here either. Opportunity is all over the place. Maybe aside from suicidal people, everyone on earth fears getting ill. And maybe aside from high health care costs, assuming I didn't choose to pay for extra insurance, I'd still rather be 'poor' and uninsured here than most places in the world. It's not 'free' like many other countries, but if you're poor, you're typically not paying for procedures either. As for the police, is there a country where someone doesn't fear the police on some level? Is there any country that doesn't give them the right to put you in a jail cell? The statistics of unjustified police violence point to it being exceedingly rare, so much that when there is a case that it does happen, the people and media take to the streets, and every detail of the matter is covered nationally.

> and time to spend with people important to you.

All choices people make, nothing prevents someone in this country from spending more time with family. People who work insane hours wanting to provide more for themselves are making the decision to do so.

The United States is a _massive_ country, and I caution against painting it with such a broad brush. I'm not saying there are no issues, there are, but the ones you point out seem wrong to me. There are massive lifestyle differences here, and I don't see that as a particularly bad thing. If the people back in my hometown, for example, want to spend their days boating instead of working some stressful job, all the more power to them. If someone wants to burn the candle at both ends to acquire a boatload of money instead, that's great too. I suspect there is a far more significant amount of opportunity to both here than in Europe based on the data I've researched in the past.

I agree with the "read from the beginning" vs "landed on a page" issue. Linking can solve a lot of these styles of issues, as does keeping in mind the many possible consumers of the given documentation. As a simple example..

Original:

> Mailers are really just another way to render a view.

"Edited":

> Mailers are another way to render a view.

My Edit:

> Mailers are another way to render a view, much like the linkTo(RenderMethod()).

Yupp! I made a little toy project for the EVM over a year ago with this exact concept, never really did anything with it sadly, life seems to find ways to get busy. Due to the nature of needing to send 'gas' to make function calls, it was a natural fit to add a call to send a small portion of the value to an address before returning the computations result.

I really loved the idea of being able to create libraries of code that could just be called for a small fee or copied for free if one didn't have the funds. I hope this idea continues to catch on, it seemed to me to be a perfect incentive fit for the open source world.

Photosynthesis is a perfect example, I know of a handful of useful chemicals that today come from the cultivation of specific plants. Food production is the other obvious one use case for it. If you're byproduct is oxygen, well, can use it for whatever you want.