That's called manslaughter... You don't get to walk when you rob a place and "accidentally" shoot someone. A sassy judge should ask "Did you accidentally rob the place too?"
1,812 karma · joined September 27, 2017
I kind of feel, and I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert, that digital warfare should be treated closer to biological warfare than just your typical bombs and bullets kind. Generally, and holy shit I know someone is going to flip their shit for me saying this, but generally a regular bomb (not nuke) is an acute type of problem. After it goes off, it's GENERALLY harmless after that. Yes, structure collapse, contamination, gas leaks and other after effects. But not really more booms from the bomb. Weaponized ebloa can still make more people sick, not affected by the original release. Same with NotPetya and other cyber attacks. After deployed, it can affect more and more targets as time goes on.
But to be fair, PR stunt dynamics are better understood these past two decades compared to the 80s. The last decade alone, you can see the reaction of the public to news instantly, react to it and see the public reaction-reaction instantly, with well formatted analytics. That's the only reason I don't immediately dismiss the idea like it was a flat-earther conspiracy theory. There's plenty of analytics to try making a solid plan to do something like that. At the same time, I have zero proof that it's ever been done intentionally.
There's a book called Weapons of Math-destruction. In it the author talks about Facebook's potential ability of swaying public discourse and increasing the chances of certain votes using their analytics knowledge. While the author said it's a scary thought, it could never happen and there's no evidence it has been done or would be done. This book came out 2016 (books are typically published about 6-12 months after manuscript is accepted, so written roughly 2015). So... yea.
If I agreed/believed that, this could be a part 2 to that plan. I bet a discussion will come up how government regulations don't allow the public to have bullet-RESISTANT vehicles (no such thing as "bulletproof", especially if you don't get 3rd party standardized testing to back up your claim). Along with trying to rewrite vehicle laws/standards to benefit Tesla.
Personally, don't care either way. But I always get this uneasy feeling whenever Musk does anything.
2. Write a lot.
3. Read more and pay attention to how it differs from your writing. Figure out what you need to improve.
4. Write a lot more.
Repeat.
In all seriousness, that's the base habit of all journalist, non-fiction and creative writers. There's an adage that you become a decent writer after you've written your first 1 million words. It took me about 1.5 million before I put myself in the decent category. My last 100 thousand have been very deliberate practice, which puts me at an almost-good level of writing.
Extra tip, fear not the editing phase. Let your writing ferment alone for a week or two. Then come back to edit. Once you've racked it, let it age just a wee bit more. Edit it again once or twice more. Then you do a typo read through.
Thing is, I've been curious about this. You mentioned, "I won't pay for a subscription to a worthless newspaper". So, I know this is the sentiment most people have. But, isn't that the problem? BTW, I'm not picking on you, this is more about the generality of the situation.
A lot of people think local politics and other issues are worthless. But then are annoyed when they don't know anything about what's going on, why no one is "doing anything about it", "how did they get away with that" or just generally complain that their local whatever is a POS. For politics that is more likely to affect you faster than state, fed or international level, why do we think it's worthless? I'm not going to pretend like I'm magically different. Our mayor is about as important to me as a dog turd in my neighbor's backyard is to me. I've been wondering how I even came to the idea myself about a month ago when local politics does heavily affect me, whether I like it or not.
Makes me wonder about some demographics. Like, what is the percentage of people that do "care" and actively read about their local area? And by how much (1hr, 3hrs, 5hrs a week, etc)? Then, what's their city like? Do they have relatively less corruption than other cities? Are their schools better? Parks? Roads? Rec centers? Gov employee well being any better? Crime rates? How many people are needed to care about "local politics", on average, to make a city "good"? 10%? 20%? 50%?
Then, what has to happen to make enough people give a shit?
Questions beyond this post and HN... but yea... why the hell do we think local politics and news is worthless when it's the issues that will affect us more and faster than anything else?
That, and I'm actually really curious how many downvotes it takes to get banned.
In my mind things like Stadia will increase the amount of data traffic exponentially, even at a low market penetration rate. I think I saw one estimate that it's going to be 120gb on average per hour. Even at 100gb, the extra traffic at scale is going to be insane.
Regardless of if current infrastructure can handle x% market penetration of that kind of usage in a, what, 1 year time? Should the infrastructure even be required for that kind of insanity? We're not talking about life-saving data transportation. We're talking about god damn video games. Or am I way off my whiskey fueled rocker?
Always having to rely on video games and the internet is a problem. You seriously can't mature through being alone in your own thoughts? People gladly, even smugly, say I'm a bad guy because on the weekends I treat myself to a cigar. Yea, I know it's bad and I don't push that habit off as some glorious thing to be protected. I have my vices. But I don't let my vice control me or become my identity. Everyone is on the kick the last 10 years like "video games define me". Y'all need to stop and go outside to hug a tree.
Stop. Go outside. Hug a tree or something. You need to realize, I'm a capitalist republican. I'm telling people to hug a tree and I mean it. You people need to hug a tree. Go out, with a book and sit underneath a tree for half an hour and collect some of them vitamin Ds. Leave your phone inside because no, the world will not end if you are without a phone for more than ten minutes. Chill, the fuck, out.
Go out and get some sun.
Anyways, there's more to life than San Fran and video games. To me, you're complaining about the smell when you live in a dumpster. San fran is the dumpster of humanity. I feel bad that you feel disconnected from humanity, because I know what that's like. Whether or not you want to believe me, I'm speaking from personal experience derived from the last 10 years, Cali sucks if you want to be a social, well rounded human being. I highly recommend changing your environment.
Oh, and the food is better in Florida too. Get a Cuban sub from the Tampa Bay area. Happy hour is always from 10am to 9am daily. Alligator tastes better than you think. Only eat Latin food in the small mom and pop places in the bad parts of town. Literally, the best ever and well worth the risk of getting shot in a gang related drive by. Seafood... you don't like seafood? You'll like Florida seafood.
Then there's the beach. I mean... do I need to get into why?
Am I going to get downvoted, sure. Florida man don't care.
Ps now (I have a ps4), 10 bucks a month to play how many different games when the hell ever I want. It totally works out for me because I normally don't care about most games after 10 hours of gameplay. I don't want to buy a game for $60 bucks and not actually have it. Generally, I don't buy a game until it's down to like $30, because I don't have to play anything immediately. At 32, I'm over the whole "ER MY GOD, I have to play this game right meow!"
But... seriously though... I like video games too. But not that much. The whole escape reality, I get it. I enjoy it too. But, if you are escaping reality more often than you are in it... that's a problem.
Just because you can't see how a trap will be sprung, doesn't mean the trap doesn't exist. This will bite people in the ass a year or two down the road. Then everyone will cry, "How could this happen? We need legislation to protect us!" No, you just need to be quit being a baby and start being an adult and understand that minor comfort and convenience can come at a heavy cost.
I travel for work or for vacation. If for work, I'm there hitting "Spit money out for me" at an ATM. Not gaming. I'm not home so I can make much better money in a short timespan to enjoy home time more. End of days is visiting restaurants/bars and either socializing or schmoozing clients. If none of that, I read a book, do work on the laptop or enjoy a movie.
Vacation... I mean... seriously, I can game at home. I go somewhere to do NOT home stuff. Why would I travel somewhere and spend money to... play video games like I would at home? Even not vacation, I go to the beach on the weekend to... hear me out... walk on the sand, sun bathe and go in water.
These excuses for a subpar games as a service are pretty ridiculous. It's an obvious "We found a solution to a problem that doesn't exist". That and the controller looks so bottom barrel generic. It's like the knock-off to a knock-off of an Xbox controller until they realized it was for a ps3 instead and did a late night change to it.
Edit: I get it, everyone vacations differently. But playing video games while out on vacation is like bringing a Subway sandwich to a 3-star steakhouse restaurant. You are there to not-home. But I also don't get the japanese restaurants where they expect you to cook your own food. Mofo, if I'm going to cook, I'll cook at home. I go somewhere to pay a premium for food, it's so I don't have to cook it. I'm 32, stop making me feel like the old man yelling to stay off my lawn!
When I first learned to program, I dived into freelancing. I lucked out and in about 3 weeks, I teamed up with two design firms that needed a webdev. I was working ~18 almost everyday. No exaggeration. I was single and this was right after I lost my job, apartment and my life collapsed. So, I was on the kick of getting it all back. It was work, coffee, sleep. I literally drank 2-3 pots of coffee everyday and had to chug beer to fall asleep. Wake up, all over again.
BTW, not a healthy lifestyle, in case you didn't realize.
After a year, I was done. I would literally stare at my emails piling up and just not move. Just blank stare for hours. I had zero focus. Not, oh I'm going to watch a video or check reddit kind of "zero focus". I could barely function. Any task I needed to do, like brush my teeth, I couldn't think about long or hard enough to get up and do it. That, I learned is zero damn focus.
Fast forward about 2 months. Lost all those contracts and contacts for obvious reasons and got into really bad depression. Now, I was "trying" to cure my burnout and was getting no where. Meditation, soothing music, motivational videos, whatever. None of it was enough to get me "work" functioning again for more than 15 minutes without me wanting to just go jump into front of a fast moving truck. Oh, but I can't do that because I lack the motivation to even go out there to kill myself. That's how bad it was.
Until, one Friday, Steam sent an email about Borderlands 2 was free for the weekend. I didn't play a video game in like 2 or 3 years at that point. I thought, "Fuck it, my weekend isn't going to be productive anyways since I'm burnt out and probably going to die in this apartment only to be found because they want to collect past due rent."
I didn't think of "working" at all. Just played, non-damn-stop that entire weekend. Didn't drink coffee or alcohol, mostly by accident because I was focused on the game.
I fell asleep at a decent time Sunday. Monday I woke up, did all my morning hygiene properly, like an adult. I then sat down and made phone calls to contacts that didn't suffer from my burnout phase. Got working again. I tried getting 7 hours of sleep every night and went from 18 hours working to only 10 max for the first few months (had to pick back up on finances). Eventually I forced 8 hours of sleep on myself over time. One of my best decisions.
You need to have fun people! I don't play video games much anymore. I like reading, woodworking, nature photography, writing, watercolor painting (I suck at it, but it's fun) and literally walking on the beach. Bars and generic social meetups are fun too. I only work more than 8 hours a day if it's a real, super emergency. I restrict my coffee intake to 3 mugs max per day. No caffeine the moment it's 5pm, no exceptions. Even if there's a crunch. My sleep is important. I only allow 2 all nighters in a 30 day timespan. No exceptions.
While I feel for Ella in the article, but you can't blame the economy or capitalism for the fact you don't take care of yourself. It's not a political issue. It's a "be an adult" issue. One that many have to learn the hard way, like myself. But blaming others is... well... stupid. Yes, there are drawbacks to standing your ground about this. Again, it's about being an adult. Nothing about gender or race. Be an adult. Yea, I didn't get certain contracts, especially one from a FAANG (Fuck them all by the way, they're the cause of this overwork bullshit plaguing society), because I have very strong stipulations how I work. If I'm requested to work after MY 5pm, I charge double, instantly. Don't call me. I don't check my work email. If you call, I charge you a full hour, at double rate, even if it's a 5 minute phone call. Email me and I'll get to it 9am the next day. Unless you take me out to dinner to chat work. But I'm an expensive work date.
If you're in a burnout phase. Here's what I recommend.
A. Do something drastically fun or relaxing. Pure pleasure and don't even think or worry about working. For at least a day. I think a weekend is best (obviously) but at minimum do 24 hours. This is the first "small fix" to get you started.
B. You need a hobby. A relaxing and/or fun hobby. No, you don't instagram or facebook what you're doing. It's FOR YOU and you only. I recommend something constructive. But whatever it is that you find enjoyable and somewhat challenges you(not crazy important). Do it.
C. Work/Life balance is about doing responsibilities and still having fun. Life isn't all about "constant" improvement and work. Relax, have fun. Get your work done sooner so you can have fun sooner. Don't get your work done sooner just so you can give yourself more work to do.
Hustling is good in spurts, especially when you're young and can handle it. Cutting your teeth is good. But you still need to realize that life is more than that. If you're hustling so you can "hustle more", you're doing it wrong. You hustle so you can enjoy life more. People bitch about the boomers. Yea, but you know, they did protest against the stiff all work corporate culture of their time and brought in the sexual revolution. Millennials are a generation that focus on all work/career along with public image for their social media feed and are really under-sexed.
Go get laid, have some fun and remember you work so you can enjoy life more. You don't life so you can work more.
Thanks for the article by the way. Got to admit, those folks have a great heist story. "We stole $10m worth of deez nutz!"
Ever wonder if someone does a heist and the press shorts the value, do those guys want to correct them? "Excuse me, we stole $12.4m worth of nuts. We are professionals after all, thank you very much." Not going to lie, it would piss me off if I ever did an art heist and the news says, "$10 million dollar painting stolen..." Mofo, you forgot a zero! You're making me look bad!
Switzerland, WW2. There is safety in holding EVERYONE's money. Because the moment you try it, you enrage many, many, many people who have things that go boom. You can fuck with someone's politics, their car or even their wife. But once you fuck with someone's money, it's a whole new ball game.
> I don't understand how this is even legal at all
Bank fees are higher. The different "islands" that do this, really don't have a choice. WTF else are they going to do as income generation? There's only so many happy endings you can give in a day spa. It's also easier to "invest" and hide the money in tourist based enterprises on said islands. It totally makes sense to hire an interior designer for $10k an hour.
>how can they trust so few people to hide so much money
Because people don't like getting into car accidents. When you're "trusted" with something on that level, suddenly people make sure you either don't have or do have car accidents that magically attract stray bullets.
>I mean apparently there is a long list of why it's risky, and I don't understand how this is even legal at all.
Homie, avocado farmers in Mexico get kidnapped and executed because avocados are cash crops. Shit, look up "avocado stolen" or even "avocado semitruck stolen". No such thing as making bank and not having risk. Some of those truck drivers in the USA get killed. If you're going to get targeted for making money, might as well go all out.
I've been noticing it for the past 3 or 4 weeks. I've been thinking my google-fu has been weakening. Glad to know I'm not the only one.
The world is getting silly. Not because of studies like this. But because people actually agree with obvious bullshit like this. I feel like I'm taking damn crazy pills.